Chapter 9 - A Tuft of Grass

-October 2008

Olivia looked on as Walter examined her sister's swollen wrist.

The aged scientist's eyes were still watery and red from his earlier tears, but he appeared to be holding it together. His touch on Rachel's wrist was surprisingly delicate, considering his refusal to even look at it initially upon her request.

He had taken the news of what had happened to Peter at the bridge about as well as she'd expected—which was to say, not well at all. In his tear-stricken rage he'd lashed out at her, laying the blame directly at her feet. You promised me, Olivia... he'd said through his sobs. You promised you'd return him to me safely. Now I've lost him...

She'd had no answer for him. How could she? She had promised, but there was no accounting for maniacs with machine guns. In the end, it had taken another promise from her to get him out of the basement storage room. A promise she intended to keep, somehow, though she hadn't broke the news to her sister or Charlie yet. That would have to come later.

Rachel inhaled sharply and let out a squeak. Her face was pale, eyes nearly popping out of her head.

"Try to hold still, Miss Dunham," Walter said. His voice was gentle, which Olivia took as a good sign. She waited for Rachel to correct him, but she seemed content with the Dunham surname. Considering how tumultuous their relationship had been from the get-go, she'd wondered before if her sister had ever truly embraced her dead husband's last name. Not that it mattered now. On the other hand, she supposed Ella thought of herself as a Blake, which was technically proper, and that Greg had protected them in the end. She wouldn't discourage or encourage either name. "I know this must hurt dreadfully, but it is important that you not make a sudden or sharp movements."

Her sister nod was sharp in response. A faint quiver ran through her as she bit down on the strap of leather Astrid had supplied to keep the pain at bay. The strap appeared to be working. Walter poked and prodded at the wrist for several minutes, squeezing at various points along her wrist and forearm. A dark, angry bruise extended from the palm of her hand, nearly to her elbow. His eyes narrowed at several points during his examination, but whether he'd found cause for concern, he didn't say.

"How does it look, Walter?" Olivia asked. "Will you be able to set it?"

Walter straightened, and rubbed at his chin. "It's difficult to say, Agent Dunham," he admitted with a shrug, keeping his gaze directed downward. "I believe it is most likely a distal radius fracture, though without access to an x-ray machine, ascertaining exactly where the break is, how severe it is, and whether or not surgery will be required to repair it properly..." He stopped and tittered unhappily. "...well, if there were an orthopedic surgeon on hand, at least. As it is, the best I can do right now is to put a splint on it, keep it elevated, and wait for some of this infernal swelling to go down. It's a pity we have no ice, as it would've lessened the time required considerably. I'm afraid you're just going to have to let nature take its course."

Rachel spit the strap from her mouth and looked up at him with concern. "Wha...what happens if I need surgery?" she said a little wildly. "Will you be able to do it, Dr. Bishop?"

"Me? Possibly...," Walter smiled and smacked his lips. "Although, I'm not a trained surgeon, my dear, but I have picked up a few things over the years due to the subject matter of my research, prior to my incarceration at St. Clair's."

"Your...what?" Rachel said, glancing nervously around the semi-circle of observers watching the proceedings.

Damn it, Walter... Olivia winced, and fished around for some explanation that might salvage the situation. She'd intended to try and convince him to keep his past...private—or least not make it part of the introductions—but had neglected to do so in the aftermath of Peter's shooting. It most likely would've been futile in any case. She had to be realistic about these things, after all. It was Walter she was dealing with.

"Walter...," Astrid spoke up before he could reply. "Could you do it if you had to?"

"And what'll happen if you can't?" Rachel added hastily. "Will I still be able to move it? It's not going to grow back like a...a hook or a claw or something is it?" Olivia couldn't blame her for sounding disturbed by the prospect.

Walter looked between the two women. "This lab is hardly a sterile environment, Miss Dunham," he said. "I may end up doing more harm than good. And even were I able to determine that such a surgery was needed, we simply lack the required provisions necessary to do so; anesthesia, plates, titanium screws. I can't even make a cast, though plaster-of-paris might work in a pinch, but we have none of that on hand, either." He picked up a roll of tan medical wrap and a thin length of wood about as long as her forearm. "As I said, with the lack of an x-ray, we're just going to have to wait and see. It's better than being dead, isn't it?" he muttered under his breath, shooting a dark glance in her direction.

Olivia lowered her head and sighed. His animosity toward her was not entirely undeserved. It might be better if she gave him a little space. She gave her sister a pat on the shoulder, then moved away from the examination chair to watch from a distance as Walter began deftly splinting up her arm with Astrid's help

She crossed over to Peter's table and gazed down at the projects he'd been working on. There were a number of disassembled head lamps, an assortment of rectangular color swatches, small hand tools, and other odds and ends she didn't recognize the use of. She picked up one of the color swatches—it felt almost like a piece of cling wrap—and held it up to a nearby candle. She supposed it was one of the light filters he'd mentioned. The flame flickered a pale green behind the thin piece of plastic. What had he called it? A dichroic gel? It didn't feel like a gel. He'd been very proud of himself—and for good reason, though she hadn't known it then. Why had she not listened when he'd tried to explain the way it worked to her? Another minute or two would have made no difference either way.

Olivia let the piece of tinted plastic slip from her fingers. She knew why. Her impatience had once again gotten the best of her. Peter deserved better than the fate she'd left him to. She searched her mind for anything she could have done differently back at the bridge, and during their frantic flight leading up to it. Would trying to hide, instead of running—as Peter had suggested—have made a difference? The men in the humvee might have missed them. Or they might've killed us all... she argued silently. No. They'd already seen us, I'm sure of it. In spite of the new promise Walter had extracted from her, she had no idea how she was going to possibly find him, or even where to start looking.

Charlie was leaning up against the tank, watching Sonia with Ella. Her niece was in front of Gene's stall, staring up at the cow with adoration. She had a handful of hay in one hand, and was holding it out diffidently toward the milk cow's snout. Sonia was crouched down next to the little girl, urging her onward.

Olivia studied the older woman for a moment, pleasantly surprised that the Sonia she'd known from before appeared to be re-emerging from her shell. She wondered if it had been a particular moment that had brought the change about, or if it had just been time. Either way, it was good to have her back. Charlie had to be relieved that she seemed to be on the road to recovery.

A wave of exhaustion chose that moment to break like an avalanche, forcing her eyes closed and her mouth open in a wide yawn. She massaged her eyelids, wishing she could sleep for a week, but there was no time. She hadn't even had a chance to clean up yet. Charlie's eyes were on her when she pulled her hands away. He looked as tired as she felt. She nodded for him to join her. Other than in the courtyard outside the Kresge Building, they'd had little chance to talk.

"What's up, Dunham?" Charlie said as he joined her in front of Peter's table. His lips thinned as he glanced down at the mishmash of objects scattered across its surface, and then shook his head. "How are you holding up?"

Olivia shrugged, and wiped a hand across her lips. "Honestly, I've been better, Charlie."

"Yeah...I know what you mean...," he replied under his breath, then nodded toward Rachel on the examination chair. "How's she doing? Her wrist gonna be okay?"

"I don't know," she said, watching as Walter began winding the bandage around her sister's forearm. "Without an x-ray, Walter can't be sure of how bad the break is. We'll just have to wait and see."

"Liv, what happened out there today?" Charlie asked after an interval of silence. "You said something about other survivors."

"Some machine-gun-wielding psychopath in a humvee—that's what happened, Charlie." She felt her face growing hot, the stirrings of rage bubbling just beneath the surface of her demeanor. She held it in check. "They caught us out in the open, while we were being chased by a horde of infected."

"A humvee?" he asked with a grimace. "You mean they were military?"

She shook her head, seeing the bastard's face again, the lilt of his cigarette at the machine gun's recoil. "No. Not this guy."

"So you got a good look him at then."

"Yeah...," she nodded. "Real good. He looked like uh...I don't know, someone in a biker gang, maybe. Long hair, black leather jacket, with what looked like colors on the back." She went on to relay the events of the day, beginning at the beginning, with the wild ride Peter had taken them on after leaving her apartment. The corners of Charlie's lips rose a fraction at several points during her retelling, but his amusement had faded into a stony silence by the end.

"You think they know we're here?" he asked in his low, gruff voice.

"I don't see how they could," Olivia answered. She hadn't thought that far ahead yet. And she still couldn't. Other matters took precedence. They had to, until she knew for sure, one way or the other. "No one followed us back, except infected, of course. I'm sure of that. After they shot Peter, they drove south into Allston."

Charlie threw a quick glance at his wife. She was standing in front of the row of shelves that served as a pantry, searching among their stock of canned goods. "Just the same," he said softly, "I think we need to start keeping regular watches. We'll have to do it in shifts."

She looked away for a moment, then gave him a tight smile. "Yeah. About that..."

"What?"

"Charlie, I have to—" A hand tugging at her sleeve interrupted her.

"Aunt Liv?"

She looked down to find her niece standing at her side. "Hey, baby girl," she said, bending toward her. "Everything okay? How's your head feeling?"

The little girl wrinkled her nose and shrugged. "It still hurts a tiny bit. Is there any water I can have?" Ella asked. "My throat's all dried out, and I think Gene might be thirsty, too. She keeps licking my hand!"

"She does, huh?" Olivia grinned, then tucked a lock of her niece's hair behind her ear and ran a thumb underneath the wound on her forehead. It had crusted over, but was still in need of cleaning. "I guess that means she likes you." She pointed to the spot where she'd dropped the packs on the way in. "There are some bottles in my backpack over there. Do you need any help opening one?"

Ella shook her head. "No. I'm okay," she told them with a child's confidence. "I can do it by myself." She looked up at Charlie and smiled. "Hi, Mr. Charlie."

"Hey, kiddo," he replied, smiling faintly. They watched her departing back for a moment, before meeting each others' eyes. "She's a good kid."

"I know she is..." she agreed as Ella knelt down next to the backpacks. "Her father was bitten while he was out gathering food for them. I found him inside my spare bedroom. He'd managed to lock himself in before he turned."

Charlie's eyebrows shot upward. "Really. This same guy I used to overhear you complaining about in one of the vacant offices from time to time?"

Olivia snorted weakly. "Yeah. Guess he wasn't such a bastard after all," she admitted, seeing Greg's pale face again, his burning gaze and snapping teeth. She pushed the image away. "Rachel's done an amazing job with Ella, though, all things considered." She glanced over at Sonia. "How's your wife doing? She seems different."

"She is...," he grinned, turning toward her. "She heard you the other day, you know. Out in the corridor. I think she took it to heart." He cast Olivia a narrow gaze. "So what were you gonna tell me?"

"That I promised Walter I'd go back out and search for Peter," she said. "So I'm leaving again."

"I figured as much. When?"

"As soon as possible. Tonight, I guess."

"Tonight?" Charlie questioned, shaking his head. "You're exhausted, Liv. At least wait until you've had some sleep. First thing in the morning. Or let me go."

"Peter could be dead by morning."

"He could be dead right now," he countered.

"He saved my sister's life, Charlie," she hissed, leaning in closer. In the corner of her eye, Rachel watched them curiously from the examination chair, eyes narrowed. Walter was nearly finished wrapping her arm. "If it was you out there, I wouldn't wait until morning. How can I do less for him?" Charlie opened his mouth to reply but she stepped closer, cutting him off with a pointed finger. "Don't you dare say a word about his past, about him not being trustworthy or...whatever it is you're hung up on with him. You don't know what we went through on the way south. Do you know who else's life he saved? Mine. I asked him to go with me to Brighton. He got shot because of me. The only reason he's even in Boston is because of me. I owe it to him to at least try and find him. And I made a promise."

"You said he got shot in the back, Liv," he uttered, massaging his temple. "What do you think his chances are of surviving, considering how long it's been already. Not to mention he fell in the river. If he didn't just drown, he could be in the Atlantic Ocean by now."

"I don't know where exactly he was hit," she whispered fiercely. "It may not have been fatal. You're not talking me out of this, Charlie."

"You think I don't know that?" he fumed. His voice was quiet, carrying only to her ears. "What about your family? They just got here, and you're gonna leave them already?"

"And they're safe now," she evaded. As safe as they can be anywhere, these days. "I'll either find him, or I won't. Then I'll be back."

Charlie shook his head again. His face was tight, lips drawn back in a thin line of irritation. He rubbed at his temples, as if he were suffering from a migraine. She'd noticed him do the same earlier, and wondered if there were more to his haggard look than just a lack of sleep. Her mind went back to the strange sense of focus she'd experienced at the bridge, and at other times lately. She hadn't mentioned it to anyone. We're all keeping secrets, she thought sadly.

Before either of them could say anything more, Ella approached, carrying a bottle of water in one hand and what looked like a small fragment of paper in the other. "Aunt Liv, is this your boyfriend?" she asked.

"Is it what...?" Olivia frowned, reaching for the slip of paper. She pulled it from her niece's hand and flipped it over. It was a picture, a photograph. The image was badly wrinkled, and at the same time looked as if it had been submerged in dirty water. But the faces that stared up through the grime were unmistakable though, despite the jagged tear that encompassed most of her own cheek and smile.

The other face belonged to John.

Olivia gaped at the image, her mind jerking to a halt in confused disbelief. It was a picture of them—her and John—taken at a photobooth in Northampton. At Thornes Market. Oddly enough, it had been John's idea to go there. Hadn't she lost it in her other backpack? Apparently not... she mused. Though she could have sworn it was in there—it had been something of a good luck charm for a time. She couldn't recall removing the photo, but she must have.

"I found this too," Ella said, holding out her other hand.

Lying in the center of her palm was a necklace—a thin strand of gold with a small cross pendant. Olivia recognized it at once, and it had been the backpack that she'd lost. There was not a single doubt in her mind. And yet her niece had somehow found it.

"Where did you get that, Ella?" she gasped, lifting the nearly weightless necklace from her palm.

Ella froze, wide-eyed, perhaps sensing something was amiss. "Uhh...it...it was in your backpack, Aunt Liv," she said in small voice. "I...I found them when I was getting the water bottle. Was that wrong? Should I have left them there?"

