The Last Mayor

Part 1

Chapter 1

I wake up a new man. It's hard to describe the feeling, as I lie on the rumpled sheets with Talia the barista nestled against my side. Faint morning light is filtering in through the skylight blinds in my garret apartment, there's a tingling sensation all across my body, and the constant sense of pressure in the back of my mind is gone completely.

I can't believe it.

It feels like an extension of a dream into wakefulness. Ever since my coma a year ago, when I died and was revived multiple times by the finest doctors basic insurance can buy, I've had the twinges: crippling migraines that knock me out in the morning, in the night, in the middle of the day. Every time I have no choice but to crawl beneath the covers and ride them out for as long as they take

Sometimes it's hours. Sometimes days. Now they seem to be gone. I get up slowly, rolling my body forward, but no customary warning twinge comes in. I rub my eyes but no pain awakens there either. I feel, impossibly, good. It's a miracle.

"Avoid triggers," the doctor told me on discharge from the hospital. "Anything new or stimulating. No movies, no video games, no painting, and no girls. Keep it clinical."

I turn to Talia. In the fresh morning light, she looks beautiful, with her coffee cream skin and curly dark hair spilled across the pillow. My memories of last night are clouded by the constant pain of the twinges, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't clinical.

She mumbles something and snuggles into the covers. I can't believe any of this. I sit on the side of the bed and run my hands through my short dark hair, probing, but there's nothing out of place; no brain-shaped chunks have come loose in the night

I pick up my pants, crumpled on the floor nearby, and fish out my phone. The charge is down, but there's a message topmost in the notifications from Carl, my best friend.

Are you even alive? Call me!!

I chuckle at that because he's being dramatic, and eager for gossip. I texted him from the restaurant restroom in the middle of the date last night, while I was crumpled on the floor by the toilet bowl beneath the weight of an almighty twinge. He helped me get through the worst of it, as he so often has before.

Another half-hour won't kill him

I plug the phone into the charger and roll smoothly to my feet, then get dressed and pad quietly to the door.

Down through the tenement building's three floors and out the door, I emerge onto the street. It's quiet at this early hour, and there's a spring chill in the air; 143 rd street in the South Bronx, overlooking the scrubby dry Willis playground, just a few streets over from the Mott Haven historic district. There are cars on the road but none of them are moving, stopped by traffic probably. I duck into my hoodie, tuck my hands in my pockets, and stroll down the sidewalk. My breath makes clouds of steam in the air.

At any minute I'll wake up. I can't stop thinking about it. I focus on my feet. If my feet are still here, it has to be real. Surely the twinges will hit at any minute

I go around the corner onto Willis, crossing in front of the neighborhood bodega. The lights are on inside, with stacks of Bud Lite in crates in the window, but I don't see anyone come for their morning swig. The awnings are up so they're open, probably in the back getting stuck.

I go by. A shorthaired terrier is shivering tied by the leash to a newspaper box. He looks at me plaintively as I pass. I figure I'll buy an extra croissant and hand it to him. Do dogs like croissants? All this is unreal.

I reach the coffee shop, a 24-hour Starbucks, and push through the glass door. It's not a patch on my favorite coffee shop in downtown Manhattan, called Sir Carl; a cozy little indie spot rife with hipsters and decked out in raw wood shelving and teal walls. Here there are no stacks of donated threadbare books, no warm feeling of a weird little community; it's all so corporate.

I go to the register and scan the blackboard in the back for prices. They usually put the decaffeinated somewhere tricky in the corner, surrounded by swirly chalk effects like they're trying to disguise it. Dare I go with a regular latte, or is that courting disaster?

I lean on the bar. The barista must be out back checking something too. Only the low whine of an air conditioning unit circulating hot air breaks the stillness. I survey the place; it's empty. Not a soul. I see a few haphazard coffees spread around on tables, the nearest one half-drunk.

This is getting weird.

"Hello?" I call.

No answer comes. I walk along the bar, looking for a bell, but there is none. I shout "Hello" again but nobody answers. Maybe they've all gone out for a bit, maybe a cigarette break, en masse, out the back?

My heart speeds up. One possibility leaps to mind.

I exit the coffee shop and jog out into the street. I see it now, where before I was too dizzy with the lack of twinges to notice. The few cars have stopped, flat in the road, and not at the traffic light, some lilted at weird angles like they were haphazardly pulled over. None of them are moving, and there's no one in them. Across the road, a BMW with gold hubcaps has gone through the window of 'Billy Ray's' pawnshop. Its taillights flash on and off soullessly.

Normally this much would set me twingeing hard, but I'm still in the clear. I look all around, studying the unkempt bushes of Willis playground, the windows of studio apartments on the redbrick building's first floor, but there's no sign of anybody.

Nobody's here.

My mind races. Could I have slept through some kind of terrorist attack, and everybody has fled? Sweat trickles down my back, and through unconscious habit, I start to count back from one hundred, a twinge prevention tactic, but still, no pain comes on. This has to be a dream, and I don't like it anymore.

I start to run.

"Hello!" I shout as I jog south down Willis toward the bridge. If there's one thing I've been able to do throughout this last miserable year of my life, it's jog. Nothing is interesting at all about running on a treadmill, staring at a wall, but the doctors said exercise might help, so…

"Anybody?" I call.

I think I see a glimmer of movement behind a curtain on a second-story apartment, but it's gone. There may be figures in the park, but when I try to focus on them they blur away Ethanngst the trees.

I blow into the intersection with 142 and panting, and see the wreckage of a car accident just around the corner. A blue Chevy saloon is resting at a crazy angle on its roof, its front all dented in, next to a yellow bulldozer in the middle of the road. I reconstruct the impact in my mind, following the sparkling pattern of smashed glass and black skid trails burned onto the road

Smoke gushes up through the car's chassis, and there's a strange scratching sound coming from inside. I look up and down 142 and, where normally people are chatting and strolling, reading papers, checking their phones, but now it's empty but for more abandoned cars. They are scattered randomly across the four-lane blacktop, several crashed into each other, some nudged into walls, one punched through the window of the Halal meat place. Smoke rises from them in near silence

My mouth is dry. I can hear the click of the traffic light overhead, shifting in and out of sync with the scratching from the upturned Chevy. I notice I'm standing in the middle of the intersection, but no traffic is coming. The road is jammed with cars and trucks left like slaughtered buffalo on the plains.

"Somebody help," I shout, but nobody replies. I'm alone.

I run to the Chevy and around to the driver's side, waving through the thick black smoke that fogs it. I lean closer and my eyes sting, but I can pick out a figure on the asphalt, trying to drag itself free from the driver's side window. There's broken glass on the ground and a dark puddle of what must be blood or oil spreading around him; a guy in a blue denim shirt with long Carl hair. He's pulling to get out and the scratching sound must be the seatbelt tearing.

"Hang on," I call to him, "I'll get you out."

He looks up. His eyes are so pale through the smoke I think I'm looking into balls of ice. The pupil at the center is dark but the iris is drained of all color. It freaks me out. His jaw wags and blood spills down his chin.

"I'll get you out," I call again, though I can barely breathe in the smoke. I press my sleeve up to my face, squint my eyes tightly shut, and plunge closer. I get my hands on the guy's arms, in his hot wet armpits, and pull. I lean my weight back and drag on him. His hands patter helplessly off my thighs but he doesn't come free. The scratching sound gets louder.

It must be the seatbelt. I contemplate ducking in and trying to clip him out, but he's so close already, and I don't like the way the car's starting to tick. We have to get clear. His head nuzzles against my knee. I put one foot up against the car body and tug with all my strength.

There's a sharp ripping sound, like Velcro unzipping, and he comes free. I stagger back with him trailing in my arms, so much lighter I can't regain my balance. I fall hard and smack my butt firmly on the concrete, dropping the guy at the outer reach of the smoke.

"s**t," I cry, rolling over. My whole butt's gone numb, I must've twanged my coccyx, and now my legs have gone trembly. I get onto my knees and shout to the guy.

"Are you OK?"

I see his weirdly white eyes emerge from the smoke first. There's blood running out from under his hairline and down his pale gray cheek and chin, staining his shirt. He's crawling to me on his chest, hand over hand, dragging himself near.

