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.
The aquarium behind us swooshed softly, systems still running, still doing exactly what they’d been designed to do. The tanks glowed faintly through the interior glass, casting slow, shifting patterns of blue across the corridor walls. Fish moving in the dark. Oblivious. Alive in their sealed little worlds, completely unaware that the one outside had fallen apart.
Beyond the door, the world had gone quiet.
No more scraping. No sirens. No cars. No voices.Nothing.
At some point, the adrenaline burned itself out completely, and what it left behind was worse—exhaustion so deep it sat in my bones, and a gnawing dread that had settled into my chest like something permanent.
Then—
A sharp beep cut through the silence.
Sloane’s phone.
The sound made both of us jump. My whole body jerked, hand instinctively reaching for anything—a weapon, a door handle, anything—before my brain caught up.
She fumbled for it immediately, hands still trembling. I watched her face as she looked down at the screen, expecting—I wasn’t exactly sure. An emergency alert? A news update? Something official? Something from the government, the CDC, anyone who could explain all of this and tell us it was contained, handled, and going to be okay.
Her expression changed instantly.
All the color drained from her face instantly, as if someone had pulled a plug.
Her eyes widened, lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.
“Sloane?” I said.
She didn’t respond. Didn’t even blink. Just stared at the phone as if it had turned into something repulsive in her hands.
“What does it say?” I asked, sitting up straighter.
She inhaled sharply and screamed.
The sound tore out of her—raw, involuntary, animal. It bounced off the concrete walls and metal doors and filled the corridor with the agonizing wail.