Chapter 10
Ten
Callan
Iflung myself out of the truck, my body instinctively moving before my brain had the chance to catch up, pure animal flight—muscles burning, lungs already aching for more air.
My boots pounded against the pavement, every instinct screaming at me to move faster, to get inside, to put something solid between us and whatever the fuck was out there.
The employee entrance loomed ahead, dark and silent.
I yanked my badge from my pocket, hands slick with sweat, and slammed it against the scanner.
Red.
The small light blinked, cold and unforgiving.
“Fuck!”
I swiped the badge again, harder this time, as if force alone would make green appear.
Red.
Behind me, the sound of them.
Dragging. Wet. Grotesque.
My stomach turned. I swiped again, trembling so much that I almost fumbled the badge. I pressed the badge flat against the reader and held it.
For one horrible second, nothing happened.
Then—
Green.
The lock clicked.
The relief almost made my knees buckle.
I wrenched the door open and looked back.
The parking lot stretched out behind me, dark and open.
“Sloane!” I shouted, my voice breaking against the night. “Come on!”
She raced toward me, face pale, hair loose and wild around her shoulders. Her breath came in sharp, panicked bursts, eyes wide and locked on the door.
Behind her—
The woman.
Or what remained of her.
Her leg appeared gone below the knee, torn away fully. Blood soaked the pavement behind her, a dark, glistening trail marking her path.
And still she moved.
Dragging herself forward with her hands, fingers clawing at the ground.
Her mouth hung open, releasing a sound.
Low.
Animal.
Ungodly.
My stomach twisted violently.
“Sloane!”
She sprinted the last few feet, slipping past me and into the building, her shoulder hitting mine as she crossed the threshold.
I stepped inside immediately and slammed the door shut with everything I had.
The heavy metal rang with the impact, loud and final, echoing down the dark corridor ahead of us.
I grabbed the handle and shoved the manual lock into place. My hands moved fast, automatically: top latch, bottom latch, deadbolt.
Something hit the door.
Not hard.
A brushing contact.
A dragging thud from the other side.
I froze, hand still wrapped around the lock.
The sound came again.
Scrape.
Thud.
Scrape.
Like something pressing itself against the metal, testing it, as if learning the shape of what kept it out.
My breath seemed too loud in my own ears. My pulse hammered in my throat, behind my eyes. Every part of me wanted to step back, but I couldn’t make myself let go of the handle. Like if I did, whatever waited on the other side would sense it.
Sloane stood a few feet behind me. Her breathing filled the silence—fast, shallow in the way people breathe when they’re trying very hard not to fall apart. She watched the door. I didn’t have to look to understand that.
Neither of us spoke.
The scraping stopped, and that seemed worse.
The aquarium stretched out behind us, the only sound now the low swoosh of filtration systems running deep in the building and the blood still pounding in my ears.
We were inside.
Safe.
For now.
I slid down to the floor, my legs giving out beneath me before I could stop it.
My back hit the cold metal with a dull thud. My chest heaved, each breath sharp and uneven, as if my lungs couldn’t quite figure out how to work anymore.
In. Out. Too fast. Not enough.
My hands were shaking so badly I had to press them flat against the floor just to steady them. The concrete seemed cold and gritty under my palms, and I focused on that because if I didn’t anchor myself to something small and real, I might very well lose it.
My ears rang, adrenaline still pumping through my bloodstream with nowhere left to go.
Outside, something scraped weakly against the door.
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing myself to breathe. Slower. Deeper. Counting the seconds between each inhale—counting.
I opened my eyes and looked at Sloane.
She sat on the floor across from me, her back against the interior door that led into the aquarium itself, her knees drawn up tight to her chest, arms wrapped around them as if they were the only thing holding her together.
Her hair had fallen loose completely, dark red strands clinging to damp cheeks.
The sound of her softly crying was the only sound outside my breathing.
Tears slid down her face, eyes fixed on nothing.
Something twisted low in my chest at the sight.
I’d never seen her cry before. Never seen her look anything less than controlled. Defiant. Angry, maybe. Sharp-tongued and sure of herself, always. But never this.
Fragile.
I swallowed, my throat dry and raw.
“You okay?” I asked.
A stupid question. I knew it even as it left my mouth.
She let out a weak, humorless laugh, her voice trembling.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m great.”
Her fingers curled tighter around her arms, shoulders shaking slightly.
