Mark stilled his body and strained his ears. Other than the distant sounds of the chaotic dance taking place down the street, he couldn’t hear a thing. The house was silent.

“Let’s go top to bottom,” Alec suggested.

The stairs proved to be too broken to manage. Mark gave up after his foot went completely through the third step.

Alec motioned toward a door that seemed likely to lead to the basement. “Bag that idea. I don’t hear anything up there. Let’s check it out down below, then move on.”

Mark carefully removed himself from the stairs and went to the basement door. He gave Alec a confirming look, grabbed the handle and jerked it open. Alec swung his weapon into the gap in case anyone attacked, but nothing happened. A rush of moist, noxious air swept up and over Mark, and he gagged. He had to cough and swallow a couple of times to keep himself from throwing up.

Alec decided to go first this time, stepping through the doorway and onto the landing. He reached back and pulled his flashlight out of his pack, clicked it on and shined it down the steps. Mark leaned in to see dust motes dancing in the bright beam. Alec was just putting his foot forward to start down when a voice rang out from below.

“C-c-come any closer and I’ll l-l-light the match.”

It was a man’s voice, weak and shaky. Alec glanced back at Mark with a questioning look.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mark caught movement, at the bottom of the steps and gestured toward it with his weapon. Alec shined the light down there to reveal the person who’d spoken, who’d just appeared out of the darkness. He was trembling top to bottom and soaking wet, his dark hair matted to his head and his clothes dripping. Little puddles were already forming on the floor. The man’s face was starkly pale, as if he hadn’t left the basement in weeks. His eyes squinted against the brightness of the flashlight.

At first Mark wondered if the man was just sweating profusely. Then he wondered if maybe the guy had some kind of busted pipe or groundwater down there. But then he caught a whiff of gasoline or kerosene—some kind of fuel. And then he noticed that the guy had things in his hands, holding them tight to his waist. In one, he held a rectangular box. In the other, a single match.

“Take one more step and I’ll light it,” the man said.

CHAPTER 54

Mark wanted to turn and run, but Alec hadn’t moved yet. He just stood there with his weapon aimed down the stairs at the man with the match.

“We didn’t come here to hurt you,” Alec said carefully. “We’re just looking for some friends of ours. Is anybody else down there?”

It seemed as if the man hadn’t heard anything Alec had said. He just continued to stand there, trembling and dripping with fuel. “They’re scared of fire, you know. Everyone is scared of fire, no matter how far your mind has gone. They don’t bother me down here. Not with my matches and gasoline.”

“Trina!” Mark called out. “Lana! Are you guys here?”

No one responded, and the man with the match wasn’t fazed by the outburst. “It’s your choice, my new friends. You can take a step toward me and I’ll light the flames that’ll take me away once and for all. Or you can go on your merry way and let me live another day.”

Alec was slowly shaking his head. He finally started to back away from the steps, pushing against Mark until they were both in the hallway again. Without a word, Alec reached out and slowly closed the door until it clicked softly. Then he turned toward Mark.

“What kind of world has this become?”

“A really sick one.” Mark was feeling it, too. Something about seeing that guy doused in fuel, holding a match. For some reason he just seemed to sum things up. “And I doubt its end will be so happy for us. All we can do is find our friends and make sure we die on our own terms.”

“Well said, son. Well said.”

Mark and Alec quietly exited the first house and moved on to the next.

The sounds were louder now. In a crouching run, Alec and Mark had made their way to the home across the street, planning to follow a zigzagging route. A few stragglers noticed them and pointed but moved on quickly enough. Mark hoped their luck would hold and no one would give them too much thought. Although the shiny weapons were bound to ruin that plan.

They’d just stepped up to the porch of the next house when two small children came running out. Mark’s finger was twitching on the trigger, but relief washed over him when he realized the advancing figures were only kids. They were filthy and had that strange distant look in their eyes. They giggled and ran away, but as soon as they disappeared a large woman came stomping out, screaming something about brats and threatening to tan their hides.

She didn’t seem to notice the two strangers until after she’d yelled for a few good seconds, and then she only gave them a disapproving look.

“We’re not crazy in this home,” she said, her face suddenly red with anger. “Not yet, anyway. No need to take my kids. They’re the only things keeping the monsters away.” There was a vacancy in her eyes that chilled Mark to the bone.

Alec was visibly annoyed. “Look, lady, we don’t care about your kids and we’re certainly not here to cart them off. All we want to do is have a quick look in your home, make sure our friends aren’t in there.”

“Friends?” the woman repeated. “The monsters are your friends? The ones that want to eat my children?” The vacancy was suddenly replaced by a stark terror that darkened her eyes. “Please … please don’t hurt me. I can give you one of them. Just one. Please.”

Alec sighed. “We don’t know any monsters. Just … look, just move aside and let us in. We don’t have time.”

He stepped forward, muscles tensed, ready to use force if necessary, but she scrambled away, almost tripping onto the dead weeds of her yard. Mark looked at her sadly—he’d assumed the monsters were the infected people down the street, but now he realized he was wrong. This woman wasn’t any more right in the head than the last guy they’d found, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she really did think monsters were living under the beds.

Mark left the woman in the front yard and followed Alec inside only to be stunned by what he saw. The interior looked more like a back alley from one of the worst parts of New York City than a suburban home. Pictures had been drawn—with what looked like black crayon and chalk—all over the walls. Dark, terrifying pictures. Of monsters. Things with claws and sharp teeth and vicious eyes. They were messy, as if they’d been done in a hurry, but some had vivid details. Enough to make the hair on Mark’s arms stand up.

He gave Alec a grim look and followed the older man past them, to the stairs to the basement, and went down, weapons held at the ready.