It comes to me as a cold flash that he's got no legs. I double-take, thinking maybe he's a veteran or a diabetic, maybe he never had legs, but now he's over halfway out of the smoke I can see the trail of black blood oozed out behind him like a slug trail. His legs were there but they're gone. I blanch, get to my shaky feet, and back up.

"What the hell…?" I mutter

He keeps crawling. I back up more. He has no legs and no pelvis either. His lower body is wholly gone, ending at a ragged line across his middle, like torn chicken meat. A lump of flesh spits out of his open belly and straggles behind on a strand of the purple gut like a sad little kite. I gag. I take another step back, but still, he's crawling toward me.

"Hey buddy," I say, pointing with a trembling hand at the organ he's left behind. It looks like a crushed pink ping-pong ball. "You left, uh…"

I stop talking. His blood is everywhere. I finally get what just happened; I tore him apart. He was sawing himself through the window and I finished the job. Now he's coming for revenge.

"Holy s**t," I blurt, as he snatches up at me with his b****y hand. I bat it away and take another step back. "Buddy looks, I'm sorry, I didn't know."

It is a ridiculous thing to say. He's still coming. It isn't possible; it has to be a dream.

He keeps coming anyway.

CHAPTER 2 GOOD LUCK

I walk backward and he follows, like some messed up dance. For each step, I take he drags himself closer. I watch with sick fascination as more guts unspool from his belly. Of course, I've seen this kind of thing a million times before, in movies and TV shows, in the comics I draw myself, but not like this. It looks realistic, is all I can think. The words 'great special effects' roll numbly through my mind.

About twenty yards back, the Chevy explodes.

The blast wind smacks my face and flutters my clothes, but it doesn't throw me through the air like in the movies. The door does fly though, spinning end over end like a Krull blade and cleaving the guy in two like sour cheese, before taking off and pinging away overhead. Fire singes my eyebrows and something punches me hard in the arm and I go down

Shit. I roll back to my feet and see the car's indicator lever sticking out of my shoulder. It is stuck into my left shoulder. The half-man is still nearby, grappling toward me with his one good arm. He's left the other one behind, along with all his spools of the gut, slit diagonally apart by the door.

I stagger backward, in shock, looking at the indicator lever sticking out of my body. There's blood running wetly down my chest and belly, darkening my hoodie. What the hell? Dizzy ideas come through the fog, that maybe I should push it left, push it right.

Click-click.

I yank it out. It comes easily, looks like a screwdriver in my hand, then I drop it. It hits the concrete and rolls. The guy is using his jaw now to propel himself closer. His head bobs up and down like a swimmer going under for breath.

"I mean," I start to say, though I have no idea what I mean to say. The car is burning hard now, with fire rising high, and the chassis has ruptured and warped. "Just a second."

I stumble away from the burning wreck. Twenty feet clear I realize I'm limping and stop. My legs are fine. My left hand is clamped to the indicator would but there's hardly any blood coming now. Smoke is drifting finely everywhere. Something catches my eye, and I see a jumbo jet spiral out of the sky.

I track it from high up, spinning like a ninja's shuriken star. The wings tear off and the fuselage breaks apart so it descends in pieces, raining seats, engine parts, and bodies. They're wriggling like maggots. Fire breaks out from a sputtering engine before it falls beyond my field of view, behind the redbricks to the south somewhere near the bridge to Manhattan.

BOOM.

The blast shakes the ground though it was at least a mile away. A fireball rises briefly above the 'Pimpin Ridez' moped shop.

The half-man is nearly at me again. His trail of blood is so full and thick I can barely believe he's got anything left inside to drive him on. Put a shell on his back and he would be a grotesque snail.

he bridges to Manhattan. No matter what else is going on, there could be survivors. I dodge around cars, trucks, and motorbikes left driverless. In glimpses down intersections at 141 st and 140 th, I see a maze of vehicles in disarray, some burning, some upturned. A few buildings are on fire too, but there are no wails of fire trucks drawing near

As I pass through 139 that I look to the sky expecting to see F1s or Stealth Bombers closing in, at least helicopters, but there are only the corkscrewing contrails of the plane that fell.

I cover half a mile in five breathless minutes, emerging past barren Pulaski Park to the Harlem riverside like a cork popped from a bottle, to survey the Mott Haven bridgehead to Manhattan.

The Upper Manhattan skyline is on fire. Black smoke rises from many points, forming a miasma that hangs over the city like cigarette fog in a jazz bar. Several of the nearby skyscrapers, bland buildings that aren't fEthanus, have been damaged. There is visible gout missing in the top corner of one, and something is burning on the upper floors of another. It looks like the city has been sacked by barbarians.

I shake myself and look across the bridge. A chunk of the white support scaffold has ruptured where the plane landed, and the railing beneath it has been swept away, leaving trailing metal fenders pointing down toward the Harlem River. The jet must have hit it like a bomb.

There are chunks of fuselage and wing hanging amidst the scaffold-like garish Christmas decorations, while other pieces of wreckage lie spread over the blackened asphalt, some of them belching thick black smoke.

And there are people. My jaw drops. They cover the bridge like sand on a beach, a crowd of hundreds of walking steps by an uneven step toward Manhattan. A horrible resurgence of my latest artwork rises in my head; the same piece I showed to Talia in Sir Carl that earned me our first date. I'd seen it in a dream a few weeks back; a great tower of the dead heaped up in Times Square, building themselves higher like the zombies in World War Z scrambling upward to take down a helicopter

Is it like that, I ask myself, halfway descending into an illogical panic? Is that what pulled that jet out of the sky?

Then something shifts. A kind of unspoken signal passes through the crowd like a ripple on the water, and one by one they turn their ice-white eyes to me. Their faces are gray, washed out of all color, like the empty Atlantic ocean seen from Coney Island. Some are splashed with blood

It's terrifying. I hold up my hands like I'm pacifying an angry drunk as if that will somehow help. "Just a second," I say.

The first of them start running toward me. Their bodies flex and lope expertly, and damn fast. Some of the sprint.

I turn tail and sprint too, back up Willis. Intersections flash by with the thunder of their stampede gaining behind. Am I running from a horde of, what, the dead? The infected? Back past 140 th, I toss a glance over my shoulder; leading the pack is a guy in a three-piece suit, splattered with dark blood. Yes, I am.

I break stride for a second to reach into my jeans for my phone, but of course, it isn't there, I left it to charge. I remember Talia, she's in my apartment now.

Shit!

I crank up the speed, to levels I never attempted on the treadmill. I vault over the bonnet of a red Porsche jammed in headlight-to-trunk with a garbage truck. I dodge around another crawler on the ground. I run up the hood of a beat-up old Volkswagen and down the other side.

The Subway station passes by on my right. On 141 st I hit the southern edge of Willis Playground. I pass back through the intersection on 142 nd and pinpoint my snail-half man from his b****y trail. I jump over his head. This is ridiculous. My breath comes hard but my legs feel good, and the lack of a twinge still is amazing.

On the last stretch to 143 rd, I wheel left at the bodega, then I'm back on my street, with the lead guy maybe fifty yards behind.

I hit my block with the keys already in my hand. I jiggle them into the lock and dive into the hallway, slamming the door behind me. I stand for a second panting in the hallway.

It is so quiet in here it freaks me out. Then the door takes a massive thump as the guy's body hits it. I jump in place. I cast about me for something to reinforce the door with. This hall is so empty! There's an ancient dark pipe running around the baseboard into a heavy metal radiator mounted on the wall, but that's no use at all. There are shelves filled with the owner's chintzy bric-a-brac, the kind of Delft doggies and Portmeirion plates Carl and I sell in the online world we built together, a virtual copy of a real-world Yangtze fulfillment center.

No help there. There's a mirror too, and a little side-table and a chair.

THUMP.

The door rocks again and that must be the next in line. It's followed by a steady drumbeat as more bodies pound against the door. How long can it hold? I grab the side-table and push it up haplessly against the door. It looks utterly forlorn, far too small and light to do more than perhaps keep a cat out.

I grab the chair and stack it next to it, but that will do little more. I get frantic as more bodies impact, and the smacking of their dead white flesh on the wood becomes a hailstorm. They'll pummel the door from its brackets in moments, I'm sure.

My chest heaves up and down with panting.