Olivia was in a daze. She held up the necklace. A gift from her dying mother. The tiny cross spun as the chain unwound, flashing sparks of golden candlelight. The clasp looked different somehow, as if it had been damaged...and then repaired. "In my backpack...?" she murmured, running a hand over her hair back to her ponytail. That's impossible... "How could they have been in my..." She trailed off as her analytical brain began to gear up again, ticking into motion as it was wont to do when presented with a puzzle. There had been several oddities over the last few days, oddities she hadn't thought much of at the time, but suddenly stood out like giant neon billboards.

She inhaled a ragged breath. Oh my god...The puzzle pieces unfolded in unison, glaringly obvious in hindsight's perfect clarity. Her gaze shifted between the necklace and picture, then over to the two backpacks lying where she'd dropped them on her way in.

Peter. He had asked if she'd lost anything important! But I told him no..., she recalled. The hand holding the necklace shook. What did you do? And why didn't you tell me? A hollow, empty feeling settled deep in the pit of her stomach. She pinched her nose, and struggled to swallow through the rapidly expanding lump in her throat. What could have possibly possessed him to do such a thing for her—to risk himself for her? What did it mean?

"Are you okay, Aunt Liv?" Ella asked, touching her hand. "Why are you crying?"

"What is it, Liv?" Charlie asked. His voice has lost some of its brusqueness. "What's going on?"

Olivia wiped at the tear rolling down her cheek. "I'm fine...," she told them both. "It's just...I...thought I'd lost both of these."

Charlie eyed her suspiciously. He probably suspected that there was more to the story than her explanation, but she had no intention of telling him. Whatever it meant, and whatever his reasons, it was between her and Peter alone—if he was still alive, at least. If not, then she would keep it close to her heart, and just have to settle for being eternally grateful.

"Here. This is for you, sweetie," she said, unhooking the clasp and settling the necklace around Ella's neck. "I'd meant to give it to you before I lost it. It was your grandmother's. She gave it to me to keep me safe, and now I'm giving it you. Do you understand?"

Ella's eyes widened with wonder that only innocence could produce. She lifted the cross for inspection, then tucked it inside the neck of her shirt. "Won't you keep me safe, Aunt Liv?" she asked.

"While I'm gone, I mean," she said, glancing at Charlie. His face darkened, but he remained silent. "I'm going back out to look for Peter, Ella. I may be gone for a day or two, but I'll be back before you know it, okay?"

"Okay...," Ella replied, nodding slowly.

"Can you look after your mom for me?"

Ella nodded again, glancing at her mother with exaggerated determination. "When are you going?" she asked. "Soon?"

Olivia glanced around the lab, at Rachel, at Walter and Astrid fussing over the best way to make a sling from a strip of cut surgical gown. She met her sister's gaze and held it. A silent communication flickered between them, an inquiry, and consent given in return. It was the sort of connection only close siblings could understand—the bond of growing up together, secret moments, and shared experiences. Rachel nodded her reply.

#


#

Peter came awake little by little, then all at once.

At the same instant, the hot sands of Iraq fled at light speed to the distant locker in the back of his mind. The place where all dreams were kept—the one with no key or combination for readmittance. Already the details were fading, leaving behind vague impressions and outlines, dots that might be connected, might form a picture, but would fade from sight if he attempted to draw the first line. The dream remained a silhouette, just out of sight. All he could say for sure was that it had been hot, and he'd been thirsty, and that underneath it all, there had been pain. Massive amounts of pain. There still was.

His eyes snapped open.

He was thirsty, incredibly so. His mouth was full of grit, his tongue swollen and parched. He couldn't see, and blinked, once, twice, reaffirming that his eyelids had actually obeyed his command. He listened and heard only his beating heart. It echoed in his ears—louder than it should have, though that may or may not have been his imagination at work. His shoulder throbbed in tune with it, burning with an intensity that made breathing difficult.

By the way, you've been shot, Peter, he told himself, fighting down the stirrings of panic. Cross that one off your bucket list.

Yet somehow, he was still alive.

His right hand was locked in a death-grip, applying pressure with what felt like a beach towel over the wound in his left shoulder. From the aching cramp, he must have been holding it there for hours, even in his sleep. Bits and pieces started to come back to him. It had still been daylight when he'd stumbled into the tiny lifeguard office, searching for medical supplies, a first-aid kit, anything at all that he could use to staunch the flow of blood. His left arm was dead weight, and lay inert on the tile floor next to him.

This is not good... he thought. Not good at all.

Why wasn't he dead? He should have been dead. There were a number of arteries in the neck and shoulder area, some of which would kill a person in short order if severed. The subclavian, in particular, was in the direct vicinity of the wound pulsing underneath his hand.

"I guess it's my lucky day...," Peter croaked, and then coughed and immediately regretted speaking. The sudden movement jostled his shoulder, turning the burning ache into a torrent of hell-fire. He gasped, and nearly passed out from the pain. His head swam in a wave of dizziness, followed by a fit of intense nausea that knocked him on his side.

He had a moment's warning before his stomach heaved and the meager contents of his stomach spilled out onto floor. Another heave racked him, then the flow trickled to a stop, leaving behind the wretched taste of bile. His shoulder felt as if it were being pounded with a hammer, and the cruel clawed end at that.

He lay on his side panting for a moment, fighting to stay conscious. It was a colossal struggle. A black nothingness hovered over the horizon. Its tenebrous gravity pulled at him, threatened to swallow him hole. Speckles of white light floated in his vision. They flipped and curled like tiny snowflakes. Liquid welled between the fingers pressing down on his shoulder. His blood was hot and sticky.

Get up, Bishop! a distant voice screamed in his head. Do you want to bleed out on the fucking floor in a puddle of your own puke? GET UP!

Elevate the wound above the heart. Apply pressure, continuous pressure. The instructor from his EMT training class droned in his memory. He had to get up, no matter how much it was going to hurt. Gritting his teeth, Peter twisted onto his back and tried to sit up.

Accomplishing this task was no small feat, and took him two excruciating tries. By the time he was back in his original upright position, he was sucking down huge gulps of air, eyes stretched all the way open from the pain. He sat still until the agony retreated to a muted roar, then thought about his near-term future.

It was looking bleak.

He'd been shot. He'd lost his crowbar, his backpack, all his supplies. Something sharp pressed against his tail-bone, and he recognized the gun Olivia had given him. Somehow he still had it. Not that it was going to do him much good at the moment. The crowbar was not too great a loss. It would have been mostly useless anyway, with his left arm as it was, and his right hand otherwise occupied with keeping him alive. But the backpack had held his food and water, his headlamp. The food he could do without for the moment, but the water, and his headlamp—those were necessities. He wondered if Olivia had taken them with her, if she had gotten her family back to the lab. He wondered if she was still alive.

He could still see the horror in her eyes when he'd fallen, when his jacket had slipped from her grasp. It was a miracle that she'd been able to get hold of him at all. Luckily, his forehead had only grazed the guardrail. The faint pulsing above his left eye was a flyspeck compared to his other injuries. She'd shouted for him, but he'd been unable to respond, unable to do anything but keep his head above water. He'd been sure he was going to be joining the ranks of the undead. The river had been frigid, the current gentle but insistent in its push toward the ocean. He'd kept his eyes on her stricken face, then her golden hair until she was out of sight. He had expected her to be the last thing he would see, but she hadn't been. Somehow he'd stayed conscious.

After that, he'd managed to kick his way slowly to the eastern bank. He'd been far downstream from the Weeks Bridge, past the two vehicle bridges they'd passed on their way north, when he'd finally managed to drag himself ashore. What happened next was foggy; he'd been tottering on the edge of delirium. There were flashes of a long, low building and a pool, shattered glass, and the lifeguard office where exhaustion had finally gotten the best of him. At least he'd had the presence of mind to sit down before he had fallen down. Though he could have chosen a more comfortable spot. His clothes were wet, and his ass was numb. Something sharp was digging into his back, screwing its way into his spine. A file cabinet or a desk? The size and shape of the object seemed about right for a handle. Taken all together—he felt like shit.

Objects emerged from the darkness as his vision adjusted. He dimly remembered there being a desk, a computer monitor, paperwork. A corkboard mounted on the wall. There was a tall, rectangular shape to his right. An open doorway. Through it the darkness was a lighter shade of black. The tiled floor shimmered faintly, reflecting some dim light source out of his view. The moon was out. The realization brought him back to his immediate situation.

The first order of business was to stand up. He had to get up. Sitting on the floor wasn't going to locate any of the things he was going to need sooner than later; water, real medical supplies, antibiotics if he was lucky. He'd been in the river, who knew what kind of infection its polluted water might bring. Secondary was food and painkillers, getting back to the lab.

He curled his legs under him and rocked forward, working his way into a kneeling position. The stress the motion put on his shoulder was brutal. He'd never considered how much one's hands were used when standing up before, but the lack of them was apparent now. Rough times are ahead, he thought, struggling to his feet. He swayed back and forth, feeling light-headed.

"Not again...," Peter muttered, and took a deep breath. He exhaled slowly, trying to wait out the unpleasant sensation. His heart hammered in his chest. The queasiness passed shortly, and he contemplated removing his hand from his shoulder—as something of a test—but decided against it, thinking of the fresh blood when he'd been on his side.

He tested the feeling in his left arm. Pins and needles ran along its length down to his fingertips. He attempted to wiggle a finger, and was met with limited success. It was difficult to say whether his pinkie had moved or not in the darkness. He tried squeezing his hand into a slow fist, expecting a fresh burst of pain from his shoulder at any moment, but it never materialized. He thought that might be a good sign, or at least he hoped it was. The numbness faded somewhat, but never vanished entirely. Worries of nerve damage came and went, but there was nothing to do about it. Having a little bit of feeling in his arm was better than none at all—or than being dead.

He moved forward, toward the blackness to the left of the doorway. After a step, his knees bumped into something hard. The desk. He turned to the side and let his fingers drag along its surface. Stacks of paper. A pencil. An open three-ring binder. He imagined someone leaving in a hurry. At the edge of the desk he stooped lower, searching for a drawer. His fingers located the handle and he carefully pulled it open. Inside there were more pens and pencils, what felt like a roll of tape, and other items one usually found in an office. He shut that drawer, and hunched lower, searching for and finding another, then opening it also. The lower drawer contained random objects his fingers couldn't discern the shape of, on top of more papers. Nothing useful. He'd been hoping for a flashlight. He needed to see his shoulder, see what he was dealing with. It had been a faint hope. Damn it. He started to pull away, then his fingers brushed against something else.

A box.

He ran his fingers over it, like a blind man reading braille. It was rectangular and small, and covered in a thin, crinkly plastic.

Cellophane. Cigarettes.

Excited by his find, he grabbed the box and gave it a little shake, noticing a distinct solidness inside. The pack was open. He flipped the top back and felt along the inside. Loose cigarettes pressed back softly against the pad of his thumb. And something else. Hard plastic, topped with something circular and rough.

A lighter.

Jackpot. He breathed easier. It was a start. A glimmer of hope broke through the surface of his exhaustion. Though it was something of a risk, he had to test out his new find.

Peter removed the lighter and flicked it alight with his thumb, closing one eye against the glare. The office interior glowed yellow. His left side was drenched in blood, from underneath the towel on his shoulder down to his waist. A frighteningly large stain covered the floor where he'd been sitting. And there was something else. Hanging from a hook to the left of the doorway was a red vinyl bag with a white cross centered in the middle of its zipped flap.

The first-aid kit. He let the lighter go out and slipped it in his front pocket. Now came the hard part.

He swallowed through the grit lining his throat, then reached for the spot where he'd seen the red bag. Or rather, he tried to reach for it. His shoulder flared anew, a tumultuous roar that was instantly unbearable. He dropped his hand and bit back a scream. Fire ran the length of his arm, enveloped the left side of his torso. He imagined being stabbed repeatedly with an icepick might have felt similar. The dizziness returned, worse than before. He lost his balance momentarily and staggered up against the desk, antagonizing the injury even further. Pain was the extent of his existence for a short while.

"Goddamn-motherfucking-son-of-a-bitch...," he mouthed, quashing his eyes shut and panting through the worst of it. Apparently, lifting his left arm above his waist was off the table for the time being.

An infinite amount of time later—after the pain had receded enough to allow complete thoughts—Peter felt around on the desk for the three-ring binder, then retrieved the lighter. He hesitated with his thumb on the flint-wheel, uncertain as to whether what he was about to do was a good idea or not. Light was an immediate necessity, non-negotiable. He had to see the wound, and needed free hands.

Were there infected nearby? He'd heard no noises since waking, nothing to indicate he wasn't alone. And surely he hadn't been quiet upon entering the building. He had a vague memory of awkwardly hurling a landscaping rock through a window at the rear entrance. It stood to reason that if there were infected in the vicinity, they would have devoured him while he'd been passed out.

There were holes in his logic he could have driven Walter's wagon through, but desperation was driving him. His knees felt like he'd been standing for hours. They had a wobbly feeling that suggested he might be running out of time.

What's the worst that can happen? he thought acerbically, and ignited the lighter.

The papers in the three-ring binder kindled at once. The corners blackened and curled upward in expanding lines of flame that took with them the sheets below. Fire licked upward, lighting up the office. Gray smoke gathered on the ceiling and flowed outward, forming a reverse mushroom cloud. He was going to have to hurry.

Peter let the towel on his shoulder drop, then snatched the first aid from its hook and set it on the desk a safe distance from the flaming binder. His hand shook as he worked the zipper open, then ripped the flap back to expose the kit's interior. Its contents were of the standard variety: gauze pads and rolls, band-aids, little packs of antiseptic ointments and various other medical devices—none of which were at all suitable for self-treating a gunshot wound.

What were you expecting, genius? He eyed the first-aid kit with dismay. Sutures? Perhaps a blow-up surgeon? It's a goddamn public pool. The cigarettes probably belonged to some kid who'd had to hide the habit from their elders.

Peter glanced down at his shoulder. The corduroy fabric of his jacket gleamed in the firelight, saturated with blood. Sucking in a long breath, he slowly peeled back the lapel, exposing his equally-stained t-shirt underneath.