“What the fuck were they, Callan?”
Her voice cracked on my name.
I didn’t have an answer. I shook my head slowly.
“I’m not sure. But they used to be people.”
The words felt useless.
She wiped at her face angrily, roughly, as if she were frustrated with herself for crying at all, like the tears somehow became a betrayal she hadn’t signed up for.
“She was still moving,” she looked dazed as she spoke. “Her leg was gone, and she was still moving.”
I stared at the floor between us, the reality of that settling in my gut. The visual still present. Every time I blinked—the way the body had kept dragging itself forward, grotesque in every way.
“I know.”
Silence fell between us. Thick, it pressed against my ears.
She looked up at me, eyes red and searching, looking for something in my face I wasn’t sure I had to give.
“We hit it,” she whispered. “You hit it. And it…kept coming.”
I exhaled slowly, running a hand through my hair; it was drenched with sweat.
“I know.”
Her voice dropped even lower.
“Callan…what if it gets in?”
The question hung there between us. Real. Possible. Terrifying.
I looked back at the door behind me. The solid metal. The locks, the faint vibration of scrapes running through the frame and into my back.
“It won’t,” I said firmly.
I didn’t know if it was true.
But I needed her to believe it, needed to believe it myself.
She stared at me for a long moment, breathing still uneven, still too fast. Her eyes searched mine, and I held her gaze; it was the only thing I had to offer right now—a steadiness I didn’t actually possess.
Finally, she nodded slightly.
Neither of us moved nor spoke.
We just sat there on the floor, backs against our separate doors, listening to the silence and trying to pretend the world outside hadn’t just come apart.
* * *
“I saw a video yesterday,” she said suddenly.
Her voice, faint. Fragile as I’d never heard from her before.
I looked up.
She gazed at the floor, fingers twisting together in her lap, working against each other as if they needed something to do.
“Jason was showing it to everyone,” she continued. “On his phone.”
Jason. The kid who worked in the gift shop. Probably no older than nineteen.
I frowned slightly. “What kind of video?”
She swallowed hard.
“I told him it had to be fake,” she said, ignoring the question somewhat. “Staged. Or edited. I don’t know.”
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“I don’t think it was fake, Callan.”
The words hung heavily between us—heavier than they should have been, because I already understood what she was going to say.
My stomach tightened.
“What did you see?”
She took a shaky breath.
“There was this woman. She looked like…like that one outside.”
Her voice cracked slightly.
“Walking through the street. Off. Jerking. Like her body didn’t belong to her anymore. People were screaming. Running.”
My chest tightened.
“They shot her,” she whispered.
The words hung in the air.
“In the head. And she just… dropped. Like a puppet with its strings cut.”
Her fingers curled tighter.
I didn’t speak. Couldn’t. My mouth became dry, and my mind started connecting things: the woman on the road, the way she moved, the way she didn’t stop, Sadie’s voice on the phone—panicked and breaking apart—the sirens we’d heard earlier that had gone silent too fast.
“The streets seemed to be filled with them,” Sloane said. “People running. Cars abandoned. Sirens everywhere. I think it was somewhere in Asia. I couldn’t read the signs, but…”
She trailed off.
“It looked exactly like this,” she finished.
Silence settled between us, heavier than before.
My mind flashed back to Sadie’s voice.
They’re trying to get in.
Something about a bite.
A cold sensation crept down my spine and stayed there.
“They said virus,” Sloane added quietly. “Jason thought it had to be some kind of virus.”
Virus.
The word felt like the wrong choice—too small, too clinical. Viruses made you sick, made you feverish, put you in a hospital bed.
They didn’t do that.
Didn’t let people walk without legs. Didn’t make them keep coming after being hit by a truck at forty miles an hour.
Outside, something scraped faintly against the door again.
We both froze, listening, waiting, breath held.
It stopped.
Sloane’s voice came again, small and uncertain; my chest ached at the sound.
“What if it’s everywhere?”
I didn’t answer right away.
* * *
We sat there for hours.
Neither of us moved much or spoke unless we had to, and after a while, we didn’t have to. Nothing left to say that wouldn’t make it worse.
Time stopped meaning anything. Minutes bled into each other. I couldn’t tell if it had been two hours or five. My phone had died somewhere in the first hour—I hadn’t charged it before my shift, because why would I, because this morning the biggest problem in my life had been my impending divorce.