Riverside looked nothing like Marcus expected. No barricades. No armed checkpoints. Just quiet streets, a few moving trucks loaded with furniture, and neighbors helping neighbors carry boxes like it was an ordinary moving day instead of the edge of an outbreak zone.
"This doesn't add up," Reyes said, slowing the truck to a crawl as they entered the district's main street. "Where's the panic?"
"Maybe they haven't been hit yet," Osei said from the vehicle behind them over the radio.
"Then why's everybody packing up like they know something's coming?" Marcus asked.
They pulled over near a cluster of people loading a moving van, and Marcus climbed out, approaching carefully with his hands visible, the way he'd learned to approach strangers this past week.
"Excuse me," he said. "We're not
