The coffee in the break room had been ranked, unofficially, by the nursing staff of St. Mary's Medical Center.
Third floor ICU: 7/10, they had a Keurig someone's husband donated after a successful bypass surgery. ER: 4/10, always burnt, nobody cleaned the pot. Pediatrics: 8/10, because the parents brought good stuff as thank-you gifts and the nurses hoarded it. The temporary overflow wing in what used to be storage room B-7: not ranked, because until four days ago it didn't exist, but Evelyn would've given it a solid 2/10. The coffee came from a Mr. Coffee machine that looked older than she was, and it tasted like someone had filtered hot water through a wet sock that had previously been used to store pennies.
She was drinking it anyway.
11:47 PM. Thirteen hours into a sixteen-hour shift. Four days since the meteor. Evelyn had stopped counting hours of sleep because the number was too depressing, but she hadn't stopped counting other things. Ceiling tiles in the overflow wing: 94. Steps from the nurses' station to the supply closet: 23. Patients currently under her care: 14. Patients whose fevers made sense: 0.
The counting was a thing she did. Had always done. James called it "nurse brain," which was generous; her therapist-the one she'd seen for six sessions after John was born, before insurance stopped covering it-had called it "a coping mechanism for anxiety that manifests as a need for control in uncontrollable situations." Same thing, really. Just more syllables.
Evelyn took another sip of the terrible coffee and stared at the whiteboard.
Fourteen names. Fourteen mysteries.
Martinez, R. - Bed 1 - Temp 103.4 - restrained (aggressive)
Park, D. - Bed 2 - Temp 102.8 - non-responsive, pupils fixed
Williams, K. - Bed 3 - Temp 104.1 - stable??
Okonkwo, J. - Bed 4 - Temp 101.9 - confused, asking for mother (deceased 2019)
And so on. Twelve more. Twelve more sets of vitals that didn't follow any pattern she'd learned in nursing school, any protocol she'd memorized in eleven years on the job. The fevers spiked and dropped without warning. The patients went from lucid to delirious to catatonic and back again. Two had died already-Park, unofficially, she was pretty sure he was braindead but the machines kept his body going-and Williams in Bed 3 was circling the drain.
She needed to check on Williams soon. But first-one more sip of this terrible coffee. One more minute of not moving.
Her phone buzzed. James. The fourth text in the last hour.
"You okay? News is saying weird stuff about hospitals."
She typed back: "Fine. Busy. Talk later."
Three words. That was all she had energy for. Three words and a period that felt like a door closing.
Karen Williams was awake when Evelyn came to check on her.
That was surprising. For the last eighteen hours, Karen had been drifting in and out of consciousness, her lucid periods getting shorter and further apart. But now her eyes were open, tracking Evelyn as she approached the bed, and there was something almost like recognition in them.
"Mrs. Williams? How are you feeling?"
"Like shit." Karen's voice was a rasp, barely above a whisper. "But I guess that's expected."
Evelyn smiled despite herself. "That's one way to put it."
"My grandmother always said there's no point in sugarcoating. You feel bad, you say you feel bad. Then everyone knows where they stand." Karen shifted slightly, wincing. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Am I dying?"
The question hung in the air. Evelyn had been asked this before-many times, over eleven years-and she'd developed scripts for it. Reassuring but honest. Hopeful but realistic. Professional.
None of the scripts felt right now.
"I wish I could give you a better answer," she said. "But I don't know what this is. None of us do."
Karen nodded slowly. "That's what I figured. You've got that look."
"What look?"
"The 'I'm trying to be brave for the patient' look. My mother had it. She was a nurse too, did I tell you that? Back in the sixties, before everything got so... complicated. She used to say the hardest part wasn't the blood or the death. It was pretending you weren't scared when you were."
Evelyn didn't say anything. Couldn't.
Karen reached for her phone on the bedside table. Her hand was shaking-fever tremors, or maybe just weakness-but she managed to unlock it, swipe through to the photos.
"Look," she said, holding the screen up. "My kids. Well. My school kids. Third grade."
The photo showed a classroom decorated for St. Patrick's Day. Green streamers, paper shamrocks, a leprechaun trap that looked like it had been built by enthusiastic but structurally challenged architects. In the center, a group of about twenty kids, all grinning, some missing teeth, all wearing green.
