Chapter 9:The Police Station
710 Words
Andrew moved through the alley at a steady pace, staying in the shadows where the fog was thickest and the visibility worked in his favour rather than against it. He kept his footsteps short and controlled, avoiding broken glass, stepping over an overturned bicycle without slowing down. The distant shuffling had faded two blocks back but he wasn't operating under the assumption that meant anything good. It meant they hadn't found him yet. That was all.
He was beginning to catalogue what he knew, forcing his battered mind into some kind of operational order. The morgue. The 911 call. Waking up in the alley. The pharmacy. Two zombies down. One woman he hadn't been fast enough to save. Mia's voice on a broken radio broadcasting from an unknown location.
The picture forming from those pieces was one he didn't particularly want to look at directly.
He turned a corner and stopped.
At the end of the alley where it opened onto the next street, sitting solid and familiar beneath a functioning blue light, was the fourth precinct station house. The same building he'd walked into and out of hundreds of times. The same steps, the same double doors with the department seal etched into the glass, the same notice board visible through the window with its curling edges and outdated bulletins.
Something loosened in his chest for the first time all night.
He crossed the street quickly, took the steps two at a time, and grabbed the door handle.
It didn't move.
He tried again, pulling harder, then pushing. Locked solid. He pressed his face close to the glass and peered inside. The front desk was empty. Chairs overturned. A phone handset hanging off its cradle, swinging faintly like it had been dropped in a hurry. Papers scattered across the floor. The emergency lighting was on — that deep red backup glow that only activated when main power failed.
Nobody was running to let him in.
He stepped back from the door and stood on the top step, the brief warmth of hope cooling rapidly in the night air.
Then he heard something beneath the wind.
A sound from the far corner of the station's exterior, where the building met the boundary wall and a small alcove of shadow had collected. Quiet and irregular. Unsteady.
Someone crying.
Andrew descended the steps and moved toward it carefully. As he rounded the corner of the alcove he made out a figure — a man, civilian clothes, knees pulled to his chest, back pressed hard into the corner like he was trying to push himself through the brick. Young, maybe mid twenties, face streaked and pale, arms wrapped around himself and shaking with a cold that went beyond the temperature.
Andrew crouched down to his level and kept his voice low and even.
"Hey. Look at me. I'm a police officer." He turned his jacket lapel slightly to show the badge still clipped there. "You're not alone. What's your name?"
The man's eyes found him and something in his expression cracked open like a dam giving way. He scrambled to his feet immediately, grabbing Andrew's jacket sleeve with both hands, words tumbling out in a broken, breathless rush.
"They're gone — I lost them, I don't know where they went, we got separated two streets back and I've been looking but there are those things everywhere and I couldn't —" He stopped, pressing the back of his hand against his mouth, pulling himself back from the edge by force. "My family. I lost my family."
Andrew gripped the man's shoulder firmly. Grounding. "Breathe. How many people are we talking about?"
The man exhaled shakily. "Five of us total. My two brothers — Marcus and Joel. And my mom and dad." His voice fractured on the last two words in a way that needed no explanation. "We were all together and then the screaming started and everyone just ran and I —" He shook his head, unable to finish.
Andrew looked at him steadily. Five people. Separated in an infested street grid in the middle of the night with no communication and no safe house.
It was a bad set of odds.
He didn't say that.
"What's your name?" he asked instead.
- Writer
