James didn't know what time it was.
He could check. Phone was right there, on the nightstand, screen-down because Evelyn read somewhere that the blue light disrupted circadian rhythms even when you weren't looking at it, which sounded like bullshit but James had flipped his phone face-down every night for three years now because that's what marriage was, adopting your partner's neuroses until you forgot which ones were originally yours.
He didn't check.
If he checked, he'd count. If he counted, he'd spiral. The spiral went like this: hours of sleep (not enough), hours until alarm (too few), hours since Evelyn last slept in this bed (he'd stopped counting that one because the number made him feel like a character in a Raymond Carver story, which was not a compliment, Raymond Carver characters were all quietly miserable people waiting for something bad to happen and James had read enough Carver in his twenties to know he didn't want to be one but here he was anyway, lying awake at—)
He didn't check.
Ceiling. There was a stain. Top right corner, brownish, irregular edges—water damage from the roof leak two years and three months ago. He knew the exact timeframe because the leak had happened during Tiffany's eighth birthday party, water dripping onto the cake, Evelyn trying to move the table while twelve eight-year-olds screamed about the "indoor rain," James on the phone with the emergency roofer who charged $400 for a Sunday visit and another $200 for "expedited service" which apparently meant showing up three hours late and tracking mud on the carpet.
The stain looked like Florida. Or a handgun. Depending on his mood.
He'd promised to repaint. Evelyn had even picked out the color—"Agreeable Gray," from Sherwin-Williams, because apparently paint colors had names now and "Agreeable Gray" was the bestselling interior paint in America, which James only knew because Evelyn had told him and then he'd spent forty-five minutes on a home improvement forum reading about paint undertones when he should've been working, which was the kind of thing James did now, disappear into Wikipedia rabbit holes about subjects he'd forget in a week, anything to avoid—
The stain was still there.
Evelyn's side: cold. Her pillow still smelled like her shampoo. That coconut thing she'd used for years, the one James always pretended to hate but secretly loved because it meant she was close.
James reached over anyway. Touched the pillow. Cotton, 400 thread count, bought during that post-Christmas sale at Bed Bath & Beyond back when Bed Bath & Beyond still existed, back when "20% off" coupons arrived in the mail every week like clockwork, back when the future felt like something that would happen gradually instead of all at once.
Cold.
He sat up. Spine: crack. Lower back, L4-L5, same spot every morning since junior year when Danny Kowalczyk—290 pounds, all-state defensive tackle, went to Ohio State on a scholarship and blew out his knee freshman year, last James heard he was selling insurance in Toledo—hit him from the blind side during the homecoming game. James remembered the hit. Remembered the sky tilting. Remembered his dad in the stands, hands cupped around mouth, yelling something James couldn't hear over the ringing in his—
Crack. Crack.
Three. Always three. He'd counted. Multiple times. Different mornings. Three cracks, then done. His body was a machine that performed the same startup sequence every day, like an old Windows computer loading drivers.
Feet on floor. Left foot first—always left, he'd noticed that too, another thing he'd noticed and catalogued in the part of his brain that collected useless patterns while ignoring useful information like his wife's work schedule or which kid had soccer practice on Thursdays.
Left foot hit something sharp.
"fffFUCK—"
The word came out weird, half-swallowed, because John's room was ten feet away and James was still trying to be a Good Dad even though Good Dads probably didn't curse at midnight or whenever-the-fuck this was, but also Good Dads didn't step on Legos because Good Dads made their kids clean up after themselves and James had definitely told Tiffany to pick up her Legos, he remembered telling her, remembered her saying "okay Dad" in that tone that meant I am acknowledging your words without any intention of acting on them, and now here he was, Lego embedded in his heel like a plastic landmine.
Red. 2x4 brick. The platonic ideal of foot pain.
He picked it up. Considered throwing it. Didn't. Put it on the nightstand, next to the phone, next to the half-empty water glass that had been there for—two days? Three? The water had that stale look. He should throw it out. He didn't.
Hallway. Dark. John's door, half-open, blue glow leaking through the gap—phone screen, had to be, the kid was either still awake from last night or already awake at dark-o'clock, and James felt the familiar surge of I should say something followed immediately by what's the point followed by is this depression or just realism followed by nothing, his brain just kind of... gave up mid-thought and moved on.
Stairs.
Kitchen.
The espresso machine sat on the counter like a small chrome altar. Breville Barista Express. $699 retail, $549 on sale, birthday present from Evelyn four years ago, wrapped in newspaper comics because they'd run out of wrapping paper and she'd said it's either this or tin foil and James had said tin foil would be funnier but she'd already started taping the comics and the whole thing fell apart the second he touched it and inside was this beautiful ridiculous machine that made espresso better than any coffee shop and James had cried a little, which he'd blamed on allergies, which Evelyn had pretended to believe because that was also what marriage was.
He filled the reservoir. Measured the beans. Tamped the grounds. The ritual took ninety seconds, give or take. Ninety seconds of whirr and hiss and gurgle where James's brain, through some Pavlovian miracle, actually went quiet.
Not today.
