He searched frantically for an escape route. They were on the wrong side of the road to cut through the corner shopping center on his left, and had passed the entrance besides. Then he realized the corner around it was landscaped. A car could fit through and get around the clogged intersection.
Mario turned, easing the car over the low divider between the lanes. The car behind him, and the one after that, followed. He took the curb onto the sidewalk at a crawl; they couldn’t afford the car becoming undriveable. The Audi’s wheels spun, kicking up wood chips when he let the clutch out too fast. He let up on the gas enough for the tires to find purchase, then punched it.
He winced at a howl of brakes and horns off to his right, followed by grinding metal and a deep BOOM! A truck had collided with a car. A man hung out of the truck’s cab on the driver’s side, legs kicking. Blood splattered the inside of the truck’s windshield as it skidded and stopped, blocking their path.
The Audi shot across the landscaped corner and flew over the curb, landing with an unnerving whump. He cranked the steering wheel left and jammed the brakes, barely missing the truck. The Audi fishtailed wildly as he straightened out and hit the gas. He flinched when he realized they were on the wrong side of the road.
“You’re going the wrong way,” Dominic shouted.
The contorted faces of outraged motorists, who didn’t realize they were driving to their doom at the gridlocked intersection, swerved out of the way as Mario played a high speed game of chicken. Adrenaline flooded his sweat-slicked body. Blood rushed in his ears, drowning out the honking horns and squealing tires. When the traffic islands gave way to a center turning lane, he swerved the careening Audi to the correct side of the road.
“Slow down, Mario! Jesus!”
Nothing was on fire here, but a limping figure with a bloody neck stumbled and tripped over a curb, then climbed to its feet. When they turned right, the road ahead was clear.
“Thank God,” he gasped. He tried to shift the car into sixth gear but it wouldn't go. He glanced down to see why; it was already in sixth.
When they were half a mile from Foothill Expressway, Mario began to downshift. He let the car drift along at twenty miles per hour. The traffic signals were still working. Nothing was on fire, cars were not abandoned. A man stood on his lawn with a hose, watering flowers along his driveway. Things looked okay, but he knew it wouldn’t last. He swallowed the impulse to shout to the guy, to warn him, but he knew from previous attempts that it would take too long to make him understand. And then he’d look at Mario like he was crazy.
There was virtually no traffic on the other side of the intersection beyond Expressway. Traffic on the Expressway was heavy, but moving. If they went straight, instead of turning left to get Dominic’s boyfriend, they might make it to the freeway in time.
“We can’t go to Sonalto to get Jim,” he said, still not sure why he was so certain doing so would be a mistake.
“What do you mean? The traffic is fine.”
The traffic light was still red. Gently, Mario pressed his foot on the brake, and the thing that he hadn’t been able to figure out clicked into place. “It’s too close to a hospital.”
“What?” Dominic said, sounding bewildered. “What’s too close to a hospital?”
“Sonalto is by a hospital, just like your house! They’ve been telling people to go to the hospital for two days, and now all those people are homicidal or insane… I don’t know what they are, but it’s spilling out from the hospitals. We can’t go.”
“If you think I’m leaving him—”
The light turned green. Mario jammed the clutch into first and peeled through the intersection toward the freeway.
“No!” Dominic roared.
He grabbed the steering wheel. Its smooth leather wrapping slid under Mario’s fingers as the Audi jerked to the right. Mario pulled it back, the tug-o-war bouncing the car like a pinball. Dominic yanked the wheel again and elbowed Mario on the jaw.
Mario jammed on the brakes. “Let go, Dominic!”
Grinding gears set his teeth tingling when Dominic knocked the gearshift out of gear. The engine stalled as the Audi spun out, then the right, rear fender crunched into a parked car. Mario shoved his brother away, stepped on the clutch pedal, and turned the key in the ignition.
“Take me with you!”
Both men jumped. A young woman banged on Dominic’s window.
“Please take me with you,” she begged, starting to cry. She never stopped banging on the window. “We have to get away. They’re coming!”
