Chapter 10: The Collapse Begins - Part 2
We made it back to Kennedy High on foot just after dark. The two-mile walk through infected streets took three hours—constant detours, hiding in alleys, moving in silence. Travis carried Griselda most of the way, her injured leg making her a liability. Daniel stayed at the rear, pistol ready, cold efficiency in every movement.
Liza met us at the school entrance, relief flooding her face when she saw Chris was with Travis. The reunion was brief—hugs, quiet tears, then immediate triage. Griselda needed medical attention beyond what we could provide with our limited supplies.
"Hospital," Liza said after examining the leg. "She needs surgery. That wound is infected, probably fractured. Without proper treatment..."
She didn't finish. Didn't need to.
Daniel sat with his wife, holding her hand, face unreadable. Ofelia hovered nearby, young and scared, looking to her father for guidance he couldn't give.
I pulled Travis and Madison aside. "We can't stay here. No power, limited supplies, and Griselda needs help we can't provide."
"The cabin," Madison suggested again. "We could—"
"Still too far with an injured person. We need somewhere closer." I checked my mental map of LA. "Your house. It's fortified, we know the area, and it's only a few miles from here."
Travis frowned. "My house or Madison's?"
"Madison's. I've already done supply runs there. I know the layout."
"The neighborhood could be overrun by now."
"Then we clear it. But staying here is a death sentence. This place is too visible, too exposed."
[ TIMER: 19:12:44 ]
The numbers glowed in my peripheral vision, mocking. Less than twenty hours. The tremors in my hands had subsided slightly, but the headache remained—a constant spike behind my eyes.
We moved at first light. All ten of us, supplies loaded into every bag we could carry. The school's cafeteria had given us enough food for maybe a week if rationed. Water would be tighter—we'd need to find more sources.
Daniel walked beside me as we left the school. "You move like someone who's done this before."
"Done what?"
"Combat evacuation. You check corners, count ammunition, assign positions without thinking. Military?"
"Medical training. Trauma response protocols."
"Mm." He didn't sound convinced. "In El Salvador, during the war, I saw many doctors. None moved like you."
"Different kind of war."
"Perhaps."
We reached the Clark house by noon. The neighborhood looked wrong—too quiet, too still. Cars sat abandoned in driveways. Windows were dark. A dog barked somewhere, frantic and alone.
Madison unlocked the front door with shaking hands. The house smelled stale, closed-up. We cleared it room by room out of habit, then secured the windows and doors.
Travis helped Griselda to the couch. She was pale, feverish, barely conscious. Liza started an IV with supplies from our medical kit—saline to keep her hydrated, antibiotics to fight the infection.
"How long can you keep her stable?" Daniel asked.
"Days, maybe. But without surgery, the infection will spread. She needs a hospital."
"Then we find one."
"Daniel—" Liza's voice was gentle but firm. "The hospitals are probably the most dangerous places right now. Full of infected, full of panicked people."
"My wife needs help."
"And I'm helping her. But I can't perform surgery here. I don't have the tools, the anesthesia, the sterile environment. If we move her too much, we could make it worse."
Daniel's jaw clenched. He turned and walked out to the backyard.
Ofelia followed him. Through the window, I watched them talk—father and daughter, having a conversation in rapid Spanish. Daniel's hands gestured sharply. Ofelia cried.
Madison started organizing the kitchen—checking what food had spoiled, what was still good. Nick and Chris boarded up the ground-floor windows from inside. Alicia sat on the stairs, watching everything, saying nothing.
I went to the garage and took inventory of tools. Hammers, nails, rope, duct tape. The basics of fortification. A manual push mower that could be converted to a weapon in a pinch. A generator that might work if we could find fuel.
My phone had been dead for hours. No power to charge it, no signal anyway. We were cut off—no information except what we could see and hear.
Around two PM, someone screamed.
The sound came from across the street. I grabbed my pistol and moved to the window. Madison was already there, peering through a gap in the boards.
