Clara squared up to Sax, coming between him and Andy. “Are you threatening us?” she said, fighting to control her voice.

Abigail strode to Sax’s side, towering over Clara, almost twice her height and several times her girth. The gladiator let the point of her spear droop, casually aiming it at Clara’s chest. “Who is threatening?”

Clara heard the creak of a chair behind her. Andy was moving into position. Panic flushed through her. “Hold on, calm down. We’re not going to make any quick decisions. Your companion is bitten, yes, but it’s your call what we do.”

“Is it?” Andy said behind her.

“Andy,” she barked. “Shut up.”

Suddenly, the monitor beside him flickered on, running a video feed. Clara pointed at the terminal. “Look, it’s working. The satellite must have rebooted.” She glanced at Abigail, trying to catch her eye contact. “We did it.”

The huge woman grunted. “Good.”

Andy turned his head slowly to watch. The video feed displayed a thin and sweaty man looking into the camera. Black pits hung from his wide eyes, saggy with exhaustion. Clara recognised the setting, the video had been recorded on the same terminal which they stood beside. A notification at the bottom of the screen displayed the message ‘Transmission in progress. Please do not interrupt.’ and there was an optional ‘Maximise stream to external monitors.’

Approaching the monitor, Clara clicked it, and the three large monitors hung on the rear wall lit up, displaying the same feed and playing the audio over speakers.

“The date is the fourteenth of January, it’s seven o’clock. The sun has just risen. We have decided to evacuate the laboratory and head north east. It’s the quickest way out of the city. I haven’t decided this on a whim. Do not blame me, do not send men to hunt me down. I am loyal to you, Old Blue Eyes, for this opportunity to do my work. I want the same things you want, however…”

The man paused, looking down, clenching his eyes shut. Clara recognised him, and checked her wrist terminal to confirm. He was the lead scientist whom they were tasked to retrieve: Linton. Excited, she checked the time stamp. “Two days ago,” Clara said. By now, everyone was fixated on the screens.

“I can’t…” The lead scientist in the video feed spluttered. “We can’t go on like this. The building is full of them. The Grizzlies you sent to supplement our defences were imbeciles without a single brain cell between them except the motor neurons required to wield an axe. Now they’re all dead. I understand that resources are stretched thin amongst the Harmonies, but the wild animals you sent were simply unprofessional. They couldn’t sit still! They were too noisy. I told them, at night, to be silent, but they attracted the horde. I think that’s what they wanted… a fight. By the morning,” he held up a finger. “One left. One merc left to protect us all, and he was traumatised. He’d bashed his companions’ brains in when they turned. So he marched around the laboratory making unreasonable requests. Threatening us to work faster. Drinking and saying crazy things about the dark.”

“Sounds like Doe’s team to me,” Sax said. Clara figured he was talking about the dead mercs–they had been Grizzlies too, part of the same mother tribe as the Hogs.

Abigail growled. “The chief should have chosen us from the start.”

Sax nodded. “Guess they’re all gone now.”

“One night,” Linton continued on the feed. “He woke up screaming about demons in the shadows. He started flailing wildly in the dark, nearly killed Riddhi in her sleep. The sound attracted more zombies, but worse than that, he destroyed the anomaly containment chamber. We didn’t think about it much at first, we didn’t have the time. We barricaded the stairway and fought for our lives. Lost more… Christ, I can’t tell you how much we lost. We’re lucky to survive. At night, they change. The zombies become feral. Their hearing improves, their hunger…” Linton shivered, his eyes getting lost.

Clara checked her wrist terminal and shared a glance with Andy. The nights were early in winter. The sun was setting outside.

“And then I started to see it too.” Linton choked on his words, struggling to contain his fear. “Things in the shadows, like black veils in the breeze. Things… happened, okay. Stuff got knocked over and lights went out. We lost power. I know that sounds trivial, but it’s difficult to describe this feeling that we all had. Cold. Something is here with us in the dark. It knows what we’re doing. It watches us sleep. It sinks into everything and it brings the night. The night! I can’t bear another. We have to escape.”

Linton leapt up from his chair, diminishing in the video feed as he paced about the room. He wore a baggy hazmat suit, and Clara could tell by the divets in his cheeks that he was malnutritioned. He picked up a metal briefcase, holding it up for the camera. “This is it. The prototype. And it probably works, but I can’t be sure. Once you get this transmission, please send a recovery team to zone Four-A. That’s where we’re heading, and with any luck-”

The transmission ended abruptly.

“What happened?” Sax said.

Clara checked the terminal, it read ‘Transmission complete’.

“The satellite must have fallen right then and cut him off,” she said.

“We can track them down,” Abigail said.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Tonight?” Sax said. “Or do we stay, wait out the night?”

“Stay,” Clara said. “I don’t like the sound of shadows and feral zombies but, frankly, we’re professionals. We can defend the rooftop overnight, and there’s a fire escape if we need to get down. Trust me, we don’t want to face the horde while it’s feral. The ones in the basement, where it was dark, were fast, ferocious.”

“Nazi zombies,” Andy added. “High level. Original Verruckt map, maybe.”

“What?” Sax said.

“The zombies,” Andy said. “When they’re in the dark, yeah, they go from being all slow to like, say… Zombieland. Have you seen that one? It might be more up your street.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s using references,” Clara explained. “From before the cataclysm.”