Mario pressed the button to open the window. She crouched lower, so she could see them better. She wore a nice sleeveless blouse and skirt. Stylish clothes for work, but cheap, like someone just starting out might buy. Her eyeliner was smudged down to her cheekbones. Her up-twisted hair had half-fallen down. Her face was flushed a deep pink and sweat ran down her temples and neck.
“I don’t know what they are, but they’re killing people, eating people!”
Mario broke out in a cold sweat. He looked out the window, but everything around them still looked normal.
“Where are they?” he demanded.
“I don’t know! I don’t know how far behind they are!”
Her face screwed up, and she began to cry in earnest. Her whole body shook. Snot ran from her nose that she wiped on her hand. She looked over the roof of the car, like she was checking to see if something had followed her, then crouched back down.
“I ran to the building, and they said they would help me,” she gasped, her voice rising and falling unevenly. “But then people started screaming, and they were inside! They were inside the building! Nobody listened when I said to run away. They didn’t listen, so I ran.”
What little reserve of composure she had managed to hold on to evaporated.
“I lost my phone! And when I asked for help everyone looked at me like I was crazy. No one would help me,” she screeched. “So I ran, I ran away.”
Her breath came in shuddering gasps. She shook so hard that the rest of her hair began to drift down in golden waves. She clutched Dominic’s arm through the window, her wild gray eyes imploring them to help her.
“You’re the only car that stopped.”
Dominic looked at Mario sidelong, plainly unnerved. They hadn’t stopped—they had crashed—and this poor girl thought they were the right people to ask for help?
“When was this? Where were you?” Mario said. He needed to know if they could still make it to the freeway.
“You don’t understand,” she said, and for the first time she really did look unhinged. “Please take me with you. We have to—”
“Where were you?” Dominic demanded.
“My interview,” she said, with a hiccupping sob. “At Sonalto. I don’t know how long ago…”
Dominic gasped. Mario felt like he was being dragged down into a vat of molasses. She ran from Los Altos, he thought, reeling. That would take half an hour at least, and she was still hysterical with fear. And she’d come from Sonalto, where Dominic’s boyfriend was. He’d been right, but fuck. He saw her mouth moving while she tugged on Dominic’s arm, and the rapid rise and fall of Dominic’s chest, the coil of tension building in his brother’s body.
Dominic flung the car door open and scrambled out.
“Dom, come back!” Mario shouted, starting to open his door to go after him.
But Dominic wasn’t leaving. He released the latch on the seat and pulled it forward. The girl scrambled in, her feet bare and stockings torn. Dominic dropped back into his seat and slammed the door shut. Mario could see his brother’s hands shake as he buckled the seatbelt. Mario peeled out from the curb, accelerating so fast his body pressed into the seat. He glanced in the rearview mirror. The young woman had turned around in the back seat. She looked out the back window.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She jumped at the sound of his voice, then turned around. “Emily.”
Mario glance
d at his brother. Dominic looked straight ahead, eyes glassy, jaw clenched, his face a rictus of grief.
“I’m Mario,” he said. “This is my brother Dominic. You’re gonna be okay.”
Miranda Tucci
Friday, September 18, 2026 - Santa Clara, California
* * *
“Miranda?”
Sam crouched beside where she huddled in the corner. From the way he looked at her, Miranda realized this wasn’t his first attempt to get her attention.
“Is it time?” she asked. Fear made her voice, her whole body, shake.
“Almost.”
She took the hand Sam offered and let him pull her to her feet. She could hear the things in the corridor, moaning and scraping, snuffling and shuffling. They had been her friends, her classmates, her roommate, a few days ago. She didn’t know what they were now.
It never stopped, the moaning and scraping and shuffling, a twenty-four hour a day soundtrack. She wanted to scream so she didn’t have to hear it for a few seconds. She turned toward the hole in the wall to the adjacent dorm room just as her best friend Karen scrambled through it.
“We’re ready,” Karen said to Sam. She didn’t acknowledge Miranda.