Oh shit... The air came whooshing out of his lungs. That's gonna leave a mark...

The bullet had passed straight through him, exiting just below his left clavicle. A gaping divot yawned beneath the tatters of his shirt, with bright red sinew and fibrous tissue exploded outward around the edges. Seeing it brought back images of the meat-packing company he'd worked for briefly, and the giant meat grinder he'd run. His stomach disagreed violently with the association. The point of entry on his back was less disturbing to look at, what little he could see of it; a small puncture wound in comparison, and in the meat of his shoulder.

Blood streamed from both wounds in steady trickles. Now that he'd seen it, the wetness running down his chest and back, down his leg and under his jeans was unmissable. His heart thumped loudly in his ears.

I should be fucking dead, he realized. He was lucky, incredibly so. From the size of the gun that had shot him—a light machine gun, as opposed to the heavy fifty-caliber that had been mounted on their humvee—to the location of the wound itself; if it had been any higher the bullet would have ricocheted off his clavicle like a pinball. The exit wound could have been anywhere...or nowhere. Perhaps the bullet would have remained lodged in his heart or some other vital organ. If it had been any lower, his subclavian would have been severed, or at least nicked. From the blood that continued to seep from the wound, he thought it might have been nicked anyway—a possibility that was distinctly worrying. He let his jacket fall back into place, hissing at the contact it made with his raw flesh. All of a sudden, keeping the pressure on it seemed like a wonderful idea.

The fire on the desk was growing. It had consumed most of the binder, and was spreading to the other papers scattered nearby. The flames rose toward the bottom of a low-hanging shelf mounted on the wall above the desk. The shelf was packed with books and manuals that looked ripe for tinder. Yellow post-its tacked to the lower half of the corkboard below the shelf smoked and then combusted, one by one. The atmosphere in the office was suddenly choked with smoke and falling paper ash that grew thicker by the second. His eyes began to water, to burn. The cloud was just above his head. It billowed through the doorway out into the hallway beyond.

Peter took in a mouthful of smoke and coughed, shooting daggers throughout his torso. Time to go. For an instant, he envisioned himself heating up a piece of metal in the flames and using it cauterize the wound, but dismissed the idea as soon as it came. There was nothing suitable in reach. And besides, this was no movie—he would have been just as likely to finish the job the bullet had started, than do any real good.

His gaze flicked around the little office, searching for a fresh towel. There were none. The one he'd had, he must have found on the way in—it was all very hazy. He grabbed the gauze and the antiseptic packets and stuffed them in his pocket, then hobbled toward the door.

Outside the office was a windowless corridor. His shadow cast against the wall opposite the doorway, outlined in orange light by the quickening flames. To his left, the hallway vanished in a wall of darkness. A shaft of moonlight stole across the path to his right, beyond the corridor's exit. He shuffled toward the light. At the threshold he paused, listening. Wind whistled through a narrow vertical window next to the rear entrance, then dropped off. A mosaic of shattered glass glittered on the floor. Crickets and other night creatures chirped and chittered outside. There was a stillness to the air, as if time were frozen, hanging between one moment and the next. Somewhere outside the building, an owl hooted once, and then again.

He was alone.

Deciding to take a chance, Peter thumbed the lighter and stepped out into the lobby. A cart of neatly folded white beach towels standing alone in the middle of the space drew his gaze instantly. He sighed, and made his way across the room. The floor in front of the cart was speckled with drops of blood intermixed with smeared shoe-prints, presumably his own.

The sight of his own blood-trail made him slightly queasy. He wondered how much he'd lost, how far he was from the threshold of hypovolemic shock. Or whether he was already entering the early stages, with loss of consciousness and death soon to follow. Was his heart rate elevated, his respiratory rate? He certainly felt anxious enough. He consciously tried to slow his breathing, despite the logical side of his brain informing him it was a useless gesture.

Standing here isn't going to get you anywhere, he told himself. Move your ass, Bishop.

He let the lighter go out. The sudden darkness made him blink, and he reached out with blind fingers for a towel from the middle of the stack, and then pressed it hard down on the wound.

The pain was immense, though not quite at the same level as before, back in the office. It was manageable, and that was good enough.

He clamped his teeth together, fighting back another bout of nausea, and staggered toward the shattered window. Glass crunched under the soles of his shoes as he passed into the narrow strip of moonlight. He passed by a lumpy, oblong-shaped rock lying amid the debris, about the size of a baseball. The stone could have been a mirror in shape—almost like a peanut—to the clump of pyrite that had been the prize of his rock collection back at the house on Reiden Lake. He wondered what had happened to the little wooden box, shaped like a treasure chest that he'd kept them in, or the lakehouse itself for that matter. It had been decades since he'd last been there—before Walter's incarceration.

Had his parents sold the house? He couldn't recall—its fate lay in one of several blank spots in his memory—spots that sometimes encompassed entire years of his childhood. All he could say for sure, was that at some point...his family had just stopped going there, no reasons given. It was strange how a simple rock could bring it all back to forefront; he hadn't thought about either; his rock collection or the old house, in years.

Peter disliked the sudden musing on the past. It wasn't like him. There was a certain resignedness to it—and he wasn't ready to concede anything yet, not while he could still walk...still breathe.

He moved past the familiar-shaped rock, putting it and the past out of his mind. Neither were of any use in his current predicament. Shards of glass caught on his jacket and plinked off as he stepped sideways through the narrow window-frame to a concrete patio area. The patio surrounded a long, rectangular pool, open long past its normal closing date. The water looked brackish and was covered in a thick layer of leaves, and most likely algae as well, though he was unable to see any in the moon's light. Another reminder of the current state of the world, if he needed another, which he most assuredly did not.

A chest-high, metal picket fence surrounded the pool, with a gate to the parking lot beyond. To the west lay a grassy area he dimly recalled stumbling across, and then the river. It flowed past silently, sparkling with ripples of silver light. Across the river, the elevated portion of I-90 stood out against the horizon. With glum amusement, he realized he was looking directly at the same section of highway under which they'd been forced to abandon the humvee. Right back where he'd started. He squinted, trying to make out the trucks angular shape in the moonlight, but was unable find it.

Was it gone? It may have been a trick of the poor lighting, but he thought the crushed portion of the fence was visible—minus the out-of-gas humvee.

If it's gone, you know who took it. He saw the man in the truck again, the colorful patch on the back of his jacket. Had he been some kind of biker? The jacket had been distinctive. Son of a bitch.

Had they gone after Olivia and her family? Men who would shoot a random stranger in the back would not hesitate to do worse. Perhaps they'd thought with him out of the way, two women and a child alone would be easy prey. Olivia would have quickly disabused them of that notion if they had...if she were able. She would've fought until her last breath.

And what if that wasn't enough? He'd known men in his former life, hard men with no consciences, no remorse. Sociopaths, all of them. Cruelty was inbred, second nature to them. They'd been the kind of men who'd kill a man without batting an eye. The thought of Olivia, or her sister and little Ella for that matter, in the hands of someone like that was sickening. Everyone had a breaking point, even her.

Peter shoved thoughts of Olivia aside, renewing the pressure on his shoulder. Maybe his worry was for nothing, and she'd gotten away safely. The woman was tough. Tougher than himself by a fairly large margin, he was sure. And he had his own problems at the moment, problems that couldn't wait. The lab was miles away. His shoulder throbbed mercilessly beneath the towel. He imagined a black infection working its way inward, slowly, a worm inching its way toward his heart. A malignant tumor growing with every second. He swallowed thickly through a chalky dryness in his throat, and started toward the gate. After a single step, he stopped, staring out over the fence.

Silhouettes moved about in the empty parking lot, shapes that lurched and wandered without intent. He eyed the infected warily. They were unaware of him. Would his blood draw them out, like sharks in the ocean? Walter's experiments with smells had been inconclusive. Everything was inconclusive.

Olivia's side trip down into the subway system came to mind. He'd thought her insane at the time, but her little experiment had provided some useful information. She'd been able to come within spitting distance before they'd become aware of her. With some luck, getting that close wouldn't become necessary.

He crept toward the gate, pressing down harder with his right hand. His head felt heavier than normal, and the arm was already feeling the effects of the strain, but there was no choice but to continue holding it there. Whether or not his efforts were accomplishing anything was up for debate, but somehow, he was still alive and was going to do his best to remain so. Anything else was unthinkable.

The gate was latched shut. Luckily, he'd had the sense to close it on his way in, or he might've woken to find the building infested with undead, or with one of them gnawing at his throat. He noticed a spring mechanism mounted on the inside. Maybe it hadn't been luck at all. He silently thanked who'd ever installed it, then pushed the latch up with his elbow. If he stayed close to the building, he should be able to slip past them, then head north, once he was out of their range. He sort of remembered there being a pharmacy somewhere in the vicinity, and it was as good a short-term destination as any.

Peter pushed the gate open, then froze at an ear-piercing electronic scream that wailed from inside the building, cutting through the night's silence with horrifying precision.

#


#

Chest heaving, Olivia stared down into the dark waters of the Charles flowing noiselessly out from beneath the bridge. Shimmering ripples and eddies imperfectly reflected the moon overhead. Her cheeks stung in the cool night air, the tip of her nose and ears as well. It had been a long run.

In spite of her stated intention to set out immediately, the sun had already dipped below the horizon by the time she'd gathered her supplies and began her southward sprint from the lab. She'd taken the most direct route to the Weeks Bridge, avoiding the infected in her path if possible, and simply racing past those evading proved too much of a hassle.

She had no clear idea of how to go about finding Peter, but going back to the beginning, where she'd lost him in the first place, had seemed like a good starting point. Walter agreed, and had even proposed she jump in the river herself, letting its current take her where it would. It had been a serious suggestion.

Olivia eyed the puffs of condensation rising up in front of her nose at every breath. "Yeah...that's not happening, Walter," she whispered, scratching her fingernails across the rough surface of the guardrail.

To her right was the concrete barricade he'd tumbled from. The walking path on the other side was clear of the horde that had been raging when she'd led Rachel and Ella away. Further south, the Harvard Business School campus was bathed in faint light. The quad appeared to be free of undead as well, from what she could see, though she didn't trust the observation; too much was hidden in shadow.

Where to start, or indeed, how to start?

She turned her gaze to the southeast, where the river curled out of sight. What would she have done if placed in a similar circumstance? If she were cognizant and aware—which he had seemed to be when he'd tipped into the water—then avoiding drowning would have been the first priority. She replayed the painful memory, saw Peter's confusion again, the instinctual clutching at the wound. He was a survivor. He'd had to be to keep his head afloat in his old life, in the circles he'd run. The two of them were similar in that way. She would have kept pressure on the bleeding as best she could as a second priority—if she'd managed the first—and so would he. Getting out of the water would have come third, and if she were aware enough to do the first two tasks, then she would have tried for the Cambridge side of the river. It would have been a difficult swim, most-likely one-armed for most of the way, with wet clothes dragging him down. He would have been exhausted, possibly going into shock when he pulled himself from the water. He wouldn't have made it far from the river before needing to find shelter.

In her perfect world of theory-land, at least.

This is ridiculous..., Olivia thought, pushing back her hair. How in the hell am I supposed to find him? He could be anywhere. With Walter's anguished gaze on her, promising to find Peter had been all too easy. However, when presented with the reality of the situation, it all seemed rather far-fetched. An unlikely sequence of events, each dependent on the preceding, and on the biggest piece of luck of them all: that the bullet had missed all of his vital organs and arteries in the first place. Saying that she would have done this or that from the relative safety of the sidelines, without a bullet-hole in her chest was simple. Her assumptions were based strictly on the best-case scenario. But she had no choice but to go with them, as the best-case scenario was the only one in which Peter was still alive. Logic told her that Charlie was more than likely correct, and that she would never find him. But there was always hope.

She flicked on her headlamp, then loped back across the foot bridge and headed south.

#


#

Peter went still, heart hammering in his chest. The high-pitched squeal reverberated across the concrete patio, the parking lot, and all of Boston for all he knew. What the hell is that? He looked back toward the building, mind racing for the source of the affronting noise.

A thin plume of smoke was drifting upward from the window. It twisted and curled in the slight breeze, then dispersed above the rooftop.

A fire alarm.

You lit the building on fire, he thought, berating himself. He'd been a fool. It's 2008. Fire alarms are pretty much mandatory at this point in history, idiot. Or were. He should have known better than to start a fire, considering how much good it had done him. Back near the beginning of the outbreak, there had been a time when battery-powered fire alarms were going off all over Cambridge. Walter had enjoyed listening to the cacophony, had claimed that it soothed his nerves.

"Excellent...," he muttered, glancing back toward the parking lot. "That's perfect."

The infected lurched toward the gate, toward him. He stepped back inside the perimeter, letting the gate swing shut. It re-latched with a metallic ring, cementing his location as the source of the disturbance. More undead silhouettes trudged into view around the corner of the building from the front, bringing the running total to at least thirty, possibly as many as forty or more. Enough to be a serious problem.

He leaned up against the metal fence, testing its sturdiness. The posts wobbled dangerously in their footings. That's not good, he thought, backing away from the fence. It might hold, for a few minutes at least. Clearly it had not been erected with the intention of holding back a horde of undead in mind.

Peter slipped back through the narrow window. The piercing alarm echoed from everywhere, from multiple alarm modules. A dense veil of smoke blanketed the lobby, and the hallway with the lifeguard office. Yellow flames flickered in the depths of the haze down the corridor, evidence of how quickly the fire in the office had grown. He imagined it was spreading like wildfire—there had been no lack of fuel, certainly. With the thick smoke, visibility was near zero. He gingerly retrieved the lighter from his pocket with his left hand and thumbed it alight. The effort left him gasping, but he strode forward anyway, holding the lighter as high as his shoulder would allow.

He moved forward, eyes watering and nose burning A faint ache began to develop deep inside his skull. He didn't have much time, and crawling underneath the smoke was more than he could manage. The building had to have a front entrance, some other way out. If he was lucky, the alarm might even clear the area in front of the building.

