The three made it across the bridge without incident, though Wil caught a glimpse of movement far behind from the way they had just come. Something had heard the inhuman cries of the bird-thing and the many gunshots and had come to investigate. Wil didn’t want to see what it was, because nothing human would go towards those sounds. They left Burnside Bridge and arrived on Burnside Street.

The remains of the Bancorp Tower poked out of the fog like a burned and broken finger far ahead of them. The skeletal remains of its insides still propped it up, but it was full of holes and craters that released thick clouds of black smoke into the gray sky. The shorter buildings hadn’t fared much better, and everything Wil could see showed some level of damage. The least of it was broken windows, while a few buildings looked to have been razed straight to the ground and were no more the piles of rubble.

The road was a mess of ruined cars, many of them on their backs or sides, all of them dented or crashed in some way. Many of the cars had become tombs for their drivers and passengers, with bodies slumped in seats, only held up by belts so Wil could see their pale, dead faces.

More bodies littered the road and sidewalks, all of them maimed in some way. Guts and viscera were in such abundance across the street that it was more difficult to find somewhere that wasn’t coated in gore.

“Of the main road, come on,” Matsuda said and made a hard right off the bridge as it sloped down. Matsuda continued down and around back toward the Willamette until he had gotten under bridge completely. The area along the banks of the Willamette had been a pristine public park, with the Saturday market to the South of Burnside and the Japanese-American Historical plaza to the north. Waterfront Park Trail stretched along the western bank of the Willamette in both directions, and would normally have been busy with cyclists and joggers and people running with their dogs. The area just south of the Burnside Bridge opened into a wide plaza full of trees and benches that encouraged tired walkers to sit and enjoy the view of the Willamette. Beyond that it separated into a broad concrete path and a street that were separated by a wide grassy area dotted with more trees. Wil and Naomi had had a picnic there once, ages ago.

Now it was strewn with more bodies. Not as many as the surface street, but there was still no shortage of brutally dismembered people to see. Wil gulped as he saw several thick trails of blood leading into the river and pressed his back against one of the bridge’s many supports. The guard rail along the Willamette had been torn open in multiple places, or removed entirely in others. All of the bars were bent away from the river, indicating that something had burst through them from the dark water beyond.

“Where are we going?” Matsuda asked.

“Washington and 9th,” Wil said. “It’s not a bad walk, uh, under normal conditions.”

“Thank god things are normal then, right?” Qadira asked with a note of hysteria.

“Best way would be to head for Morrison Bridge, south,” Wil said and pointed. “Maybe we stay down here? Looks less crowded than up there.”

“Mm. Longer sight lines too,” Matsuda said. “We walk on the grassy part in the middle, stay under trees, keep away from the water. If we have to retreat, we head inland, toward some of those buildings. Plenty of broken windows to dive through if we have to make a quick getaway.”

“Speaking of, we should get the hell away from this bridge,” Wil said. It was distant, but Wil heard the distinct feral snarling of what sounded like the black-eyed zombies approaching from the east side of the bridge.

“What about this guy not having a bike?” Qadira asked and nodded at Wil.

“It’s a bike path. We’ll find one sooner or later. In the meantime, Wil, you might need to jog a bit until we can get away from all this commotion,” Matsuda said and nodded up at the bridge.

“I got no problem with that,” Wil said and took off at an easy jog, his bag bouncing against his back. Wil spared a glance to a grassy spot not far from the wide plaza. It was near a tree, not much different than any other, but Will knew the spot well. He and Naomi had a picnic there every year since they’d met.

----------------------------------------

Portland, Oregon

Four years ago

The Saturday market had been busier than usual. It was full of tourists or families from the suburbs who had come out to see whatever festival or gathering it was that had sprung up in the form of hundreds of tiny tents and stalls and food trucks. It was a nice day for it too: sunny, warm, but with a breeze coming off the coast that provided plenty of relief.

Wil had just wanted to come down and buy some of the bread that the local bakeries prepared, along with a few things to put on said baked goods. He could’ve gone to any market for the latter, but he would have been happy to kill somebody in front of their own mother for a loaf of the ciabatta that was just the perfect texture of crunchy and chewy.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Though if the crowd got any worse he might just need to start mowing people down anyway to get back to his car. He’d gotten turned around in the maze of stalls and tents set up outside the Saturday market, and had run into dead ends twice, blocked by the back ends of food trucks, and been forced to retrace his steps and weave through the crowd.

A woman carrying a baby in one arm while her other child gripped the other one almost slammed into him, and Wil was forced to almost jump back or risk body slamming the baby. He bumped hard into somebody behind him, felt his elbow dig right into the area below their armpit, and was greeted by a feminine yelp of pain and surprise.

He turned, one arm clutching a brown bag full of heavenly loaves, an apology on his lips, when a young woman met him with a glare.

“Asshole!” she snapped.