“I don’t think I can do it,” Miranda said to Sam, her voice small and unfamiliar. “I don’t think I can go out there.”
Chalky dust from the smashed drywall dusted Karen’s chestnut brown skin. As her eyes narrowed and her face contorted, she looked like a vengeful spirit. Miranda braced herself for the verbal barrage sure to follow but Sam cut Karen off with a gesture.
“You can, Miri,” he said, still holding her hand in his. He talked to her like she had seen him talk to his three-year-old nephew. “It’s simple. There are holes in the walls between this and the next few rooms. Jill’s waiting in the farthest room from here, and I’m going to help her open that door. But it won’t open the whole way, so we have time to get to the next room. Karen will help push the desk and chairs into place once we’re through.”
“A bunch of furniture won’t stop them,” Miranda protested.
“It’s not supposed to. We want them to get through, we just need to slow them down a little. By the time we get back here they’ll still be stuck in the first room but they’ll keep following through the holes in the walls. That will clear out the hallway enough so we can reach the stairwell and the roof.”
“There are people across the courtyard in Benson Center, Miranda. If we can get to the roof they’ll figure out a way to help us,” Karen chimed in. For once she didn’t sound angry, but her forbearance felt forced.
“How long will we be up there?” Miranda said.
Sam shifted closer to her. The shiny silver of his badge glinted where it caught the light, made brilliant by the black shirt of his uniform. “I don’t know, but it will be okay. Maybe there’s a way to get to a fire escape—”
Miranda gasped. A cold sweat slicked her body. “But they’re everywhere on the ground! We can’t go down there, Sam, we—”
Sam put his first two fingers over her lips. “We’ll think of something, okay? But we cannot stay here, Miri. We can’t. If we stay here, we’re going to die.”
It brought her up short, to hear him say it so plain. She was so focused on staying away from the… things. She had ignored the flip side: if they did not get out of this room they would be just as dead.
“What if they’re in the stairwell?” she said, knowing her protest was futile, but still needing to hold on to the illusion of the dorm room’s safety.
Sam brushed a strand of auburn hair away from Miranda’s face. “Don’t worry about that right now. Stay quiet, like you’ve been doing. If you do that, you’ll be okay.”
Sam’s calm voice was no-nonsense, and brooked no argument—his calm cop voice. The first time she’d seen him use it was in a bar, to de-escalate a disagreement between two drunks. Up to that point, she’d never seen a cop de-escalate anything. Impressed, and because he was cute, she’d complimented him as he passed her table. He stopped to talk, and they’d been dating ever since. Sam made what they needed to do sound simple. She knew it wouldn’t be.
“I got us this far, babe. Trust me, okay?”
It was true. Sam was the reason that she, Karen, and Jill were alive. The fear that flooded her brain did not recede, it was just that she trusted Sam more.
“Okay.”
First Karen, then Sam, scrambled through the hole in the wall. She wanted to follow after them but then she would be closer to the things. She heard the low murmur of their voices, then Karen’s head popped back through.
“Miranda?” Her voice sounded gentle, like the Karen whom she’d always known. “You have to pull your shit together and you have to do it now. I love you, hon, but I am not dying for you. If you freeze or do something stupid, I won’t come back.”
Karen ducked back through the hole. Miranda stared at the empty space where Karen had been, a hollow feeling her chest. Even her best friend thought she was a liability.
Alone for the first time in days, an irrational fear that one of the things had gotten into the room seized her. She whirled around. No monsters, but there was an aluminum baseball bat poking out from under the chair in the corner. She picked it up and felt a little better.
Raised voices. Human voices. Unable to bear not knowing, Miranda ran to look through the hole in the wall. She crouched down for a better sight line. Figures hovered near another hole in another wall. A scream, high and panicked, pierced the grunts and moans.
Miranda scuttled back, fumbling with the bat. Were the others dead? Was she left here alone? Banging and more shouting, voices coming closer. A shadow appeared on the other side of the hole to the next room, and she realized she was going to die in this crappy dorm. When Karen bolted through she smothered a scream. It’s Karen, it’s Karen, she told herself. Sam crawled through and sprang to his feet. He and Karen flipped the single bed frame on its side and shoved it in front of the hole.