I can't do anything more here. We have to get the hell out.

I think of Talia.

I run up the stairs. Any day of the last year I would have been collapsed on the floor disabled by twinges a long time ago, but today I feel vital and alive. On the top floor, I shuffle the key out and jiggle my room open, then step back into familiarity.

It's almost quiet up here, with the thumping four stories distant. My room's soothing smells are on the air; green tea, bolognese, fresh sheets. My Banksy print is there above the computer, my large JR canvas, my Space Invader reproduction. Everything is as it should be.

Except Talia is not here. I look to the bed, to the desk, even out the window, but she isn't here.

"What the hell…?" I mumble.

In her place, the bed has been made and there's a note lying on the pillow, written in neat handwriting. I snatch it up and read it three times.

You have my number. Good luck with the zombies. Talia. Xx

I sag to the bed and laugh. This is utterly crazy.

I showed her my painting of zombies. That's what she's talking about. But then, Jesus, what is happening?

The phone rings. I pick it up and see it's an incoming Skype call from Carl. There's a history of thirty-three missed calls, and I remember his message from earlier, that I thought had to be him just keen to get the lowdown on my big night.

Are you even alive? Call me!!

I've had his number for the last eight months, but we've never actually spoken. Neither of us wanted the novelty of our voices to bring on a twinge in the other

Now I slap the answer and hold the phone to my ear.

CHAPTER 3 MINECRAFT

I met Carl six months into my convalescence after the coma, while I was hiding out in my parents' dark Iowa basement. I met him in a virtual world I built myself, inside a video game called Minecraft, where we both pretended to have the most boring job imaginable.

pretended to have the most boring job imaginable. Those were slow, depressing days. My friends came to visit but stopped as their presence made me twinge. My friend in New York had already given up on me after I'd died in my coma for the third time.

I was pretty much alone.

"You'll be with us again soon," my mother would often say when she brought down my lukewarm milkshakes or diet mayo tuna sandwiches.

"Coming back to the land of the living."

I appreciated everything she did, but it pissed me off. I'd been through this terrible thing, a coma that killed me multiple times, and here now it was continuing. My brain was weak, my body too, I could hardly stand to be around other people and TV made my brain twinge like crazy, but I wasn't some feeble dying goat incapable of doing anything for myself.

"Baby steps," the doctor counseled. "Think of it like mental rehab. Your brain has to get re-accustomed to the stimulation step gradually. Especially your art. Have you any idea how many parts of the brain fire when you're doing creative work? I'd stay away from it."

"Stay away from art?

" He gave a sad smile. "It looks like you may be allergic. I know that sounds strange, but trust me, Ethan. Boredom is your bandage."

"And what if I don't?"

"Then there'll be complications."

"Like what, I might die?"

"Or worse."

"Or worse? What could be worse than dying?"

He shrugged. "Some would say a never-ending coma is worse. I've never been in a coma so I wouldn't know. I imagine if you never wake up though, then you may as well be dead. It's just a horrible, powerless delay."

"I woke up this time," I said, more confidently than I felt.

"You did," he agreed. "Who can say?"

Who could say? Nobody.

So I took it easy. I let my parents pamper me, I let boredom be my bandage until I was more sick of reading old books and watching old black and white movies than I was afraid of death. I was already living with the crushing pain of the twinges, no matter what I did.

So I got a job.

I researched the least mentally demanding work out there, in the dullest, darkest environment, and came up with picker at a Yangtze online shopping fulfillment center. They're the people who collect the stuff we order on the website, who labor all day in vast windowless warehouses that cover about a square mile each.

I applied and they took me on. Two days later I turned up and nodded through a twinge-inducing but mercifully brief induction. The supervisor gave me a simple gizmo called a 'diviner', which I was to follow as it flashed left-right directions through the warehouse. I picked up the stuff it highlighted then put it on conveyor belts for the packing department, ad infinitum, like a rat in a maze.

I loved it. All-day I walked down dark climate-controlled shelving corridors, making no decisions for myself, just following the diviner to pick up limited edition basketballs, sets of tea knives, greetings cards, self-published books from the cranky print-on-demand machines, talking teddies, butt-shaped pillows and so on. Whatever the diviner demanded, I collected.

It was a lovely monotony. I got back into some kind of physical shape and built up my stimulation endurance. If an order was too weird, I'd count backward from one hundred to distract myself. I got good enough that the twinges faded some and my thinking cleared up.

"So when she says her name, you say, 'You should speak a little louder, you must be the shy one in the group'," he told me once.

"It's embarrassing her," I said.

"Right, it's putting her on the spot, meaning you control the spotlight. It's cool stuff man, neuro-linguistic programming from the top artists in the game."

"Does it work?

"I haven't tried it yet."

Bobby was six foot seven and really into North Korea. Sometimes he wore the red star of North Korea on a T-shirt he'd printed himself as if daring our overlords to kick him out. I don't think the supervisor ever noticed, he probably thought it was a basketball shoe logo.

Linda from Arkansas was working her way around all the Yangtze fulfillment centers in the US, for a travel memoir she was writing.

"It's like the travel book by the guy who hitch-hiked around Ireland with a fridge," she told me once. "You have to have a gimmick. This is my gimmick."

I loved it. There were weird people, all with their strange aspirations just like me, and I was handling it. When I needed time apart, I'd turn at a crossing when it looked as if we were going to intersect. A simple shrug of the shoulders and a point to the diviner would explain all.

The gods are re-routing me, that shrug said. It's just my fate.

It was Lucy on the print-on-demand machines, that clattery industrial corner of the center where books were baked in great X-ray like kilns, who put me onto Minecraft.

put me onto Minecraft. I liked to stay near the printers for as long as I could before the sound made my brain twinge, watching pages slip in and out of the runners, forming up gradually into newly birthed books, their binding still tacky. These were dreams being made, just like my brain was rebuilding itself.

"I print my own here," Lucy told me once. She was a chubby girl with poorly dyed blue hair. We all called her Blucy. "I write romance with Amish vampires in the post-apocalypse. It's a big niche. They let me print them at cost."

cost." I nodded. She showed me one of her books. The cover was awful, just clipart of something representative of each of those genres overlaid.

I made her one much better that night, stretching my brain's limits to the max. I had twinges for the following week, but she went wild for it. She invited me to play Minecraft with her.

"It's just like digital Lego, Ethan, you can turn down the danger and everything so there's no random events like falling into lava, no roaming zombies, nothing to make you scared or set off stress alarms, just a sandbox to build in. I make weird ruined worlds for my characters to live in. I think you'd get a kick out of it."

We went in together at her place, viewing one of her post-apocalyptic worlds through split-screen. It was funny to see the broken elevated roadways and tattered skyscrapers she'd envisaged built-in chunky 3D blocks. Her ruins were fun and bright, like her writing. The game itself was intuitive and repetitive, involving grinding out ores by digging, then crafting them into tools and materials to create buildings.

It was fun. At home I built a miniature version of the fulfillment center; lovingly stacking up the long clean corridors, fitting it with low lights, stocking the shelves with whatever products I could craft, even hand-coding a diviner.

At the same time, I started making covers for all of Blucy's books. She never paid me, but she put me onto her writer friends who wanted covers, and they did pay. The work ran me down, but then I'd go into Minecraft and grind out ores for hours, add to my fulfillment center, and wander it in a trance. In God mode, I added non-player characters modeled on my co-workers in real life, who wandered its corridors endlessly online, forever doomed to think of little nuggets of information they wanted to pass on.

It was wonderfully soothing, and it sped up my recovery so much that I was able to make more covers. I had enough cash and energy after six months to quit the picking job and go full time with the covers.

"Don't go," my mother said when I told her I was heading back to New York. "That place broke you. I couldn't bear for it to happen again.

" My dad patted me on the shoulder and stood by.

I came back to New York on a Greyhound, quietly defiant. I worked on art that would've bored me to tears before. I went to the coffee shop Sir Carl's as mental therapy to build up my tolerance. I crafted goods to sit on my Minecraft warehouse shelves, even opening it up for others to run online and critique.

On one of those runs, I met Carl

Carl was an ex-Olympic diver who had a coma, just like me. He fell into him, during a dive off the highest platform. He broke his back on the edge of the pool, then nearly drowned in the water before anyone thought to fish him out.

