Gutierrez fired again, tears running down her face. Another black-eyed runner got a hole in their head and face-planted. Matsuda opened fire on the mob of green-eyed things behind them.

Wil finally managed to take his pistol out of the holster without looking at it.

He didn’t have much choice. His eyes were stuck, wide and unblinking, on the nightmare horde before him. He stared into their black eyes, took in every facet of their twisted and writhing forms. He raised his pistol and fired.

Nothing fell. He didn’t even know if he had hit anything. There were so many of them, and all of them had had their bodies ravaged in some way or another.

He fired again. Gutierrez swore at them and her rifle cracked and another one fell. Matsuda continued to fire behind them but Wil couldn’t take his eyes away from death charging at him. It wouldn’t be long now. They would be on him and the other two, and they’d be turned into those things, torn apart and brought back.

He wasn’t doing shit with his pistol.

Better to put it to where it would be the best use.

Wil felt a familiar and not unpleasant sense of surety settle over him.

He’d tried to get to Naomi. He’d gone Out There, done his best, but this was it.

One thing left to do.

Wil turned the gun toward himself, put it against his temple…

“Get down!” Matsuda said and grabbed both Wil’s and Gutierrez’s heads and shoved them down towards the soaking lawn they had crashed onto. Gutierrez grunted and Wil’s pistol went off, inches away from the side of his skull.

Shadows fell over them, howling green-eyed shapes that moved with the same uniformity as a flock of birds or a school of fish. And they descended…

On the black-eyed things.

The two horrific forces broke against each other in a crashing wave of violence. They completely ignored Wil, Gutierrez and Matsuda, and focused their brutal attentions on each other. The black-eyed things tore into the green-eyed creatures with visceral savagery: blood and limbs flew, bones snapped, viscera spilled.

But the green-eyed things took no notice. They fought with precision and an eerie, nimble grace. And while Wil couldn’t be certain, he thought he saw several of them fight without touching the black-eyed things. Some invisible force grabbed several of the undead attackers and flung them away or snapped their legs off.

“Go! The house! Go!” Matusda shouted over the hellish howling and snarling. The water from the fire hydrant had turned into a small lake of blood and guts and Wil was almost shoved down into its sloshing, chunky carmine surface. He gagged at the smell and shambled in a low crouch, Matsuda’s hand on his back, behind Gutierrez.

The house in question was the one they had crashed in front of, and its door had been knocked off its hinges. Gutierrez hurried in while the monstrous melee continued behind them. Wil dared a single look back and regretted it at once.

Fountains of blood, piles of intestines, livers, lungs, rolling heads, flayed skin. Shards of bone, all scattered across the street. There were still dozens of the now inhuman combatants tearing each other to pieces, howling in fury, and that was enough for Wil. More than enough. He scurried after Gutierrez and ducked into the dark interior of the house, Matsuda right behind.

“Holy shit,” Wil said. His chest was heaving, and not only from barely escaping the mob of things. He’d been ready to do it, almost offed himself, would have offed himself if not for Matsuda.

“Keep moving, no cover,” Matsuda said and continued to walk in a rapid, tactical hunched way toward the far end of the house. Gutierrez said nothing, tears still rolling down her cheeks, but her face was still neutral. She followed Matsuda with the grace of a wind-up doll. Wil trembled as the bestial sounds of slaughter continued outside and followed after.

They entered a narrow kitchen with a back door that was still intact. Matsuda peered up over the edge of a window, then opened the door and waved Gutierrez forward.

“Through the back yard, into the next house. If their back door is locked, go to the right,” Matsuda said in a rushed whisper. Gutierrez nodded, clearly on autopilot, and crouch-walked across the yard. The houses did not have fences separating their back yards, though a few had planted hedges. Gutierrez tried the back door at the next house, shook her head, and continued around the other side.

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Wil followed her and Matsuda brought up the rear. Wil wasn’t sure he was comfortable with that. Gutierrez was in shock after seeing O’Donnell get killed, and then having to shoot him after the fact. Wil was still coming off the pleasant mellow of certain death, and even if he was in a good headspace, had no idea what the best course of action was. Matsuda should have been in front.

“How far are we from your family’s house?” Matsuda whispered ahead to Gutierrez as all three of them hid in the bushes alongside the next house. The sounds of the brutal fight behind them were fading, either with distance or a lack of combatants.

Wil doubted their luck would hold to the length that all of the monstrosities took each other out. Surely there would be some survivors, and what then? They’d likely go looking for the living people who had escaped from right under them.

“Uh, I don’t…I got turned around. Gimme a sec,” she said and sniffled. Matsuda just nodded as Gutierrez peered out from the side of the house, looking for street signs. She came back a second later. “Two blocks to the left.”

“I assume you still want to go there?” Matsuda asked.