A pair of doors emerged from the smoke on the left side of the lobby—changing rooms from the signs on their fronts—then a row of vending machines to his right. He paused for a moment at the vending machines, wishing he had the time and means to vandalize one of them. He had neither, so he moved on, following the wall until he came to a rectangular cut-out with a narrow countertop across the lower edge. The cashier's window. The front entrance had to be close.

He coughed, and took another step through the smoke, and then fire spread throughout his abdomen. Peter managed to hold in the next cough for an instant, before the need for air became paramount. The coughing fit was light at first, and then quickly escalated to hacking gasps that felt as if his lungs were being turned inside-out. He began to choke, to gag. Sunny spots drifted across his vision. The burning in his lungs, combined with the alarms constant peal and the waves of torture emanating from his shoulder sent his head spinning. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think. His lungs were raw, full of scraping needlepoints.

I'm...suffocating... he realized as darkness closed in.

Abruptly, something cool pressed against Peter's cheek. His eyes slitted open. The world was blurry, and had turned sideways. He blinked in the dim light. He was on the floor.

Inhaling was painful, though the atmosphere was better down low. He lay there for a moment, wheezing for air. He had to get up, had to keep moving. Staying still was certain death...and then undeath.

But his limbs refused to cooperate—he felt languid, relaxed. At peace. If he just closed his eyes, sleep would carry him away. It would be so easy to give in, just for a moment, then he could go on. In a moment. His eyes refused to stay open. He recalled being in a great amount of pain for some reason, but couldn't remember why, or feel much of anything. Except there was an angry whistle in his head. The trill whistling faded in and out, like a gnat buzzing in his ear—it refused to be silent, or let him slip over the edge.

Go away... he thought, looking down from the clouds.

He stirred, and tried to swat at the flying insect. Fiery agony tore through his left arm and shoulder. "Gahh...fuck!" Peter rolled onto his back and clutching at the shoulder. The pain, and the sound of his own voice brought him back from the precipice. He suddenly recognized the intense droning in his ear for what it was.

The fire alarm.

He was still in the building. He'd collapsed.

Smoke inhalation can incapacitate a man in minutes, so his instructor at the firefighting academy had drilled into them. Don't try to be heroes, people. We have oxygen tanks for a reason. The man would have been laughing his ass off if he could see him now. Fuck you..., he told the man in his head. He'd never liked him anyway.

He stared upward, and saw the outline of the cashier window above him. The entrance had to be near. It had to be.

Peter sat up slowly, panting painfully and gritting his teeth. He'd lost the lighter, but had somehow managed to keep hold of the towel when he'd fallen. He winced, and pressed it back into place over his mangled shoulder. Of the two, he wasn't sure which was more important, but there was no time to look for the former. The layer of smoke was right above him, and getting denser by the second.

He glanced back toward the rear of the building, at the hazy strip of moonlight that was the shattered window. Shapes moved in the haze—whether they were inside or outside, he couldn't say for sure. They'd gotten through the fence though, and were far too close, either way.

A voice spoke in his head, urging him to move. Now, Peter. He smiled, despite how miserable he felt. She would say it like that. And she was right, as usual.

He leaned forward, and reached out cautiously with his left hand, testing his weight on the tiled floor. It hurt about as much he'd expected it to—enough to make his eyes bug out of their sockets. He struggled not to cry out, breathing in short bursts through his teeth, and then let his full weight settle on it. The pain was tremendous, and he felt like vomiting again, but he had nothing more to give.

In the background, he heard a drawn-out squeak underneath the tonal fire alarm, and froze in the crawl position. It had sounded like something in need of oil. It had been close, and not a natural sound. Something metal had moved...or been pushed. He heard the noise again.

A squeaky wheel? he wondered.

A wheel. The towel cart. They were inside the building.

Shit. Move. Now.

Peter crawled forward on his left arm, doing his best to ignore the anguish pulsing in his shoulder. There was a dull crash behind him and the thud of something solid hitting the floor, followed by a low, unhuman grunt. He crawled faster, moving like a lame dog, and a blind one to boot. His shoulder screamed at the abuse. The exit had to be close. He slipped, and almost face-planted on the floor, only catching himself at the last moment. Nearly insane from the pain, he pushed himself up and started forward again—only to smack his forehead hard against something as solid as a brick wall. Pain shot down his neck, and he saw stars for an instant. Ignoring this new injury—minor at best, compared to the plethora of others he was accumulating—he tilted his head, holding the towel in place on his shoulder while feeling around with his right hand.

It was a brick wall. An exterior wall, to be precise. Excited now, he felt for the corner to his right, then slid to his left until he came across a raised surface. A metal door frame. Hinges and smooth, cool glass. Darkly tinted. He could just make out a sidewalk through the lower half beneath the smoke. There was more movement behind him, along with harsh growls and exhalations that sent icy prickles down his spine.

They were close.

He reached upward in a frantic search for a knob or a handle. Not finding it, he rose up on his knees ran his palm all over the glass door's surface. He inhaled a mouthful of smoke, and was coughing before he was even aware he'd done so. It was a deep, belly cough, hoarse, and loud enough to drown out the shrill fire alarm in his ears, like someone on the edge of death by tuberculosis. He dropped out of the smoke layer. The towel slipped from his shoulder. Dry-heaving came next, and he tasted a foul concoction of blood and bile on his tongue. Fighting down another heave, he pushed on the door with his good shoulder.

The door rattled in its frame, but remained closed. The entrance was actually two doors, he realized, with a dead-bolt in the center, holding them together. His fingers fumbled for the inside knob that must be there. All dead-bolts had them, didn't they? Yes. It was there! He twisted the knob clockwise and heard the bolt draw back with a mechanical click.

Relief made him giddy...until he tried the door again, and it still refused to budge. The relief turned to unmitigated dread that left him dumbfounded, unable to process further action.

It should've opened... His thoughts were stuck in a loop of stupid unbelief. He pushed and pulled on the door again, then again, with the same result. It should've... The solution slid into his conscious mind, coalescing like a rainbow out of the mist.

There was another latch. Two locks, two latches. He'd seen the same configuration on double doors ten-thousand times before, on commercial buildings the world-over. It was fucking standard, like the goddamn fire alarm.

He shot a glance over his shoulder. From his low vantage, the vertical window was mostly gone, obscured by shuffling legs, with their torsos hidden in the layer of smoke above. Many legs. The lobby was crowded with infected. The air seemed to groan at their approach, drawn toward him by his coughing. They're like a colony of bats, came the absent thought.

Peter looked away from the horde, and felt desperately along the metal frame, over the knob he'd already turned, and higher, deeper into the smoke layer. Where is it? It had to be there. There was no other explanation. He sucked in a hoarse breath, then rose up on his knees once more. He found what he was looking for an instant later—a short lever, as opposed to a knob. He swung it downward, then pushed again.

The door swung open.

About fucking time, Bishop, he thought, climbing to his feet.

Before he'd gone more than a step, a hand grabbed a fistful of his coat. He felt himself being hauled backward, inside the building. Twisting around, he caught a glimpse of snarling teeth, of mad eyes, just in the doorway. Others were just behind. Another hand clutched his shoulder with a vice-like grip just above the gunshot wound and squeezed.

Peter choked off a tortured shout. "No...!" he growled, leaning forward, resisting the pull.

He grabbed the door for leverage, then stepped to the side and swung it shut with all the force his weaker arm could muster. The grip on his jacket relaxed, and he tore free of the clinging fingers. He threw his weight against the glass and crushed the reaching arms between the two doors. The bones in the protruding forearms snapped audibly, like dried twigs.

Fear and adrenaline had him in their frenetic grip. It had almost had him. He threw himself against the door, pushing with all his strength. The infected's gaping mouth was visible against the glass directly opposite him, snapping futilely. Thick blood spurted from dangling limbs as the door's edge sheared through the mottled skin with the practiced ease of a razor-blade. And then the upper latch clicked in place, reducing the fire alarm's wail to a low murmur.

Peter stepped back from the door, shoulder throbbing with the heat of a thousand suns. He sucked in huge gasps of air. His lungs were raw, and his knees wobbled dangerously. The world tilted and swayed from side to side.

That was way too close... he thought as the adrenaline began to recede. Way too close. He checked his surroundings, expecting to see another horde rushing toward him, but there were only a few stragglers on the sidewalk across the street. None were close enough to pose a threat. He could still hear the fire alarm, he noticed, echoing distantly from the back side of the building. Maybe it would draw the rest of the undead in the area. Like a sonic bug zapper.

He glanced back at the entrance, at the outlines pressed up against the glass. He hoped they all burned. The pair of severed hands dangled from ragged strips of flesh, fingers tensing and releasing with their strange inner-life. A woman's bracelet hung loosely from one wrist. Disturbed, he shook his head, eying the hands for a moment. They reminded him of Walter, and the infected woman they'd captured. He wondered if his father had begun his research on the detached body parts, if he'd discovered anything of use. With a little luck, he might even be around to find out.

The infected he'd noticed earlier were moving diagonally across the street, heading toward the pool building. Their heads bobbed over a row of squarely-cut bushes lining the sidewalk. Peter pressed himself against the bricks in the shadows of the shallow entrance alcove, waiting to see what they would do. There were four of them, three males and a female. The infected bumbled across a narrow strip of tall grass and leaves, then moved past to his left, heading toward the parking lot and the rear of the building.

He stepped cautiously out into the moonlight, keeping an eye on their departing backs. When they were out of sight, he swallowed, and lifted his jacket to get another look at his shoulder. Fresh blood glittered wetly in the pale light. As before, the sight of his torn flesh sent his stomach reeling. It was unfortunate that he'd lost the towel—keeping the pressure on the wound without it might be more than he could manage. With an unhappy sigh, he pulled the gauze from his pocket. The packages seemed laughably small compared to the extent of his injuries, but they were all he had. He fumbled them out of their wrappers with his good hand.

Not exactly sterile, he thought uneasily, glancing at his bare fingers. He'd been crawling on the ground, in the river. Infection was a near certainty, even if he somehow managed to stop the bleeding. But of the two likely forms of death in his near future, bleeding-out would come far quicker. Here goes.

Peter bit down on the lapel of his jacket, then shoved the gauze pads into the exit wound, pushing them in as far as they would go. For an instant, electrifying agony became the extent of his existence, of the entire universe. It was all pain, from top to bottom. He staggered back against the building, barely able to stay on his feet. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry. Instead, he settled for merely gritting his teeth and thudding the side of his fist against the bricks and riding it out.

He was beginning to hate his new life. His left arm had gone numb again, and salt stung at his eyes. He mopped a layer of sweat from his brow. He was drenched. You're in bad way, Mister Bishop, an Irish accent that sounded like Big Eddie's informed him. The night air was cool on his wet skin. A shiver worked its way through him, antagonizing him further. Feeling dizzy all of a sudden, he touched his forehead once more. Was he hot? Or cold? A fever? He'd never been able to feel fevers on himself... "I have to...get out of here," he panted, but didn't move.

After a while, he spotted more infected down the block, strolling his way from the south. They disappeared in the murk of shadows, only to reappear a moment later. They were on his side of the street.

Move your ass, Bishop.

Peter blinked forcefully, trying to clear his head. Where was he going again? Thinking was more difficult than it should have been. North. Yes, that's it. He had to go north. There was a pharmacy somewhere to the north. He needed something...he'd had a shopping list...hadn't he? He would have to figure it out on the way.

He forced himself off the wall and stumbled out toward the street. The street's name wouldn't come, but it looked familiar, mostly. Unlike nearly every other road in Boston, it was deserted, with not an abandoned car or truck in sight. He didn't waste much energy on wondering why—energy was in short supply at the moment, and not to be spent frivolously. Just maintaining a slow walk seemed a titanic effort.

The pool parking lot was empty when he passed it by. The moon was obscured by a cloud of smoke rising up from the back side of the building, where flames were already visible above the roof line. The rolling clouds blotted out a small section of the night sky. He suspected there would be nothing left of the structure come morning, and felt no remorse.

Towering black outlines broke the horizon several blocks away. A hotel, he dimly remembered, and some other office buildings. Data storage? A pharmaceutical company? Exhaustion left his head empty. It wasn't the kind of pharmacy he needed in any case.

The going was slow, even with the moonlight for guidance. An incessant wind slipped through his wet clothes and jacket. He slunk slowly from shadow to shadow, trying to stay focused on his surroundings, but his shoulder throbbed and his thoughts drifted to other things, unimportant things. The surreality that had become the norm. His father, and how he was likely coping with his absence. Probably not so well if he knew Walter at all. And then there was Olivia.

He'd never met a woman quite like her before, ever, in all his travels. Selfless to a fault and full of mystery. Fierce and fearless. He found himself watching her sometimes, wondering if she was real or not. She had a passion for helping others that was contagious in its intensity. How else could he explain his actions—so much out of character—since arriving back in Boston? Why had he even agreed to stay? Had it been the sincere urgency in her eyes? He'd found himself unable to refuse her. A pair of luminous green eyes was all it had taken. He thought of the prior morning in her apartment, of how he'd awoken to find her head on his shoulder, snoring softly, face clear of all her usual stresses. At peace. Christ, she'd been beautiful. Reminiscent of a sleeping angel. And then she'd whispered for John as he'd extricated himself, reminding him of exactly who he was. And who he wasn't.

A noise off to his right drew Peter from his meandering thoughts. The rattle of metal. He thought about stopping to investigate, then thought better of it, and increased his speed instead. The night was eerily silent. Then he heard the rattle again, behind him now. He glanced back down the street toward the pool building, far down the block.

His breath caught.

Black shapes crowded the street behind him. At least ten of them...maybe twenty. And close enough to hear the scuff of their shoes on loose gravel. Their outlines listed and reeled as they jerked after him, arms swinging limply. The group moved into a patch of moonlight, revealing their ruined faces and gaping jaws. More of them streamed off a side street, adding their numbers to the whole. Several dozens, at least, and gaining on him.

Fuck me... he thought, eyeing their numbers. How could he have missed so many? Had he gone blind?

Peter increased his speed from the slow stumble he'd been maintaining to a moderate stroll. They were no longer gaining on him, but not falling back, either. A golden-yeared mall-walker would've blazed past him, but it was the best he could do. Running might be possible, but he wouldn't put any wagers on how long he'd be able to keep it up—exhaustion had sunk its barbed fangs in, and was loathe to let go. He thought it best to conserve what little strength he had left, just in case.

