The Morning After

“Great.”

He grabbed his keys, wallet, and the phone charger from beside the couch, then opened his apartment door.

Smoke rolled along the ceiling of the hallway.

Jeremy stopped with one hand on the knob. The smoke was thin near his door, gray and streaked with sunlight, but farther down the corridor it thickened around the stairwell entrance. A detector chirped once, then fell silent.

Someone shouted below.

“Move! Get out of the way!”

Footsteps thundered up the stairs. A woman burst into view, coughing into the sleeve of her robe. She hit the wall beside Jeremy and nearly fell.

“Is there a fire?” he asked.

“Don’t go down there.” She grabbed his arm. Her fingers were hot and shaking. “Don’t go down.”

“What happened?”

“People are - ” She looked over her shoulder. “They’re in the lobby.”

A child cried somewhere below. Another voice yelled for an ambulance. The words tangled with a heavy banging sound that traveled through the stairwell, slow and irregular.

Jeremy pulled his arm free. “I need to get out.”

“So does everyone!”

The woman pushed past him toward the upper floors. Behind her, more residents climbed through the smoke: a man in pajama pants carrying a backpack, an elderly tenant clutching a small dog, a teenager with blood on one cheek. Nobody stopped to explain. They moved as if something behind them had learned how to climb.

Jeremy backed into his apartment.

The front door slammed somewhere below. A burst of screaming followed.

He locked his door, then immediately felt stupid for doing it. The lock would not stop smoke. It would not stop fire. It would not stop whatever had made the people in the stairwell run upward.

His phone buzzed once in his hand.

A notification appeared, then vanished before he could read it. The screen went black.

“Perfect.”

He looked toward the window. His apartment was on the fourth floor. Too high to climb down, too low to feel safe staying put. The fire escape ran outside the kitchen window, but the metal stairs ended above the alley and were usually chained shut at the bottom.

The stairwell was the only way out.

Jeremy opened his door again.

Smoke brushed his face, dry and bitter. He pulled the collar of his shirt over his mouth and stepped into the hall. The building’s emergency lights glowed red along the baseboards. Someone had dropped a suitcase near the stairs. Its wheels spun uselessly against the carpet.

“Jeremy!”

He turned.

A man stumbled up from below and collapsed against the railing. Jeremy had seen him once or twice near the mailboxes, but he couldn’t remember his name. Blood covered the man’s shirt from collar to waist. One hand pressed against his side. The other was clenched around a broken piece of metal.

“Help me,” the man said.

Jeremy moved toward him. “What happened?”

“Don’t touch me.”

The man’s eyes darted past Jeremy toward the apartment doors. His face was gray beneath the blood.

“Where’s the fire?” Jeremy asked.

“It isn’t a fire.”

A crash boomed below them. The railing shuddered.

The man flinched so violently that his head struck the wall. “They’re coming.”

“Who?”

The answer rose from the stairwell as a wet, choking groan.

Jeremy froze.

The sound came again, followed by dragging footsteps. Something scraped along the concrete steps. The residents above began shouting at one another.

“Keep moving!”

“Get away from the stairs!”

“Somebody call the police!”

“They’re already here!”

A woman appeared on the landing above Jeremy, dragging a suitcase with one hand and holding a kitchen knife in the other. “Close the doors!” she yelled. “Block the doors!”

The bloodied man tried to stand. His knees folded.

Jeremy caught him beneath the shoulder. The man was heavier than he looked, and hot through his torn shirt.

“I can’t carry you,” Jeremy said.

“Then leave me.”

Another figure lurched into view below.

At first Jeremy saw only a shoulder, then a face lifted through the smoke. It belonged to a woman in a blue work uniform. Her hair hung across her eyes. One side of her throat was dark with blood.

She climbed without using the railing. Her hands slapped each step, fingers spreading for balance. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

Jeremy waited for her to look up.

She did.

Her eyes were clouded and fixed on the bloodied man beside him.

The man made a small sound. “No.”

The woman launched herself up the stairs.

Jeremy shoved the injured stranger backward and kicked the stairwell door. It swung shut between them. The woman struck it from the other side with enough force to rattle the hinges.

A second body hit the door.

Then a third.

The metal bucked in its frame.

“Move!” the woman with the knife screamed.