He had everything way worse than me. With his broken back, he was a paraplegic, stuck to his bed and unable to leave his mom's basement, unlike me. It led to a coma far worse than mine, which left him far more crippled by the twinges.

But he found me.

We were the only two people in the world, as far as we knew, who'd been through the same coma and come out with the same mind-crushing migraines, and somehow, out of all the fake Minecraft worlds in all the world, he found mine.

I saw him one night, loitering at the edge of the shelving, figuring out how to use a diviner. Wordlessly, I showed him. We started running the shelves together. We started to talk. Soon enough, we loved nothing better than to run the fulfillment center picking up randomly generated orders, together. He was always there for me. I was always there for him. We got each other through.

"Carl," I say into the receiver now, curled up against my bed and hardly believing this is happening, "holy s**t, Carl you're alive?"

A moment passes and he says nothing, during which time I feel like I'm falling, then his voice comes through, weak and high.

"Ethan?

CHAPTER 4 CARL

"It's me," I whisper frantically, "I'm here, s**t, I saw your message earlier, I thought you were talking about the date, then I went outside and damn, it's been crazy, the girl's gone, the whole city's gone crazy, what the hell is going on?"

Ethan," he says again, his voice getting clearer now, a slight Southern drawl. "I'd just about given up, I've been calling and texting you for hours. You say you went outside?"

I take a deep breath. Abruptly tears start coursing down my face. s**t, this is Carl, and it's our first time to talk.

"The twinges are gone. I went out to get coffee and the world's gone mad. They're everywhere. They chased me up and down the Bronx. Planes were falling from the sky, New York is burning. What's going on?"

"Calm down. Ethan, I know." He takes a breath, then plows ahead. "I've been watching it all night. It started around midnight and it spread across the country in hours. They were calling it a disease vector carried on the Gulfstream until it got them too and most of the news outlets went out. Twitter went down while they were trying to evacuate, but most people were at home asleep in their beds. The whole country's gone down, I'm surprised the internet is even up still, phone service and texts went down hours ago. I thought I'd call you until my uplink went dead, and then…" he trails off.

I stifle my tears and stare wide-eyed out the window.

"The whole country's gone down?"

"They've all turned, Ethan. This thing is instantly virulent, one breath and you're infected. You've seen them so you know. I watched it happen on the news; there were videos up on YouTube before that went down too. A few websites are still working, so I Googled everything I could find and download it to the shared drive on your computer. You'll need to know this stuff, I have reams on the prepper lifestyle, survival tactics and strategies, how to make weapons and how to find weapons, how to rig a generator and hotwire a car, siphoning fuel from a station, all that kind of stuff. It's good I did because Wikipedia has just gone down; I guess they didn't get enough donations.

He gives a scrappy laugh. I'm struggling to catch up with everything he's saying. My heart's still pounding from the run.

"What are you talking about? Carl?"

He takes a deep breath. "Ethan, I'm cured too. The twinges are gone and I'm thinking clearly. I've not turned, but everyone else is. You said everyone you saw in New York has gone gray? They're all that way, as far as I can tell. Now you need to survive."

"Sure, but-" I begin then trail off. Something is missing. "What about you?

He laughs. "My brain got better but I'm still a cripple, buddy."

I hadn't thought of that. I wince as the repercussions come down. Of course, his spine is still broken. He can't run, can't fight, he can't leave his mother's basement. It's why 'the Darkness', our shared nickname for the virtual Yangtze fulfillment center, came to mean so much to him. It was his only way out

Shit.

"Where do you think I'm going to go?" he goes on. "I'm busting for a piss but is my mom going to come down and take me to the toilet? More likely she'll come down and tear out my throat. She's banging on the basement door even now, she's been at it all night, her and a few dozen others. It sounds like they're pulling up the floor overhead."

What the-" I start. "She's turned too?"

I can hear him smiling. God, I love Carl. That fit, handsome, paraplegic bastard. His mom's upstairs coming for him and he's been calling me all this time, trying to save me. "Of course she is, and it's not to bring me a batch of midnight cookies."

I get to my feet, deciding instantly. I look around the room taking stock of what I'll need. "Where are you? I have your address here somewhere. I'll come to get you. I'll get you out."

He laughs softly. I picture the only Carl I've ever seen images of on Google, the dark young man on the dive platform or the medal stand, full of confidence and in his prime, ready to take on the Olympics and the world and make them his own. "Don't be silly, Ethan. You'll never get here in time. The basement door's been iffy for years; it won't take much longer for them to get down here. They'll come through the floor in a day or two anyway. Don't worry about me, I have a syringe here and I know what to do with it."

The blood drains from my head and I go dizzy. I'm still looking around my room urgently like there might be an answer here when there cannot be.

"What do you mean, you have a syringe?"

"It's all right," he says. "Sit down. Are you somewhere safe, Ethan? Are you in your room, are you barricaded in?"

"I don't-" I begin, then look at the door. I can hear them thumping faintly from downstairs. "I'm in my building. I locked the front door, but there are probably hundreds of them out there now. I don't-"

"Block up your room," he says. "Do it now. Wedge the bed against the door, wedge something against that if you can. They're not smart but they're persistent, and you're in no state to take to the streets again. You need to lie low and get your head straight, Ethan, if you're going to get through this. Do you hear me?"

"I-"

"Deadbolt the door and wedge it in. Use everything you have. Do it right now. I'll still be here. Put the phone on speaker and do it now. I want to hear it happening."

I take the phone from my head and stare at it blankly for a moment. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

"Ethan!"

I remember and click the button for the speaker. I hear the distant sound of Carl's home somewhere in the South filter into my New York apartment. There are his breathing and the sound of a dehumidifier, sucking damp out of the cement basement that's been his prison cell since he fell.

I shake myself and look to the bed, then the door, and start moving to bring them together. The bed drags noisily out of the recessed wall. I push its headboard flush against the door. The headboard has metal slats that reach three quarters up the height of the door, so even if one of the zombies gets in the house and successfully punches a hole through the door, they'll still have to get over the slats.

"I've done the bed," I call to Carl. "I'm getting the desk."

"Good. Don't damage your computer, you're going to need that."

I lift my monitor carefully off, then drag the desk to the tail of the bed Laid end on, it fits almost perfectly between the bed and the wall, wedged into place. It's going nowhere. They'd have to bend the bed's metal frame or push it through the wall to get in, and I don't see either of those happening. That's more force than human bodies can muster.

I drop to the floor by the side of the bed and start to shake.

"I've done it," I say to the phone, turning it off speaker mode and holding it back to my ear

"Good, good. Now you need to relax. We can talk about something that matters. matters.

I laugh beside myself. I scratch on the wooden floor with a fingernail.

"It went fine. It went great. She liked the final panel in my comic book. You remember?"

Of course, he remembers. I showed it to him first, two days earlier, and it sent him into a monumental twinge, but still, he stayed on the line to tell me how beautiful he thought it was.

That's the kind of friend he is. When all my other friends left, or just drifted away, because staying in touch with someone in 'my condition' was just too damn hard, or too slow, Carl showed what true friendship is

He was there last night, texting me when I collapsed in the restroom, overcome by all the stimulation on my date with Talia. I'd thought for sure I was going to die at the table, face-first in my grey Poupon soup. Then he sent me a text that made it all seem different, that gave me the strength to get back in there and survive my date.

"She came back here afterward," I say, shy now. "I didn't expect that, but…" I trail off. "She's gone now. The note she left, Carl, it's mad."

"Call me Robert," he says. "That's my name."

More tears poured down my cheeks. I try to gulp them back. "I know. OK, Robert."

"Are you crying? Come on, old buddy. Pull yourself together. It's not the end of the world. Just the end of most of it. You said she's gone?"

I laugh. I rub my eyes. "I don't know. I think so, yes, she's gone. She left a note, it said 'Good luck with the zombies'. She was talking about the comic, but Christ, look at this s**t, Carl. I mean Robert. Where the hell is she now?"

"Probably running halfway down Manhattan, if she's not already infected. Calm your a*s down, Ethan. What are you going to do for her now? She'll either get safe or she won't, on her own. You're lucky you're alive. Do you know how many people out there who's immune? Do you have any idea?"

No idea. I didn't see any. Maybe her?"