"This one." Karen pointed to a boy in the front row, skinny, serious-faced. "Marcus. He couldn't read when he came to me. Not a word. The other teachers said he was a lost cause. Too far behind, too many problems at home, too-too much of everything, I guess." She coughed, a wet sound that made Evelyn wince. "By Christmas, he was reading chapter books. Not great, but reading. He cried when he finished his first one. Charlotte's Web. Said it was the first book he'd ever finished in his whole life."
"That's amazing."
"It's not, though. That's the thing. It's just... paying attention. Showing up. Being there." Karen's eyes drifted to the ceiling. "I hope someone's paying attention to them now. With me gone. I hope-"
She stopped.
"Mrs. Williams?"
"I feel strange." Karen's voice had changed. Flatter. Distant. "I feel like... like I'm forgetting something. Something important. But I can't remember what it is."
"That's probably the fever. It can cause confusion-"
"No." Karen's hand found Evelyn's wrist. Not grabbing-just resting there. Her skin was hot. Too hot. "No, it's different. I close my eyes and I can't remember what I was dreaming about. I can't remember what I was thinking five minutes ago. It's like... like pieces of me are going somewhere else. Does that make sense?"
It didn't. It absolutely didn't. But Evelyn nodded anyway.
"Try to rest," she said. "I'll check on you again soon."
Karen's eyes were already closing. "Tell your kids you love them," she mumbled. "Don't assume they know. Say it. Every day."
Evelyn left. She didn't look back.
"You look like someone pissed in your cereal."
Evelyn turned. Maya was leaning against the doorframe of the break room-if you could call it a break room, it was really just a corner with a mini-fridge and the ancient Mr. Coffee and two chairs that had been stolen from the cafeteria-looking exactly as wrecked as Evelyn felt.
"Someone did," Evelyn said. "This coffee."
"Ah." Maya walked in, grabbed a styrofoam cup, poured herself some of the poison. "Cheers to that."
They drank in silence for a moment. This was the friendship, distilled: two people who'd seen too much shit together to need small talk. Seven years of twelve-hour shifts, holiday coverage, code blues, the time a guy came into the ER with a fork stuck in his eye and neither of them had flinched. The chicken incident of 2019, which they'd sworn never to speak of again but which came up at least once a month anyway because it was objectively hilarious in retrospect.
"How's Williams?" Maya asked.
"Awake, weirdly. We talked. She showed me pictures of her students." Evelyn stared into her cup. "She asked me if she was dying."
"What'd you say?"
"The truth. That nobody knows what's happening."
Maya was quiet for a moment. "That's rough."
"Yeah."
"You ever think about quitting?" Maya asked.
Evelyn blinked. "What?"
"Nursing. This." Maya gestured vaguely at everything. "After COVID, I almost did. Spent a whole weekend writing up my resignation letter. Three drafts. I was gonna go work at my cousin's flower shop in Portland. Arrange bouquets. Wear an apron. Never watch someone die again."
"What happened?"
"My cousin's an asshole." Maya shrugged. "Also, I realized I didn't know how to do anything else. Eleven years of this, and I'm not qualified for anything except wiping asses and watching people code. What am I gonna put on my resume? 'Excellent at remaining calm while someone's grandma flatlines'?"
Evelyn snorted. It wasn't funny, but it was-something. The kind of joke you made because the alternative was screaming.
"I think about quitting every shift," she said. "Then I go home and John asks me how my day was and I say 'fine' and he rolls his eyes because he's fourteen and everything I do is embarrassing, and then Tiffany shows me whatever she's building with Legos and I have to pretend I understand what it is, and then James and I watch TV until I fall asleep on the couch, and then I wake up and do it again."
"Sounds nice, actually."
"It is." Evelyn looked at her cup. Empty. When had she finished it? "It's nice. That's the problem. I have this nice life waiting for me, and I keep... not going home to it."
"Because you're here. Saving lives."
"Am I, though?" Evelyn gestured at the whiteboard. "Fourteen patients. None of them getting better. Two probably dead by morning. And nobody-CDC, hospital admin, nobody-can tell me what's actually wrong with them. 'Meteor-related pathogen.' What does that even mean? It's not a diagnosis. It's a placeholder."