They found more children below—at least fifteen, maybe more. And they were living in filth. Most of them were huddled together in groups, cowering as if they expected some horrible punishment from the new arrivals. They were all dirty and poorly clothed and, by the looks of it, starving. Mark hardly registered the fact that the people he was looking for were nowhere to be seen.

“We … we can’t leave them here,” Mark said. He’d let go of his weapon, and it hung from the strap on his shoulder. He was dumbfounded. “There’s no way we can leave them here.”

Alec seemed to sense he wouldn’t be able to make Mark budge on this. The soldier stepped in front of him and spoke gravely.

“I understand what you’re saying, son. Where you’re coming from. But listen to me. What can we do for these children? Everyone in this godforsaken place is sick, and we don’t have the manpower to get them out. At least they’re … I don’t even know what to say.”

“Surviving,” Mark said quietly. “I thought surviving was all that mattered, but I was wrong. We can’t leave these kids here.”

Alec sighed. “Look at me.” When Mark didn’t, Alec snapped his fingers and yelled, “Look at me!”

Mark did.

“Let’s go find our friends. After that we can come back. But if we take them now, we’ll have no chance. You hear me? Absolutely zero.”

Mark nodded. He knew the old man was right. But something had torn in his heart at the sight of these kids, and it physically hurt. He didn’t think it would ever mend.

He turned around to gather his thoughts. All he could do was focus on Trina. He had to save Trina. And Deedee.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Let’s go.”

Mark and Alec moved from house to house, searching them from top to bottom.

It all became a big, hazy blur to Mark. The more he saw, the more numb he grew to the strangeness of the new world. This sickness that had been spread on purpose. In each house, on each block, he saw things that kept topping what he’d thought untoppable. He saw a woman jump off a roof and land, broken, on her front steps. He saw three men drawing circles in the dirt and jumping in and out of them, like kids playing a game. Except something was making them more and more upset and they finally erupted into a crazed brawl. There was a room in one of the homes where twenty or thirty people were lying in a heap in complete silence. Definitely alive, but not moving.

A woman eating a cat. A man chewing on a rug in the corner of his living room. Two kids throwing rocks at each other as hard as they could, bloodied and bruised from head to toe. Laughing all the while. People standing still in their yards, staring at the sky. Others lying facedown in the dirt, talking to themselves. Mark saw a man bull-rushing a tree, slamming himself into the trunk over and over, as if he thought eventually he’d win some battle and knock the thing down.

But on they went, quickly searching each and every home as they got closer to what Alec had called the party. The strangest thing, though, was that so far no one had attacked them. Most people actually seemed scared to death of them.

They were approaching their next house when a scream suddenly tore through the air, somehow louder than all the other sounds combined. It was piercing and raw, ripping its way along the street like a living thing.

Alec pulled up short, as did Mark, and they both looked in the direction of the noise.

About five houses down, two men were dragging a woman with black hair by her feet through the front door. Her head smacked the concrete of each step as they descended to the yard.

“Holy Mother of …,” Alec whispered. “It’s Lana.”

CHAPTER 55

Alec didn’t wait for Mark’s response.

He burst into an all-out sprint, booking into the street, his feet pounding the pavement as he headed for Lana and the strangers now dragging her across the rock-filled yard of the house. He’d reacted so quickly that Mark was far behind. He tried his best to catch up, his backpack bouncing against his shoulders and his weapon threatening to slip out of his sweaty hands.

Alec was screaming at the men to stop what they were doing. He held up his Transvice, but the thugs didn’t understand the threat, or didn’t care. They continued pulling Lana across the yard until they reached the sidewalk, where they threw her legs down violently. She’d ceased her screaming and Mark wondered if she was still conscious. Still alive.

Alec stopped a dozen feet from where Lana lay unmoving. He was aiming his weapon, yelling at them all to freeze, when Mark caught up to him. It took him a moment to catch his breath before he could aim his own Transvice.

There were three men total, and they stood in a circle around Lana’s body, all of them looking down at her. They seemed completely oblivious that people had weapons aimed at them.

“Step away from her!” Alec shouted.

Now that they were closer, Mark finally got a good look at their friend. It made his stomach turn. She was battered and bloody and covered in bruises. Much of her hair had been ripped out, and her bloody scalp shown through where it was missing. The last thing Mark noticed was that one of her ears looked like someone had tried to tear it off. The horror of it struck Mark like an anvil to his chest, and the rage he’d grown all too familiar with came boiling back up. These people were monsters, and if they’d done the same things to Trina …

He stepped toward them, but Alec reached a hand out and stopped him.

“Just a second,” he said, then returned his attention to Lana’s captors. “I’m not going to repeat myself. Step away from her or I start shooting.”

But instead of responding, the three men knelt to the ground, their knees touching Lana’s body as they surrounded her. Frantically, she looked back and forth between them.

“Just do it,” Mark said. “What’re you waiting for?”

“I don’t have a clear shot!” Alec barked back. “I don’t want to vaporize her!”

Alec’s words just made Mark angrier. He wasn’t going to stand there and do nothing for one more second.

“I’ve had enough of this crap,” he muttered, and started walking forward, slapping away Alec’s hand when he tried once again to stop him.

The men didn’t so much as glance at him as he approached. They were all digging deep in their pockets for something, their bodies turned in a way that blocked most of Mark’s view.

“Hey!” he shouted, his weapon held out before him. “Get away from her or I’m going to shoot. You won’t know what hit you, believe me!”

They didn’t hear him, or pretended not to. The next thing that happened was so quick and shocking that it made him stumble, almost fall down. In a blur of motion, one of the men pulled out a switchblade and stabbed Lana. Her screams sent a jolt of horror thudding through Mark’s bones. Then he was rushing forward, slinging his weapon to his back, diving. He leaped and tackled the man closest to him, sending them both rolling away from Lana.