The weight of Olivia's gun pulled at his belt. With his left arm as it was, shooting with his right on any but the closest of targets would be laughable at best. His offhand was blind and stupid comparatively. It always had been. Just in case, she'd said. He would use it all right, but only at the very end, when all his options were exhausted. There would be no chance of missing. He hadn't reached those doldrums yet, so he struggled onward, putting one foot in front of the other.

The river slid by on his left, keeping him on a northerly course. He tried to estimate how far he had to go, but stumbled over the numbers. Three blocks? Five? He thought the pharmacy might be several blocks to the east also. He passed a burnt-out Starbucks on his right, and would have given anything for a cup of their overpriced coffee, or even a drink from their drinking fountain. His throat was a barren desert.

At the corner in front of the coffee shop, he spied shapes moving in the street ahead, in the shadow of the hotel building. He turned east away from the hotel, wishing he had a clearer idea of where he was going, what obstacles lay in his path, but the concentration required to plot the course eluded him. It was hard enough just to keep his eyes open, to stay on this side of conscious. His breathing had deteriorated to short, shallow rasps that whistled in his ears. They were coming too fast, part of him was aware, but his only other option was to not breathe at all. The undead kept pace, and turned the corner behind him. He pressed onward.

Hypovolemic shock, Peter, he thought, recognizing the symptoms. You're going to become intimately familiar with it.

Every step sent a jolt through his shoulder. He'd let his right arm drop long ago. He was at the point of diminishing returns; the effort required to keep pressure on the wound outweighed any tangible benefit he might have been receiving. It had come away sticky with blood. Whether or not he'd been accomplishing anything was anyone's guess. In any event, he had a sneaking feeling the time he had left was on the shorter side of soon.

The eastward street disappeared shortly under a thick blanket of shadow. Tightly packed apartment buildings and a forest of trees hugged both sides of the street, cutting off the moon's light. He moved into the patchy darkness without stopping. Visibility dropped to what was directly in front of him. Beyond that, anything might be waiting. But anything might also be nothing, and of the two, his fear for the definite something behind him was far stronger.

Peter gave his followers a backward glance. The group had yet to cross the border into shadow. He'd gained a little ground on them, several yards at least, maybe as much as ten. "Slow and steady...," he whispered painfully, turning back to the front. He tried to walk a little faster still. His shoulder shouted its disapproval.

A strip of moonlight ran across the street at the next intersection. He zeroed in on the light, ignoring the faint rustling of leaves beyond the parked cars, the quiet exhalations of breath, and low grunts that he may or may not be imagining. They were close, conceivably all around him. He forced legs to move faster, hoping to make it past before it...they, became truly aware of him.

His spine tingled with ill attention. There were eyes on him. His over-worked senses screamed at him to run—to get the hell out of there while he still could. Not yet... he overruled, glancing left and right. The time's not right...

Was something there, outside his little cone of vision? Blackness shifting inside a deeper blackness? Could there be a ripple of awareness blinking in his wake? He imagined misshapen heads turning, slow-firing impulses making the required connections to form an instinctual response to the stimuli of his passage. Then would come motion.

Peter crossed out of the shadow, into the pale brilliance of the intersection and swung north, putting the moon at his back. His elongated form preceded him across the pavement, mimicked his movements. Ahead, the street curled around a closeknit strip of family-homes, before winding out of sight in a gentle curl to the northeast. He risked another peek behind him when he was almost at the next block.

There was nothing at first, only a black penumbra of varying shades. No sign of anyone...or anything following. A biting wind gusted, urging him onward. Had he lost them? Not likely, the voice of reason answered at once. The infected were single-minded creatures, though somewhat easily distracted. And there had been no distractions—hence, they were still behind him. Whether or not they would turn the corner was the question. He glanced away for an instant, double-checking the street ahead. When he turned back, his heart threatened to leap from his chest.

A figure charged out of the blackness. Its movements were jerky, with arms that swung and flapped in out-of-sync motions. A man it had been, before. A big man—easily as large as the infected that had been Olivia's brother-in-law. It was a wearing a fireman's jacket.

He noticed all those little details at a glance, yet was unable to look away from the only important one. The pale face. White cheeks that glowed faintly in the moonlight. "Oh shit...," he whispered out loud, unintentionally. His bowels constricted into a tight fist. The creature took the corner in a wide, off-balance turn, then headed straight toward him. Behind it, a thick line of shambling infected emerged from the shadows. They too turned the corner. From somewhere deep in the midst of his rising dread, came the abstract observation that he'd attracted a rather large following.

Now it's time, he thought grimly, summoning the last of his strength. Whatever play he had left to make, it was either now, or die trying. If he failed...well, at least they weren't going to take him alive. Olivia had seen to that.

Peter retrieved the gun from the small of his back, and began to run.

#


#

The infected man lunged forward with outstretched arms, teeth bared. Olivia backpedaled, and sank Peter's crowbar in above its left ear. Its knees buckled, nearly yanking the crowbar from her hands as it collapsed at her feet. She ripped the hook free, spraying blood and chunks of gore across the front of her jacket. Nudging the infected on its back, she directed her red light on its gnarled face, just to double-check, then exhaled with relief.

It was fairly fresh as she'd thought, but it wasn't him.

She'd been unsure. The infected had been a man wearing a brownish jacket, and sporting similarly wavy hair. But where Peter was tall and slender like a knife-blade, this fellow looked as if he'd spent a considerable amount of time at the gym. She'd found it wandering the riverbank in her path, and for one heart-wrenching instant, she'd been sure she was looking at an undead Peter Bishop. It wasn't the first infected she'd come across since turning south, but it was the first that had born a vague resemblance to Peter. The others hadn't required her to come half as close in order to verify they weren't him.

Olivia stepped over the dead man without another glance. More of them were gathered off to her left, standing in a tight group in front of a low apartment building. She moved past them after a cursory glance. Even from a distance, it was obvious that they were all old-dead, and had reached the point where stumbling about was the best they could manage.

The strip of tall grass she'd been following ended abruptly. Whitish blocks of concrete emerged from the murk just ahead. Out in the river, the collapsed span of the Western Avenue Bridge stood out in the moonlight. She hurried toward the bridge, keeping her light on the rubble rising from the water. It was conceivable that someone—or a body—floating downstream could have become stuck in the debris on their way past. She moved as close as she dared, pushing through the thick chaparral covering the riverbank at the bridge's base.

Submerged cars and trucks sat in watery graves between the jagged blast points. The river lapped at their twisted remains, flowed through the shattered windows. She searched for the drivers, the families, trapped in the explosion, as had been at the other collapsed bridge, but found none. Maybe the man following orders had a conscience for once, she thought. The vehicles were empty, and Peter was nowhere to be seen, alive or otherwise.

After forcing her way to the bridge abutment, she rose up and peered over the masonry wall. The red light of her headlamp reflected off the rear side window of an expensive-looking BMW sandwiched between a nondescript mini-van, and a black SUV. The closest infected was out in the intersection, bumping up against a bus-stop canopy, reminding her of a broken record. She watched it for a moment, then pulled herself up and over the guardrail with a grunt, and moved down the line of cars to the broken span of bridge.

He's not going to be here, she told herself, sweeping her light among the wreckage below that had been out of view from the riverbank. And he wasn't. He must've passed through on the far side, underneath the section that's still standing. The thought was worrisome. Maybe she'd been wrong in her assumption that he would try for this side of the river. Would he not have tried for whichever bank was closest?

She clicked off her light, and gazed over at the far bank. There was nothing to see but opaque, inky shadows and rectangular silhouettes against the horizon. She shook her head at the lingering doubts. All she could do was keep looking. She'd made her choice, and now she had to see it through.

Olivia retreated quietly off the collapsed bridge. She stayed low and out of sight, then continued southward, past the doddering infected at the bus stop. A sidewalk had replaced the landscaping she'd been following. She jogged along a low handrail that overlooked the river, and kept her eyes peeled, despite it being unlikely in the extreme that Peter could have managed to pull himself out of the water along this stretch of shoreline; the sidewalk was elevated several feet over the waterline.

After a while, she was almost able to imagine being on one of her predawn morning runs. Almost, except for the crowbar throwing her off-balance and the backpack bouncing up and down behind her. And the undead standing limply in the street to her left, she mustn't forget about them. None were Peter though, and she ran by them without slowing. Past an old decaying warehouse on her left, a stout office building, then a park of some sort, with thickets of skeletal trees scattered randomly throughout. Infected haunted the park's grounds. She slowed to a walk as she passed opposite the bunch, sucking in gulps of much-needed air. She kept one eye on those closest to the street. They never looked in her direction, and she moved passed them quickly, noticing several that could only have been young children. As of yet, she'd not had to kill any child-sized undead, and hoped she never did. There was only so much deprivation a mind could take before something inside—something necessary for sanity, in her opinion—was irrevocably broken. She moved past them and didn't look back.

#

A tall hotel building towered at the next cross-street, where the next bridge—this one whole—crossed over the Charles. Unlike when they'd passed it by earlier that morning, the bridge was clear of infected. She shook her head ruefully. Could all the gunfire to the north have paved the way for her now, when she no longer needed it? No doubt Peter would have come up with an amusing and sardonic commentary on the irony of it all, but at the moment she lacked the imagination to do the same.

What a fucking disaster this is... she thought gloomily, eyeing the bridge and the unbroken chain of vehicles stretching across it.

The handrail came to end at a low wall of crumbling concrete blocks that continued around the corner onto the bridge. She stopped next to a traffic light and wiped a sheen of cool sweat from her brow. It had been a long, grueling day. One of the worst in recent memory, and that was saying something, considering the string of horrific days she was putting together. And her day wasn't even close to being over. She bit back a yawn and felt through her jeans for the small lump in her pocket, thinking of Walter's last words before she'd walked out of the lab.

Take these, Agent Dunham, he'd whispered in her ear, pressing a plastic baggy into her hand. Just in case you need a little pick me up while you're out finding Peter.

What are they? she'd asked with a frown, fingering the white capsules through the plastic.

A mix of dexedrine and modafinil... he'd said excitedly. His lined face and bright, eager eyes had been the picture of insanity. It's my own personal blend...quite potent. Then he'd turned and walked away before she could refuse.

She left the baggy in her pocket and turned the corner, slinking a path through the stalled vehicles and out onto the bridge. There might be a situation that called for their use, but Walter's homemade drug cocktails weren't something she was eager to ingest—not without a high degree of desperation, at least. And she was nowhere close...yet.

At the bridge's apex, Olivia pulled off her headlamp and massaged a spot on her forehead where it had begun to chafe. She wondered for an instant if Peter had given her the lamp with the least padding on purpose. No, she thought, shaking her head slowly. She turned the headlamp over in her hands. He wouldn't do that. The swaggering Peter that she'd met in a posh hotel in Baghdad might have, but he wasn't the same man he'd been then. That Peter, with all his anger, his stubborn bitterness—at herself and at Walter—would have never done what he'd done. She had to know why, had to read the truth for herself behind his eyes. If he was alive.

She cast her gaze southward over the water toward the western bank. What if I've been searching the wrong side of the river? The nagging doubt ran dogged circles in the back of her mind. He'd fallen in much nearer to the western bank, after all. She could cross over here, if she so chose, and work her way north again, essentially retracing their footsteps from that morning. Or she could go south, only the next bridge across was several miles away—nearly as far as West Fens—and there was no guarantee she'd be able to cross it in any case. What if she reached the bridge and still hadn't found him? What then? Was she supposed to follow the river all the way to Boston Harbor? Out into the Atlantic?

How was she to know when to draw the line?

Make a choice, 'Livia, a Bostonian drawl that sounded suspiciously like Peter's taunted. Either way, you're still searching for a proverbial needle. Have fun with that.

A chilly breeze blew obstinately from the west. The wind could be taken as a sign perhaps, if she believed in such things. She did not, however, and never had. The breeze became a moaning gust seeking entrance through her layers. She took a hesitant step, wincing at the stinging bite on her cheeks, then froze when a fetid rankness tickled her nose.

Olivia hastily re-affixed her headlamp, then flashed the red beam all around her. There was nothing to see at first, stalled vehicles, and the veil darkness just beyond the range of her light. Then a figure with thick, stringy hair staggered into view. An infected woman careened in slow-motion down the narrow aisle between cars in her direction. Hefting Peter's crowbar, she started toward the undead woman then jerked to a halt, noticing a dark lump protruding from its chest. Her first thought was that it was a backpack, inexplicably being worn backwards, but then, as the creature moved closer, it became apparent that it was something else entirely. The lump was open at the top, almost like a kangaroo's pouch.

Unbidden, a memory of a slightly younger Rachel wearing a similar device flashed through her mind: tiny arms and legs, a patch of thin, dark hair visible above the folded-down rim, and her sister's joyful smile as she stared down at Ella, less than six months old. Things had been normal then, her sister newly-married and happy.

With mounting horror, she ripped her gaze from the baby carrier. The undead woman was closer now, almost within arms reach. Their eyes met for a heartbeat, and then the infected was rushing forward, clawing for her face. Olivia stood frozen, still in shock by the unimaginable possibility strapped across its chest. Please be empty... came a repeating voice, thrashing around inside her head.

She recovered at the last moment, and managed to drive the angled tip of the crowbar upwards into the soft flesh underneath its chin. The infected crashed into her, forcing her back against one of the cars in the line. She found herself face-to-face with the dead woman, holding its limp weight upright with the crowbar. The stench of rotting death was overpowering. She gagged, and then, horribly, felt a slight movement against her chest.

Her gaze dipped downward of it its own volition, filling the gap between them with red light. Something tiny squirmed there. Something terrible and obscene, something that should not exist. Her mind recoiled, screaming, and fled to some distant recess where peace and tranquility were still possibilities. She shivered maniacally, unable to look away. The air seemed twisted around the monstrosity, depressed somehow, as if the malignancy were too crushing a burden for even reality to bear.