Maya didn't answer. There wasn't an answer.
The door to the break room opened. Harold.
Harold Reyes was 58 years old and had been a security guard at St. Mary's for twenty-two years. He'd started before Evelyn had even graduated high school, which he mentioned every time they talked, like it was a point of pride instead of a reminder that they were both getting old.
He had a mustache that belonged in a 1970s cop show, a collection of vintage baseball cards he'd been curating since childhood, and a way of appearing exactly when you needed someone calm and solid and unembarrassed to be helpful.
"Ladies," he said, nodding at them.
"How we holding up?"
"Spectacular," Maya said. "Living the dream."
"That bad, huh." Harold poured himself some coffee, tasted it, grimaced, drank it anyway.
"Management's asking about the overflow wing. They want a status report."
"Tell them the status is 'fucked,'" Evelyn said.
"I'll paraphrase."
"Harold." Evelyn stood up. "The patient in Bed 7. The one who bit the nurse. What happened to him?"
Harold's face did something complicated. "Sedated. Restrained. Patterson's keeping an eye on him."
"But what happened? I mean, before. Was he showing signs of aggression? Fever spike? Anything?"
"I wasn't there for the start of it. Just the end." Harold paused. "Took three of us to hold him down. Guy was sixty years old, looked like he hadn't lifted anything heavier than a TV remote in thirty years, and he was strong. Stronger than he should've been."
"Adrenaline," Maya said. "Fever delirium. I've seen it before."
"Maybe." Harold didn't look convinced. "You know what else is weird? The bite. On the nurse."
"What about it?"
"Broke the skin. Deep. But she says it didn't hurt. Not at the time. She felt pressure, then nothing. Like her arm went numb the second the guy's teeth touched her."
Evelyn and Maya exchanged a look.
"Where's she now?" Evelyn asked.
"Observation. They're keeping her overnight just in case." Harold finished his coffee. "Lot of weird going around lately. You need anything, you call me. I'll be doing rounds."
He left. The door swung shut behind him.
"That's weird," Maya said.
"You said that."
"Because it's weird."
Evelyn found Lisa on her way back to the nurses' station.
She wasn't in the overflow wing—technically she wasn't a meteor patient, just an overflow patient from the regular wards because every bed in the hospital was full. Eighteen years old. Indonesian. Exchange student at the state college, first semester abroad, and now she was stuck in a converted storage closet with a broken arm and no one to talk to because her parents were on the other side of the planet and couldn't visit even if there wasn't a lockdown.
"Hey." Lisa's face lit up when she saw Evelyn. "Are you busy? I know you're busy. You're always busy. But if you have like two seconds-"
"I have two seconds." Evelyn pulled up a chair. "What's up?"
"Nothing. I just-" Lisa fidgeted with the edge of her blanket. "I hate the quiet. Back home there's always noise, you know? My little brother's always playing video games, my mom's always on the phone with my aunt arguing about something stupid, my dad's always yelling at the TV during basketball games. It's annoying but it's... I don't know. Home noise. Here it's just beeping and silence and beeping and more silence."
"I know what you mean."
"Do you have kids?"
"Two. A boy and a girl."
"How old?"
"Fourteen and ten."
Lisa smiled. "I bet the ten-year-old is cooler. Fourteen is when everyone gets annoying. I was super annoying at fourteen. Still am, honestly. Just differently annoying."
Evelyn laughed-an actual laugh, the first one in hours. Maybe days.
"You're not annoying."
"You're just saying that because you're nice." Lisa's smile faded a little. "The patients in the other room. The meteor people. Are they okay?"
"We're taking care of them."
"That's not what I asked."
No, it wasn't. Lisa was sharp. Too sharp for eighteen, or maybe exactly sharp enough—Evelyn remembered being that age, remembered thinking she understood everything when she understood almost nothing, but also remembered catching things that adults thought they'd hidden.
"Some of them are very sick," Evelyn said. "We're doing everything we can."
Lisa was quiet for a moment. Then: "My grandma died when I was twelve. It was okay, I mean, she was really old and really sick, and my mom said she was ready. But I remember-I remember the night before, I visited her in the hospital, and she held my hand, and she said something in Javanese that I didn't understand because I never learned it properly even though my mom tried to teach me, and I always thought I'd have time to ask her what it meant, and then I didn't."
