45 Hours Left
The sign was handwritten, uneven letters slashed across a piece of cardboard and taped behind the steel shutter.
SHOP CLOSED.
Josh stared at it for a long moment. Then he drove his fist into the metal.
The bang echoed down the empty street. His knuckles throbbed. He didn't care.
I drove forty minutes. He pressed his forehead against the cold shutter, jaw tight, chest heaving. Forty goddamn minutes and every store on this side of the city is shut down. He pushed off and turned back toward his car, running a hand through his hair.
"I can't disappoint her again," he muttered to no one. "Not again."
He got in. Started the engine. Pulled out.
He noticed the crowd first — a slow, thick river of people clogging the road ahead.
Cars were parked at odd angles, some abandoned entirely. Families huddled together on sidewalks, children pressed against their mothers' sides. Josh slowed, leaning forward over the wheel.
Then he saw the tanks.
Military vehicles lined the boulevard in both directions, their engines idling like sleeping giants. Soldiers in full combat gear stood at intervals along the road, rifles resting across their chests. Somewhere ahead, a voice boomed through a megaphone.
"Line up! Single file! Ladies and children to the front — move it, let's go!"
Josh's hands tightened on the wheel.
A general stepped directly into his path and held up a fist. Josh stopped.
The man leaned down to the window, face weathered and eyes sharp beneath the brim of his cap.
"Where exactly do you think you're going, son?"
"Home," Josh said. "I'm trying to get home."
"There's a martial law order in effect. The entire country is under military control as of two hours ago." The general's eyes swept the interior of the car slowly. "You didn't know."
It wasn't a question.
"I didn't know." Josh's voice cracked at the edges. "Please — my kids are at Grimoire Elementary. My wife is home alone. I have to—"
"Your children are being processed and transported as we speak."
The general's voice didn't soften, but something behind his eyes did, just slightly. "Every school in the district has a response team on site. They will reach you."
"And my wife—"
"Is she mobile?"
Josh hesitated. One second too long.
The general studied him. "You need to cooperate with us, son."
"Please." Josh met his eyes. "She needs me."
A long pause stretched between them. Finally, the general straightened and turned.
"Alpha-3! On me!"
Four soldiers broke from the formation and assembled beside the car. The general pointed at Josh's windshield.
"You are escorting this civilian to his residence at Parkinson Street. You move fast, you stay tight." He lowered his voice, just enough for the soldiers to hear clearly.
"Any infected individual you encounter — symptomatic, confirmed, suspected — you put them down on sight. No hesitation. That is a direct order. Move out."
The convoy crept through streets that had become something unrecognizable.
Josh drove. The soldiers rode behind him. Through his rearview mirror he watched them scanning windows, doorways, shadows between buildings — rifles up, fingers near triggers.
On the sidewalk to his left, a woman in a floral dress was on her knees. Two soldiers stood over her. Josh looked away before it happened, but he heard it.
He gripped the wheel so hard his arms shook.
In the passenger seat, one of the soldiers — young, maybe twenty-two, sandy-haired beneath his helmet — kept his eyes on the road. His name patch read GABE.
"You still haven't found a cure," Josh said. Not a question. A wound reopening.
Gabe shook his head once. "Medical teams are working around the clock. But the Blight—" He exhaled slowly. "There's no substitution. Nothing comes close."
Josh watched the road. "So killing them is the answer."
"If we don't contain it—" Gabe stopped.
Started again, quieter. "If we don't contain it, there won't be anyone left to save."
"That's not an answer."
"No," Gabe said. "It's not."
From the back seat, someone made a sound — barely audible, quickly swallowed. Josh glanced in the mirror. One of the younger soldiers had turned toward the window. His shoulders were moving.
"Hey," Josh said gently. "You alright back there?"
The soldier didn't answer. The one beside him leaned forward.
"He lost his sister three days ago." A pause. "We've all lost something."
The car went quiet.
After a moment, the sandy-haired soldier in the passenger seat turned slightly.
"I'm Gabe, by the way."
Josh stared at the road. "Josh."
Parkinson Street appeared through the windshield like a memory — the familiar row of houses, the oak tree on the corner, the cracked pavement in front of number 14. Home.
Josh pulled to the curb and killed the engine.
The radio crackled before anyone could move.
"Alpha-3, you are to conduct a door-to-door sweep of the immediate block. Standard protocol — anyone showing vital signs of infection is to be neutralized at the threshold. Do not enter. Do not engage. Just put them down. That is your order. Out."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Josh turned slowly. "Gabe."
Gabe was already opening his door.
"Gabe." Josh's voice split. "My wife has a fever. She's sick, she's been sick for days, but she's — she's fighting it, she's still herself, she's—" He was out of the car now, moving around to block the path. "Please. She is the mother of my children. You cannot do this. You cannot—"
"Step aside, Josh." Gabe's voice had changed. It was flat now, the way a door sounds when it locks. "We have to check. Step aside."
"No. No. You're not going near that door, Gabe, I swear to—"
He felt it before he understood it.
Something warm. On his upper lip.
He touched his face. Pulled his hand back.
A thin smear of red across his fingers.
The street went silent. Every soldier froze.
Gabe's eyes dropped to Josh's hand. Then rose slowly to his face.
"...Buddy." His voice was barely above a whisper. "Are you infected?"
Josh looked at the blood on his fingers. He thought of Kim inside that house. He thought of his kids, somewhere out there, being brought home to a street full of soldiers. He thought of the pills he never got. The drive that took too long. The sign on the shutter.
Shop closed.
He wiped his hand on his jeans. Looked up at Gabe.
And ran.
He crossed the distance in two strides — grabbed for the Glock at Gabe's hip, fingers closing around the grip — but the crack of a rifle split the air and his leg buckled beneath him like a snapped branch.
"AAAAAAAAAA—!"
JOSH SCREAMED!!!
The scream tore out of him before he hit the ground.
"JOSH—!"
The front door exploded open.
Kim stood in the doorway. Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, her hair loose around her shoulders.
She looked at her husband bleeding in the street. She looked at the soldiers.
And she understood everything in the space of a single second.
"No—" Her voice broke into pieces.
Noooo..Nooo...No..."
Josh looked up at her from the pavement. His mouth moved.
The gunshot was quiet, almost gentle, the way the worst things often are.
And then Josh was still.
Kim's scream didn't stop for a long time.