"Maybe her. On top of that, there's me and there's you. I've not seen any others, Ethan, not any at all. Every live video feed I saw got corrupted in seconds because the people filming it were infected. It's the most virulent thing ever. It's like that cat in the box, the second you open the box to see if it's alive or not, it drags you in so you're inside the box too. There's no time to report out.

I laugh through my tears. "Schrodinger's cat. I don't think that's how it works."

"Whatever. Listen, Ethan, it can't be a coincidence that it's me and you, and maybe her. Did she have the same condition as us, did she have a coma then recover like us?"

I wince as I try to recall. "She said she burned out. I don't think she was twingeing though. I don't think so."

"Well, maybe you'll find out. Perhaps proximity to you conferred immunity. I'm pretty sure we're immune, Ethan because whatever is hitting them now hit us a year ago. Do you follow? Some lesser strain hit us, but it acted like a vaccine, so now we're safe. We went blank, we died multiple times, but they brought us back. Maybe if we hadn't been brought back, we'd be like these others out on the streets now. We got saved."

I shudder. I'm grasping at straws now.

"You're alive," is all I can say.

He laughs. "I am."

We sit in silence for a while. My room comes back to me. I look up at my Banksy print on the wall, the guy throwing the flowers. I wonder, is Banksy a zombie now too? Is Space Invader?

"I can come for you," I say. "I'll get a nice car and make it there in a day. I'll drive all night."

"That's a lyric from a song isn't it?"

"Stop it! Tell me your address and I'll come."

"No, you won't. Why in hell would you come here Ethan, to see my bitten out corpse laid up in a b****y cradle stinking of methadone and s**t? I'll not have that. I won't be alive by then, Ethan. Understand that. Accept that, and we can move on. I've downloaded everything I can think of to your computer, plus a few extras I've had the time to come up with. The fulfillment center will be a bit different. I think it's going to be pretty important to you, going forward, or for a while at least. There are some new routines. You'll figure it out. Until then we can talk."

I sag. "I want to come."

"I want you to come too. Don't you think I'd love that if you could come charging in now and rescue me from this mess? But you can't. It's not going to happen, so let's move on. We've never even spoken before, have we? Hi, Ethan, I'm Robert. I'm a freak just like you. We might be the last two people alive in the world."

I laugh. "Hi, Robert, I'm Ethan. It's good to meet you. I don't want you to die."

"So tell me about the date," he says. "Tell me everything."

I do, about the twinges and the conversation, about the wild rush back to my apartment and the pain coming free, and in the end, he sighs contentedly. "I'm happy for you, Ethan. It sounds great."

I smile through tears, because yes, it was.

"You'll need to hang on to that memory, Ethan. You will, won't you? Talia might be alive out there. You might be able to find her. Hold on to that. You'll put out some flags and let her know where you are. You'll figure this thing out and make it right. I know you will. You've always been resourceful, and smart, and so damn charming."

I laugh

"It's good you can laugh. Don't forget that. Don't you dare feel guilty? I want it to be you, not me. You're a good man. You're the best friend I've ever had. I want you to get good things out of this and become better for it. There's always room to grow. When I lost my legs and I knew I could never dive anymore, I just about gave up. Then I found this weird guy who'd built a weird world on Minecraft, and he welcomed me in. He loaned me a diviner and we fulfilled stupid orders together. I saw the world through him, and I'm still seeing the world through him now. Ethan, you're going to be OK."

I find I'm gulping in the air.

"Get yourself solid. Research the stuff I sent. Find a safer place than your apartment, a bank, or something downtown, somewhere this girl Talia can find and start clearing the streets around. Make a base and she'll be drawn to you, Ethan, if you're offering safety and something worth having. That way you'll find the others too, the ones like us who are lost somewhere across the country and don't have each other like we've had each other. I know you will. You'll make good things out of this."

I gulp back tears. I can hear the thumping through the phone getting louder.

"She's almost through the door isn't she?"

"She is. It's all right. I have the syringe loaded with my methadone, enough of a dose to knock me right out. I won't feel a thing. It's better this way Ethan. I wouldn't stand a chance on the road. I was never good in a wheelchair."

I sob into the phone. "How long?"

I don't know. A minute, maybe five? I've already injected it." His voice starts to go woozy. "You'll stay on the line, won't you? You'll wait with me."

"Of course I will. Robert, I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. You're here with me. We're in the fulfillment center, running it together. I have legs again, Ethan. We're keeping up with the orders. We're one step ahead."

The tears are coming freely. I hate this. I want to reach through the phone and save him. I want to save my friend, but I can't.

"Goodbye, Ethan," he says fuzzily. There is a crash through the line, and his mother must have breached the basement.

"Robert," I say urgently. "Robert."

"She's coming. I won't feel a thing. The Darkness is so close. I'm going to turn the phone off now Ethan. I don't want you to hear this. Goodbye."

The phone clicks dead. The sound from his distant basement fades at once. My last link to Carl is severed.

I lean back against the bed and cry, curled around the phone like it's a dagger thrust through my belly.

CHAPTER 4 MAYOR

I come back to myself and it's bright still, with early spring light glowing in through the skylight right onto my face. I don't hear the people downstairs, they're not banging on the door still. I look up at the sky and wonder if it could all truly be a dream.

I don't have a headache, no twinge at all. That is a wonder I can't help but be glad for. At least Carl had that too, in his final hours. At least we got to speak.

I look at my phone. It's not even mid-day, I guess I slept for only an hour or two. In the corner, there are no signal bars, but the Wi-Fi symbol is still there. I click through to the Internet but the pipeline is empty and I get missing server messages. I click through each of my tabs on the phone methodically, social media, email, news, and they all erase themselves away.

Perhaps I'll never see them again. Pushing the back button in the browser doesn't recapture them. The Internet is gone.

I double click the button and the phone pings.

"Hi, Io," I tell the screen. Io is the name I've given my phone's generic AI assistant. Io and Ethan, it was a kind of lame joke, I suppose.

"Hello, Ethan," she says.

"My friend just died. His name was Carl."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"That sounds difficult."

I laugh and put the phone down. I need to think clearly. I get to my feet and go to the window."Me too.

I get to my feet and go to the window.

The street is filled with people. Seeing them is like an ice-water shower. There are hundreds of them, all gray-faced with bright white eyes looking up at me. It chills my blood. They don't groan or rasp, they just stare. I open the window and I can hear them breathing, like a lapping tide. They jostle and sway like bits of wreckage caught on a wave.

I hold my hand out and their ice-white eyes track me silently. It makes me feel dizzy and I step back. I drop to the bed and the springs crunch comfortingly. Talia's note is still there.

GOOD LUCK WITH ZOMBIES

It's a good joke.

I try to adjust. My art doesn't matter now. Nothing matters, now that everyone is dead. There's no sound from the city; no rescue helicopters are coming, because they're all gone. Carl saw it, and it's over, an apocalypse to end us all.

Talia though may be alive.

I think about that. Her skin wasn't gray in the morning when I work up. She wrote that note and left as a normal person. Now I have to find her. That thought gets me up and moving.

I need to prepare. My shoulder throbs where the indicator lever hit me, so I'll deal with that. I pull back my shirt to study the wound. It's capped by a stud of dried blood, which I nudge away. The hole beneath is puckered and sealed already, with only a slight red ring of inflammation. I rub it gently; it feels OK. I rotate my arm and it works well enough. I put two sticky bandages on top and call it a day.

Next, I go to my computer on the floor and swizz the mouse. The soft chime as it wakes up comforts me, telling me the power grid isn't down, though it probably will be soon.

I open the shared drive with Carl and survey the contents he downloaded. It was less than a gigabyte of stuff before, mostly texture maps and crafting patterns for the Darkness, but now it's packed to the gills and close to its hundred-gigabyte limit.

I scroll through the contents and find a mish-mash of HTML webpages, pdfs, videos, and books about the 'prepper' lifestyle; people who spent their free time preparing for a coming cataclysm.

Judging from the titles they are mostly about basic survival; securing sources of food and water, finding and reinforcing shelter, sourcing weapons, and using them in combat against 'hostiles', sourcing power and fuel, and using these to employ vehicles, computers, walkie-talkies and so on. I notice that preppers like the word 'source' a lot.

