Chapter 5

The voice outside sounded enough like their neighbour for Rebecca to reach toward the lock before Daniel caught her wrist and dragged her back, knocking the phone out of her hand as another impact rattled the front door hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

"That is not Peter asking for help, Rebecca, because Peter has never sounded like he's chewing glass while he talks, and I'm not opening this door to find out what the hell has happened to him." Daniel shoved his shoulder against the cabinet blocking the entrance, his face shiny with sweat as something scraped down the other side of the wood. "Get Nina away from the windows before that thing breaks through."

Rebecca grabbed Nina's sleeve and pulled her toward the kitchen, but Nina twisted around to look through the narrow gap between the curtains, catching sight of a blood-covered man stumbling across the road with one side of his face hanging open. A woman in a torn dressing gown lurched after him, one leg dragging behind her, and when a little boy tried to crawl beneath a parked car, she caught his ankle and hauled him back into the street while he kicked and screamed for his mother.

Nina jerked away from the window when the boy's screaming changed into a wet, strangled noise, and she nearly knocked over a chair trying to get farther from the glass. Daniel shouted at them to stay away from the windows, but his hands were shaking so badly that he fumbled the deadbolt twice before managing to check it, while Rebecca tried calling the neighbours and got nothing except a recorded message telling her the number could not be connected.

The television in the living room suddenly burst into a government announcement, the presenter sitting behind a desk with a face so tightly controlled that Nina could see the effort it took him to keep talking. He ordered residents to remain indoors while military units established containment zones, warned them not to approach anyone displaying violent behaviour after a sudden collapse, and started reading out emergency shelter locations before his eyes flicked toward something behind the camera.

"Please remain calm while emergency personnel—" The presenter stopped speaking, his mouth still half open as a crash sounded somewhere inside the studio, and the camera continued filming the empty desk while something stumbled across the background with its head hanging sideways.

The screen dissolved into static just as a heavy crash erupted upstairs, followed by a scraping noise that made Nina's stomach twist because she knew exactly which room they had locked Elise in.

She bolted for the stairs, ignoring Daniel shouting after her, and found the storage-room door hanging open while something inside dragged itself against the shelves. Elise crouched in the corner with her knees pressed against her chest, her grey skin stretched tight over her face and blood coating her mouth, and when she lifted her cloudy eyes toward Nina, a little piece of the girl who had grown up beside her seemed to surface through the mess.

"Nina," Elise whispered, her cracked lips barely moving, and Nina rushed forward before she had time to think about the teeth that had torn through her shirt the night before.

Elise's face jerked sideways, her jaw opening with a horrible clicking sound, and she threw herself at Nina so violently that they crashed into the shelving and sent bottles, boxes, and old tools scattering across the floor. Nina tried to hold her back without hitting her, pleading with her to stop while Elise snapped at her face, then caught the fabric of her sleeve between her teeth and bit down hard enough to tear it.

Daniel seized Nina around the waist and hauled her backward as Rebecca came through the doorway swinging a heavy metal torch, striking Elise across the head with a dull crack that sent her tumbling against the wall. Elise dropped onto her hands and knees, but instead of staying down, she began dragging herself toward them, leaving bloody smears across the floor while her fingers scratched uselessly at the boards.

Rebecca's torch slipped in her hand, and she made a sound Nina had never heard from her before, something between a sob and a curse, because the child she had raised was crawling toward them with her mouth full of blood and absolutely no understanding of what she was doing.

Then the front door gave way.

The cabinet toppled inward with a crash, and three infected bodies poured into the hallway, one of them their neighbour Peter, whose throat had been ripped open so badly that his head lolled whenever he moved. Daniel swung the hammer into the first attacker's face, sending it staggering into the wall, while Rebecca grabbed Nina's arm and dragged her toward the kitchen as another infected lunged over the fallen furniture.

They were trapped between the things forcing their way through the entrance and Elise crawling out of the storage room, and Nina grabbed a kitchen knife from the counter with fingers so slippery that she nearly dropped it. When Elise stumbled into the hallway, Nina raised the blade between them, staring at the familiar shape of her friend's face beneath the blood and cloudy film spreading across her eyes.