Today his brain was playing a highlight reel. Bit a nurse. That's what Evelyn had said. Yesterday? Day before? The days were Xeroxes of Xeroxes now, each one slightly more faded than the last. One of the meteor patients. Fever spiked, then he just—bit her. Right on the forearm. Security had to—
She'd stopped there. James hadn't asked her to continue. He'd been watching something on TV, half-listening, the way you half-listened to your spouse after fifteen years because you'd heard most of their stories already and the new ones usually weren't that different from the old ones except this one was different, wasn't it, this one had the word bit in it and that was a weird word, bit, not a hospital word, not a word that belonged in—
The machine beeped.
Coffee. Black. No sugar because Evelyn had declared war on refined sugars and James had surrendered immediately because he always surrendered, not out of weakness but out of efficiency, marriage was a series of battles and you had to choose which ones mattered and sugar in coffee didn't matter, nothing about coffee mattered, it was just caffeine delivery and if Evelyn wanted him to drink it black then he'd drink it black and eventually he'd forget he ever liked it any other way.
He forgot most things eventually.
Living room. TV on, volume at 3. James had spent an embarrassing amount of time finding that number. 2 was too quiet—the house felt like a mausoleum, every creak amplified, every silence suspicious. 4 was too loud—you could make out words, and words meant news, and news meant anxiety. 3 was the Goldilocks zone. Just enough sound to trick your hindbrain into thinking you weren't alone.
He sat.
The TV showed a reporter. Blonde, mid-thirties, the kind of generic attractiveness that news channels cultivated like a crop. She was standing in front of a hospital—some hospital, James wasn't really looking, the coffee hadn't kicked in yet and the screen was just shapes and colors and the low murmur of someone else's emergency.
He should probably pay attention. News. Important.
He changed the channel.
SpongeBob. Because at whatever-the-fuck AM, your options were news or cartoons or infomercials, and SpongeBob was the least likely to spike his cortisol. The yellow sponge was laughing about something. Patrick was there. The pineapple. James had watched enough SpongeBob with the kids to know the lore, which was a sentence that would've baffled his twenty-year-old self but made perfect sense now.
"I'm ready! I'm ready! I'm ready!"
Sure you are, buddy.
Phone. Buzzing. James startled awake—wait, had he fallen asleep? He didn't remember falling asleep. He was on the couch, coffee cup in hand, gone cold now, SpongeBob replaced by some other cartoon with a pink bear or possibly a dog, the animation style was that modern CalArts thing where everyone had noodle limbs and big eyes—
The clock on the wall said 12:31 AM. He'd been out for a while.
Text from Greg: "Call me. Now. Laptop."
James grabbed the laptop from the coffee table, opened it. Greg's face was already waiting—he must've sent a video call request right after the text.
James answered without checking his face, which was a mistake, Greg's expression told him that immediately.
"Dude. You look like shit."
"Thanks."
"Seriously, did you sleep?"
"Define sleep."
Greg's face on the screen: unshaved, bags under eyes, hair that had given up. Behind him, the usual disaster—his bedroom looked like a distribution center had exploded, clothes and energy drink cans and what appeared to be a pizza box balanced on a stack of books. Greg was thirty-six, MBA from Northwestern, made $140K managing supply chain logistics, and lived like a college freshman whose parents had stopped visiting. James found it oddly comforting. At least he wasn't the only one failing at adulthood.
"Check the work chat," Greg said.
"Which one."
"The gossip one. HR and Marketing."
"That one's muted."
"Unmute it."
Something in Greg's voice—not panic, Greg didn't panic, Greg had been in a car accident once and his first words to the EMT were is my podcast still playing—but something adjacent to panic. Panic's neighbor. James opened WhatsApp, scrolled, found the group.
Office Chaos 🔥 (someone had renamed it)
Sixty-three unread messages.
The first twenty were noise. Someone's kid's birthday. A meme about working from home. Linda from Accounting asking if anyone knew how to unjam a printer remotely, which wasn't possible, but Linda asked questions like that.
Then:
"ok what the fuck is this"
A video. Forwarded.
"is that real"
"no way"
"dude my cousin works there she says"
"STOP this is scary"
"its fake look at the lighting"
"ITS NOT FAKE"
James pressed play.
The video was forty-seven seconds long. He would remember that number later, the way you remember numbers that become important—his anniversary, his kids' birthdays, the exact duration of the video that cracked his reality in half.
Hospital corridor. The camera shaking—running, the person holding it was running. Fluorescent lights, half dead, casting everything in that sick yellow that hospitals had, that no one is healthy here yellow. Audio was garbage, compressed and recompressed through a dozen shares, but underneath the static there was screaming. Definitely screaming.
And at the end of the hallway.
Something.
Someone. No. Something.
It was shaped like a person but it didn't move like one. The legs were wrong—stiff, shuffling, one dragging behind. The arms hung at angles that suggested the shoulders weren't doing their job anymore. And the head, the head was—
James paused.
His thumb had moved. He stared at the frozen frame. The figure was blurry, mid-motion, but even frozen you could tell something was wrong with it. The proportions were human but the posture wasn't. Like a puppet with half its strings cut.
"James."