“Yes. I have to make sure. One way or another,” she said. Matsuda nodded and so did Wil.

“You lead for now then. Let’s check on your family,” the old man said.

What followed was a hurried, silent, and terrifying sort of game of leapfrog.

Gutierrez would poke her head out, scan the road, and then wave them forward to the next house or bit of cover. Wil and Matusda would hurry forward, check out the area, then wave her on when it was clear. Repeat.

They spotted some shambling figures at varying distances. Wil couldn’t tell if they were the low-tier black-eyed ones or the green-eyed ones from this distance. Fog had begun to settle in the streets, cutting visibility to just half a block. Wil only saw indistinct human shapes shuffling in the ethereal gray.

Once, after they had cleared one block, they all froze in the shadow of a house as something huge thumped past them on the street they had just crossed. Wil smelled it before he saw or heard it: a foul odor of rot and vomit that made Wil gag and cover his mouth. It could have been one of the stretched out humans-things like Sandoval had been but it sounded much, much bigger.

When they approached the second block, Matsuda hissed at them to stop.

The coast was clear, no shapes loomed out of the fog. It looked clear.

Then Wil saw the distortion. The asphalt had been swirled around into a spiral of rocks and tar, then frozen in place. That could have been mistaken for a construction error, though. What could not be dismissed was the fog subtly ebbing, waning, and swirling around the same same area.

God, it’s practically invisible. I would’ve walked right into it, he thought. The more Wil studied the distortion, he saw at least some people had walked into it.

There were quite a few abandoned clothes in the street. Normally this might have been enough to raise Wil’s eyebrows, but the streets were riddled with debris. All of the clothes were gathered roughly around the distortion, and all of them bore faint scorch marks.

So not the same as the sucking one or the spiky one, Wil thought. Matsuda waved his hand and made a going-around gesture with it, pointing the way he wanted to go. Gutierrez didn’t acknowledge him, just moved as he directed, across the street.

Another round a life-or-death leapfrog later, and Gutierrez stopped.

She froze ahead of them, at the corner of the next hour, head just beyond the edge of some blood-spattered siding. She was staring at something, still as a rabbit listening for a fox.

“What is it?” Matsuda whispered.

Gutierrez didn’t answer. Wil leaned forward and followed her gaze across the street.

Gutierrez stared at a two-story house painted a pleasant sunflower-yellow with white trim and dark blue shingles on the roof. It was a happy-looking house, and somebody had even taken the time to paint the mailbox out front with swirling lavender letters that spelled a name.

“GUTIERREZ.”

The house had been ruined. Windows were broken, the door had been snapped off its hinges, and there was a long streak of blood in the concrete driveway that lead to the sidewalk, then continued down the road and out of sight.

“Oh no,” Wil sighed.

“They have a basement,” Gutierrez said. “They could be in there, holed up.”

“It’d be dangerous. Whatever did that damage could still be in there,” Matsuda said.

“We’re exposed out here. Everything is dangerous. Follow me or don’t,” Gutierrez said and then ran forward without looking.

“Hey!” Wil hissed, then grumbled and checked the road before he hurried after her. Gutierrez wasn’t trying to be sneaky any more, she ran upright, ranger’s boots tromping up wooden steps to the porch then through the open doorway. Matsuda and Wil followed after, albeit much more quietly.

“Mama? Papa? David? Hector?” Gutierrez called out as she went from room-to-room.

“Shh!” Wil hissed but Gutierrez ignored him.

“Raul? Esmi?” she asked as she ran up the stairs. Wil glanced out the open doorway and shattered windows. Nothing was coming near them, nothing appeared to be near enough, but every house was a possible den of horrors, and every corner might have concealed another horde. Wil didn’t think they’d get lucky enough to have two groups cancel each other out that often.

Something in the house thumped.

Gutierrez was upstairs, but the noise had come from below.

Matsuda and Wil looked at each other, and the old man pointed down. Wil nodded.

“There’s nobody here…but, but there’s no blood and no——” Gutierrez came back down the stairs and saw the two men looking down at the floor and backing away. Matsuda put a finger to his mouth as he looked up at the ranger, then pointed down at the floor.

“Basement,” Gutierrez whispered. She rushed past Matusda and almost knocked Wil over, then rounded a corner.

“No!” Matsuda whispered. “Careful!”

More thumping as Gutierrez hurried further back into the house and Wil followed. He saw her just as she reached a door. It began to open even before she touched the handle and time slowed down as Wil saw only darkness beyond. The door opened fully onto a dark staircase leading down. Hands emerged from the shadows.

They embraced Gutierrez, drew her close, into the shaking arms of an elderly Hispanic couple. Their eyes were bright with tears, and perfectly human. Gutierrez sobbed as she embraced her parents, fell to her knees, and hugged them close.

They were alive.