Evelyn didn't know what to say. So she just sat there, holding space, the way her own mother had taught her to do a long time ago.
"I never asked my mom," Lisa continued. "What grandma said. I keep meaning to, but it feels weird now. Like too much time has passed." She looked at Evelyn. "Do you think it's too late? To ask?"
"I think it's never too late to ask someone you love a question."
"Even a hard question?"
"Especially a hard question."
Lisa nodded slowly. Then: "Can you stay? Just for like five more minutes? You can talk about anything. Tell me about your kids. Tell me about the annoying fourteen-year-old."
So Evelyn did. She talked about John, who thought she was embarrassing but still asked her to make his favorite pasta when he was stressed. She talked about Tiffany, who built elaborate Lego structures and left pieces everywhere like a tiny, passive-aggressive architect. She talked about James, who fell asleep during movies but always woke up at the end to ask "wait, who was the bad guy again?"
It was the most she'd talked about her family at work in months. Maybe years.
"They sound nice," Lisa said when she finished. "You should go home to them."
"I will. As soon as my shift ends."
"Promise?"
Evelyn smiled. "Promise."
Lisa held up her pinky. "Pinky promise. I know it's dumb, but my grandma always said a pinky promise is the only promise that counts."
Evelyn hooked her pinky around Lisa's. "Pinky promise."
The overflow wing was quiet when she returned.
That was the first thing Evelyn noticed. Usually there was noise-monitors beeping, patients coughing, the squeak of shoes on linoleum, somebody somewhere always needing something. But right now, walking down the hallway at 12:23 AM, the only sound was her own footsteps and the hum of the fluorescent lights.
Seventeen steps from the nurses' station to Bed 3. She'd counted.
The curtain was drawn. Blue, standard issue, stained near the bottom with something that might've been coffee or iodine. She'd noticed the stain on Monday, thought someone should clean that, and then forgotten because there were a hundred more important things to think about. She noticed it again now.
Funny, how the brain worked. Four days of crisis, and her eyes kept landing on a stain on a curtain.
She pulled it back.
Karen Williams was sitting up.
Rigid. Straight. Like someone had pulled a string attached to the top of her head and yanked. The tubes and wires were still connected-IV line, catheter, monitoring leads-but they looked wrong now. Loose. Like her body had shrunk or shifted in some subtle way that Evelyn's brain registered as wrong before it could articulate why.
"Mrs. Williams?"
No response.
"Karen? Can you hear me?"
The head turned.
Not slowly. Not the gradual movement of a weak patient repositioning. It just-rotated. Twenty degrees to the left. Evelyn was now in Karen Williams' field of vision.
The eyes were different.
That was the second thing Evelyn registered, after the movement. The eyes were open, but they weren't Karen's eyes anymore. The warm brown was gone. In its place: something darker. Redder. Like the color had been drained out and replaced with something that didn't belong in a human face.
"I'm going to check your vitals, okay? Just routine."
Evelyn's hands were steady. After eleven years, her hands were always steady during patient care. You could fall apart later, in the break room, in your car, at home-but not in front of the patient. Never in front of the patient.
She reached for the blood pressure cuff.
Karen Williams' hand shot out and grabbed her wrist.
The grip was wrong.
That was Evelyn's first thought, absurdly clinical: the grip is wrong. Too strong. Way too strong. Karen Williams was a 54-year-old elementary school teacher who'd been bedridden for four days with a fever that should've killed her. She'd shown Evelyn pictures of her students thirty minutes ago. She'd asked about Evelyn's kids. She'd-
The fingers dug in. Harder. Evelyn felt something in her wrist grind against something else, bone on bone, pain shooting up her arm-
"Karen-you need to let go-"
Karen Williams lunged.
One motion. Fluid. Wrong. Her mouth opened, and the sound that came out wasn't a word. Low, wet, hungry-the sound an animal makes, not a person, not a third-grade teacher who cried when her students learned to read-
Evelyn yanked her arm back. The grip didn't break. She yanked harder, felt something pop-pain, sharp, immediate-but she was free, stumbling backward, hitting the curtain, the curtain collapsing around her-
Karen Williams got out of the bed.
