2026-06-13 19:51:38
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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 be
Chapter 9
The concrete floor squeaked and popped under their boots as the control tower listing was now in inches of agonized movement. The support pillars were shrieking and tearing under the dead-weight momentum of the swarming infected. A digital death warrant still hummed over their radios from the armored vehicle on the outer perimeter: "Incendiary containment commencing in T-minus four minutes.""The stairs are pancakeing!" shouted Mac, gripping a bolted-down routing desk for support as his feet slid on the sloped floor."The window!" shouted Isaac in terror, lunging toward the fractured glass that looked out onto the eastern rail line. "We can jump to the roof of that box car!""It's twenty-five feet down, Isaac! You'll crack your pelvis!"Mac intercepted his son's path, grabbing his arm. "Look at the suspension under that car; it's a bad landing. If you break your leg I have to carry you, and then everyone dies.""Stop calling us everyone!" Isaac yelled, ripping his arm from Mac's gr
Chapter 8
As the shadow grew, the air itself screamed. Mac didn't calculate vectors or weigh his options; he went with raw, muscle-memorized survival instinct. He dived across the ballast stones, hooked his hands under Rose's waist and drove his whole weight forward. Lola lunged after Isaac, her nails digging into his jacket as she dragged him desperately, sliding away from the concrete lip of the drainage canal.The multi-ton steel quarantine container slammed into the edge of the retaining wall with a catastrophic, metal-liquefying thud. The impact of the kinetic energy release shattered the concrete rim into a thousand lethal stone projectiles; the rear half of the heavy steel box crumpled under its own terminal velocity, pitching violently over on itself before diving straight down into the drainage canal below where it crushed the sprinting tide of the subsurface infected; but the front half ripped open like a crushed soda can on the gravel surface of the train yard.A strangled, comm
Chapter 7
The noise from the mouth of the tunnel consumed their cries.As Mac and Lola shoved them down the sloping concrete incline toward the sound of the roaring tunnel mouth Isaac and Rose screamed out. Mac let his shotgun drop. He grabbed the chain-link fence post on top with his left hand and flung himself down. The ball sockets on his arm joints cried out at the strain as he snatched upIsaac’s hoodie just in time.Lola’s survival instinct kicked into overdrive thanks to her primal terror, and she leaped out flat onto the sloped concrete, her boot wedged in a crack while her fingers wrapped around Rosie’s wrist."Pull!" Mac shouted. His neck muscles bulged as if they would burst through his skin.With a shared, agonizing heave, they managed to wrench the two teenagers back up the forty-five-degree incline just as the first of the sprinty hoard poured out of the tunnel. They did not bother climbing the walls, the forward motion was too strong. The crowd surged ahead and smashed against
Chapter 6
She lost the gun and it was a shock like a blow on her face.When the rail-worker ripped the pistol from Lola’s grasp, the metallic click of its body against the gravel sounded like the report of a closing coffin. The bulk of the man drove her backward and against the rusted tin siding of the warehouse door, his black coagulated fluid stained teeth snapping inches from her throat.“Take your hands off her!” Mac bellowed.Mac, who was now empty on his primary shotgun, dropped the weapon off the strap and out of his vest came his combat knife. He stepped forward into a death lunge and buried the thick, five-inch steel blade upward into the tissue under the rail-worker’s jawbone and into the creature’s brain stem. The steel went in smoothly and the monstrosity’s eyes rolled back, its bulk going completely slack, collapsing on top of Lola’s boots.To his right, things were getting dicey; the other two concealed runners had finally closed the gap and reached Isaac.Isaac did not freeze t
Chapter 5
The sound of a hundred pairs of feet on asphalt at top speed keep sounding like a rapidly approaching thunderstorm."Behind the semi! Go, go, go!" Mac bellowed above the shriek and din of honking, trapped cars.He grabbed Isaac's shoulder, roughly shoved him into the gap between the jackknifed rig and the disabled sedan. Lola followed suit, hauling the hysterical Rose forward by the wrist through the tangle of cold, dead steel. The oily, shattering-glass covered asphalt was still streaked with the blood-red horrors of the initial discharge.Behind them, a screaming wall of the Infected closed with impossible speed. The creatures bounded, climbed over and hurled themselves through the gridlocked vehicles as they gained ground, a simian, rabid wave climbing atop the rooftops and smashing through the shattered windows of overturned buses. The State Trooper runner was the lead dog at their heels, his jaw unhinged and a shriek ripping from his throat.Mac skidded to a halt at the rear