It was too much. Olivia squeezed her eyes shut, turning away from the insanity staring, reaching, up at her. She had to get away from there, away from the horror and the death at every turn. She felt a strange pressure, building inside her head, and then a slight pop, similar to the feeling of a soap bubble busting against her skin. The dead woman's limp weight vanished, and she staggered at its absence. At the same instant, the air...changed around her, temperature, the smell. Her eyes flew open.

She was someplace...else.

The bridge remained, but gone were the lines of abandoned vehicles, the dead woman and her monstrous burden. The air was warmer, and the always-present stench of rotting corpses had given way to...nothing—a complete lack of odors of any sort. A staleness. An absence of life of any kind, she would have called it, if her mind weren't occupied, trying to comprehend the view to the southeast. A giant, irregular mound of...something, dominated the horizon. She gaped at its sheer size, at the way the moonlight reflected off its seemingly smooth surface, like glittering drops of honey. Was it translucent? Were there shapes inside it? Buildings? The city?

I'm going utterly mad..., she thought, taking a step forward. I'm going— The world... flickered...around her mid-step. And then she was back. crazy... she finished the thought, looking around wildly.

There had been no feeling of transition. She'd simply been there one instant, and been back the next. Back in the oppressive chill, with the stench of death filling her nostrils once more. The infected woman was lying face-down on the pavement at her feet. The mirror of the sedan she'd stumbled against dug into her side.

Olivia stared with bulging eyes at the straps crisscrossing the back of its coat, at the filthy mop of hair. She had no idea what had just happened—maybe she'd imagined it all—but the sense of horrible wrongness still lingered. A raving voice in the back of her mind warned her to leave it alone, but she reached out anyway, and hooked the dead woman over onto its back.

The baby-carrier had a purplish tint in the light of her head lamp and was surprisingly clean. Was the fabric blue? Rachel's had been a dark navy color, also. She slowly raised the crowbar over her head. It's not person...or a baby. She squeezed the cool metal with both hands, steeling herself for what would come next.

Just as Olivia was about to bring an end to its unholy existence, a whiff of something acrid grabbed her attention. She hesitated, arms still upraised, and sniffed at the air. The odor didn't belong, not anymore. She smelled death and blood, rusting metal and herself. The wind breezed in off the river. She caught another whiff of harshness, and recognized it for what it was.

Smoke.

A fire.

Peter. A spark of hope kindled to life, sending her heart racing.

Thoughts of that other place and even the thing in the baby carrier fell away. She dropped her arms and spun about in a slow circle, scanning the horizon. She saw nothing out of place, until she turned her gaze to the south, along the eastern bank of the river. About a quarter-mile away, the moonlight revealed what looked like a boat dock jutting out into the water. An angular structure sat nearby—presumably the associated boathouse—amid a clumpy blackness that she took for trees. Above the trees was a faint, orangish glow, that she would have missed if she hadn't been looking for it. Higher up, a section of the night sky was blotted out by what she could only assume was a plume of smoke.

"If that's not a sign, Peter, I don't know what is," she whispered to the night.

She swallowed, then glanced down at the corpse. A moving lump pressed outward, deforming the fabric of the baby-carrier. She hesitated, clenching her teeth, then stilled its movements with a single, tearful blow. That wasn't a baby, she told herself afterward, taking a deep breath and pushing her hair back. It wasn't. There had been no other choice. She kept repeating it to herself as she raced off the bridge.

The towering hotel building on the corner cast a wide shadow that fell diagonally across the intersection. She plunged into the darkness without slowing, turning south.

The circle of her red light bounced on the pavement. Infected loomed outside its beam, standing in disorganized groups out in the street, and on the parking lot and sidewalks in front of the hotel and the river. In her path. She zigzagged through their ranks, sprinting past them even as awareness bloomed on their ruined faces. They would follow her, of course, but not nearly quickly enough.

The street was clear beyond the hotel. Olivia set a torrid pace, keeping her gaze near the spot where she'd seen the orange glow, though it was no longer visible. More undead wandered near a squat office building on her left. She flew by them with out a second glance. Another herd was moving away from her, down a side street where the blackened shell of a Starbuck's sat abandoned on the corner. She frowned at their departing backs, curious, but then they were out of sight and out of mind. She ran faster, noticing the pungent odor of smoke.

The road angled away from the riverbank, taking the sidewalk with it. A line of trees sprang up to her right, cutting off her view of The Charles. The strip of land widened into a wooded area, with the angular boathouse she'd seen from the bridge nestled in its center.

She was almost there.

Flames were visible now, flickering in the background of tree trunks and branches. The air became hazy. The trees ended abruptly, and she arrived at a paved parking lot, blanketed in a thickening smoke. She slowed down as the source of the smoke came into view; an old brick structure with licks of fire and shooting sparks rising up over the roof-line like a crown.

She sped across the parking lot, fighting her way through the smoke cloud. It reeked of burning plastic and who-knew-what else, lead paint probably, or something equally as toxic. There was another odor inside the smoke, foul and stomach-turning, like rotten meat. The high-pitched shriek of a battery-powered fire alarm echoed from inside, audible over the snaps and pops of burning wood.

Olivia covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve, and imagined what conditions might be like inside. Considering the amount of fire shooting through the roof, it must be a raging inferno. Anyone inside would have succumbed to smoke inhalation in short order. Surely if Peter had the sense to start the fire, he would have gotten himself out beforehand. Surely.

Of course he would have, she told herself, moving toward the rear of the building where the wailing of the alarm was loudest. She expected there to be infected in the building's vicinity, drawn in by the sounding alarm, but there were none. The lack of them was disturbing, and what she came upon next even more so.

A picket fence extended off the rear corner of the building, out toward the river. A wide section was buckled inward, like some giant had put its foot down on top of it. She stepped carefully between the metal pickets. Beyond the fence was a concrete area, with lines of lawn chairs, and circular picnic tables and folded umbrellas. A public pool, she realized, eyeing the long, rectangular depression in the concrete.

Blackish smoke billowed from a narrow, vertical window adjacent to the building's rear entrance. The glass had been shattered. She stared into the depths of the smoke for a moment, before moving toward the rows of lawn chairs. He couldn't be inside.

"Peter...," she called out, keeping her voice low. She headed toward the far end of the pool, casting her light around the patio. "Peter, are you out here?"

There was no response, and some part of her sensed that she was alone, similar to the feeling of being in an empty room. It was discouraging to admit. Maybe she'd been wrong, and the fire had been purely coincidental after all.

It was possible, she reasoned, but not probable. She would've been willing to bet almost anything that he was connected to it in some way. Someone had set the fire, certainly, and burning down a building to make a signal, or even because he was cold or needed light was something she could picture Peter doing. Her lips curved inadvertently at the thought.

The back side of the property was wide open, all the way to the river. A narrow strip of shoreline glistened faintly under the moon's glare. A beach, she concluded after a moment's thought. An easy place to exit the river, and the first she'd seen since she'd started her search.

She retreated back to the flattened section of the fence. Taking a closer look at the bent metal, she noticed that it included an unlocked gate. A human, even one delirious and gunshot, would have just opened it and walked through. The fence was the work of infected—probably a small horde drawn by the fire alarm. It would've been irresistible. But they had not broken the window. That was the work of a human, and a desperate one at that. They'd probably thrown something through it. She glanced around and noticed a rocky landscaped area, not far from the parking lot. Hunkering down, she inspected the concrete between where the gate would have stood, and the entrance.

The concrete glowed pink under her light. In front of rear entrance she found several dark stains of indeterminate color, drops of some congealed liquid. She smeared a finger through one of the globules and sniffed at the sticky substance. It had a metallic, coppery odor. She knew it well from her former life.

Blood. And fairly fresh.

She rose from her crouch. He'd been injured. Hence, the blood was his. It was the simplest explanation. She ducked under the billowing smoke. Holding her breath, she moved closer to the window, into a blast of hot air that singed her cheeks. Yellow and orange flames flickered deep inside the haze, up high on the ceiling and engulfing interior walls. The fire alarm's wailing turned to static suddenly, and then went silent.

If he's in there...he's dead. She knew it, but couldn't leave without trying.

Olivia stuck her head through the window. "Peter," she cried. "Peter!" Smoke stung her eyes, burned in her nose and throat. She turned away from the window, coughing, and gasping for air. She looked around futilely, panting, and wondered what to do next. Finding him had always been something of a fool's hope—in spite of how she'd convinced herself otherwise. She'd been sure he was here, that it had been him. Everything pointed to it.

She heard a sound, then saw figures moving inside the smoky interior, bodies wreathed in flames. The infected she'd been looking for. They appeared confused, unable to navigate to any degree. She thought that maybe their eyes had burned out. Several collapsed and lay still, burning. Others staggered about, as if searching for a way out. Any of them could have been Peter, or none.

Goddamnit... Olivia scrubbed at her eyes and turned away from the window.

She headed toward the front side of the building, intending to walk its perimeter. There were no signs of him in the parking lot or on the sidewalk leading up to the front entrance. The double doors stood closed and still whole, but she wanted to inspect them anyway. Directing her light into the recessed entrance, she gasped, and her breath caught in her throat. Her heart stopped for an instant, then continued in a frantic, adrenaline-fueled pace.

It was a pair of hands, both cut off just above the wrist. They lay on the concrete in a pool of blood, flexing and squeezing at the air. Next to the hands, part of a towel peeked out from under the door frame, stuck there. The white cloth was covered with bloody spots and smears, several of which looked to be hand prints. She gazed at the towel feeling a surge of hope.

Peter had been there. She could feel it. Every part of her intuition was screaming it. She could almost picture how it had all unfolded, leading up to his escape through the front door. Had the building already been on fire? Almost certainly. Where was he now? She scoured the sidewalk, searching for another blood trail, but found nothing.

Olivia hurried out to the street and looked around. Where was he? She peered southward, following the rows of houses toward a bend in the road where it turned east and disappeared. He wouldn't go south, she thought, shaking her head and turning back to the north. If he'd been able to make it this far, he would try to get back to the lab. That's what she would have done, and it was all she had to go on. They might have even passed each other, the timing seemed about right, or near enough. But we didn't, she argued, I would have seen him, and he would have seen me, seen the red light. She had taken the most direct route. And all she'd seen were undead, all of them old, except for the one she'd killed. She was missing something. Something crucial.

A sudden yawn forced her eyes closed. When she reopened them, a man was standing in her path, less than a block away.

Olivia frowned at his sudden appearance. "Peter?" she said, hurrying toward him. No, she answered herself an instant later, coming to a stop. Not Peter. She shifted the crowbar to her left hand, and dropped her right down to the pistol on her belt.

The man stood perfectly still, shoulders straight back, watching her. He was wearing a dark suit. And a hat. A fedora. Olivia's mouth went dry.

It was him. The strange man she'd seen on the way to Brighton. He was here. ...And he appeared to be expecting her. He'd been watching them before. Perhaps he'd seen Peter.

Well...there's no reason to keep him waiting, she thought, and started forward keeping her eyes locked on his silhouette. If he planned on disappearing as he seemed able to, he showed no sign of it, or indeed any emotion at all when she came to a stop in front of him.

#


#

Peter rounded the corner and risked a glance behind him, toward the deepening shadows between the last pair of houses on the block. He searched the darkness for a hint of his pursuers' silhouettes. The first infected—the fresh, as he'd known it would be—burst into the light, closer than before. The thing was gaining on him with a rapidity that deflated his balls into shriveled prunes.

He gritted his teeth, taking a pull from some internal well that had nearly run dry. Cool sweat beaded on his cheeks, dripped from the bridge of his eyebrows. His labored breaths rasped loudly in his ears. He was nearing the end.

Not quite yet... he thought determinedly, eying a nearly windowless brick structure that loomed out of the pitch-black on his left. A manufacturing plant of some sort. The building was surrounded by a chain-linked fence. He continued past it, doing his best to ignore the scraping behind him, the loose gravel kicked about by ungainly feet. Feet that were more than capable of catching him.

Another structure appeared out of the night. This one was brick also, though it had an angled roof-line with regular gables that looked vaguely familiar. On the side facing the street stood an arched opening, with a drive leading up to it. A parking garage. The sight of it sent his heart racing, and gave him a moment of total clarity.

He knew that building, knew exactly where he was; the Whole Foods on the corner of River and Putnam. He'd taken Walter there once and it had blown his mind. Despite Peter's protests, they'd left with more food than they could reasonably eat, and most of it had gone bad in the lab's refrigerator. More importantly for the present, however, was that the grocery store shared a parking lot with one of those chain pharmacy stores.

Swerving between a pair of parked cars, he angled toward the darkened opening to the parking garage, zeroing in on another entrance visible through the blackness of the garage's interior. The pharmacy lay just beyond it.

Just before plunging into the darkness of the garage, he noticed a foul putrescence in the air and skidded to a stop underneath intricately bricked archway. A patch of blackness in the garage moved. The shadows separated, became distinct forms, bodies outlined against the far entrance. They moved toward him.

Well, that was stupid of you, Peter. Why don't you just run right in to them next time?

He backed slowly away from the garage entrance. His heart raced, thudded furiously under his coat. Footsteps scraped on the sidewalk to his left. He spun, desperately bringing Olivia's gun up, and stared into the insane eyes of the still-fresh infected, highlighted in the moonlight. It was less than ten steps away, teeth bared in anticipation of his throat. At the same time, he sensed movement to his right, back in the garage. Both were closing the distance rapidly.

Peter stepped toward it and fired without thought, without even aiming. He was suddenly furious. All he could think of was that he was tired of this shit; the running, the constant pain, and the goddamn near-death experiences. The muzzle flashed, bathing the former fireman in yellow light for an instant. The shot thundered in the silence. Its nose evaporated in a red mist.

One, he counted grimly, turning away even as the creature fell in a heap of flopping arms and legs.

There came a collective groan from inside the garage, and then undead by the dozen spilled out into the street, cutting off his avenue to the north. He spied an apartment building across the street; an ancient triplex, divided by floors, with an external staircase winding up the outside to each entrance. More undead blocked any retreat to the south, as the other hangers-on finally arrived on the scene. Apartment it is then, he thought wildly, and dashed across the street.

