The silence left by the emergency broadcast was heavier than any sound. It filled every corner of the house, pressing in on them. Quinn stood with the aluminum bat in one hand, his knuckles white against the metal. Sarah held Lily and Tom in a tight embrace near the kitchen doorway, her body a physical shield against the unseen horrors outside. Mark just stared at the blank television, his face slack with a shock so profound it had erased all other expressions. He looked like a man who had seen the world he knew vanish in a flash of red light and a monotone voice.
Then, a sound from next door shattered the stillness.
It was not a scream of terror, but a sharp, guttural cry of pain. The cry was cut short. It was followed by the unmistakable crash of a window breaking, a sharp, percussive sound and the tinkle of glass hitting a wooden deck.
Everyone flinched. Tom buried his face deeper into his mother's side, his small body trembling.
"Stay here," Quinn said, his voice a low command. "Stay away from the outside walls."
He moved from the kitchen into the living room, his steps silent on the thick carpet. The front of the house was shrouded in gloom from the drawn curtains. The only light was the weak, gray daylight filtering down the stairwell from the second floor. He crept to the large picture window that looked out onto their front lawn and, to the side, their neighbor's property. Mr. Henderson's house. A tidy, two-story home identical to their own. The man who mowed his lawn every Saturday at nine a.m. The man who had once brought their mail to the door when it was delivered to his address by mistake.
Quinn put his eye to the tiny gap where the curtain met the window frame. His view was limited, a narrow slice of green lawn and the beige siding of Henderson's house. For a moment, he saw nothing but a bird feeder swaying gently in the breeze.
Then a figure moved into his field of vision.
It was Mr. Henderson. His familiar plaid shirt was torn at the shoulder, revealing pale skin beneath. His gray hair was wild. But it was his eyes that made Quinn's breath catch in his throat. They were wide, frantic, and completely devoid of recognition or thought. He was not just angry or scared. He was feral.
He was standing over another man, Mr. Davies from two houses down. Davies was on his back in the grass, trying to scramble away, kicking his legs uselessly against the ground. He was pleading, but the words were a choked, terrified babble that made no sense.
The attack was nothing like a human fight. There was no posturing, no shouting, no hesitation. Henderson moved with a twitching, unnatural speed that was horrifyingly efficient. He fell upon Davies not with fists, but with a blind, ravenous intensity. He grabbed Davies by the shirt and slammed his head against the soft turf with a sickening thud. He did it again. The pleading stopped.
Quinn felt a cold wave of nausea. He had seen combat in Fallujah. He had seen violence. This was different. This was not born of anger, or ideology, or strategy. It was a complete and total breakdown of humanity into something else. It was a predator cornering its prey.
Then he saw it. The thing that would be burned into his mind forever. Mr. Henderson leaned down, his head obscuring Davies' neck from view. There was a low, wet, tearing sound. Davies' body convulsed once, a violent, arching spasm that lifted his back off the ground, and then went completely still.
A profound, instinctual part of Quinn's military training surfaced. Infection vector. Biological contagion. The thought came unbidden, a ghost from a briefing room long ago, a contingency plan for a disaster scenario that had always seemed abstract.
Mr. Henderson lifted his head. His mouth and chin were covered in dark, glistening blood. He did not look triumphant. He did not look satisfied. He simply stood there for a second, his chest heaving, his head twitching from side to side like an animal sniffing the air for a new scent.
And then he turned.
His wild, bloodshot eyes scanned the street, passing over cars and other houses before they locked directly onto the window where Quinn was hiding. It was impossible. Quinn was hidden in shadow, looking through a tiny slit no wider than his finger. But Henderson's gaze was direct, unwavering. He saw him.
Quinn jerked back from the window as if he had been physically struck, his heart hammering against his ribs. The cold focus of the soldier was momentarily shattered by a raw, primal fear.
"He's coming," Quinn said, his voice rough and strained. "He's coming here. Now."
Panic, which had been simmering under the surface of the family's shock, erupted.
"What? Who?" Mark stammered, finally jolted from his stupor. He took a half-step toward the window.
"Mark, get Sarah and the kids. Go to the basement. Now!" Quinn's voice was a whip crack of command, sharp and absolute, leaving no room for argument or hesitation.
Sarah did not need to be told twice. "Come on, babies, let's go," she said, her voice shaking as she pulled her children away from the kitchen. "We're going to play a game downstairs in the fort."
Lily was crying now, loud, terrified sobs that echoed in the sudden emptiness of the room.
Mark was still frozen, his mind unable to reconcile the mild-mannered man who had borrowed his hedge clippers a month ago with the monster Quinn was describing. "That was… that was Mr. Henderson," he whispered, horrified.
BAM!
The sound of a body hitting their front door was like a physical blow. It was a heavy, solid impact, a dead weight thrown with immense force. The whole door shuddered in its frame.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
It was not the sound of someone knocking for help. It was a relentless, mindless assault. A fist, a shoulder, something heavy and hard, trying to break through the wood and metal of the door. A low, guttural snarl accompanied the impacts, a sound that was barely human, more animal than man.
Quinn grabbed the aluminum baseball bat, his knuckles aching from the pressure of his grip. He stood in the center of the living room, planting his feet, placing himself between the door and the hallway that led to his family. The cold focus returned, pushing the fear down. *Protect the family. Secure the perimeter. Eliminate the threat.* The objectives were simple and clear.
The banging on the door stopped.
An unnerving silence descended once more. Even Lily's sobs quieted to whimpers from the basement stairwell.
Quinn held his breath, straining to listen over the sound of blood pounding in his ears. He heard a scraping sound along the siding of the house. A slow, dragging noise. It was moving. It was moving towards the living room window.
He motioned frantically with his free hand for Mark to get back. Mark, his face ashen, finally broke from his trance and scrambled back towards the hallway, disappearing from view.
A bloody handprint smeared itself across the picture window's glass, five crimson fingers spreading across the pane in a grotesque greeting. Then, a face pressed itself against the glass.
It was Mr. Henderson. His features were distorted, pressed flat by the pressure. His eyes were wide and milky, his pupils tiny black dots in a sea of red. Blood dripped from his teeth and ran down his chin onto the glass. There was no recognition in his gaze, no memory of neighborhood barbecues or friendly waves. There was only a terrifying, empty hunger.
He saw Quinn standing in the room.
He pulled back and began to hammer on the glass with his bare fists. The thick, double-paned window vibrated with each sickening, wet impact.
A spiderweb of cracks appeared in the glass, spreading out from the point of impact.
"Sarah, the basement! Lock the door at the bottom!" Quinn yelled, his voice echoing in the house. He did not take his eyes off the window.
He backed away, moving toward the fireplace. The aluminum bat felt too light, too flimsy. His eyes darted around the room and landed on the set of fireplace tools resting on the hearth. He dropped the bat with a soft thud on the carpet and his hand closed around the cool, heavy iron of the fireplace poker. It was solid, black, with a hooked end. It felt better. More permanent.
Mr. Henderson let out a thin, high-pitched shriek—a sound of pure, mindless rage—and threw his entire body against the window.
The cracking sound was deafening. The center of the window bowed inward, the fractured glass holding for a split second against the impossible force.
Then, with a sound like a gunshot, it exploded.
Shards of glass flew across the living room like shrapnel, embedding themselves in the opposite wall and the soft fabric of the couch. A cold gust of outside air, carrying the metallic scent of blood and the general chaos of the world, rushed into the house. In the gaping, shattered frame of the window, silhouetted against the gray morning light, stood the thing that used to be their neighbor.