She shouldn't have been able to. She'd had a catheter. An IV line. Monitoring leads. But she was standing now, the tubes and wires ripping out of her body, pulling the IV stand over with a crash, and she was walking toward Evelyn, jerky and uncoordinated but fast, faster than she should've been-
Evelyn ran.
The hallway was a blur.
She passed Bed 1-curtain open, patient gone, where was Martinez?-and Bed 2-Park still in bed but his head was turning, tracking her, eyes open and they were wrong too, that same dark red-and she heard sounds behind her, footsteps, multiple sets, too slow but somehow keeping pace-
Bed 7. The curtain open. The bed empty. The restraints hanging loose like shed skin.
Where's the patient? Where's the guy who bit the nurse?
She didn't stop to find out.
The nurses' station. Maya, standing there, coffee cup frozen halfway to her mouth, face going white-
"Ev? What-"
"RUN."
"Wait—" Maya's eyes went wide. "Lisa. The girl in storage."
The storage closet was ten steps past the nurses' station. Evelyn didn't think. She just ran.
The door was closed. She yanked it open.
Lisa was sitting up in bed, phone in her good hand, face pale. "I heard screaming. What's—"
"We have to go. Now."
"What?"
Evelyn grabbed her arm—the good one—and pulled. Lisa stumbled out of bed, bare feet hitting the floor, hospital gown flapping.
"My shoes—"
"No time."
Maya was already at the stairwell door. Behind them, footsteps. That sound—wet, low, guttural, coming from multiple throats. The noise of something crashing into a cart, medical supplies scattering across linoleum.
Stairwell door. Evelyn slammed through it. Maya right behind. The door swung shut.
One second.
Two.
Something hit the door from the other side.
Hard.
The metal shuddered.
Again.
Again.
More than one set of hands now. Pounding. Scratching.
"Stairs," Evelyn gasped. "Down. Now."
They ran.
Down one flight. Two. Evelyn's lungs burning, her wrist throbbing where Karen had grabbed her. Lisa was keeping pace—adrenaline, probably, overriding the pain of running barefoot on concrete. Third flight. A door. B1. Records storage.
"Keep going," Maya panted. "Don't stop-"
A sound from below.
Footsteps.
Coming up.
Evelyn froze. Maya slammed into her back. They stood on the landing, caught between floors, and listened.
The footsteps were wrong. Too slow. Too uneven. And behind them, still audible from above: the pounding on the stairwell door. Getting louder.
"Fire exit." Maya pointed at a door on the landing. "B1.5. There's a service corridor-"
They didn't wait to discuss. Evelyn hit the door, stumbled through, Maya right behind. The corridor was dark-half the lights burnt out, the rest flickering-and it smelled like dust and mold and old cleaning supplies left too long in a closet.
They ran.
Past a door marked "RECORDS - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY." Past another marked "MECHANICAL." Past a stack of boxes that had been there so long they'd become part of the floor.
A sound behind them. The door they'd come through, opening.
They ran faster.
A fire extinguisher. Red. Wall-mounted beside a door marked ELECTRICAL.
Evelyn grabbed it without thinking. Her hands knew what to do even when her brain was stuck three steps behind.
Heavy. Solid. The kind of weight that meant something.
They found Harold in the service corridor.
He was sitting with his back against the wall, one hand pressed to his neck. Blood-a lot of blood-seeped between his fingers. Beside him, on the floor, a young woman. Blonde. Maybe twenty. Hospital gown. She wasn't moving anymore.
"Harold." Evelyn dropped to her knees beside him. "What happened?"
"The girl." His voice was weak. Wet. "From the ER. Came through the basement. She was dead, Evelyn. I saw her on the gurney this morning. Dead. And then she was here and she-"
"Let me see the wound."
"Don't." Harold's hand tightened on his neck. "Don't touch it. I can feel it. Whatever's in her, it's in me now."
"Harold, we can help-"
"No." His eyes found hers. Still his eyes. Still Harold. "You can't. You know you can't. I've been here twenty-two years, Evelyn. I've seen a lot. But I've never seen anything like this, and I know when something's beyond fixing."