The Dawsons' house. Mr. Dawson stumbled out the front door, moving wrong—that telltale jerking gait. His shirt was torn, chest covered in blood.
Mrs. Dawson ran out after him. "Bill! Bill, please, you need to lie down, you need—"
He turned on her.
The attack was savage. He grabbed her shoulders and bit down on her neck, tearing flesh. She screamed, tried to push him away. He didn't let go.
"Jesus Christ," Madison breathed.
I was already moving. Out the front door, pistol raised. Twenty yards across the street. Mr. Dawson was still feeding, Mrs. Dawson's screams weakening.
"Hey!"
He looked up. Dead eyes, mouth red. He released his wife and lurched toward me.
I fired twice. Center mass. He stumbled but kept coming. The third shot took him in the head—skull fragments painting the Dawsons' front lawn. He dropped.
Mrs. Dawson lay on the ground, blood pumping from her neck. She looked at me, eyes wide with fear and confusion. "Help... please..."
The wound was arterial. She had maybe a minute.
I knelt beside her. "I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do."
"Bill... why did Bill..."
"He was sick. He didn't know what he was doing."
Her breathing rattled. Blood bubbled at her lips. Thirty seconds.
Behind me, footsteps. Alicia appeared with blankets. "What can I—" She saw the wound, went pale. "Oh God."
"Get back inside."
"But—"
"Now."
She ran. Mrs. Dawson's eyes glazed over. Her breathing stopped. I waited fifteen seconds, then pulled out my knife and drove it through her temple before she could reanimate.
Two bodies in the street. My gunshots had announced our presence to anyone—anything—within earshot.
I grabbed the blankets Alicia had dropped and covered both corpses. Leaving them out in the open felt wrong, but we didn't have time for burial. The dead could wait. The living couldn't.
An engine roared around the corner. I spun, pistol raised.
A pickup truck—rusted, loud, three men in the cab and one in the bed. They slowed when they saw me standing over the bodies.
The truck stopped. The driver leaned out—mid-thirties, beer gut, shotgun propped on the door. Prison tattoos crawled up his neck.
"Nice piece." He gestured at my Glock. "How about you share?"
I kept my expression neutral. "How about you keep driving."
"Not very neighborly." His grin showed missing teeth. "We're just trying to survive, man. Help each other out."
The guy in the truck bed jumped out—younger, skinnier, carrying a baseball bat. "Come on, just give us the gun. We'll let you walk away."
[ TIMER: 18:47:23 ]
The pressure spiked. Headache intensifying. The virus wanted out, wanted to spread, and here were perfect targets—violent, criminal, already threatening innocent people.
Not yet. Control it. Just a little longer.
"Last chance," I said. "Drive away."
The shotgun came up. Driver's mistake—telegraphed the movement, slow and confident. I shot him through the windshield before he could aim properly.
The guy with the bat charged. I pivoted, fired twice. He went down clutching his stomach.
The remaining two in the truck bed were already running, scrambling over each other to get away. One fell, got up, limped after his friend.
I walked to the driver—dead, half his face missing. The one with the bat was alive, curled on the pavement, bleeding.
"Help," he gasped. "Please..."
Young. Maybe twenty-two. Tattoos still fresh—recent prison release. I could see track marks on his arms. Addict, probably. Definitely criminal given the company he kept.
[ TIMER: 18:41:17 ]
[ WARNING: STAGE 1 SYMPTOMS CRITICAL ]
[ INFECTION DRIVE: MAXIMUM ]
My hands shook. The headache was blinding now. Vision tinged red at the edges. I needed to infect someone or risk losing control completely.
Guilty. He's guilty. He was going to rob us, maybe kill us. This is justified.
"Can you walk?" I asked.
"My stomach... I can't..."
"Then don't move. Help is coming."
I grabbed him by the collar and dragged him behind the Dawsons' garage, out of sight from the street. He groaned, leaving a blood trail. Dying, but slowly.