The mass of infected surged after him, following him toward a slim opening in a fence along the sidewalk. He reached the front porch and staggered up a short flight of steps to the front door. It was stout and wooden, with an arched window high on its upper third, too high to be of any use. The door was locked, and he had no time.

In full blown panic, he gazed around the porch frantically, unsure of what exactly he was looking for. A child's bicycle with training wheels sat next to several lawn chairs. Maybe he could block them somehow, he reasoned, thinking of the stairwell in Olivia's apartment building.

The first of the infected reached the porch. He recalled wondering whether or not they could even climb steps at one point. That question had been answered with finality back at the bridge. He moved close enough to give his right hand the handicap and fired at random into the crowd. Rancid blood splattered in his face, on the painted white column next to his head. At least a half-dozen dropped, smacked face-first on the wooden treads. Those behind them stumbled over the fallen bodies, causing havoc at the bottom of the steps. It wouldn't last.

Peter surveyed the scene for an instant, then shoved the pistol inside his belt. In two long strides he was at the bicycle. He hurled it at the chest of a leering infected woman who was crushing its fellow underfoot as it struggled up the steps. The dead woman fell back, pushing a whole in their ranks. The lawn chairs followed the bike onto the pileup, adding to the chaos.

He hurried up the stairs to the second level and found another locked door. "Goddamnit..." he said, and gave it a weak kick, to no affect. The door was as solid as an oak tree.

He went to the banister and peered down at the fray. His throat tightened. I'm so fucked... he thought, eyeballing the seething mass. The undead were pushing their way through his obstructions, trampling one another in their efforts to climb the narrow set of stairs. He could hear the dry crunching of snapping bones even from his height. Their numbers swelled in the small courtyard—at least a hundred of them and growing.

Do something. Move! a voice shouted in his head. His eyes darted, searching for a way out.

A gas barbecue grill gleamed in the scant light. It had been nice once, plated in stainless steel and large enough to cook several meals at once. Nearby was a small table and a threesome of wooden chairs. A ten-speed that looked older than he was leaned on its kickstand. He grabbed one of the chairs and pushed it down the steps. It tumbled end-over-end before coming to rest against the railing on the intermediate landing. The other chairs followed suit, followed by the ten-speed bike, and several basketball-sized potted plants he'd discovered also. They made a jumbled pile at the bottom, difficult to pass by to be sure, but he could do better.

He dragged the gas grill to the precipice, then hesitated, eyeing the balustrade below. It didn't look particularly sturdy, and the grill was not light. If it broke through, he might end up clearing a path for the infected. To hell with it, he thought, and shoved it over the edge. The grill tilted comically, then plunged down the steps like a runaway piano. It managed to stay upright for a second or two. Then one of its supports caught. The grill went into a cartwheel and smashed down on top of the chairs and the ten-speed with enough force to shake the floor beneath his feet. The ensuing crash was deafening in the silence. Echoes rebounded off the nearby buildings and again off those even further out.

Peter leaned up against a square support column and assessed his handiwork. It wasn't too bad, considering he had no refrigerator to make use of. The tangled mess might even hold them back. For a little while, at least. A grin cracked his lips, and then a slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up from some place inside that was still capable of seeing amusement. It felt good to laugh. They came far too infrequently these days. The laughter died out after a moment, leaving him empty and exhausted. His breath was coming out in short little wheezes, he realized, and had been for sometime. It was amazing how rapidly his strength had fled. It's the adrenaline saying sayonara, he thought dazedly. He wanted to laugh again, but it would have taken too much effort. He leaned his head against the column instead and sighed.

Boards creaked on the porch below, and he knew that the infected were on their way. He trudged toward the third floor steps, incapable of summoning any of his previous energy. His well had finally run dry.

Climbing the next floor proved difficult. Peter was gasping by the time he reached the landing at the halfway point. He struggled to catch his breath, to take in enough air; no amount seemed enough to fill his lungs. But he forced himself onward, taking one step at a time. Sweat poured down his face, into his beard, onto his lips. He touched his forehead and was surprised he wasn't burned, so intense was the heat under his skin.

As he neared the top, a violent wave of lightheadedness sent the world spinning like a top. He teetered on the brink of tipping backwards. Out of pure left-handed instinct, he grabbed for the railing and immediately regretted it. His shoulder—which in his distraction had faded to a muted throb—suddenly roared back to life with the force of a supernova, searing every particle of his being.

Peter screamed and then felt himself falling.

#


#

The man's skin was pale, almost white, and contrasted brightly against his black suit. But he wasn't infected. His eyes were colorless, to the point of being gray. He had a delicate nose for a man, with a cleft chin below skin-colored lips. It was difficult to put an age to him—he could have been anywhere from his mid-thirties into his fifties. Strangest of all, he was hairless, even his eyebrows. And there was a calmness to him, as if he could stand there all night, as if he had all the time in the world. A black briefcase hung from his left hand.

"Who are you?" Olivia said when the silence grew too thick.

"Who are you." The man spoke in unison, repeating her own words back to her. His voice was bland, just like everything else about him. His head tilted to the side.

"Why are you watching me?" she tried, and the man did it again, repeating her question even as she spoke it. "Why are you watching me."

She took a step back, out of arm's reach. Something is very wrong here. The way his head moved, the slow, emotionless cadence of his speech. He almost seemed something other than human.

"What-"

"What do you want?" the man finished for her. His head tilted to his other shoulder, eyes intent on her face. "Have you seen Peter? Is he still alive?"

Olivia gaped at hearing the questions she'd yet to ask, but had intended to. It was as if the man had plucked them from inside her head. "Who...what the hell are you?" she said, fumbling her gun from its holster.

"I mean you no harm, Olivia Dunham," the man replied, pronouncing every syllable fully. He shifted his head again, unaffected by the presence of her weapon.

She reeled at hearing her name on the stranger's lips. He knew her. How was it possible? "How do you know me?" she whispered. "How did you know what I was going to say?"

"It is a small thing," the stranger said mechanically, "and of no consequence in this place and time."

Place and time? Or place in time? She wasn't sure which he'd said, and neither made sense. Olivia frowned. "What does that even mean? Who are you?"

The man regarded her silently before replying. "I'm not supposed to get involved," he said. His voice quiet, as if he were worried about being overheard. "I shouldn't be speaking with you. It is ours to watch. Only to observe, never to intervene. And yet..." He trailed off, seemingly confused by his own actions.

"It's a little late for that, don't you think?" she told him dryly, letting her pistol fall back in its holster. Despite the man's strangeness, she sensed no ill intent from him, but kept her hand on the pistol's grip, just in case. "You know, I saw you before, two days ago. You were...observing us, then. I had an accident."

"Yes..." He tilted his head again, eyes narrowed. "I presume an...adjustment, had become necessary. A correction."

"An adjustment? What are you talking about?" The way he'd said it, it gave her the chills.

"Something has gone askew here...," he said, sounding confused again. Olivia had sneaking suspicion that he wasn't referring to Boston. "Events are not proceeding as history intended. There has been a fork. It was unforeseen, and highly unstable."

"A fork...?" Olivia didn't know what a fork had to do with anything, but there was definitely something askew, as he'd put it. "You're talking about the infected...aren't you?"

"The...infected," he repeated, as if tasting the word on his tongue for the first time. "Yes."

"Why is this happening?" She threw her hands wide, gesturing all around her. "What caused it?"

"The beacon in this place was...diverted." In spite of his cryptic answer, his voice remained devoid of emotion. He stuck his chin out, then angled his head to one side—an inhuman motion if she'd ever seen one. "I have been unable to calculate the source of the divergence. The ripples of causality are still compounding, expanding outward up the lines of probability. They have yet to converge on any single outcome. All is in flux as we have never witnessed before."

"The beacon? Probability?" We? Olivia smoothed back her hair impatiently. The man was speaking gibberish, worse than Walter ever had. This is going nowhere. Maybe the end of the world had driven the fellow mad. He certainly seemed delusional. But then how could he know her? "Have you seen Peter? Peter Bishop?"

"Yes." The man's gaze was sharp, knowing. "The boy. He is...was important. Before. In another place. He is different in this here and now. And so are you, Olivia. I had to see for myself."

What in the hell is that supposed to mean? She didn't bother asking. "Where did Peter go?" she said instead. "Is he alive?"

The stranger made no reply. Instead of answering, he flipped open a what appeared to be a cell phone and studied it for a moment before slipping it inside his suit jacket. When his hand emerged, it was holding a small, black handgun of strange design. Olivia recoiled, reaching desperately for her own gun. The man ignored her efforts and fired without aiming off to her right side.

Instead of a gunshot, there was only an odd whirring noise, and then a thud on the pavement behind her. She twirled around and found an infected lying in the street. Its skull was crushed, caved in like it had been struck by a sledgehammer. Bits of gore and gleaming bone splattered the sidewalk behind it.

Olivia turned back to the stranger. "What was tha..." The question died on her lips. She was speaking to the air.

The man was gone.

She spun on her heels, directing her light in the shadows and dark places where a man could secrete himself. He was nowhere. Vanished, into thin air. Like a ghost. Her back had been turned only for an instant. There had been no time for him to run, or to hide.

He'd known something about Peter.

Before she could ponder the pale stranger and his curious behavior any further, a gunshot echoed in the night. Olivia froze at the sudden sound. Had it come from the north? She started forward at a slow trot, keeping her own gun drawn. Another shot rang out, and then a flurry of them, all to the northeast.

Peter.

Olivia broke into a sprint even as the gunshots died out and were replaced by a foreboding quiet. She headed north, toward the burnt Starbuck's building she'd passed on her way south. As she turned the corner, making a loping turn eastward, her earlier thought that they could have passed each other returned.

There had been a number of infected on this street earlier, moving away from her...or chasing after something...or someone. She'd looked right at them, and had never considered that possibility. He might've been right here, and I missed him. Son of a bitch.

She ran faster, until her thighs and calves burned. Her bad knee ached with every stride, the wound most likely reopened, but she distanced herself from the pain. Trees flew past, parked cars and trucks in front of houses packed together in tight bunches. But not a single infected. While it was normal for there to be stretches of inactivity, surely some of the bunch she'd seen would have broken off, distracted by some sound or another. Unless they had been following something.

They can be single-minded when it comes to their dinner. Peter had said that to her once, while they'd been watching a horde of newly-infected rush past from the safety of the van. They'd been moving south toward Harvard Square. Toward what had sounded like a full-scale armed conflict, complete with automatic weapon fire and explosions loud enough to shatter glass and rock buildings.

Olivia slowed at the next cross-street, unsure of the right direction to take. She took a few steps to the east, squinting into the blackness ahead. Something had moved in her peripheral vision, a shifting of shadow perhaps, or the play of moonlight across some reflective surface. It had been something. She took a few more hesitant steps, then jumped when a thunderous boom reverberated from the north.

What the hell was that? she thought, shooting glances in all directions. The sudden noise reminded her of the trash behind her apartment building being emptied into a garbage truck, an occurrence that seemed fairly unlikely given the current state of civilization.

She turned north, moving slower than she had been, unsure of what she might be heading into. It seemed unlikely she was the only one moving to investigate all the noise. The natives would undoubtedly be closing in as well. The rows of tightly-packed houses were replaced by ivy-covered apartment buildings. A tall fence sprang up on her left, crowned with spirals of razor-wire. Then came a dark alleyway, followed by another brick building, a former retail store of some sort, she thought, from the receiving area on its back side.

Movement in the darkness brought her up short. She ducked behind a parked car and peered around the fender. Infected clogged the street ahead. Their outlines moved just out of the range of her head lamp; at least a hundred undead pushing and surging toward an apartment building across the street diagonally from her position.

What were they after? Images of Peter in the center of the scrum, being torn to pieces, eaten alive, flooded her imagination in a continuous stream. How cruel a fate would it be to survive being shot in the back, only to be devoured by a mob of undead? She had to get closer. She had to see.

Staying in her crouch, Olivia moved down the line of cars until she was nearly on top of the infected at the rear of the congregation. A body lay face down on the sidewalk. It wasn't Peter. Her new location put the apartment in clear view. It was an older building, three stories, with wrinkled siding and an external staircase with attached porches that looked as if it had been added after the fact.

The raucous sea of undead pushed and shoved their way onto the lowest porch, and up the steps to the second level with feverish intensity. She searched the upper levels and was shocked to find the porch above empty. The red light of her headlamp reflected off something metallic on the landing between the floors. Is that a wheel? She noticed a circular shape between the slats. A bike? The undead appeared unable to move past it to the second level.

A prickle of excitement ran down Olivia's spine. Someone had blocked the stairwell, though from the size of the horde below, it wouldn't hold forever.

The gunshots, that noise—they had to have come from here, she thought, scanning the upper floors again. The porches seemed empty, but that didn't necessarily mean anything; whoever had done it could have simply entered one of the apartments. And the third floor was mostly out of sight anyway. Either way, she had to get up there.

And just how in the hell are you going to accomplish that small feat? She ground the end of the crowbar into the concrete. She needed a diversion, something that could get the attention of all the infected, and at the same time, wouldn't draw attention to herself.

There was nothing close by. Abandoned cars lined the sidewalks intermittently on both sides of the street. She vaguely recalled seeing a row of dumpsters back near the receiving area she'd passed earlier. With a little luck, there might be something suitable to throw inside one of them, something made of glass, hopefully.

She holstered her pistol, then retreated to the alley, staying in a low crouch until she was clear. Her memory was as accurate as ever; the dumpsters were massive, two of them in a line along inside a fenced enclosure. She lifted up on her toes and peered inside the closest only to find it full of cardboard, much to her disappointment. The second was empty.

Damn it. Time was running out. She glanced around, searching for anything that looked useful, but there was nothing, not even a discarded cigarette butt. Somehow, she'd stumbled up on the only clean alley in all of Boston. She smacked her fist against her thigh in frustration. Goddamn it...

She trotted back to the street. There had to be something she could use. Her headlamp glared red off the passenger window of a sedan parked at the alley's entrance. She came to a stop, staring at her reflection in the glass. And then it hit her, like a slap across the face.

The parked cars.