For a second, Elise tilted her head and seemed to recognize her, and Nina saw the girl who used to steal sweets from her shopping basket, who slept beside her during thunderstorms, who had promised she would never leave her alone.

Then Elise lunged at her throat.

Nina couldn't bring the knife down, even when Elise's teeth snapped inches from her cheek, and Daniel dragged her through the rear door while Rebecca snatched the medicine bag from the counter and followed them into the garden. They scrambled over the low fence into the neighbouring property as infected spilled from the house behind them, and Nina heard somebody screaming from the upper floor while a man across the road tried to climb a fence and was dragged down by the legs before he reached the top.

The street had turned into a slaughterhouse, with abandoned cars blocking the road and people running straight into the infected because they were too frightened to look where they were going. A woman was beating her husband with a handbag while he crawled after her on broken fingers, and when he caught her ankle, she kicked him in the face until his teeth scattered across the pavement, only to stumble backward into two more bodies coming out of a doorway.

Nina looked back toward her house and saw Elise standing in the broken entrance, unnaturally still among the bodies, her head tilted toward the street as if she could hear Nina through all the screaming. She started toward her, but Daniel locked both hands around her arm and hauled her away, shouting that he would not let her die trying to rescue someone who had already torn her apart once.

They reached the corner and found the road blocked by a crowd of infected surging out of an alley, their ruined mouths working as they turned toward the three living people. Rebecca backed into Daniel, Nina stumbled against a parked car, and the nearest infected man launched himself at them with his hands spread wide and his teeth bared.

The world stopped.

The man falling from a second-storey window hung above the pavement without hitting the ground, while shards of glass from a shattered shopfront remained suspended in the air around him. Flames licking the side of an abandoned car became motionless, and the rain that had started falling minutes earlier stayed caught between the clouds and the street, each drop hanging like a tiny bead of glass.

Every infected creature froze where it stood, including the man whose teeth were inches from Rebecca's face, and the screams filling the neighbourhood vanished so abruptly that Nina could hear her own heartbeat hammering inside her ears.

She could still move, still breathe, still feel Daniel gripping her arm, but nothing else in the street responded to them, not even the smoke twisting above the burning car. At the far end of the road stood Doom, dressed entirely in black, his clothes untouched by the blood and ash covering everything around him, his face so strikingly beautiful that it looked obscene against the ruined houses and bodies littering the pavement.

Doom did not look at the burning car or the people trapped among the wreckage, and he showed no interest in the blood running through the gutters as his gaze travelled across the street and settled directly on Nina. She stared back at him, unable to understand why a man could stand in the middle of a nightmare without appearing concerned that the world was ending around him.

Then an infected woman collapsed onto the pavement, her body striking the ground hard enough to splash blood across the curb, and the man frozen beside Rebecca dropped immediately afterward. More bodies began falling throughout the street, tumbling from cars and doorways as their limbs struck the ground in ugly, tangled heaps.

Nina thought they were dead until their fingers began twitching against the pavement, their jaws working soundlessly while one man dragged himself through the blood and another convulsed so violently that his shoulder twisted beneath his body. The infected woman raised her head, fixed her cloudy eyes on Doom, and slowly pulled herself upright, followed by every other creature scattered across the road.

They turned away from the living.

One by one, their ruined faces swung toward Doom, and the infected that had been clawing at a trapped woman abandoned her completely, leaving her sobbing beneath an overturned bicycle as it staggered toward him. Doom remained where he stood, his expression almost bored, while the dead crowded the street around him without a single one attempting to bite him.

Daniel loosened his grip on Nina's arm, and Rebecca covered her mouth as the infected began gathering between the houses, their bodies swaying toward the man in black like they were waiting for permission to move.

Then Doom's expression changed, so slightly that Nina might have missed it if she hadn't been watching him so intently, and every dead face in the street turned toward her.