Chapter 16
Sixteen
Sloane
Iwalked slowly through the aquarium, scouring rooms and supply closets, trying to figure out what counted as useful now. The problem was that I had no idea what the rules were anymore.
Yesterday, useful meant specimen jars, salinity kits, and filtration pumps.
Today, useful might mean blankets, weapons, batteries—a way to talk to the outside world.
The building felt different now; the empty halls stretched wide and bare without the noise of visitors and school kids to fill them.
Tank lights glowed softly in some rooms, casting the water in eerie blue and green waves that rippled across the ceilings. Fish moved through their worlds as if nothing had changed.
I rubbed my arms as I walked.
It wasn’t cold, but the silence sat wrong against my skin.
My real mission was bedding—anything that meant I didn’t have to share a blanket with Callan.
Heat crept up the back of my neck at the thought, not because I hated the idea, and that was the true problem.
Earlier kept replaying in my head—his hand between my legs, his fingers slow and confident, the way he’d watched me when I came apart, how he hadn’t asked for anything in return. No expectation, there were no smug looks or demands, as if giving me that had been enough.
It unsettled me in a way I had no name for. Peter would never have done that; Peter barely looked at me afterward.
Callan had simply held me.
I shook my head hard.
Focus, Sloane. Supplies, bedding.
I pushed through the door leading down to the fish quarantine level; the air down here always had an odor of faintly medicinal saltwater mixed with antiseptic and rubber gloves. This was the area where new fish were kept before being introduced to the main tank.
The lights were dim but still on, stretching long reflections across the smaller holding tanks lining the walls.
A few fish darted as I walked past, startled by the movement.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
Habit, even now.
I checked the cabinets along the far wall. Latex gloves. Salinity strips. Syringes for medication. Nothing close to what I needed.
I crouched and pulled open another drawer.
More medical kits, a few emergency thermal blankets, the thin foil kind used for hypothermia.
I grabbed those immediately and tucked them under my arm, not perfect, but better than nothing.
Something on the counter caught my eye.
At first, I thought it was simply another piece of equipment, but when I stepped closer, my heart started racing.
A marine radio, the kind boats used, that could reach Coast Guard channels and harbor frequencies.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered.
I brushed the dust off the panel with shaking fingers. It was wired into a portable battery pack.
Hope hit me so fast it almost hurt, if the Coast Guard were still operating. If anyone was broadcasting on emergency frequencies, it might mean information or rescue. A way out.
I scooped the radio up and pressed it against my chest alongside the crinkly foil blankets, already moving.
“Callan’s going to want to see this.”
I took the stairs two at a time, my footsteps ringing through the empty quarantine bay, heart hammering with something dangerously close to hope.
* * *
I was halfway down the corridor toward the main service stairs when I heard heavy footsteps echoing up from below.
A second later, Callan appeared, climbing the last few steps from the lower level. His hair was damp with sweat, sleeves rolled up, grease streaked across one forearm as if he’d been wrestling with machinery.
He looked tired.
His eyes landed on me immediately.
“All the doors are chained shut,” he said, breathing harder than normal. “Garage entrance, too. I found some industrial chains in maintenance. If anything tries to get in, it’s gonna have to work for it.”
“Good,” I said.
Then I lifted the radio.
“I found something.”
His eyes dropped to it. For a second, he didn’t react.
Then his whole expression changed.
“Is that a marine radio?”
“Yeah.” I held it out to him. “It was in the quarantine bay, just sitting there like manna from God.”
He stepped closer and took it from me carefully, turning it over in his hands as if he were afraid it might not be real.
“Do you know how to use one of these?” I asked.
He snorted softly.
“Yeah, Sloane. I know how to use one.”
His fingers moved over the knobs and switches without hesitation. He flipped open the side panel, checked the battery pack, and adjusted the frequency dial with his thumb.
“Battery’s still good,” he murmured.
My pulse raced. “So it might work?”
He didn’t answer right away; his eyes lifted to the ceiling, as if he were running calculations.
Then he exhaled.
“Not down here,” he said. “Too much concrete and steel between us and open air.”
My stomach sank.
“But if we get to the roof—” He lifted the radio again. “Higher elevation, less interference. These things are built to reach miles out over open water.” His voice dropped slightly. “If the Coast Guard is still broadcasting…”
He didn’t finish.
He didn’t need to.
Callan looked at me.
“You did well finding this.”
Something about the way he said it—no performance in it, no inflation—settled warm and unexpected in my chest.
I cleared my throat, suddenly very aware of the crinkled foil blankets still tucked under my arm like a sad little bundle.
“I also found these,” I said, lifting them. “Not exactly luxury bedding, but—”
He glanced down. “Better than nothing.”
Then his attention went back to the radio, and his expression sharpened.
“We should try it now.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.” His jaw tightened. “If someone’s talking out there, I want to be aware of it.”
He was already moving toward the stairwell leading up, radio tucked under one arm, steps quick and purposeful.
Then he stopped when he realized I wasn’t behind him.
“Sloane.”
I looked up.