I go to the desk and pluck out five thumb-drives, which I use all the time to back up my art. I slot them into the computer and set the contents downloading. The prepper Bible needs to be portable.

The computer says it'll take at least an hour. I slump back against the bed, and a sound comes from beyond the door as if in response.

I freeze. I look. The door is sealed but the sound is still coming, a wheezing right outside my room. Is that…?

My blood goes cold. I listen to the low susurrus of breath rise and fall like one giant lung. I get up quietly and go to the door, then lean over the bed and put my eye to the spyglass

Holy s**t. They are in the corridor, packed five wide back to the stairs, so tightly they can't move, like wieners in a vacuum-packed casing. I jerk away. I back-pedal across the room until I hit the wall.

I'm trapped.

XXXXXXXX

I will make green tea.

It's gratifying that the kettle still works. I spoon green dust that smells like freshly mown grass into the cup and pour boiling water atop it. The smell of bitter tannins wafts into the room, and I hold the cup in my shaking hand. There is solace in such routines, even though my brain may no longer need them to survive. They've saved me before, and they can save me now.

I'm barely even thirsty, but I sip anyway. I try to think about practicalities objectively, one at a time. I look at my phone; it's 10:33. Plenty of daylight left. Wherever Talia is it can't be that far.

I bring up my phone and click the map app. My geo-location still works, though the map it's built upon doesn't refresh. I am a blue dot in the midst of the gray blur of New York, pointing southeast. Good to know.

I start making up a pack, adding my laptop, a kitchen knife, a water bottle, some clothes. What else do I need? I add my just-completed comic, Zombies of New York, to the USB download tray, plus the latest build of the Yangtze fulfillment center. I add my phone and laptop chargers like I'm packing for a trip.

The computer chimes, signaling the transfer is finished. I wrap the USBs in plastic kitchen wrap then tuck them into my pocket. I look at my bag and think about where I'm going to go, where Talia might be. I don't know anything about her, not really. Her folks live in upstate New York somewhere, but that could be anywhere. She lives in Brooklyn, but that could be anywhere too.

The computer blanks out abruptly. My phone chimes to say it's been disconnected.

The power's gone out. I toss the keyboard and mouse away, useless now. There's only one place I can go where she might conceivably be. Sir Carl. It helps that I'm still the mayor.

XXXXXXXXX

I became mayor of Sir Carl only a few days back; a feature of a geo-location app on my phone, in partnership with the coffee shop's management. I turned up often enough, and regularly enough, as measured by my phone's GPS position, that I beat out anyone else, and was rewarded with my mayorhood and a few free coffees to hand out to my 'constituents'; other users of the same app.

MAYOR

The word had revolved on my phone screen, twinkling glossily. It almost brought on a twinge itself. Baby steps, the doctor had said. Becoming mayor felt like a baby victory.

It feels like another world now, that moment when I'd surveyed the low bustle of hipsters I had come to rule, spread out on mismatching vintage sofas and benches. They wore skinny jeans and neckbeards and plaited ponytails, all clutching phones like the sawn-off hilts of swords in a war. I suppose I looked much like them, a 28-year old artist with dreams of becoming relevant, though I'd become their leader.

I handed out my free coffees to them in a playful way, back when that had seemed such a big step forward. I made one of them hop on his way to pick up a skinny latte. I made another grovel over text message for a chocolate Carlie. It was almost too much fun, threatening the onset of another crippling twinge.

Then Talia came.

I shouldn't be thinking about this now. I rub my eyes because I need to move. But I need to get my head straight, too. It's a huge deal that the twinges have stopped. I need to come to grips with it somehow, with what it means for me, and that's tied up with Talia in some way I don't yet understand. So, I sit on the bed, and I think back to Talia.

I'd been doing my best to ignore her for months. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, though that in itself put me at risk of twinges every time I saw her. It was also the way she talked to customers. The way she talked to me, when she served me, though I tried to avoid it. She was just nice. Decent. Kind. Always patient. Slightly flirtatious, yes, sure, OK, but beneath that, compassionate.

"So you're the new mayor, huh?" she asked

I looked to the side.

Shit.

She was standing right there. We'd never spoken before without the coffee bar between us. Immediately my heart started to race. She was some kind of Afro-Caribbean blend with a French touch to her eyes, with these lovely dark ringlets of hair that circled down her cheeks.

Shit.

"We haven't had one for a while," she went on. "The spec is set pretty high."

I put the phone down and smiled, belying the terror I felt. "It's the culmination of all my plans."

She snorted. "You are in here a lot. It would probably be me, for all the shifts I do, but they don't let staff use the app."

I shrugged, far more confidently than I felt. "I'll bring it up with the council."

She laughed. Her eye-whites sparkled. "So what are you doing here every day, writing a novel?"

I followed her eye-line to my laptop computer on the table, open on a page full of text.

"Ah, yeah," I said, "it's not a novel. It's storyboarded for a graphic novel. I make them here then I do the art at home."

Her eyes lit up a shade brighter. "Really? I'm into comics. What's it about?"

My smile went wry. "Zombies."

"Ha. That's cool. Do they run?"

I laughed, then rein it in. This was the closest I'd come to flirting since the coma, and my head was already starting to twinge with the pressure. "They do. Do you want to see some panels?"

"Panels is like pages? Sure."

I leaned to the laptop, swizzed the word processor screen away, and brought up my latest work, the zombie tower in Times Square.

Her jaw dropped a little. That and mayor made it a truly great day.

"You are kidding me?"

I went all bashful. "No, it's mine. It's the penultimate panel I'm brainstorming what to do with the last one."

She leaned over my shoulder and studied the screen closer. It was a view of New York from high up, around the 30 th floor of the Chrysler building, but everything was destructed fitting the post-apocalypse; all cracks and weeds and toppled skyscrapers with leathery corpses strung on telephone wires.

The zombies were there too, heaped in their contorted tower at the Times Square intersection. Drawing it had laid me up in bed for a day. I could barely move for migraine-twinges and thinking I was going to die. It was worth it though.

"This is amazing. But what's going on?" Her breath touched my neck as she leaned closer. My pulse raced. "What are they trying to get at?"

I swallowed despite my dry throat and spat out words. "That's the question. At this point all the humans are dead, so it's just zombies left. You'd think they'd roam around mindlessly with no brains left, but they stack up like this. I'm not sure if I should give the reason for it in the last panel, or sort of leave it open."

She leaned back. "OK, like a cliff hanger. So do you know what they're climbing for?"

"Yeah. It's not aliens or anything. They're not climbing up to the mother ship."

She chuckled. I should have stopped there, I knew it, following my doctor's advice. But I didn't. The becoming mayor had emboldened me, and why not?

"I'll show you if you like," I said. "I'll be here tomorrow. I come in here on most days."

"I know."

There was a bashful quiet. Of course, I'd noticed her before, done my best not to notice her, in fact, but I had no notion if I'd registered on her radar. We'd never talked apart from coffee orders, and I wasn't supposed to be talking to her then. It could have killed me. I should have just shut up

"Dinner," I said instead. "I'll show you at dinner tomorrow night. There's a great modern French spot nearby, they do logarithmic art on the walls and they have a cat that sings for its supper. My treat. I'll show you the panel. You render judgment."

Her left eyebrow raised a fraction. "A date? I suppose I was asking for this."

"I'm the one asking. I think it'll be fun.

She laughed. "Points for opportunism, then. What if I say I have a boyfriend?"

"Then you'll have to buy the finished comic yourself. No free peeks at the last page."

She laughed again, and her bright eyes narrowed, appraising me. "Well, you seem OK. No scurvy, rickets, nothing like that. It's a deal. Give me your phone

I handed it over solemnly. She tapped on it deftly then handed it back. "I'm not in here tomorrow," she said, "but we can have dinner. The cat better sing. I want good logarithms."

"Only the best."

She raised her eyebrow a little higher. I wasn't entirely sure I knew what a logarithm was, so I hoped she wouldn't ask. I saw it on a flyer.

"Talia," she said. "That's my name."

"Ethan. It means love in Latin. My parents were hippies."

"Ethan the mayor, OK. I'll see you."

She turned and left. There were other people's novels to check on, probably, and my constituents to serve. My heart was racing. A date! ( in a zombie apocalypse)

Sitting now on the bed, I flick through my phone to her number. There it is. Talia. I should've thought of it earlier.

