Chapter 27
Twenty Seven
Callan
The morning had settled into something almost normal.
Almost.
Sloane and Ethan sat at the desk in the office, laughing about some stupid TV show they both apparently loved. I didn’t recognize half the references flying back and forth, but they were into it.
“…I’m telling you, the dragon episode is the best one,” Ethan insisted.
“That episode is ridiculous,” Sloane shot back. “The dragon makes no sense.”
“It’s a fantasy show! It’s not supposed to make sense.”
“That doesn’t mean it gets to ignore basic logic, Ethan.”
Jeff sat a few feet away at the coffee table, maps spread out in front of him, pencil tucked behind his ear, eyes tracing the coastline with the quiet focus of a man who’d spent his life reading water and wind.
“Wind patterns along this stretch can get nasty this time of year,” he muttered, more to himself, “especially running north.”
I stood near the doorway, pulling my jacket on.
“I’m going up to the roof,” I told them. “See if the radio picks up anything today.”
“Copy that,” Jeff said without looking up.
Sloane waved a hand in my direction, already deep in another argument about fictional dragons and lands.
I stepped into the corridor and started down the walkway toward the spiral ramp.
The aquarium stretched quiet around me; halfway down the spiral ramp, something stopped me: a sound.
Faint.
Metal scraping against metal, the sound of a door.
My stomach clenched; that sound didn’t belong here.
I leaned over the railing, peering down toward the main floor below—at first, nothing, but then something moved.
A shape staggering out from the direction of the parking garage entrance, followed by another, and another.
My blood ran cold; five of them from what I could see, more behind, pushing through the open doorway in that slow, awkward way they moved, like bodies remembering how to walk.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
The chain, the goddamn chain on the garage door, hadn’t held.
I spun and ran.
“SLOANE!”
My voice tore through the aquarium, bouncing off glass and concrete.
I sprinted down the hallway toward the director’s office.
“SLOANE!”
They already stood in the doorway when I rounded the corner—all three of them, alert, reading the panic on my face before I said a word.
“What’s wrong?” Jeff asked immediately. His hand already moved toward the shotgun leaning against the wall behind him.
I skidded to a stop.
“They’re inside.”
The words landed like a grenade.
“What?” Ethan said.
“Parking garage. Chain broke. At least five in the building.”
As if answering, a low, guttural moan drifted up from the lower levels, distant but closer with every second.
Jeff’s eyes went wide.
“Jesus…”
I moved into the hallway that overlooked the main floor.
More of them now, shuffling through the entrance in a slow, steady stream.
Seven…Eight… more behind them, shapes moving in the dark of the garage corridor.
How the hell had so many gathered out there?
My brain raced.
If they had reached the spiral ramps, we’d have nowhere to go. We couldn’t fight that many in tight corridors—not with one shotgun and bare hands. We needed somewhere they couldn’t reach. Somewhere defensible. Somewhere—
My eyes locked onto the main tank.
“Sloane!”
“What?!”
“Get them in the tank!”
Her face went blank.
“What?!”
I pointed at the massive central aquarium—the towering column of water that ran from the bottom level up through the spiral walkways.
“Get inside the tank! Now!”
She stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.
I didn’t have time to make it make sense.
“I’m opening the main gate at the bottom!” The words came fast, half-shouted, my brain building the plan even as my mouth tried to keep up. “It’ll flush into the quarantine pool—out through the channel—toward the marina. Toward the boat.”
Sloane’s eyes widened as the pieces connected.
If I opened the main hatch connecting the aquarium system to the exterior water channel, the surge would carry them through and out of the building, into the holding pool, to the Mariner.
But there was a catch; there always was a catch.
I swallowed hard.
“I have to open the tide gate manually,” I said, “from the control room.”
Jeff understood immediately.
“Which means you’re still inside when it happens,” he said.
I didn’t answer; I didn’t need to.
Behind us, the guttural moans grew louder, echoing up through the hall as the dead pushed deeper into the aquarium. The sound multiplied, bouncing off glass and making it impossible to tell how many there actually were.
We had minutes. Maybe less.
“GO!” I shouted.
Sloane grabbed Ethan by the arm and shoved him toward the ramp that led to the maintenance hatch above the main tank. Jeff followed, shotgun in hand, positioning himself between the boy and the corridor behind them.
Sloane stopped at the base of the ramp.
She turned back to me.
For one second—one single, suspended second—her eyes found mine across the hallway. And everything we’d never said out loud, everything we’d buried under routine and arguments and the careful pretense of morning distance, passed between us in that look.
“Callan—”
“Go,” I said.
The three of them ran up the ramp.
I turned and sprinted in the opposite direction.
Alone.
The control room door slammed behind me, and I threw the heavy bolt across it, dragging a metal filing cabinet in front of the entrance for good measure. The legs screeched against the floor, the sound swallowed almost immediately by a loud thud from somewhere down the hallway.
Closer—they were getting closer.
I turned to the control panel, scanning the rows of old switches and levers. Faded labels. Tiny print. Systems designed for calm, methodical operation by trained staff during normal business hours.
“Come on… come on…”
My hands shook as I searched. Pump pressure. Tank circulation. Filtration overrides. Backup aeration.
“Where the hell—”
I saw it.
MAIN HATCH CONTROL.
I grabbed the lever and pulled it.
Somewhere deep in the building, a massive mechanical groan tore through the walls as the lower gate began to open.
Water roared through the pipes—a deep, thundering sound that vibrated up through the floor and into my chest. The main tank draining, flushing out through the system and into the holding pool.
Good.
But the tide gate still needed to open for the boat to clear the channel and reach open water.
I grabbed the PA microphone and slammed the button.
“Sloane!”
My voice echoed through the entire aquarium, bouncing off glass, off water, off every empty corridor.
“Swim for the ladder! Get the boat started!”
I forced the next words out.
“I’m opening the tide gate, but I can’t release the holding pool until the boat clears the channel!”
If I opened everything at once, the surge would slam the Mariner against the concrete walls, crush it, kill everyone inside.
They had to move first.
The boat had to clear.
My throat tightened. My grip on the microphone turned white-knuckled.
My voice cracked, just barely, just enough that I heard it and hated myself for it.
“I can’t leave Frank.”
The words hung in the air.
Behind me, something slammed against the control room door. The bolt held. The cabinet shifted half an inch; I closed my eyes.
Tried to steady my breathing, tried to pretend this sounded like every other plan I’d made this week—calm, logical, another problem with a solution at the end of it.
But my hand wouldn’t stop shaking on the microphone, and we both knew what staying behind meant.
“Just get to the boat,” I said quietly.
My voice carried through the empty building, through the dark hallways and the drained tanks and the water still rushing somewhere below.