The parking lot was full of them.
Dozens. Maybe more. They staggered across the asphalt in loose, directionless clusters, bumping off parked carsand 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 justthere. 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.