I hit the button and it rings…

of his kids comes bounding down the stairs, Jemima or Janiqua, her ice-white eyes pinning me like a bug to the door.

CHAPTER 7 ZOMBIE FORTCHAPTER 6 JEMIMA/JANIQUA

No answer.

A minute goes by, and then another while it rings, and I'm thinking to myself that maybe she lost her phone, or maybe she was infected the minute she stepped out of the apartment, or maybe she just doesn't want to talk to me, or maybe she's currently running for her life and…

The phone dials off and shunts me to a voice mail. I hang up and dial again.

The phone rings.

I try to imagine where she is, what she's doing until abruptly something clicks, and I hear a second of what might be her voice or some kind of static ghost, and I'm just starting to shout something back when the line goes dead.

"What the hell?"

I look at the screen. My phone has betrayed me. Was that her voice? The signal is gone: zero bars. I hold it up and 'scan' for a signal, but nothing comes.

"s**t," I curse, and go to the window. They're all out there still. They love it as I lean out of the window, and hold up the phone to the sky like I'm trying to draw down lightning, but still nothing.

Zero bars.

"s**t s**t s**t!"

I pace around my room, making them creak hungrily in the hall outside. I look at the phone and click dial and listen to nothing on the other end. Click, nothing, click, nothing.

Was that her? Is she alive? Does she need me, even now?

"Shiiiit!"

It makes me crazy

I start doing crazy things.

I smash the glass out of my window and toss mugs and plates down at the ocean of gray heads, but that doesn't do a damn thing. Mugs bounce off their heads in shards, and plates, no matter how hard I Frisbee them down, just buckle whichever one they hit for a few seconds.

I toss my computer monitor. I won't need it anymore, with the power out. It's heavy, edged, and hits a man on the head corner-first, staving in his skull. There's a nasty crunch and he goes down. Then he comes right back up.

That dampens the crazy for a moment. I feel nauseous, looking down at his buckled skull. He's looking right up at me, with his right eye bugging out. He still looks like a person despite the gray skin and the massive crumple in his forehead.

I gag a little.

"s**t," I whisper, between spitting out the foul taste of green tea. He's dressed like a salesman with his tie neatly knotted at the throat. Now black blood discolors his white shirt.

It makes me dizzy. I just tried to kill someone. It doesn't seem to matter that he's already dead, or infected, or whatever, I still feel sick to my stomach. I don't know anything about what he is. Could be they'll all recover in a day or two, and I just tried to kill a human.

But Talia's out there

The nauseating wave of shock and horror hits that hard truth and breaks. I can't let worries like that stop me. Talia has to be alive. I have to make finding her and getting safe together my top priority, no matter the cost.

Thinking that simplifies things. Carl said wait it out, but he's not around anymore. He didn't hear Talia's voice on the phone line. It's time to go.

I grab my bag, survey my room a final time, then move the chair beneath the skylight, push it wide open, and climb out onto the roof.

It's chilly but sunny up here, kneeling on red sloping slates that are thankfully dry, so I'm not slipping on moss. The rippling crowd below start to breathe harder as they see me. To the south, the smoking skyline of Manhattan rises over the blocks of apartments. Still, there are no jets or helicopters in the air.

Nobody is coming. There's still no signal on my phone

I move, sliding awkwardly up to the roof's sloping crest, where a line of stacked ceramic tiles runs like a monorail. I hold onto it and pad left along the roof, looking down into the square back yards behind each house.

Three houses over I see the first parked motorbike, a black and chrome beast which is surely more than I can handle on a first outing. I've never ridden a bike before, plus there's no skylight into the garret for easy access, so I slide on. Two buildings further on there's a pastel green moped on a kickstand, much more my style, and a skylight in the roof.

I try to pry it open and find it's already unlocked. I peer in checking for people, but there are none. It's a rec room with a drum set in one corner and some workout weights in the other. I dangle in from the skylight frame, then drop to the carpeted floor with a soft thump.

Breaking.

Remembering something from a movie I saw, I go to the weights. The dumbbell bars look just about right, and after I slide the weights off one, it fits in my hand perfectly as a club. I creep to the door and creak it open.

The corridor beyond is mercifully empty. The house smells like toasted bagels, and there's a large poster of Bob Marley's face on the wall. I tread lightly to the stairs and start down. The inhabitants like flowery wallpaper. I pass by four bedrooms, two for kids with their names written on hanging signs.

Jemima

Janiqua

It's not an apartment block then, but a single-family. They must be rich. I hope they're all out. I pad down with my senses on high alert, straining for any sound. By the ground floor, my heart is going crazy.

y sound. By the ground floor, my heart is going crazy. I pad over the tiled corridor toward the back, where there's a classy kitchen with a polished granite breakfast bar, bright plastic stools, and a full-length glass door through which I can see the moped in the yard. I start toward it, then see someone standing off to the left by the sinks, with his back to me.

"Uh," I say, involuntarily.

It's a guy in a bathrobe with long dreadlocks. He turns, and I see he's wearing blue pajamas beneath the open robe. His skin is a gray tan and his eyes are ice-white.

An awkward moment passes.

An awkward moment passes. "I'll just," I start, perhaps intending to finish with 'let myself out,' but he doesn't give me the chance. With his robe fluttering behind him he charges.

"s**t," I mutter and try to get my dumbbell club up in the air. He hits me before I can bring it down and slams me back against the half-open kitchen door, which crashes shut with a wall-shaking slam.

I try to bounce away but his weight pins me and his outstretched fingers claw off my hoodie. His mouth is open and for a second his cheek hits my cheek and I freak out completely, spinning a frantic elbow into the side of his head.

The force knocks him down to his knees, and I leap away and kick him in the head, the same way I'd kick out at a rat, not wanting to touch it. I connect and his head whacks to the side but it does nothing but slow him briefly, because he keeps coming

"Goddamn s**t," I curse because now my foot hurts and I'm penned in and all I have is this damn metal club.

I bring it down on his shoulder, too squeamish to go for the head, and with a horrible c***k, his collarbone crumples in. He doesn't seem to care though, and rises to his feet smoothly, leaning in.

I drop my weight low and shoulder him in the breastbone as hard as I can. It's enough to send him tumbling into the bright stools at the bar. There's another c***k as his skull bounces off the sharp stone edge, then there's blood pouring down his back and spreading across the floor.

My legs go weak. He's on his knees and I kick him in the chest, driving his head back against the marble again. He manages to snag the leg of my jeans with his hand, pulling me off balance. I bring the bar down on his forearm with all my strength. The heavy metal snaps through the bones like they were made of Graham crackers, and his arm distends like a marshmallow.

I feel like I might puke. He barely notices. He leans against his broken arm while trying to get to his feet, and instead bends the bones back the other way against the floor. I gag as his now-useless appendage flops like a fish. He looks at it, pushes off the stub of forearm bone so hard it pierces the skin and blood starts coming out there too, and gets onto his feet.

He's like a Terminator. I kick him pathetically in the thigh and hit him again with the bar in the other shoulder. Another c***k rings out as his other collarbone snaps, and now both his arms sag uselessly at his sides. He gets to his feet with them dangling weirdly in front of him.

Shit s**t s**t, this is too messed up. I want to go back to my room. I notice he's wearing fluffy red slippers with faces on. It's too much. I back up frantically and he follows. His blood is everywhere now, dribbling down his neck and spilling out past the white knob of bone sticking through his forearm, puddling across the dark floor tiles.

I grab the kitchen door and plunge back through it, slamming it behind me.

The hall beyond is lit by a half-light cast through the glass by the front door. I stand with my back to the door, panting and holding tight to the handle, waiting for him to try and force it open. Of course, he doesn't. He thumps and shuffles against the door like a zombie. His blood leaks underneath. He hasn't got any functioning hands to open the door with. He hasn't got the brain for it either.

Still, I don't let go of the handle, not even while I puke, not until one

I can't do this.

I let go of the door handle and dart to the left as the little girl comes around the bottom of the stairs. I barrel through another door without a second to think and slam it behind me with a loud bang.

How many goddamn dead people in one house?