Maya was standing behind her, breathing hard, eyes fixed on the door at the end of the corridor. Lisa was pressed against the wall, silent, good arm wrapped around herself, the casted one clutched to her chest.
"The loading dock," Harold said. "Fifty feet that way. Door code is 7734. That's 'hell' upside down on a calculator." He laughed, and blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. "My daughter. Kelly. She picked it when she was nine. Thought it was the funniest thing. I kept meaning to change it, but..."
"You're coming with us."
"No." Harold's free hand fumbled at his belt. His security badge. He pressed it into Evelyn's palm. "Take this. Might help get through some doors. Might not. But I want someone to have something of mine."
"Harold-"
"I have a daughter." The words came out in a rush, wet and desperate. "Kelly. She's thirty-one. Lives in Seattle. Works at some tech company, I don't understand what she does, but she's happy. I think." He coughed. More blood. "We don't talk much. That's my fault. I was always here. Working. Missed her graduation. Her wedding. Thought I was being responsible. Thought I had time."
His eyes were starting to change. Evelyn could see it-the pupils dilating wrong, the whites going red.
"I don't want to forget her," Harold said. His voice was slurring now. "I don't want to forget Kelly. I don't want to-I don't-"
His head dropped.
Evelyn waited.
One second.
Two.
Harold's head came back up.
The eyes that looked at her weren't Harold's anymore.
Maya grabbed her arm. "Ev. NOW."
They ran.
From somewhere above them-through layers of concrete and steel-Evelyn heard new sounds. Not the moaning, not the footsteps. Voices. Shouting. And underneath that, the crackle of radio static.
Police. Security. Someone with authority, finally showing up.
Too late for Harold. Too late for Karen Williams. Too late for however many people were still trapped in that building.
But maybe-maybe-not too late for everyone.
She didn't slow down to find out.
A shape in the doorway ahead.
Hospital gown. Old man. Confused face, mouth slack, eyes gone red—that same wrong red—which meant he wasn't a person anymore.
He saw them. Started shuffling forward.
Maya froze.
Evelyn didn't think. The fire extinguisher came up—heavy, solid, the weight of it familiar now in a way that made her sick—and she swung.
The impact traveled up her arms. Wet. Wrong.
He went down.
She hit him again. And again. Until he stopped moving, until the confused look was gone, until there was nothing left to be confused.
Her hands were shaking. The extinguisher was slick with something she didn't look at.
"Ev." Maya's voice, distant. "Ev, we have to go."
She dropped the extinguisher. Couldn't carry it anymore. Couldn't look at it.
"Service entrance." Maya's voice was ragged. "Behind the kitchen. There's a fence—"
They found it. Chain-link, six feet high, topped with barbed wire that caught the emergency lights like teeth.
Maya went first. Up and over, scrubs tearing, landing hard.
"Lisa, go." Evelyn boosted her. The cast made it awkward—Lisa couldn't grip properly with her bad arm—but she made it over, landing in a heap on the other side.
Evelyn followed. The wire caught her side. Pain, sharp, tearing—but she barely felt it. Adrenaline. Shock. She'd feel it later.
She landed wrong. Stumbled. Maya caught her arm.
"You're bleeding."
"I know." Dark stain spreading across her scrubs. "It's not a bite. Keep moving."
Lisa was shaking, barefoot on the asphalt, hospital gown thin against the night air. But she was moving. That was what mattered.
Cold night air. The parking lot spreading out in front of them. Evelyn's lungs filled with it—clean, sharp, nothing like the inside of the hospital with its blood and antiseptic and something else underneath, something that smelled like meat left out too long.
The parking lot was emptying fast.
Not chaos-not yet-but something close to it. Nurses still in scrubs, running for their cars. A security guard Evelyn didn't recognize, sprinting past without looking at her. Someone in a visitor's badge, crying into a phone. The overhead lights cast everything in that flat yellow that made people look sick even when they weren't.
In the distance, sirens. Getting closer. Police, maybe, or more ambulances. Too late either way.
Most of the parking lot was still full-people inside didn't know yet, or couldn't get out, or were already dead. The cars that were moving were all heading for the exit at the same time, brake lights flashing, horns honking at each other to move faster.
