"AHHH!"
The young woman's head was wrenched sideways by a tremendous force. She slammed onto the metal grating, then felt searing pain as her scalp began to tear. She screamed in agony.
"Help me! Help me! I don't want to die!" The middle-aged woman dangled in midair, clutching the hair with white-knuckled desperation, begging for rescue.
But human hair can't support an adult's weight. The sudden drop had already ripped away a chunk of the young woman's scalp. Blood poured from the wound, a nauseating sight.
And the middle-aged woman kept struggling, tearing the wound wider. The young woman's screams grew more piercing. Her body was being dragged toward the edge.
The pain nearly made her black out. But she didn't want to die—especially not like this, dragged down by someone else. Her face contorted with rage.
"Let GO of me, you crazy bitch!"
BANG! BANG! BANG!
She didn't wait for an answer. She drew her pistol and fired wildly at the woman below.
Her aim was terrible, but the target was hard to miss. A bullet tore through the middle-aged woman's shoulder.
She screamed and released her grip, plummeting.
But the young woman had been pulled too far off balance. Half her body was already over the edge, and one hand still held the gun. She couldn't grab anything in time. She went over too.
Worse, as she fell, she instinctively kicked out—catching the ankle of a man behind her, destroying his barely recovered balance. He tumbled after her.
"AHHHHH—!"
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Three screams—terror and despair—echoed through the street, followed by the sickening sounds of bodies hitting pavement. The Infected below erupted in fresh frenzy.
It had all happened in under a minute. Four of seven people, gone. Everyone stared in stunned silence, swallowing hard.
When the wind died and the walkway steadied, the three survivors still on it were shaking too badly to stand.
Several brave soldiers rushed out and helped them back to the conference room. Left to themselves, they might have stayed frozen there forever.
After that disaster, the remaining survivors approached the crossing with newfound respect. No one took it lightly again.
...
"What the hell is this?!"
When the last survivor reached the building, someone cried out in shock. "Look at that!"
Everyone turned toward the voice. A thin young man stood with his face pressed against the outer glass, staring at something outside with a mixture of awe and dread.
During the crossing, no one had paid attention to anything but the walkway. Now, following his gaze, they understood his reaction.
If the streets they'd traveled through had been a deserted city, what lay before them was a bombed-out warzone.
Countless buildings reduced to skeletal ruins. Streets cratered and buckled, forming jagged hills and valleys. Underground pipes had burst, sending water fountaining upward—now frozen into ice-covered ponds filling the artificial depressions.
The devastation stretched six or seven kilometers. Infected wandered through the rubble, though most were scattered—only a few spots showed large concentrations. Deeper in, a perimeter fence had been erected. Mountains of Infected corpses lay outside it. Armed soldiers patrolled within.
Behind the perimeter, in the safe zone, paths had been cleared through the rubble. Military trucks lined the roads. Someone with sharp eyes spotted tanks.
And at the center of it all, rising from the chaos, stood the massive walls of the Quarantine Zone—built in less than a month. Their destination. Their journey's end.
"Enough sightseeing." Tracy checked her watch impatiently. "The sooner we reach the safe zone, the safer we'll be. Move out."
The survivors snapped back to attention. Soldiers organized them, and they filed out of the conference room toward the stairwell.
Perhaps because so many Infected had fallen from the walkway, the rest of the building was clear. They reached the ground floor without incident.
There, a dozen soldiers attached suppressors to their rifles and pistols—commonly called silencers, though they didn't truly silence anything. They reduced the noise enough to deal with scattered Infected without drawing hordes. Given the equipment losses at the hospital, only half the soldiers had them.
Pfft! Pfft!
Suppressed rounds whispered through the air, dropping Infected near the building entrance.
Tracy led them into the rubble—uneven, snow-covered terrain stretching ahead. Scattered Infected were neutralized with suppressed fire. Impassable sections were detoured. When they couldn't detour, soldiers boosted people over obstacles.
At first, everyone was energized. But as time wore on and the terrain grew more treacherous, even the cold couldn't stop the sweat. Exhaustion set in. Panting filled the air. Someone's stomach growled audibly.
"Mommy, I'm hungry."
A boy of five or six tugged at his mother's sleeve, hand pressed to his stomach, eyes pleading.
The mother looked at her son's thin face and patted herself down desperately, hoping to find something—anything. Her pockets were empty.
She turned to the people around her, voice barely above a whisper, almost begging: "Does anyone have food? My son hasn't eaten properly in days. Please, anything..."
She and her son had gone nearly five days without a real meal. They'd lost their supplies fleeing the hospital. At the camp last night, they'd received one piece of bread to share between them. After today's grueling trek, that meager sustenance was long gone. She could endure. Her son couldn't.
Most people gave her cold glances and kept walking. A few stopped, sympathy in their eyes. One or two even reached for their bags—but companions pulled them back.
Tracy saw everything. But the military's food had been distributed last night. They had nothing left. She couldn't force survivors to share their own supplies.
She sighed, walked over, and knelt beside the boy. She spoke softly, telling him to hold on just a little longer—there would be food waiting when they arrived.
Her gentle words seemed to work. The boy nodded bravely and continued walking with his mother, one small step at a time.
...
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