Olivia rushed across the street to the northward facing row of vehicles. The closest was a blue sedan. Its doors were locked. She glanced around, checking her immediate vicinity. Then smashed the driver's window with the crowbar, wincing at, but ignoring the crash of shattered glass. Please work..., she prayed, and reached through the window for the headlight lever.

The headlights bloomed to life, lighting up the street with a blinding intensity. She moved down the line, repeating the process on three more vehicles. The street was awash in light. It was a scene she'd never thought to see again; lines of cars, waiting for whatever was causing the traffic jam to move on. But she wasn't done. She pulled open the door of the last vehicle, a tall pickup truck with massive tires, and pressed the horn. It was freakishly loud in the quiet. She didn't doubt that it could be heard for miles.

She kept her hand on the steering wheel, blaring the horn for what seemed like a full minute before the first of the infected staggered into the light of the blue sedan. More followed closely behind, all moving with a greedy fervor. She watched them move closer. They reached the first car, the second, and then it was time for her to go. She released the horn and raced across the street.

The infected continued toward the truck. Olivia retraced her steps beside the fence, staying low on the sidewalk close to the southward facing vehicles. Bodies moved past in the street. Their throaty growls and shuffling footsteps drowned out her pounding heart. She reached the alley, and peeked around the rear bumper of a minivan. As she'd hoped they would, the infected were pouring out into the street from the front of the apartment building like it was on fire.

She watched them hurry down the street toward the headlights. Why does it enrage them so? Walter had yet to explain the behavior. After several minutes the stream of undead came to an end, and she was able to cross the street behind them.

On the walk leading up to the front porch she found five trampled infected. All had been shot in the head, and at close range. She stepped over the mangled bodies and hurried up the steps to the second floor. As she'd thought, the landing had indeed been blocked. What looked like the remains of several wooden lawn chairs and a bicycle were in a jumbled pile, all crushed beneath the weight of an over-sized barbecue grill. An infected man struggled among the debris, pierced through the left thigh by a spike of wood from a broken lawn chair. The creature appeared unaware of the injury and groped toward the headlights below. With a grunt, she plunged the crowbar into the back of its head, then yanked it out of her way. It skidded down the steps on its back. Olivia picked her way over the pile and ascended to the second floor. There was no sign of Peter, though someone had certainly been there. Fresh scratches on the painted wood floor led straight to the stairs. The apartment was locked, and she moved past it, onto the third floor stairwell.

And that was when she saw him.

Her heart took a great leap in her chest. He was lying on his back at the bottom of the steps. His eyes were closed. A nasty cut marred his forehead, and his skin was pale beneath his light beard. His jacket was soaked in blood, the source of which was a gaping wound in his left shoulder. The handgun she'd given him was shoved inside the front of his jeans.

"Peter!"

Olivia threw herself down beside him. Was he breathing? She couldn't decide and reached for his pulse. Her hand shook. She touched his neck and hissed, jerking back reflexively. His skin was on fire. Her mind flashed back to John, and how hot he'd grown the instant before he'd turned. She expected Peter's eyes to snap open, their cool blue replaced by an ugly gold, but he remained still. Gingerly, she touched his neck again, conscious of her proximity to his teeth. There was nothing. A painful constriction swelled about her throat. She was too late.A tear fell on his cheek, then another, and she wiped them away with her thumb, letting her palm linger against his beard for a moment.

She screwed her eyes shut and took in a shaky breath. The taste of failure was bitter on her tongue, in her gut. "I'm so sorry, Peter," she whispered, leaning over him. She touched his cheek again, then ran her fingers through his hair. "I'm sorry."

Peter's body suddenly stirred beneath her hand. He exhaled a saw-toothed breath. Olivia backed away, then rose up on her knees, lifting his crowbar. The angled tip hovered over his head. A groan escaped his lips—a raspy, liquid sounding growl that sent chills racing down her spine. I'm sorry, she told him silently, fighting back more tears. His eyes fluttered, then slid open.

It was the moment.

Olivia steeled herself. It's not him... she thought, looking him over for the last time. She tensed, lifting the crowbar higher. It's not him. She clenched her jaw in preparation for the killing thrust.

Peter's eyes swiveled in their sockets, unfocused, before coming to rest on her face. Her heart lurched. She gasped, and came close to dropping the crowbar, which would have been a disaster. His eyes were blue. Beautifully, and completely blue—without a hint of an infected's cruel yellow. And she'd come within an inch of killing him.

"Peter!" She tossed the crowbar aside and crouched over him again, touching his face. "Peter, can you hear me? It's me..."

He moaned pitifully, then mumbled something she couldn't make out, if it had been words at all. It didn't matter. He was alive. Now she just had to make sure he stayed that way.

Grabbing him under the arms, Olivia lifted him into a sitting position against the railing, trying to be gentle with his wounded shoulder. He let out a painful groan despite her best efforts, but remained otherwise docile. She shifted her gaze between the second and third levels. As much as she hated the idea, they would have to take shelter for the night. He was in no condition to move, and she wanted to take a closer look at his injuries.

"Stay here, Peter," she said, and snatched up the crowbar. "I'll be right back."

The second level apartment's front door proved easy prey for the crowbar. It was easy to see why he carried it, and she was beginning to develop a fondness for its versatility herself. The door swung open on silent hinges.

Olivia stepped into a family room and shined her light around. An ancient couch and matching love seat sat adjacent along two walls. The room was empty. She moved further inside, going from room to room. The apartment smelled of mold and staleness, but not of death, and that was all she cared about at the moment. The other rooms were just as empty as the first. Dishes cluttered the kitchen sink and clothes sat neglected in laundry baskets. Whoever had lived in the apartment had left in a hurry, or had never been back at all after the start of the outbreak. Either suited her just fine.

Peter was still sitting where she'd left him, head limply lolled to one side. For an instant, she thought he'd passed in the interim, but then his chest lifted. "Don't you dare die on me now, Bishop," she muttered, crouching beside him. Not after all the trouble she'd gone to find him. "I have to lift you up, Peter. Try to help if you can."

There was no reply.

She grabbed him under the arms again, hugging him against her chest. He was heavier than she would have guessed, considering their poor diets as of late. Grunting, she staggered to her feet, lifting him with her. His head rested on her shoulder. She felt the scratchy roughness of his beard against her neck. He reeked of blood and smoke and himself, and the feverish heat emanating from him was incredible.

He's burning up..., Olivia thought, dragging him down the steps to the open apartment door. She maneuvered him to the sofa. After some difficulty, she managed to get him situated, with a number of pillows propped under his head and back. It would have to do.

She found an oil lamp sitting on top of an old microwave in the kitchen, and a book of matches in a junk drawer underneath. The apartment's only bathroom had an ample supply of towels—though their cleanliness was certainly in question—along with a medicine cabinet in which she'd found a half-empty bottle of Tylenol. She set the lamp on an end table and knelt down next to the couch. Peter lay still, eyes closed, his breathing reduced to shallow gasps. Sweat beaded on his brow and dribbled onto the cushion below. The bullethole in his shoulder looked in need of serious attention, but she was no doctor. He appeared to have shoved a bandage of some kind into it; the pain must have been immense. The best she could do was wrap it up, and try to keep pressure on it until she could get him back to Walter. The fever burning him up was a much greater worry.

Olivia pulled a water from her backpack. "Peter..." She put a hand on his cheek and winced at the furnace raging inside him. "Peter, I have some water. Try to take a drink." She dribbled a few drops over his closed lips. They twitched as if the water tickled, then his tongue peeked out for an instant. His mouth opened, and she gave him a drink. He swallowed several mouthfuls, then she pulled the bottle away from his reaching lips. "That's enough for now. Go slow, Peter." She spoke softly, as if talking louder might violate the atmosphere of the empty apartment in some indescribable way.

She set the bottle aside. When she turned back to the couch, his eyes were wide-open, locked on her face with the same cerulean intensity she'd pretended not to notice so often in the lab.

"'Livia..." His voice was a wet rasp, almost inaudible. She leaned closer as he said something else. "What...how are you even here? You just...can't get enough of me, can you, Agent Dunham?"

Olivia snorted and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. At least he still had his sense of humor. Her lips curled into a wide grin, and she suddenly found her self on the brink of tears. "Watch yourself, Bishop," she said fondly, wiping at her eyes. "Or I might just have to leave you here."

Peter chuckled, and then coughed and reared up on the couch. "Ahh...don't make me laugh, Olivia...," he gasped, grabbing at his shoulder. "Don't make me laugh, please."

"Sorry..." And she meant it too. He must be in an extraordinary amount of pain. She helped him lie back with a hand on his chest. "I'll try to keep the laughter to a minimum." Their eyes met, and she held the contact instead of looking away as she usually did. She had questions for him, but they could wait. She wanted him clearheaded when he answered. After several heartbeats, his eyes slid shut and he let out a long sigh. She dabbed at the sweat on his face. "You're burning up, Peter. I found some Tylenol in the bathroom." Olivia grabbed the bottle and spilled two out onto her palm. "Here. Take these." She pressed them to his lips.

Peter glanced down at the pills. "Keep 'em...coming," he said, and opened his mouth. She frowned at his request, but gave him two more, followed by another sip of water. He stared up at the ceiling, breathing shallowly. "I'm fairly sure..." he panted, "that in addition...to suffering from the effects of blood loss, the river left me a...little present. Sepsis, here I come." He exhaled loudly through his nose. "I'm gonna need antibiotics sooner than later...that is if I don't finish bleeding out first."

"Antibiotics?"

"There's a pharmacy not far from here," he said. "That's where I was...headed when..." His eyes slid shut, and he swallowed thickly. "...You ever been shot, Olivia?" he asked a moment later.

"Never," she replied at once. "One time on a raid, I took a hit in the vest, though. Hurt like hell."

"That it does..." he agreed, managing to smile. He eyed her sideways. "How's Walter? Not so good, I imagine."

"Yeah...that would be something of an understatement," she said with a low chuckle. "He begged me to find you. Made me promise that I would, actually."

"Is that the only reason you came?" His voice was deceptively light.

Olivia regarded him before answering. Muscles flexed under his beard in the intervening silence. "No...," she murmured finally. His gaze sharpened, but she changed the subject; that was a conversation she wasn't ready for, and maybe never would be. "Listen, Peter," she began instead, grabbing his hand and giving it a squeeze. "I have to wrap your shoulder. It's probably going to hurt."

"Probably?" He grunted, and bit the lapel of his jacket. She suspected it was not the first time he'd used it so. "Go ahead," he said through his teeth.

Olivia snaked a bath towel under his arm pit, then criss-crossed the ends. "You ready?" He nodded in reply. She was about to cinch the towel tight, when a thought struck her. "Oh. What kind of antibiotics do you think you'll need?" At his frown, she elaborated. "...Just in case."

"Umm...a non-refrigerant type, obviously. Uh...cefalexin, if they've got any," he answered. "Or any of the penecillins if they don't. Fuck...just grab whatever you can find. That's what I was going to do anyway..." He hesitated, meeting her eyes again. "Olivia...I...thank you. For coming."

She swallowed and gave his hand another squeeze. "You would have done the same for me, Peter," she said, returning his gaze meaningfully.

After a moment, he nodded, then bit into the lapel again.

"Okay..." She would just have to figure it out, somehow. Hopefully, the pharmacy wasn't completely looted, and the pharmacist in charge had made good use of labels and organized her drugs in an obvious way. "All right, here goes." She pulled the towel tight. Peter gasped around his lapel, eyes bulging as she increased the pressure. At some point during her second knot, he lost consciousness, just as she'd predicted.

Olivia stood and stared down at his still form. Why did you do it, Peter? she wondered again. Why had she been so desperate to find him? Because he'd gone and found her necklace? Because he'd saved Rachel? Both were good enough reasons, she supposed. There's more to it than that, a voice answered. And you know it. She thrust the thoughts aside. Reasons weren't important at present. Getting back to the lab was.

She went out onto the porch. The street to the south was still a halo of light, though some of the headlights seemed dimmer than she recalled. The mass of infected had surrounded the vehicles. Their frenzied silhouettes reminded her of moths in a spotlight. After several minutes of watching their fruitless efforts, she went back inside.

Since the front door's lock no longer held, she wedged a chair from the kitchen under the door knob. A human would be able to push it open certainly, but it would deter a curious infected, if one managed to bypass the barricade. She glanced around the dingy apartment. The oil lamp sputtered and flickered fitfully. Who had lived there, and what had happened to them? A man, most likely, she judged. And single, from the lack of photographs in evidence, and the absence of any effeminate decor in any of the rooms. Maybe a grad student taking night classes. She wondered how they'd died.

Finding that line of inquiry too depressing, she returned to Peter's side. His sleep was peaceful, though his chest rose and fell faster than she would have liked. She touched his forehead, and was again disturbed by his fever. I should have given him more water, she thought worriedly, eyeing his sweat-soaked hair. Resisting a sudden urge to touch him again, Olivia instead crossed over to the love seat and sat down.

Her body ached, from the soles of her feet all the way up to her scalp. She released her ponytail and felt a prickly pain, but immediately felt less tense, more relaxed. She sighed, and then settled back on the love seat, curling her legs to one side. It occurred to her that she'd forgotten to mention the strange man in the suit to Peter, and their even stranger conversation. She was eager to hear his opinion. In the morning. What had happened on the bridge she would keep to herself for the time being. Surely she'd imagined the whole thing, anyway. It was the only explanation.

A tired yawn stretched her mouth open. She sank deeper into the cushions, overcome with an overpowering exhaustion that pulled her eyelids downward with irresistible force. On the edge of sleep now, her mind hovered in that place where the waking world and dreams were indistinguishable. The stranger's words echoed in the silence of her purgatory, dark and full of premonition.

He is different in this here and now. And so are you, Olivia.

Olivia teetered on the brink. Some memory sparked another memory, that in turn produced an image. The image wavered, obscured by time and chemical barriers. The sliver of her consciousness that remained awake reached for it, recognizing some part of its terrible truth. She grasped the image and all that came with it for a single instant. And then it sublimed into the haze of false memory, and she succumbed to sleep.

Tears rolled down her cheek, unnoticed and unadorned.