The thing on the couch lunged. It moved with a convulsive, unnatural speed, a puppet whose strings had been pulled taut by an unseen hand. It was no longer his sister. It was a vessel for the sickness, a mindless engine of violence. It crashed to the concrete floor, its limbs flailing for a moment, and then it immediately began to crawl towards the sound of Lily's sobs.
"Stay behind me, Lily," Quinn said, his voice a low, strained command. He shoved her gently but firmly behind his legs, creating a physical barrier with his own body. He stood his ground, the iron poker held in a two-handed grip, its cold weight a poor substitute for courage.
The creature that had been Sarah scrambled towards him, its fingernails scraping against the rough concrete with a sound like grinding stones. It was faster than Henderson had been, fueled by a fresher, more potent version of the rage that animated them all. Its head was cocked at a broken angle, and its jaw hung slack, a guttural, continuous growl rattling in its chest.
As it closed the distance, its milky eyes fixed on him, a series of images flashed, unbidden, through Quinn's mind. Sarah, at age seven, grinning with a missing front tooth after falling off her bike. Sarah on her wedding day, radiant and impossibly happy, her laughter echoing in a sunlit church. Sarah holding a newborn Lily in the hospital, her eyes filled with a fierce, protective love. The smell of the chicken she had roasted for him just last night. The warmth of her hug at the door.
His sister.
The creature lunged, and the memories shattered into a million pieces. He swung the poker, not to kill, but to disable. He aimed for its legs, an instinctive, desperate act of preservation. He could not bring himself to aim for the head. The heavy iron bar connected with its knee with a dull, sickening crack. The leg bent at an unnatural angle, rendered useless. But the creature did not stop. It did not register the pain. It dragged its now-useless limb behind it, pulling itself forward with its arms, its speed barely diminished. It was a broken machine that did not know it was broken.
It was almost at his feet. He backed away, pulling a terrified Lily with him. The basement was small, cluttered with the debris of a forgotten life. There was nowhere to run. He was cornered. His back hit the cold, damp concrete of the foundation wall.
The monster swiped at his legs, its nails sharp as blades, tearing through the denim of his jeans. He kicked out, his boot connecting with its shoulder, sending it skidding back a few feet. It recovered instantly, snarling, its gaze locked on the small, crying child hiding behind him.
Lily was screaming now, a continuous, high-pitched wail of pure terror. She was watching the nightmare unfold, watching her uncle fight a monster that looked exactly like her mother. The trauma of this moment, Quinn knew, would carve itself into her memory forever, a scar that would never fully fade.
He looked down at the creature. It was preparing to lunge again, coiling its muscles. He saw the faint outline of the bite mark on its arm, the wound that had started all of this. He saw the promise he had made to Mark, a promise to save his family. He saw the promise he had just made to Sarah, to protect her daughter.
Those two promises were now in direct conflict. He could not protect Lily if he did not destroy the thing that was trying to kill them. He could not honor his sister's final wish without violating her memory, without committing this final, terrible act.
The decision was agonizing, a choice between two impossible weights. But it was not a choice at all. He looked at Lily, at her small, terrified face streaked with tears and dirt, and he knew. His promise to the living had to outweigh his duty to the dead.
Tears streamed down his face, hot and silent. "I'm sorry, Sarah," he whispered, the words lost in the sound of the creature's growls and Lily's screams. "I'm so sorry."
He stopped retreating. He stood his ground. As the creature lunged one last time, he did not swing the poker. He thrust it downward, like a spear, with all the strength he possessed. He put his entire body weight behind the blow, driving the pointed tip of the iron bar into the center of the creature's chest.
There was a moment of resistance as the iron hit the sternum, then the tip punched through flesh and bone. The creature froze, its body impaled. Its mouth opened in a silent, agonized snarl. For a split second, as the life-light faded completely from its eyes, Quinn thought he saw a flicker of recognition, a brief, fleeting glimpse of his sister looking out from behind the monster's mask. A moment of peace. Then it was gone. The body went limp, its full weight slumping onto the poker.
Quinn held it there for a long moment, his arms trembling from the strain, his body shaking with ragged, silent sobs. He was holding up the body of his dead sister, the silence of the basement a deafening roar in his ears.
Slowly, he pulled the poker free. The body collapsed onto the floor and did not move again.
It was over.
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by two sounds: Lily's hysterical, gulping sobs and Quinn's own ragged, desperate gasps for air. He dropped the poker. It clattered to the floor, the sound unnaturally loud. He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the cold concrete, his head in his hands.
The weight of what he had just done crashed down on him. The full, crushing weight of it all. Mark was gone. Tom was gone. And now Sarah, taken by the sickness and then by his own hand. He was the sole guardian of the promise, the last remnant of a family that had been whole and happy just twenty-four hours ago.
He felt a small body press against his side. Lily crawled into his lap, burying her face in his chest, her small body shaking with uncontrollable sobs. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, as if he could absorb her pain, her terror, into himself.
He rocked her back and forth, whispering meaningless words of comfort, his own tears dripping into her hair. He was all she had left. And she was all he had left. A six-year-old girl and her broken uncle, huddled together in a dark basement, surrounded by the dead. The weight of the world was on his shoulders, and it was heavier than he could have ever imagined.