Jeremy dragged the bloodied man away from the landing. Residents crowded the hall, pressing against walls and apartment doors. A baby wailed. Someone sobbed that the elevator was stuck. Smoke curled beneath the stairwell door and spread across the carpet.

The injured man gripped Jeremy’s wrist. “They don’t stop.”

“What are they?”

His grip tightened. “They don’t stop.”

The door burst open.

The woman in blue fell through first, catching herself on both hands. Her head snapped toward the nearest resident. A man tried to run past her. She seized his ankle and pulled him down. He screamed once before her teeth closed on his calf.

The hallway erupted.

People shoved in every direction. The knife-wielding woman slashed at the attacker and missed. A suitcase toppled. The dog barked wildly. Jeremy stumbled backward, still holding the injured man, while the woman in blue tore at the fallen resident’s leg as if she could not feel the knife striking her shoulder.

Jeremy’s mind rejected the scene.

This was not a fire. Not a riot. Not an accident.

The thing wearing the blue uniform lifted its head. Blood ran from its mouth. Its eyes found him.

Jeremy let go of the injured man.

The stranger hit the floor with a cry. Jeremy turned and ran.

He passed his apartment without stopping. The hallway narrowed ahead, ending at the laundry room. He had never used the window there because the room always smelled of damp concrete and detergent, but he knew it opened onto the alley.

Behind him, feet pounded across the carpet.

“Jeremy!” the injured man shouted.

Jeremy reached the laundry room and slammed the door. A washer rattled against the wall. He shoved a plastic chair beneath the handle, then crossed to the window.

Paint sealed the lower frame. He grabbed the latch and pulled until his fingers slipped. The glass trembled. Outside, the alley lay four floors below, hemmed in by brick walls and overflowing dumpsters.

The door shuddered behind him.

“Open!” someone screamed from the hall.

Jeremy struck the latch with the metal charger block. Once. Twice. On the third blow, the lock snapped.

Cold air rushed in.

He climbed onto the washer, pushed the window higher, and looked down. The fire escape platform sat directly beneath him, rusted and narrow. A ladder dropped from its edge to the alley.

The door cracked around the chair.

Jeremy swung one leg through the window.

The bloodied man appeared in the doorway beyond the splintering frame. He had somehow reached the laundry room. Blood soaked both hands now.

“Help me,” he said again.

Something slammed into him from behind.

His body struck the doorjamb. A mouth opened against his neck.

Jeremy flinched away and dropped onto the fire escape.

The platform buckled under his weight. Rust flaked beneath his palms. He crawled toward the ladder as the laundry-room window filled with grasping hands.

“Go!” the bloodied man shouted.

Jeremy went.

He climbed down too fast, shoes slipping on the cold metal rungs. Above him, bodies pressed against the window. One hand reached through the opening and scraped at his ankle. He kicked it loose and dropped the final six feet into the alley.

Pain shot through his heel.

He rolled behind a dumpster and lay there, holding his breath.

The building’s back door opened.

A figure stumbled into the alley. Then another. They moved without looking around, heads jerking toward every sound. One wore the blue uniform. Another dragged a torn leg behind him. A third stood beneath the fire escape and stared upward at Jeremy’s empty window.

Jeremy stayed crouched until his lungs burned.

His phone was still in his hand.

The screen flickered when he pressed it. One percent. A single emergency notification waited beneath the cracked display, but before he could open it, a low moan rose from the street beyond the alley.

He crept to the corner and looked out.

Mercer Street was no longer empty.

People moved between the abandoned cars in uneven, staggering clusters. Some wore office clothes. Some wore pajamas. A cyclist lay tangled beneath a bent bicycle while three figures pulled at him from different sides. A bus had mounted the curb, its windshield webbed with cracks. Smoke drifted from its open doors.

Farther down the street, a police cruiser sat sideways across the intersection. Its lights flashed silently.

Jeremy backed away from the corner.

The apartment building stood behind him, every window dark except the laundry room, where pale faces crowded the glass.

Home was four floors above.

The street was crawling with the infected.

His phone buzzed once more, so faintly he felt it rather than heard it. The emergency notification opened to a broken line of text.

STAY INDOORS - The screen died.

Jeremy looked from the black phone to the alley mouth. A figure turned toward him, head tilting as if it had heard his thoughts.

Then another figure turned.

And another.

Jeremy tightened his grip on the phone and stepped backward into the smoke.

End of chapter one. 39 more chapters and about 81,434 words in the full book.