No Man's Land
1008 Words
The moaning sound got louder as they moved down the alley, and Marcus stopped at the next corner, holding up a hand.
"Wait," he said. "Listen."
Reyes crouched beside him, rifle up. "That's not a small group. That's a crowd."
Priya leaned around the corner, just enough to see. She pulled back fast. "It's not a crowd. It's a line. Like they're walking in some kind of formation."
Marcus looked for himself. Down the cross street, maybe thirty infected moved in a loose column, shoulder to shoulder, moaning low and steady, all facing the same direction. Not toward Marcus and the others. Away from them, toward the sound of gunfire still cracking somewhere behind the checkpoint.
"They're not hunting us," Marcus said. "They're heading toward the noise."
"Sound draws them," Priya said. "That tracks with what I saw on the train. The ones that turned went straight for whoever was screaming loudest."
"Good," Reyes said. "Means we stay quiet, we stay alive. Come on, there's a service road two blocks up that'll get us around this mess."
They backtracked and cut through a parking garage, moving fast in the dark between rows of abandoned cars. Halfway through, Marcus's foot caught something soft, and he looked down to see a body slumped against a tire. Not infected. A soldier, throat cut clean, weapon missing.
"Reyes," Marcus said quietly.
Reyes crouched next to the body, checked the tags. "This isn't one of ours from the checkpoint. Different unit patch." He looked around at the shadows between the cars. "There's more."
He was right. Three more bodies, all soldiers, all killed the same way…not bitten, not torn apart, just cut down clean and left where they fell.
"Infected don't do this," Priya said, crouching by one of the bodies. "This is deliberate. Someone executed these men."
"Or something did," Reyes said. "But nothing I've seen tonight moves like this. This is controlled. Precise."
Marcus felt his stomach turn. "You're saying there's something else out here. Something that isn't infected and isn't us."
Before Reyes could answer, his radio crackled to life, clipped to his vest, the one he hadn't turned off. A voice came through, calm, controlled, nothing like the panic from the checkpoint.
"Unit Seven, radio check. Confirm containment status on Fifth and Larchwood."
Reyes froze. "That's not our command frequency."
"Unit Seven, respond."
Reyes grabbed the radio and killed the volume before it could give away their position.
"That voice wasn't panicked. Everybody else on comms tonight has been screaming.
That guy sounded like he was ordering lunch."
"Different chain of command," Priya said. "Different unit. Whoever's running that channel isn't dealing with the same chaos we are."
Marcus crouched by the nearest body, checking the man's gear out of habit…looking for anything useful, a flashlight, extra rounds.
His hand stopped on a small device clipped to the dead man's belt. Black, compact, a single red light blinking slow and steady.
"What is this?" Marcus said, unclipping it and holding it up.
Reyes took it, turned it over. His face changed. "That's a beacon. Military grade. The kind you plant to mark a location for airstrike coordination."
"Airstrike," Priya repeated. "On a city block full of civilians?"
"On a containment zone," Reyes said. "If command's decided a sector's lost, sometimes the call isn't to send more soldiers.
Sometimes the call is to burn it and start the line further back."
Marcus felt cold. "How do you know that's what this is?"
"Because I've seen the protocol training. Never thought I'd see it in the field." Reyes checked the beacon's light, counting the blink rate under his breath.
"This thing's been active for maybe ten minutes. That means somebody's already called this block in."
"How long do we have?" Marcus said.
"Depends on the aircraft. Could be twenty minutes. Could be two."
Priya stood up fast. "Marcus, how far to Mrs. Hart's house from here?"
"Six, seven blocks."
"Then we need to move now."
They ran, cutting through the rest of the parking garage and out onto a side street that Reyes swore was clear based on checkpoint radio chatter from before his radio went dead to command.
The moaning column of infected had passed further down, drawn off toward the gunfire, leaving the street ahead quiet except for their own footsteps.
"Marcus," Priya said, keeping pace beside him. "The beacon. If they're calling in strikes on containment zones, that means somebody up the chain has already decided some neighborhoods aren't worth saving."
"I heard you the first time."
"I'm saying, if your daughter's sitter's house is in a flagged zone…"
"I know what you're saying." Marcus's voice came out sharper than he meant it. He slowed down, just slightly, and softened. "Sorry. I know. I'm just not leaving without her, flagged zone or not."
"Nobody said leave her," Reyes said. "Said hurry."
They turned onto Mrs. Hart's street and Marcus's chest went tight at what he saw. No fire. No horde. Just a quiet, empty road, porch lights on in a few houses, completely undisturbed, like the rest of the city's collapse hadn't reached this block yet.
"This doesn't feel right," Reyes muttered. "This calm, this late into an outbreak, right next to a flagged containment zone?"
"Maybe it's just lucky," Priya said, though she didn't sound like she believed it.
Marcus was already moving toward Mrs. Hart's porch, taking the steps two at a time, pounding on the door.
"Elena! It's Dad, open up!"
No answer. He pounded again, harder.
"Mrs. Hart! It's Marcus!"
Still nothing. He tried the handle, and it turned easy, unlocked, swinging open into a dark hallway.
"Elena?"
Behind him, Reyes checked the street both directions, rifle up, uneasy. "Marcus. We need to be quick about this."
Marcus stepped inside, calling his daughter's name again, and stopped cold at the sight of Elena's backpack sitting by the stairs, untouched, exactly where she'd leave it after sc
hool.
But the house was silent, and somewhere upstairs, a floorboard creaked under weight that wasn't his own.
- Writer
