"Fucking quarantine zones?" Bianca whispered. As she followed Frank through the diner, she locked eyes with the server who stood behind the counter, whispering frantically into his device.

"Frank? Go faster, please."

"Stop shoving me!"

They stumbled down the diner steps and looked both ways. Frank was half a block away when he turned around to see her still standing back at the diner. He ran back and tugged her shirt sleeve.

"Hey! Snap out of it!" he said. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"What?"

"Where are we going, Frank?"

"I don't know! My place, I guess? Or yours?"

She shook her head. "No. No, I don't think we should—"

At the diner window, the patrons stood staring down at them as the server locked the door.

"B! Move it!"

"Listen," she said.

"You walk, I'll listen."

"Frank," she said, pulling her arm away. "Stop!"

"What—"

"Will you just hush!"

"Oh," he said. "I thought you meant, you know, listen. As in, listen because I'm about to say something to you. And now you're looking at me like that because you want me to shut up and I'm still talking. Fine, but at least come over here." He pulled her into an alley, where they stood behind a dumpster, listening until Frank heard what she had heard.

"Sirens."

She nodded. "A lot of sirens. But listen. Listen to where they're coming from."

His eyes grew wide.

"We can't go home, Frank. We can't go home."

"Well, we sure as hell can't stay here. Pretty sure they reported you," Frank said, nodding toward the diner.

"Yeah," Bianca said. "How about the store?"

"I don't have the key. You?"

"No, it's back at home."

"We could break in?"

"I choose life, Frank."

He looked at her arms, which was when she realized she was mindlessly scratching them. Droplets of blood stained the lightweight cotton. She made a frowny face and whined.

"Oh no, this is vintage."

"Hey. Does it hurt? Are they poking through your skin? I mean, can you feel them?"

"Not really. They itch down to the bone, though. It's fucking maddening." She moved to shrug off the shirt again.

"Don't! Sorry, that came out harsher than I meant. It's just, you're definitely safer with it on."

She let her hands fall to her sides. "Tell me the truth. Am I gonna die?"

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Frank shook his head and held out his hand. She took it, and they walked down the alley in silence, away from the diner, away from the sirens, away from home. When they reached the far end of the alley, Frank took a deep breath.

"Okay, look, if they're really setting up quarantine zones, we don't want to be down in Wharton, anyway. I say we get to where the getting's good, while we still can."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, if they're locking us in, let's at least get stuck in Brewerytown."

"Yeah. I mean, okay. Let's get stuck in Brewerytown. Who do you know there?"

He took a step backward and held up a hand. "Hold up. Who do I know? Who do I know?" He shook his head. "Who do you think I even am? Do you even know me?"

"Fine, knower of all things and people." She stood aside and held an arm out. "Lead the way."

They made their way north, sticking to crumbling alleys and neglected byways. Except for the distant sirens that sometimes came a little too close for comfort, the streets were dead silent; passersby seemed as eager as they were to go unnoticed.

As they skirted downtown Philadelphia, its towering buildings loomed over them like broken sentinels, their glass windows long since shattered, their vast concrete facades cracked and crumbling. Passing through seemingly abandoned neighborhoods, they caught occasional whiffs of smoke, evidence of recent cook fires tended to by folks who had no coin for the power syndicates. Everywhere, broken streetlights and stripped vehicles lined the busted streets, which were piled high with the skeletal remains of a once vibrant city. But despite its decay, or maybe because of it, Philly's ghost held a powerful allure that kept its inhabitants circling like moths to a fading flame.

They walked on, and little by little, the decomposition yielded. Someone—some wealthy neighborhood family or revitalization group—had haphazardly repaved many of the streets around Northside, though weeds still grew through cracks in the pavement, reclaiming some of what humans had stolen from them.

The result was a slightly more pleasant driving experience for vehicle owners who ventured out of their gated community. Those people were few and far between; anyone leaving Northside by car kept just going north if they valued life and limb. Aside from pedestrians, the pretty streets mostly made way for bicycles and wagons.

They also made way for heavy Strategic Defense trucks.

"Go! Go, go, go."

They ran across the old parkway toward the museum and ducked behind a massive granite block.

"Plan?" she said. "They're not just gonna open the gates and welcome us in."

"There!" Frank said, squeezing the stitch in his side. He pointed toward a 10-foot iron fence, where Bianca spied a meager gap in the bars. Judging by the narrow dirt path which cut a zig-zagging line into the surrounding weeds, it was a popular spot.

Frank let Bianca through, then squeezed in sideways and promptly got stuck.

"This," he panted, "is bullshit." He groaned as he wiggled from side to side. "Fat.. shaming... short... cut... making... mother... fuckers."

Bianca poked his stomach. "Go over."

"Uhh," he grunted. "Get bent." Then he forced his way through the opening.

"Get down!" she whispered. They lay in the tall grass as the trucks approached. Bianca felt her teeth chatter, then the rumbling tons of metal sent vibrations through the packed earth and up into her bones. "Damn, I think it's the tank trucks," she said. "Feels like two."

"Feels like?" Frank said.

"Yeah. No, it's three. I'm gonna look."

"No!" he said. "Just stay put. It doesn't matter."

He was right. It didn't matter. They could barely run across a few empty lanes of ancient parkway, let alone outrun military-trained police. She lay on her back and watched the clouds drift by as the trucks rolled out of earshot.

"Stratocumulus."

"Huh?"

"The clouds," she said.

"Oh."

"They are the most common clouds on Earth."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Tell me something else."

"Umm, most lightning bolts are barely an inch wide."

"What? How?"

She shrugged. "Can we go?" she said. "I need to get out of this grass before I claw my skin off."

"I just need a minute."

"You okay? Out of breath? Maybe if you sit up?"

"Just give me a sec. It's just so fucking hot."

She sat up and looked at him. "Yeah, you don't look so good."

She reached out to palm his forehead, but he dodged her touch. "Don't. I'm just hot, that's all. Don't get your plague all over me."

She let that hang between them for a minute.

"You know," she said, "we still don't know what this is."

"Yeah," he said, without a hint of hope.

"It could be fine. We—I could be fine."

"Yeah, I hate to say it, B, but scales growing out of your fucking arms isn't fine."

She stood, shook out her hair, stripped off her shirt, and looked down at him with a face full of contempt.

"Fuck you, Frank."