Wil’s first thought when he saw Naomi for the first time was that she had a very cute nose. It wasn’t small, but it was very rounded and arched just so and had a very faint smattering of freckles marching across the bridge like tiny fairy footprints. Her hair was long, light brown, and tied back in a simple pony tail that left her neck and shoulders bared. Her eyes matched her hair, and were alight with irritation.

Wil’s second thought when he saw Naomi for the first time was that she was being very rude for what was clearly an accident.

“Shithead,” Wil snapped back before he could stop his mouth. Naomi drew her head back as if he had spit at her and her eyes widened. Wil bit his lip and took a breath.

“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry for bumping into you. A lady almost knocked me down and I didn’t see you.”

“No, no I was rude. It’s been a madhouse around here all morning,” Naomi said.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll live, just been jostled a few too many times.”

“Same. If one of these damn tourists smooshes up against my bread I’m gonna bite them.”

“Hey, is that the stuff from Leo’s Loaves? The guy with the big mustache?” Naomi asked and smiled. She had dimples when she smiled.

“Yeah. Not a tourist, I take it?” Wil asked.

“Nah, been here a while. Anyway, I’ll let you evacuate your bread.”

“That sounds like a euphemism for something terrible,” Wil said. Naomi looked surprised again, but pleasantly so this time. She laughed, and it was almost musical.

“I guess it does,” she said with a nod.

“Anyway, good luck out there, and sorry again,” Wil said and gave her a little wave before turning back into the crowd. He was too focused on the crowd to think much about the pretty gal who had called him an asshole until he got back to his car. He paused with his hand on the door, wondering if he should go back, ask her out, try to get her number, the whole bit.

She had clearly been agitated by the crowd already. She didn’t need some random guy hitting her up after elbowing her and calling her a shithead. Wil sighed and opened the trunk of his car and put his purchases inside and slammed it shut.

“Oh hey,” a familiar voice said and Wil looked up. It was her, again. She had a plastic bag in one hand and car keys in another.

“Hey,” Wil replied.

“My car’s just here,” she said and pointed. “The chocolate guy I was gonna see had sold everything already.”

“Too bad.”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause between them, and then they both tried to speak at once, stopped, and another pause.

“I wanted to apologize again for elbowing you,” Wil said and decided to go for it. “Maybe get you a coffee? Decent place up the street. They got chocolate too, I think.”

“Funny, I was about to ask you the same thing,” she replied. Wil’s eyebrows rose up and he smiled. “A condition though.”

“Oh?”

“Gotta tell me your name first. I can’t just keep calling you Asshole.”

“Fair, but then you have to tell me yours, or I’ll have to keep calling you Shithead.”

“Deal.”

“Wil.”

“Naomi.”

He shook her hand after she had but her groceries in her car, and the two of them had walked away from the Saturday Market and along the Willamette to the cafe.

----------------------------------------

Portland, Oregon

Now

The cafe had a lower torso in front of its entrance. Both legs had been broken, compound fractures where the bone was shoved out through the skin in vicious white barbs. Several feet of intestines fell out of the exposed waist, and part of what might have been a liver. They and the vast puddle of blood around them had dried into a dark, sticky mess. Flies of various sizes crawled over the legs and the guts, sticking their tiny sucker mouths all over them and rubbing their legs together in a gesture of pure avarice and gruesome delight.

The cafe was dark. The table Wil and Naomi had sat at had been shattered to splinters, and the body of one of the black-eyed zombies lay across it. Something had cleaved it in half on the diagonal, from the left side of the skull all the way down to the right hip.

That cafe had been their first date. Wil had figured he’d have been lucky to get an hour of the pretty woman’s time, but they had stayed until the sky turned dark and the owner was giving them the stink-eye. They’d had their first-year anniversary roughly on the grass where they’d bumped into each other, still within sight of the cafe.

The memory seemed alien by comparison to the current reality. They sky had been blue, people had been everywhere, and the air had been full of happy chatter and the smells of food.

Now the sky was gray, the only people were dead, and the air was full of the scent of decay, and the distant sounds of inhuman predators.

“Hey buddy, you gonna make it?” Qadira asked and Wil blinked as he looked up from the ruined cafe. “Something in there?”

“No, Wil said, “Not anymore. Morrison Bridge isn’t far.”

“Found you another bike,” Matsuda said and nodded at a fallen bicycle. A pair of hands still gripped the handlebars. Whoever the hands had belonged to was nowhere to be seen, as the limbs ended just above the wrists. Wil grimaced as he peeled the disembodied hands off the bike and tossed them away.

“Sorry,” he said to whoever the hands had been a part of.

“C’mon. Don’t wanna give anything the chance to catch up to us,” Matsuda said and pedaled away. Qadira followed and Wil spared a moment to glance back at the cafe and the spot on the grass.

“You better be okay, Shithead,” Wil muttered to himself as he pedaled away.