“Popular culture,” Andy said.

“Oh,” Sax said. “So, what, they’re more dangerous in the dark?”

“Yep.”

“Like…” Sax glanced between Clara and Andy, unsure of himself. “Like the ones in I am Legend?”

Andy snorted. “Those are vampires.”

“What?”

“Yeah stupid.”

“No they’re not.”

“Read the comics.”

“Guys,” Clara said. “It doesn’t matter what they are or what references you want to make. Listen to me, if we reach the rooftop quietly, we shouldn’t have any trouble. Then tomorrow, we pick up on the scientists’ trail in the morning.”

“No,” Abigail said. “Too slow.”

“We’ve got a better chance of finding them in the daylight,” Clara said.

“Daniel needs medicine,” Sax said. “There’s probably a pharmacy in town.”

“What?” Clara said. “Are you kidding me? You heard what he said. It gets worse at night. We’re not going anywhere. Besides, that message was just sent to Quadra. Blue Eyes will have received it by now and is probably sending reinforcements as we speak. If not that, he’ll send a correspondence. We should at least wait until the morning.”

“Then you wait here,” Sax said. “We’ve got a job to do.”

“Leave.” Daniel struggled to speak. “Go.” They all looked at him, slouched against the wall.

“See,” Sax said. “Daniel agrees. He hasn’t given up yet.”

Clara’s heart sank. The merc was hanging in there, but for how long? She wondered how best to approach the topic of executing him once he turned into a zombie. That was never an easy conversation to have.

In the quiet, a muffled sound reached her from outside. Gunfire. The Trojan was still out there firing pot-shots at zombies, while the sun set about them. Clara broke into a run. As she reached the lobby to the facility, the gunfire sounded more rapid. Several weapons joined the clamour as she reached the reception area window. Outside, zombies were hurling themselves at the chain fence, climbing on top of one another with surmounting fervour. The Trojan’s headlights were on, and muzzles flashed from every firing slit.

Behind her, each of the three Hogs entered the lobby, Andy taking up the rear. He watched Sax carry Daniel over his shoulder. The wiry man placed his senior on a chair, then pressed his earpiece. “All good Robert? Ready to go?”

“Affirmative.” The voice sounded over the radio in each of the Hogs’ earpieces.

“Get the meds out of the boot,” Sax said over the channel. “Every antibiotic you can find. He’s in bad shape, but he’s been in worse. Aye, boss?”

Daniel’s head lulled. He looked up at Sax with grave eyes.

“Priority is get out of this fucking city,” Sax said.

A loud horn blurted outside, the Trojan’s modified horn sounding like a baying stallion. Clara soon realised what they were signalling. The perimeter fence had been breached, trampled by the crush of bodies. Flames lit the night as the Trojan whirled into action, driving to align itself with the new horde. But zombies piled on all sides of the fence, falling over the fence where their bodies were stacked high enough to surmount it. The Trojan revved its engine and accelerated towards the exit. Zombies collided with it, bouncing off its hull like raindrops on the concrete. The battlewagon flattened everything in its path, obliterating the corpses beneath its wheels, disappearing down the road, into the vast fields beyond, its red tail lights dimming over the distance.

“Idiots,” Clara said.

“We are better without them,” Abigail said.

Clara felt exposed in the window, as though a zombie might look up and notice her. The horde was massive now. They must have hidden in the shadows during the day, she hadn’t seen this many on the streets while they were driving that morning. “If we’re going to leave, we have to do it now.”

“He’s turned,” Andy said.

“What?” Sax said.

“That’s a zombie,” Andy pointed at Daniel, who sat hunched over in the chair, his head hanging between his hands.

“That’s our boss, mate. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Nope. Not got a problem shooting either of you.”

“Andy,” Clara said. “Cool it.”

Sax stormed up to Andy and shouted in his face. “You wanna go, kid? You think you’re tough?” He was shorter than Andy, who remained leaning against the wall, arms crossed.

“Be quiet,” Abigail shouted.

“I don’t take orders from you,” Sax spat. “I take them from him.” He pointed at Daniel. “He’s my boss. Has been for years. A lot longer than I’ve known you. And he’s seen a lot, and we’ve come through a lot-”

Daniel’s head snapped around to Sax. He bound out of his chair like a rabid dog. Andy shot him a split second later. The revolver was deafening in close quarters. Daniel’s corpse collided with Sax sending them both tumbling to the floor.

“Fucker!” Sax pushed Daniel’s corpse off him and scrambled to his feet. “You shot him.”

“It,” Andy corrected, training his revolver on Sax’s head.

The little man bit down on his tongue so hard he shook with anger. His eyes swelled, veins bulging in his neck. His hand twitched to a dagger at his side.

“Had he turned?” Abigail asked, a quiver in her voice. Clara took a step away from the huge warrior, afraid she’d suddenly lose her temper.

“He was getting up,” Sax said.

Andy chuckled. “Yeah, sure. He was gonna be fine.”

A clatter in the stairwell beyond drew Clara’s attention. Outside in the car park, an offshoot of zombies had turned away from the road, running back towards the building. They attracted more, who followed like sand trickling through an hourglass.

“Hush,” Clara said. “Is that your man in the stairwell?”

Abigail paused to listen, then radioed in. “No, he’s with the vehicles.”

Clara’s heart dropped. “Then tell him to hide.”