“Where’s Jill?” Miranda said.
“Didn’t make it,” Sam answered, his voice tight and face pinched.
Karen crouched beside the hole to the next room, adjusting the pistol in her waistband.
“The ones that aren’t eat—” Karen stopped, then added softly, “They’re sniffing around the first barricade.”
“Shhh,” said Sam. He knelt on the desk that barricaded the door to the hallway. He leaned in, his ear to the door. Minutes ticked by.
“They’re through,” Karen whispered.
Moans began to emanate from the rooms beside them. The sharp stench of decaying bodies wafted through the hole. How can it smell worse than what’s coming from the hallway, Miranda thought, her stomach heaving.
No one spoke. Miranda closed her eyes. Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of death. Hail Mary, full of Grace—
“They’re through the second barricade,” Karen whispered.
Miranda opened her eyes, not sure how much time had passed while she’d been praying on a non-stop loop. Sam eased off the desk. He and Karen lifted it carefully, as if it were made of spun sugar, and quietly moved it away from the door. Sam put his ear to the door again. He looked over to Miranda and mouthed silently, “It’s working.”
Karen joined them at the door. Her body seemed to vibrate like a tightly wound spring, poised for attack, for action. Miranda tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs wouldn’t cooperate. The room seemed to shrink. Her ears started buzzing. She jumped when a hand closed around her wrist.
“It’s okay,” Sam said softly. “Just breathe, look at me.”
Miranda nodded. She tried to breathe, gripped the bat tighter. Sam’s focus shifted. She followed his gaze and saw a grasping, bloody hand reach through the small gap at the top of the hole in the wall.
Sam pulled the dull, black truncheon from his utility belt. He
nodded to Karen. With a torpid deliberateness, Karen unlocked the deadbolt. She gripped the doorknob and looked at Sam.
“Stay next to me, Miri,” Sam whispered. He looked at Karen. “Do it.”
Karen eased the door open. Sam looked into the hallway, then turned back and nodded. Karen opened the door wider. Sam stepped into the hallway, pulling Miranda with him. She half-stumbled before righting herself. When she looked down the hallway her body froze. Dozens of moaning things shoved and pushed into the room three doors down. Puddles of congealing blood slicked the floors and walls. Without air conditioning, the hallway felt stifling, close and hot like cotton packed tight.
Panic exploded inside Miranda’s chest. Her knees felt watery. After spending so much time trying to be quiet, the grunts and moans of the things sounded amplified, so much it almost hurt her ears. When she felt the tug of Sam’s hand on her arm, she yelped.
The heads of the things in the hallway turned toward them.
Distraction compromised, they bolted down the corridor. Sam reached the stairwell door first and eased it open, then opened it wider and stepped through. He turned back and motioned for Miranda and Karen to follow. As Karen stepped through the door she cried out and was yanked backwards.
Miranda caught Karen’s hand. Their outstretched arms kept the heavy metal door to the stairwell open.
“Let go, Miranda! Save yourself!”
Karen had said she wouldn’t die for Miranda, but if she let go of her hand now, she would. And Miranda would live. Karen wouldn’t even hold it against her.
No.
The voice was so loud, so distinct and sure, that if Miranda hadn’t known they were alone, she would have looked to see who had spoken. Deep in her belly something stirred. A hot, furious anger welled up, detonating inside her chest. She felt light and strong instead of heavy and weak. She felt fearless, not like a victim praying for an end to her suffering.
She was not going to die today. Neither was Karen.
Miranda rammed the heavy door with her right shoulder. She jammed her foot against it to get its weight off of hers and Karen’s arms. Karen stretched between Miranda and the thing like an accordion paper doll. The thing tried to reach down for a bite, but every time it did, it started to lose its footing. But more things were just steps behind the one that had Karen, and more behind them, all the way down the hallway.
The Undead Age Series | Novella | The Undead Age [Origin Stories] Page 3
