The Dead Come for Us

Chapter 10

The world tipped into a void of white heat.

As the concrete foundations of the control tower collapsed inward, the third-floor routing room strained at its structural joints, peeling away to begin its sickeningly deliberate fall toward the eastern tracks.

Concrete dust sprayed through widening cracks in the walls, blinding them, making their throats scratchy and dry.

"Hold onto something!"

Mac yelled, his boots slipping off the crumbling floor. He jammed his shoulder into a bolted steel relay rack, digging his heels in, and wrapped his arms around Rose like a clamp. Lola slammed against the base of the control console, clutching an iron cable conduit.

Isaac wasn't as fortunate; his feet flew out from under him and he began sliding rapidly down the increasing slope of the concrete floor toward the empty window that overlooked the blaze below.

"Dad!"

Isaac screamed, his fingers scraping at the linoleum before his legs dangled over the void. Mac let go of the rack, his own descent beginning. He rammed his tactical boot into the base of a smashed terminal to arrest his progress, and lunged out, catching Isaac by the cuff of his denim jacket as his son’s shoulders cleared the opening.

The sharp pain that shot through Mac’s shoulder was immediate and intense, but he held on, gritting his teeth. With a final, earth-shattering crunch, the tower's fall came to an abrupt halt.

The top section of the building had wedged itself at a severe thirty-degree angle against the thick steel roof of a derelict military boxcar.

"Out! Onto the roof! Go!"

Mac roared, pulling Isaac up and shoving him through the splintered window frame and onto the corrugated steel. Lola scrambled out after them, her clothing blackened with soot, but still clutching her iron crowbar.

Mac dragged Rose up-a deadweight in his arms-and passed her to Lola before clambering onto the roof himself. The heat from the train yard was like a physical wall, searing their faces.

The tracks below were a lake of molten thermite and burning embers. The thousands of infected that had been present on the tracks had been reduced to twitching black shapes, their smell, a mix of pressurized blood and vaporized flesh, thick in the air. But the familial conflict had not been stopped by the fire.

"We are exposed! We are completely out in the open!"

Isaac shrieked, his voice a cracked mixture of terror and pure rage as he stood on the vibrating metal roof. He jabbed a trembling, soot-covered finger at Mac. "You did this! You forced us up there, and we almost burned to death! You almost let me drop into that!"

"I caught you, Isaac!"

Mac roared, his voice a guttural rasp above the roaring flames. He stalked into his son's space, his face smeared with grease and his own blood. "The danger was the drop! I prevented the drop! Had we stayed on the ground, that thermite would have liquified your bones!"

"And what now?!"

Lola inserted herself between them, her voice a fierce hiss. She shoved Mac hard in the chest with her gloved hand. "Look at the perimeter, Mac! Look at the 'prevention' that you've wrought! Your secondary charge broke the containment wall!"

Mac snapped his head towards the south boundary. Lola was right. The secondary thermite canister hadn't just disintegrated the tower; the concussive force of its explosion had obliterated a fifty-yard segment of the concrete and steel security wall surrounding the train yard and the forest beyond. And the thermite was burning out, starving of its own chemical speed.

"Listen,"

Rose whispered. Her voice was barely audible above the roar, but it cut through their argument like a razor. Her eyes were no longer blank but were dilated and intensely focused on the dark, unburnt line of trees beyond the broken wall.

"Rose, what do you hear?"

Mac asked, his internal tactical clock resetting instantly.

"Everything,"

she chattered, her teeth vibrating audibly.

"The woods. They're all coming out."

A deep, resonating hum began to fill the air, rising from the dark tree line – a synchronized, high-pitched whine like a thousand torn metal sheets. The sheer volume of the noise drowned out the last of the roaring flames.

The thermite drop had been a massive clear-out of the train yard, but the deafening explosions and the intense light show had acted as a planetary signal flare.

Every single infected that had scattered out into the surrounding valleys and woods in the first twenty-four hours of the pandemic was now being drawn back toward the sound.

From the shadowy recesses of the red oaks, the first of the approaching herd appeared. Not a pack, but a mega-swarm. A black, surging wave of human forms-tens of thousands of them-poured through the gap in the wall, moving with the brutal, unstoppable kinetic energy of an avalanche.

The burning heat emanating from the train tracks did not deter them; they vaulted over the still-smoldering embers, limbs flailing, milky eyes locking onto the four figures silhouetted against the inferno.

"Down the ladder! Into the southern drainage channel!"

Mac commanded, drawing his sidearm and locking in his last magazine. They scrambled down the rusted iron rungs on the side of the boxcar, their boots striking the unburnt gravel just as the vanguard of the approaching swarm cleared the railroad tracks fifty yards away.

They ran toward the dark, narrow channel that sliced away from the industrial complex and toward the desolate, open interstate system.

They came to a narrow, underpass-a dead end of concrete pillars and abandoned construction barriers under the southern outer-ring highway. Mac pulled up, raising his pistol to cover their rear.

"Mac, the gate's welded shut!"

Lola's voice rang out from the absolute blackness of the underpass, tight with panic. "We can't get through to the highway!"

Mac did not look back. He leveled his pistol as the first three sprinting runners broke through into the concrete corridor, their jaws snapping rhythmically, their fingers gnarled.

He squeezed the trigger three times. Bang. Bang. Bang. Three of them dropped, but behind them, the black void of the underpass was instantly crammed with the screaming, wall-to-wall silhouette of the mega-swarm, their bodies piled atop one another in their desperate need to wedge into the concrete choke-point.

Mac's slide locked back with a dry, metallic click.

Empty.

The swarm’s scream was deafening, and the hot, copper breath of the front runner was washing over Mac’s face as a dozen blood-soaked hands reached through the dark toward his throat.