He tilted his head toward the stairs.
“Come on. Let’s find out if anything alive is still out there.”
* * *
We made it to the roof just as the sun was dipping toward the horizon.
Sunset painted the sky in violent slashes of crimson and gold, turning the water into a mirror of fire. I could almost pretend, in that fleeting moment between breaths, that the world hadn’t ended yesterday.
If you ignored the smoke columns rising from the city.
If you ignored the city’s new soundtrack—staccato gunfire punctuating human screams that rose and fell like terrible music carried across the water.
Twenty-four hours.
That’s all it had taken.
Now, here we were, standing on the roof of an aquarium like survivors in some bad disaster movie, except nobody was coming to write the third act.
Callan crouched beside the hatch, the marine radio balanced on a low metal housing unit. His big hands worked over the controls with surprising precision, turning knobs slowly while bursts of static crackled through the small speaker.
Shhhhhhhhk—
He adjusted another dial.
More static.
“Come on,” he muttered under his breath.
I walked toward the edge of the roof, my boots scraping softly against the gravel surface.
I told myself I was just checking the perimeter.
But when I reached the edge and looked down—
My breath froze in my chest.
The parking lot was full of them.
Dozens. Maybe more. They staggered across the asphalt in loose, directionless clusters, bumping off parked cars and spinning slowly away like broken wind-up toys. Some walked in tight circles, their heads lolling, feet dragging through dark smears they’d tracked across the concrete.
One of them—a woman, or what had been a woman—stood motionless near the entrance booth.
Her blouse was shredded down the front, and most of her abdomen was simply gone.
Ropes of intestine hung from the cavity in thick, glistening loops, swaying gently each time she shifted her weight.
Her jaw worked open and closed around nothing.
I could see teeth through the hole in her cheek.
A few feet from her, a heavyset man in a security uniform stumbled forward on a leg that bent wrong at the knee, the bone punching through the fabric of his pants with each step.
He didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t seem to notice anything.
His throat had been torn out so completely that his head sat at a loose, sickening angle, connected by little more than the spine.
And scattered between them—on the hoods of cars, ground into the asphalt, smeared in long drag marks that led nowhere—was more blood than I had ever seen. It looked black in the fading light. Some of it was still wet enough to shine.
The worst part?
The worst part was that they weren’t leaving.
They were just there. Milling. Drifting. Like they were waiting for something.
My stomach clenched so hard that I nearly doubled over, and I took a quick step back from the edge, my pulse hammering in my ears.
“Callan,” I whispered.
He didn’t look up from the radio.
“What?”
I gestured behind me with a jerky movement. “There’s a whole crowd of them down there. Dozens, at least.”
His hand froze on the tuning knob.
“They see you?”
“No. I stepped back before they could.”
He nodded once.
“Good.”
Then his voice dropped.
“Don’t look again.”
The firmness in his tone stopped me cold.
“Why?”
His jaw tightened. “When they gather like that, something’s attracting them.”
“You sound pretty certain for someone who had no idea what they are.”
His fingers never stopped working the dials. “They’re operating on instinct now. Basic animal behavior.” He glanced up at me briefly. “Animals don’t form packs without a reason.”
The radio erupted with harsh interference.
KRSHHHHH—
His fingers found the squelch control, dialing back the noise until it faded to a low whisper.
“And whatever’s drawing them together,” he said quietly, “I don’t want to find out what it is.”
I swallowed hard. The groaning from below rose and fell—dozens of voices, if you could call them that anymore, blending into a single shapeless moan that pressed against my chest.
“Where did you even learn to use one of those?” I asked because I needed to think about anything other than those things down there.
“Marines,” he said simply, without looking up.
“You were a Marine?”
“Four years.” He twisted another knob, adjusting the gain. “Before I figured out I wasn’t cut out for following idiots into pointless fights.”
The speaker burst with sharper static.
He leaned closer, listening.
“In the Corps, we trained with field radios. Different equipment, same principles. Frequencies, signal strength, line of sight.” His finger tapped the dial. “Marine radios are simpler.”
He flipped a switch.
“Channel sixteen is the international distress channel. If anything is still operating out there—Coast Guard, cargo ships, fishing boats—this is where they’ll be.”
My chest tightened.
“And if no one answers?”
He didn’t respond.
Instead, he pressed the transmit button. The radio chirped softly, and he leaned toward the microphone.
“This is the Bay City Aquarium. Any station monitoring Channel Sixteen, come back.”
He released the button.
Static filled the air.
The wind moved across the roof. Below us, that awful collective groan drifted up from the parking lot—low and constant, like the building itself was sick.
We waited.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Nothing.
Callan adjusted the frequency drift, his face tight with concentration.
“Come on,” he murmured.
Then the radio crackled sharply—a different sound, cutting through the white noise like a knife.
We both froze.
A voice tried to push through the static.
“…—any survivors—repeat,”
Callan’s head snapped toward the speaker. His hand tightened around the radio so hard that his knuckles turned white.
“Holy shit,” he breathed.
“Someone’s out there.”