Chapter 31: The City’s Throat
The groan of the heavy bay door sliding open was the only sound in the pre-dawn stillness. It felt like the opening of a tomb. The riot van rolled out of the auto shop’s dusty sanctuary and back into the wounded city. Inside, the small band of survivors was quiet, each lost in their own thoughts. The two other adults from the clinic, Ben and Clara, sat huddled in the back, their faces pale and drawn. The children were quiet, a silent pact of shared trauma passing between them.
Quinn drove, his eyes constantly scanning the blighted landscape. He navigated the van through the maze of industrial streets, his movements precise and economical. They were a self-contained, armored island, moving through a sea of death.
Their route toward Interstate 95 took them past the skeletal remains of the city’s last organized defenses. They saw a FEMA station that had been set up in a high school gymnasium. The words "SHELTER" and "HOPE" were still spray-painted on a banner above the entrance, a bitter, mocking epitaph. The grounds were littered with overturned cots, discarded medical supplies, and the still, silent forms of both civilians and government workers. The infected had torn through it with savage indifference.
Further on, they encountered a military checkpoint that had been established to control access to the Grant Memorial Bridge. Sandbag emplacements were torn apart. A burned-out Humvee sat askew, its doors peppered with bullet holes from the inside out. The bodies of soldiers in combat gear lay where they had fallen, a testament to a battle that had been lost swiftly and brutally.
"They never stood a chance," Hex said quietly from the passenger seat, his voice flat. It was a confirmation of what they already knew, but seeing the evidence with their own eyes extinguished the last, foolish ember of hope that some larger force was still fighting. There was no one coming. There was only them.
The van could not navigate every street. Many were completely impassable, choked with a tangled wreckage of cars and trucks. Twice, they had to stop, hiding the van in a secure alleyway while Quinn and Hex proceeded on foot to scout a path.
During one of these scouting runs, they found themselves forced to use the rooftops. They moved across the flat, gravel-covered expanse of a series of connected commercial buildings, a vantage point that gave them a terrifying god’s-eye view of the city. Below them, the infected moved in slow, meandering rivers through the concrete canyons.
"We need to get to that intersection," Quinn whispered, pointing to a cross-street two blocks down. "From there, it looks like a straight shot to the on-ramp."
They found a fire escape and descended back into the labyrinth of alleys. As they rounded a corner, they froze. A large horde, at least fifty strong, was shuffling down the main street just ahead, their collective moans a low, chilling hum. They were trapped. The alley they were in was a dead end.
"Back," Quinn mouthed, pushing Hex behind a large, overflowing dumpster. They pressed themselves into the shadows, their hearts pounding. The horde was passing the mouth of their alley, so close they could smell the cloying, sweet scent of decay.
Suddenly, a lone infected, a shambler that had gotten separated from the group, turned and began to wander down their alley. It had not seen them. It was simply drifting. But if it made a sound, if it spotted them and let out a cry, it would bring the entire horde down on them.
Quinn knew what he had to do. He drew the 9mm pistol from its holster. A gunshot was out of the question. He waited, his body coiled like a spring. The infected shambled closer, its vacant eyes scanning nothing. When it was five feet away, Quinn moved. He lunged forward, clapping a hand over the creature’s mouth to stifle any sound, and drove the blade of his combat knife up under its jaw, severing the brain stem. It was a silent, brutal, and perfectly executed takedown. The creature went limp in his arms, and he lowered it gently to the ground.