The minivan fishtailed onto the street, the smell of burning rubber and gasoline filling the cab. Quinn did not look in the rearview mirror. He could not. Looking back meant seeing the house, seeing the memory of Mark's last moments framed in the back window. He pushed the accelerator to the floor, weaving around an abandoned sedan that sat parked in the middle of the road, its driver-side door wide open.
The world outside the van's windows was a blur of motion and terror. Figures stumbled across lawns, some shambling with a slow, disjointed gait, others running with a frantic, unnatural speed. A plume of thick black smoke rose from a few blocks away, staining the gray sky. The organized sound of sirens was gone, replaced by a more intimate and horrifying chaos of individual screams and the sharp percussion of breaking glass.
"Where are we going?" Sarah's voice was a dead thing, a monotone devoid of emotion. She was staring straight ahead through the windshield, her eyes glassy with shock. In the backseat, Lily's sobs had subsided into hitched, terrified breaths. Tom was completely silent, his small face a pale mask.
"Away," Quinn said, his voice tight, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. "Just away."
He turned a corner onto a main thoroughfare and his foot slammed on the brake. The van skidded to a halt, its nose inches from a pile-up of cars that blocked the entire intersection. There was no way through. In the rearview mirror, he saw two of them, two of the infected, turn their heads at the sound of the screeching tires and begin jogging toward the van.
"Out. Everybody out, now!" Quinn commanded, killing the engine and grabbing the iron poker from the passenger seat.
He threw his door open. He wrenched open the sliding door on the side of the van and practically pulled Sarah and the kids out onto the asphalt. The air was cold, thick with the smell of smoke and something else, something metallic and sweet that his mind refused to name.
"This way! Between the houses!" he yelled, pointing to a narrow gap between two tall wooden fences.
He pushed them forward, keeping himself between his family and the two approaching infected. They scrambled through the gap, the splintered wood of the fences snagging their clothes, and emerged into the relative quiet of a stranger's backyard. The change was jarring. The yard was eerily pristine. A child's swing set stood perfectly still on a patch of neat green grass. A pink flamingo lawn ornament stared at them with a single black plastic eye. For a heartbeat, it felt like a sanctuary.
"The back fence," Quinn said, his voice low, pointing to the tall fence at the far end of the yard. "If we can get over it, we can get to the next street over. Move."
Sarah nodded numbly, her hand clutching Lily's. Tom stayed close to her other side. She started moving them across the lawn, her steps unsteady. Quinn followed, his head on a constant swivel, his eyes scanning the yard, the windows of the house, the dark space beneath an elevated wooden deck.
His eyes swept past the large plastic storage shed tucked into the corner of the yard.
It was a mistake.
A shape exploded from behind the shed. It was low to the ground, fast and utterly silent. It was not one of the shambling ones; it was a runner, its body coiled with a terrifying energy. Its target was the smallest and slowest member of their group. It lunged directly at Lily.
"NO!"
The scream ripped from Sarah's throat. She reacted with pure maternal instinct. There was no thought, no hesitation. She threw herself sideways, shoving Lily hard, pushing the little girl out of the creature's path and placing her own body in the way.
The infected collided with her. They went down in a tangle of flailing limbs on the soft grass. The creature was a woman, her face a contorted mask of fury, her teeth snapping inches from Sarah's face. Lily shrieked, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror.
Quinn was already moving. He closed the distance in two strides and brought the heavy poker down on the back of the creature's head. The impact was sickeningly solid. The creature went limp, collapsing on top of Sarah.
He kicked the dead thing off his sister, his heart hammering in his chest. "Sarah! Are you okay? Did it bite you?"
Sarah pushed herself up, her face pale, her breathing coming in ragged gasps. She scrambled over to Lily, pulling her into a fierce, protective hug. "I'm okay. I'm fine. It didn't get me."
But Quinn saw it. The dark, ragged tear in the sleeve of her left jacket. The blood that was already soaking through the fabric of her forearm. It was a deep one. A bite. He knew from the shape of the tear that it was a bite.
"Sarah…" he started, his voice low and urgent, the word catching in his throat.
"I'm fine, Quinn," she said, her voice sharp, her eyes pleading with him not to say more, not in front of the children. She hugged Lily tighter, trying to hide the wound, trying to pretend that the world had not just ended for a second time.
The chaos of the moment, the singular focus on Sarah's sacrifice, had created a fatal distraction. In the seconds it took for Sarah to be attacked, for Quinn to neutralize the threat, for them to assess the damage, they had forgotten one of the group.
Tom, who had been standing just a few feet away, had frozen. He was a ten-year-old boy who had just watched his father die, had seen his home overrun, and had now witnessed his mother being attacked by a monster. His mind had simply shut down. He stood rooted to the spot, his eyes wide with a horror too deep for tears.
A scraping sound came from the other side of the yard, near the house's deck.
Another one. It must have been drawn by Sarah's scream. This one was a man, large and broad, and it had emerged from the shadows beneath the deck. It was not running. It was moving with a slow, deliberate purpose, its eyes locked on the closest, most vulnerable target. On Tom.
Quinn saw it. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but the word died in his throat. It was too late.
The creature's large hand shot out and clamped down on Tom's shoulder.
Tom let out a small, terrified gasp as he was violently spun around. He was lifted off his feet as if he weighed nothing, his legs kicking uselessly in the air.
Sarah followed Quinn's gaze. The sight that met her eyes shattered what little composure she had left. The denial about her own wound, the brave face for Lily—it all crumbled into dust.
"TOM!"
The name was not a shout. It was a sound of physical agony, of a mother's soul being torn from her body. She started to run toward him, but the creature was already moving, dragging her son back into the shadows under the deck. Tom's wide, terrified eyes locked with hers for one horrible, final second before he disappeared into the darkness.
Quinn grabbed Sarah, holding her back as she fought against him, screaming her son's name over and over again.
"We can't, Sarah! We can't!" he yelled, his own voice cracking with the strain. He could hear more of them now, the shuffling of feet from the front yard, drawn by the new commotion. Going under that deck was a death sentence. To save Tom now would mean sacrificing Sarah and Lily.
It was Mark's choice. The promise. Save my family.
And his family was now a wounded woman and a terrified little girl.
The horror of the choice was a physical weight, crushing the air from his lungs. He had to leave another one behind.
He pulled his sister, who was now sobbing uncontrollably, and scooped a wailing Lily into his free arm. He half-dragged, half-carried them to the back of the yard, to the fence. He did not look back at the dark space under the deck. He could not. The sounds from under the deck were not something a human mind could process and remain intact.
He shoved Sarah towards the fence. "Climb," he ordered, his voice broken. "Climb now."
Somehow, she did. Her movements were clumsy, automated, driven by some deep, broken instinct. He pushed her from below, his own muscles screaming in protest. She tumbled over the top, landing heavily on the other side. He passed a crying Lily over to her and then vaulted the fence himself.
They landed in another yard, a mirror image of the one they had just left. But this one was empty. They scrambled through it and emerged onto a different street. The chaos here was the same. The distant smoke, the scattered bodies on lawns and sidewalks, the roaming infected.
They stood there for a moment, a broken, bleeding trio in the middle of a dead world. They had escaped. But they had not survived. They had left their home, their father, their brother, their son, all behind them in a trail of blood and loss. And as Quinn looked at the deep, bloody wound on his sister's arm, he knew with a cold, sickening certainty that their losses were not over yet.