Evelyn pulled out her phone. Cracked screen-when had that happened?-but still working.
She dialed James.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
"The number you are trying to reach-"
Again.
Ring.
Ring.
R-
"Ev?"
James. Scared. Tired. Alive.
Her own voice sounded wrong. Too quiet. Too flat. Like she was reading from a script and trying very hard not to look at the loading dock door behind her.
"Ev. Thank God. I've been calling-are you okay? I saw a video-"
"I know."
"What's happening? Are you okay? The news is saying-"
"James." She cut him off. No time. "Listen to me. I don't have long."
"What do you-"
"The videos are real."
Three words. She made them count.
"The meteor patients. Some of them-" Breath. Keep it together. "They died. And then they didn't stay dead. And now they're-" Another breath. "They're biting people, James. They're—it's spreading. We tried to quarantine but there's too many. They locked the building down before we could get out—I had to go through the basement, the loading dock—"
A sound from inside the loading dock. Metal scraping.
She pressed the phone harder against her ear, dropped her voice to a whisper.
"Don't come here. Whatever you see on the news, don't come. Keep the kids inside. Don't let them-"
A scream from somewhere inside. Not Maya-Maya was right next to her. Someone still trapped.
"I'm in the parking lot. I'm coming home, just—stay there."
Glass breaking. Closer now.
"I have to go. I love you. Tell the kids I love them. Jamie-"
The door burst open.
Harold-the thing that had been Harold-stumbled through. Moving wrong, shuffling, but fast. Behind him, more shapes in the doorway.
Maya screamed.
Evelyn dropped the phone.
They ran across the parking lot, dodging cars, dodging people. Evelyn's eyes scanned the rows—her car was on the far side, section C, she'd parked there four days ago when the world still made sense—
A car. Silver sedan, driver's door hanging open, keys still in the ignition. The engine was running. Whoever owned it had fled on foot—or hadn't made it far enough to matter.
Evelyn didn't hesitate.
She slid behind the wheel. Maya threw herself into the passenger seat. Lisa scrambled into the back. The door wasn't even closed before Evelyn floored it, tires screaming against asphalt.
In the side mirror, Harold's body—just a body now, not Harold, not anymore—stumbled through the loading dock door. Getting smaller. Disappearing.
"Oh God." Maya's voice was cracking. "Oh God, oh God—"
Evelyn didn't answer. Couldn't. Her hands were shaking now—finally shaking, her body catching up to what her brain had known for hours.
She gripped the wheel harder. Made herself breathe.
Maya was crying in the passenger seat—quiet, muffled, the kind of crying you did when you didn't want anyone to notice.
Evelyn looked down at her hand.
Harold's badge. The plastic was warm from her grip. The photo was maybe ten years old—Harold younger, mustache already in place, half-smiling at the camera like someone who thought he'd found a job he'd keep forever.
Harold Reyes. Security. St. Mary's Medical Center.
Twenty-two years.
She closed her fingers around it.
"Where are we going?" Maya's voice was small. Broken.
Evelyn thought about James. About John, who rolled his eyes at everything she said but still wanted her pasta when he was sad. About Tiffany, who made her pinky promise things. About the house that was waiting for her, the life that was waiting for her, the nice normal boring life she kept almost going home to.
In the backseat, Lisa was silent. Curled up against the door, good arm hugging her knees, the cast resting awkward across her lap. Bare feet tucked under the hem of her hospital gown. She hadn't said a word since the fence.
Evelyn glanced at her in the rearview mirror. Eighteen years old. First semester abroad. Twelve thousand miles from home.
The pinky promise. She'd kept it. Barely.
Evelyn's grip tightened on the wheel.
"Home," she said. "I'm taking you home."
She didn't know whose car this was. Didn't know if the owner was alive or dead or something worse. She'd think about that later. Feel guilty about it later. Right now, she just needed to drive.
Behind them, St. Mary's Medical Center was lit up like a stage. Every window bright. Shadows moving behind some of them. In the distance, the sirens were getting louder—finally arriving, finally responding, finally too late.
The rest of the city was dark. Quiet. Lockdown quiet.
Evelyn stared at the road ahead until the hospital disappeared from the rearview mirror. The steering wheel was sticky under her palms. She didn't look down to check why.