Their living room lies before me, with two sofas facing each other, a big-screen TV at one end and a faux fireplace at the other, a coffee table, a big piece of Orwellian-looking art on the wall, and scrabbling around in the middle are two more infected.

Shit!

Jemima/Janiqua thumps at the door behind me, her dad thumps in the kitchen, and now I'm looking at the mom and the other kid, and it's horrible. I should have stayed in the goddamned kitchen.

They have crusty dark blood around their mouths, spattered with bits of the purple and pink gut. The mess of it spreads to their throats, their hands, their forearms, dressed in pajamas both. The girl has a weird yellow cartoon character on hers, and there's a big splodge of quivery meat right on the creature's stupid yellow face. Their dark hair clings in ratty bands to their chins.

"Oh God," I murmur.

They look up at me. I crane my neck to see what they've been eating. On the floor, fouling the taupe carpet with its well-chewed red and black viscera lies what looks like half a tortoiseshell cat.

I puke a little in my mouth; it's a bad day for acid reflux. Now I see the clumps of Carl and black fur sticking to their cheeks. Oh lord, they've been eating their pet. They rear up and come for me, and I start moving. I get one of the sofas between them and me, and they circle after me, thankfully both coming the same way, and I go around ahead of them.

Shitting ridiculous is all I can think as we run around a second time, then a third, with them straining to reach me. I have to time it just right so they're both almost on me, or I risk having them come around both sides at once and pincer me.

I scour the room for a way out. The dumbbell bar hangs slackly in my hand, but I'm not doing that again. There's a dining room stretching out into a conservatory beyond the sofa, overlooking the yard, but I have just a few seconds lead time on them, not enough to open the door if it's locked.

I go around the sofa and they follow.

"Wait for a second," I bark at them, but it has no effect. "Jemima, Janiqua, mom, just wait a damn second!"

"Wait for a second," I bark at them, but it has no effect. "Jemima, Janiqua, mom, just wait a damn second!"

We hit the fifth time around.

"Arrgh!" I shout and break for the dining room. They follow. I hit the door with time enough to try the handle, but of course, it's locked, then I'm back to circling, this time around the gorgeous redwood dining table. They clatter after me and I pull a chair out and tip it in their path.

The mom hits it hard in the shin and goes down, then the kid follows. It takes them a second to get back up. I use that time to throw another chair at them.

"Sit down!" I shout at them. "Just take a goddamned seat!"

The chair bounces off the mom's shoulder and she falls back, collapsing on her daughter. I throw another chair and another, shouting inane one-liners like, "Have a break, take a load off!" until all eight chairs are resting on them or either side of them.

A brainwave strikes and I shove the table sideways over them, pressing hard against the chairs and locking them skewed against the thick mahogany dresser against the wall, with the mom and daughter tangled up in the dresser against the wall, with the mom and daughter tangled up in them. I stop and pant. I drop and look under the table. For now, they're tangled in each other's limbs and the chairs, reaching out toward me still, but any second they'll break free.

I run to the living room, snatch up the coffee table and carry it back. I slide it under the table and press it up against the chairs as well. I drag the green sofa over too, pressing it flush against the head of the table and bracing in the chairs. I get the TV and press it in tightly above the coffee table. I throw cushions from the sofa to cover them up.

I stop and pant some more in the middle of the now-empty living room. I just made a zombie fort. The furry remnants of the cat stain the carpet by my feet. My dumbbell bar is there and I pick it up. The fort makes creaking sounds, but I don't think they can get free. Maybe they never will.

I creep past them to the back door. It's made of glass, and there's no key apparent. I cover my eyes and hit the glass with the bar. It bounces off and sends a jarring reverberation up my arm, so I hit it harder with a stabbing motion as I've seen on TV. It smashes. I open my eyes and pound, c***k, and kick the rest of the glass through.

I step outside.

Now I'm outside.

I look into the kitchen, where the father with the broken collarbones is pressing up against the back door. His face leaves b****y smears on the glass. I can see his snapped right collarbone jutting up underneath his robe. I turn to the side and throw up again, hot and acrid. Goddamn.

Then I go to the moped. It's a beauty, sitting there on the brushed concrete, bright and limpid as a lily pad. Beside it, there's a tiny work shed, a low bank of withered tomato plants, and a big plastic trunk spilling over with kids' toys. I go to the yard gate, slide open the bolts, and duck my head out into the backstreet beyond.

Empty. That is a delicious sight. The alley runs left and right in cracked asphalt, at one end meeting Willis and the other turning onto 143 rd .

I duck my head back in and close the gate as quietly as I can. Probably it's only a matter of time before they find me. I dart back to the moped and pat down its front, finding the ignition keyhole right at the top of the front wheel's upright axle, set within an elegant walnut bevel.

Of course, there is no key. I don't have a clue how to hot-wire it. At the kitchen window, I press my face up close and look inside for the key. I scan the walls for little hooks, the sideboards for little dishes. The father's face thumps against the glass in front of me, obscuring my view. What an arse.

I slide over and keep looking until soon enough I spot the most likely candidate; a papier-mâché soap dish in the middle of the breakfast bar, within which a tangle of keys and chains lie.

The idea comes easily.

I tip up the yard toy box and carry it back into the living room. With one hand I hold up the box, and with the other, I open the door to the corridor beyond. Little Jemima/Janiqua is standing there looking up at me.

I put the box on her head like I'm cheating at a carney game; dropping hoops over spikes in the back of a cruddy stall, then press down. Her legs give out beneath my weight and she crumples to the floor. I set the box on top of her and weight it down with the TV stand. She thumps but she's trapped.

I open the front door and lookout. Hello, horde. They are crammed into the right, still staring up at the roof of my building where they last spotted me. I look only long enough to see there's a bit of clear road between me and them, in front of the library, and maybe that's enough.

I jog back inside, open the kitchen door, then run back. The dad lumbers awkwardly after me, his arms swaying like pendulums. I dash out the front door and he follows, out into the street in full view of the horde, where I wait for him to catch up.

Crazy. The horde notices me and members start to peel off at a sprint. Seconds remain before they hit me, and the father's still barely clear of the door. I run at him then dart to the side, vaulting over the low green fence and cutting in behind him for the door.

I make it with seconds to spare and slam the door shut. They hammer against it and I run on, I've probably got moments only, so finding the key is essential. In the kitchen, I snatch up the papier-mâché tray and splay the keys out onto the breakfast bar.

Smeared blood and crushed cornflake crumbs mingle on the countertop. I pick through the contents rapidly; house keys, a bottle top, car keys, a little sculpture in colored clay, then keys on a lime green fob the same color as the moped. It has to be the one, so I snatch it up, try the kitchen door, and thank Buddha it opens. The thumping gets louder behind me and I sail through into the yard, closing the door behind me.

I straddle the moped and waddle it to the yard gate. I fumble to get the key into the handsome slot. I bumble to open the yard-gate, backing up the moped to let it swing inward. I turn the ignition key, and just as a resounding c***k comes from the front of the house, the engine revs into life.

It is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. I squeeze the handle for gas hard and the moped takes out from under me like a rocket, jetting off and throwing itself forward into the alley and me flat onto my back.

It is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. I squeeze the handle for gas hard and the moped takes out from under me like a rocket, jetting off and throwing itself forward into the alley and me flat onto my back.

The glass fractures like ice cracking. Dizzily I watch them, beating at the glass kitchen door just yards away.

They look so sad. Their faces and eyes are just dead. I feel like crying, that so many of them have become like this and there's nothing I can do but run.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, because I can't help them, and I'm going to leave the little girl in her box, maybe forever. The mom and daughter could stay in that fort until they rot and become trickles of mess on the carpet like their poor dead cat. The father might wander limp-armed around his own home with all his family lost forever, because of me.

Then a shard of glass skitters out of the door and hits the ground next to my face, and I get moving again. The glass door cracks outward and the flood pours through, drawing b****y stripes down their faces on the jagged glass.

I jerk to my feet and leap through the gate, slamming it behind me. The moped is thanked God still revving on its side, and I pull it up, get on tentatively, and squeeze the handle just hard enough to sneak a squirt of gas into its firing chambers.

It picks up. I stay on. Together we spurt off in an amateurish zigzag down the alley, followed by a crash and a tidal flow of people seconds later.

Jesus  Christ.