Greg's voice, from the laptop. James had forgotten the video call was still going.
"Scroll up. Someone in the chat said that's St. Mary's."
James scrolled. There it was—someone's cousin confirming the location. St. Mary's. Evelyn's hospital.
"Yeah," he said. His mouth had gone dry.
"Evelyn." Greg's voice dropped. "She's still there?"
"Yeah."
James put the phone down. Picked it up. Put it down again. His hands were doing things without consulting his brain, which was stuck on the frozen frame, on the shape at the end of the hallway, on the word bit bouncing around his skull like a pinball—
He called Evelyn. *Come on, Ev. Pick up.*
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
"The number you are trying to reach—"
Again.
Ring.
Ring.
R—
"James?"
Her voice.
But wrong.
Too quiet. Too flat. Like she was reading from a script and trying very hard not to look at something happening off-page.
"Ev. Thank God. I've been calling—are you okay? I saw a video—"
"I know."
"What's happening? Are you okay? The news is saying—"
"James." She cut him off. She never cut him off. In fifteen years of marriage, Evelyn had never once—
"Listen to me. I don't have long."
"What do you—"
"The videos are real."
Three words. James's brain snagged on them like a nail on fabric.
"The meteor patients. Some of them—" A breath. Shaky. "They died. And then they didn't stay dead. And now they're—" Another breath. "They're biting people, James. They're—it's spreading. We tried to quarantine but there's too many and they locked the building, they won't let us—"
Sound.
Something in the background.
Glass breaking?
Metal?
Evelyn's breath, suddenly close to the phone, like she'd pressed it hard against her ear. When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper.
"Don't come here. Whatever you see on the news, don't come. Keep the kids inside. Don't let them—"
A scream.
Not Evelyn's.
Somewhere nearby.
"I'm in the parking lot. I'm coming home, just—stay there."
Sound of glass breaking.
"I have to go. I love you. Tell the kids I love them. Jamie—"
Nothing.
The call display: 1:14.
One minute and fourteen seconds.
James stared at the phone.
The screen went dark.
His reflection stared back. Forty-one years old, though his reflection looked older. Tired. Scared. The kind of scared that hadn't fully arrived yet, that was still en route, that would hit him later like a delayed invoice.
"James." Greg's voice, from the laptop.
"James. What did she say."
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"James—" Greg's voice from the laptop, urgent.
"James, what did she—"
James slammed the laptop shut.
Keys. Where were the keys. Counter, no. Hook by the door, no. Jacket pocket—there. He had them in his hand before his brain caught up with his body.
"James, what are you—"
"I'm going." The words came out strange, too loud, not his voice. "I have to—she's out there, alone, Greg, she's—"
"The hospital's locked down. There's military—"
"I don't care."
He was at the front door. Hand on the knob. Ready to—
"Dad?"
Footsteps on the stairs. John first, still in yesterday's clothes—he'd never changed for bed. Tiffany behind him, pajamas and stuffed elephant trailing.
"Dad? Where are you going?"
James froze.
His hand was on the doorknob. His keys were in his other hand. His wife was out there—Parking lot, chaos, things that used to be people—and his children were standing in front of him, waiting for him to tell them everything was okay.
Evelyn's voice, echoing: *Keep the kids inside. Don't let them—*
She hadn't finished that sentence. She'd been cut off. But James could fill in the blanks.
*Don't let them be alone.*
He looked at John. Fourteen, trying to look brave, failing. He looked at Tiffany. Ten, not even trying, just scared.
If he left, they'd be alone. In a house. While the world—
If he stayed, Evelyn would be alone. Out there. While—
His hand didn't move from the doorknob.
"Dad?" John's voice cracked.
"What's happening?"
James let go of the door.
It was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Harder than any decision he'd made in forty-one years of life.
His wife was out there, and he was choosing to stay here, and he would hate himself for it, but Evelyn had said *keep the kids inside* and she'd meant it and she was smarter than him, she was always smarter than him, and if she said stay then he had to trust that she knew what she was doing.
He had to trust her.
He didn't have a choice.
"Nothing," he heard himself say. The lie tasted like ash. "Just—I thought I heard something outside. It's nothing."
He put the keys back on the hook.
"Go back to bed," James said. "Both of you."
John didn't believe him. James could see it in his face—the lie was too thin, too obvious. But he took Tiffany's hand anyway and led her back upstairs. Two doors closed. The house went quiet.
James sat on the couch. Phone in hand. Waiting.
He called Evelyn again. Voicemail. Again. Voicemail. He lost count somewhere around fifteen.
The house was silent. John and Tiffany back in their rooms, hopefully asleep, hopefully not lying awake the way James was lying awake.
He stared at the front door.
She'd said she was coming home. She'd said stay. So he stayed.
Minutes passed. Maybe hours. He couldn't tell anymore. The clock on the wall said 1:17 AM. Then 1:34. Then 1:52.
His phone stayed dark. No calls. No texts. Nothing.
Just the door. And the waiting.
And somewhere out there, in the dark, his wife—driving home, or not driving home, or something worse that his brain wouldn't let him think about.
James didn't move.
He couldn't.
All he could do was wait.