I pulled out my knife and made a shallow cut on his forearm. Then pressed my own cut palm—opened with the same knife—against his wound. Blood to blood contact.
[ INFECTION INITIATED ]
[ TIMER RESET: 72:00:00 ]
The relief was instant. The pressure released. The headache faded to manageable levels. My hands steadied. I could breathe again.
The looter stared at me, confused and afraid. "What... what did you do?"
"Gave you a chance." I stood. "You'll turn into one of them. Or you'll bleed out first. Either way, you die here."
"You're insane..."
"Yeah. Probably."
I left him there and walked back to the Clark house. Madison met me at the door.
"The other one ran off," I said. "Probably won't be back."
"You shot two people."
"They pulled weapons first. What did you want me to do?"
"I don't know. I just..." She looked at the street—three bodies now, if you counted the bleeding looter I'd left to die. "This is our neighborhood. These are our neighbors."
"Were. Past tense. This is something else now."
Nick appeared behind her. "We need to move the bodies. And the truck. They'll draw more walkers."
He was right. We spent the next hour dragging corpses behind houses, moving the looters' truck to a garage down the street. Grim work. Nobody talked much.
Travis helped, his teacher's hands shaking as he grabbed dead ankles. Chris threw up in the bushes. Daniel worked silently, efficiently, like he'd done this a hundred times before.
When we finished, the sun was setting. The power flickered across the block—lights coming on in a few houses, then dying again. This time for good.
Madison lit candles in the living room. The soft light cast dancing shadows on the walls.
"We're not safe here," Liza said quietly. "Not with Griselda needing surgery."
"The military promised evacuation zones," Travis said. "Maybe we should try to reach one."
"The military's gone," Daniel said from the window. "I saw helicopters leaving the city this afternoon. They're not evacuating civilians. They're evacuating themselves."
"You don't know that."
"In El Salvador, during the war, I learned to recognize when the government abandons its people. This is what it looks like."
Silence settled over the group. Griselda moaned softly on the couch. Ofelia wiped her mother's forehead with a damp cloth.
[ TIMER: 71:18:42 ]
Seventy-one hours. I had three days before I'd need to do it again. Three days to find another target, another guilty person to sacrifice so I could stay human.
How long can I keep this up? How many people will I infect before I run out of justifications?
I pushed the thought away. One day at a time. That was all anyone could manage now.
"We need a plan," Madison said. "We can't just sit here waiting."
"Agreed." I moved to the kitchen table, spread out a map I'd grabbed from the house. "The cabin's still the best long-term option. But getting there means crossing city limits, navigating blocked roads, probably fighting through walker herds."
"So we wait until things settle," Alicia said. "Let the initial panic die down."
"Things won't settle. They'll get worse. Every person who dies becomes another walker. The infection spreads exponentially."
"Then what do we do?"
"We survive. We gather more supplies, weapons, vehicles. We scout routes. And when the time is right, we move as a convoy."
Daniel nodded slowly. "Sensible. Military approach."
"Survival approach," I corrected. "Same difference these days."
We spent the evening planning—assigning watch shifts, rationing food, discussing potential supply runs. Normal people learning to be survivors, one decision at a time.
Around midnight, Nick relieved me at the window. I lay down on the floor with a blanket, surrounded by strangers who were becoming something like family.
Alicia was across the room, curled on her side, eyes open and staring at nothing. Processing Matt's death, probably. Processing this new world where everything familiar had become alien.
"You okay?" I asked quietly.
"No." She didn't look at me. "But I'm still here. That counts for something, right?"
"Yeah. It counts for everything."
She closed her eyes. After a while, her breathing evened out.
I lay awake, watching shadows dance on the ceiling, listening to the distant sounds of the city dying—gunshots, screams, car alarms. The symphony of civilization's collapse.
My timer ticked down. 70:45:19. 70:45:18. 70:45:17.
Counting the hours until I'd have to kill again.
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