The feed cut to static.
It wasn't a clean cut—no tidy blackout. The picture shredded into snow like the camera itself had been yanked by the throat. A smear of motion. A flash of bodies. Then nothing but a hiss of white noise that sounded too much like wind through teeth.
Ellis stared at it anyway.
As if staring hard enough could force the image back into existence.
Behind him, the lab—normally alive with small sounds—went dead quiet. No keyboard clicks. No murmured updates. Even the emergency lights seemed to dim, pulsing a faint, sick red over stainless steel and glass.
That silence wasn't calm.
It was the pause after a gunshot, when your ears ring and your brain is still trying to decide if you're alive.
"Pull it again," Ellis said.
His voice came out low—steady in the way men got when they were too close to breaking.
A tech's fingers flew across the keyboard. "The municipal loop is unstable. Some nodes are down, some are—"
"I don't care," Ellis cut in. "Get me anything that sees that lot."
Another feed blinked alive.
This one was angled higher—street-facing, across from the station canopy. Grainy. Jerky. The picture stuttered like it was struggling to keep up with reality.
But it was enough.
Ellis saw the gas station lot.
He saw the Jeep.
And he saw the dead.
A shifting ring of bodies packed around the vehicle like the world had decided that Jeep was the center of gravity. They weren't wandering anymore. They weren't lost. They were pressed in—arms slapping tinted windows, palms dragging down glass in greasy streaks that shone under the camera's washed-out light. Faces mashed close enough to fog the panes. Teeth clicked against metal, scraping, trying. Mouths opened and closed like broken machinery, jaws grinding as if chewing air could somehow chew through glass.
Some were fresh enough to look like people from a distance—hoodies, work shirts, a woman still wearing a lanyard that bounced against her chest as she shoved herself forward. Up close, in pixels, Ellis saw what the camera couldn't hide: the gray shine of skin gone too tight, the way lips had split at the corners, the wetness around mouths that never swallowed.
A man's ear dangled by a strip of flesh, flopping as he slammed his forehead against the Jeep. Another had a jaw that hung wrong, unhinged in a way that made each moan sound like it was bubbling through bone. A few had blood so dark it looked black, smeared across their chins and down their throats like crude paint.
The lot had that same wrong rhythm Ellis had seen in war zones: the way panic organized itself into patterns.
The way one sound could change everything.
Ellis leaned closer until his breath fogged the lab-side glass.
"What happened?" he whispered, not to anyone—just to the screen.
Mike, beside him, didn't joke. Didn't hum. His voice was rough. "Something loud. One event. A trigger."
Ellis saw it—felt it even through pixels.
A single blast of chaos in the middle of a half-quiet morning.
The kind of noise that didn't just draw attention.
It called them.
The camera caught movement inside the Jeep—low shadows shifting beneath the window line. Whoever was inside was trying to stay small, trying to be invisible. But even stillness had weight when you were surrounded by fifty bodies leaning in to listen.
Ellis's stomach turned.
The dead slammed the Jeep again—hard enough to rock it on its suspension. The vehicle dipped, bounced, dipped again. Nails scraped glass with that awful, thin squeal, leaving chalky crescents. One of them kept biting the driver-side window, teeth clicking, leaving spit and blood and cloudy smears. It couldn't break through, so it bit again anyway—until its gums tore and pink froth streaked the glass.
The Jeep held.
Barely.
Another feed flashed up—closer, lower, as if it belonged to a storefront camera.
Ellis's eyes snapped to it.
The Jeep was closer now. The tint on the windows made the inside a dark aquarium full of shadows. But he saw outlines: a woman hunched behind the wheel, shoulders tight, head low—Mari, Ellis realized, not by her face but by the way her hands locked around the wheel like it was the only solid thing left.
And behind the driver's seat—pressed down, tucked out of sight—another shape.
Dark hair. Not blond. Not any bright marker that would make her stand out.
Just a tense, coiled body trying to disappear.
Tally.
Ellis's throat tightened with that fierce, complicated pain that only came with family—love wrapped around frustration wrapped around terror.
Then the camera stuttered and caught something else that made Ellis's skin go cold.
A body in the lot.
Not moving.
Not rising.
A woman crumpled wrong on the asphalt, half-covered by the shifting swarm. They weren't just standing around her. They were… working. Hands. Mouths. Weight shifting as they tore and fed. Someone's shoulder pumped in a steady rhythm, like sawing. The camera didn't have sound, but Ellis could almost hear it—the wet rip, the snap when something finally gave.
A zombie lifted its head for a second, and the woman's blood was smeared across its cheeks and chin in thick, shiny ribbons. It shook its head once like a dog, flinging droplets onto the side of the Jeep, then bent back down.
Ellis swallowed hard and didn't look away.
Because looking away didn't change what was happening.
The ring around the Jeep tightened again. Bodies pressed closer. One of them climbed halfway onto the hood, sliding over the metal like it was slick with oil, leaving streaks behind. It slapped the windshield with both palms, hard enough that the glass flexed with a subtle, terrifying bounce.
Ellis's hands curled into fists on the counter.
"Run the adjacent angles," he said. "Any camera that catches the side of the building."
A tech nodded too fast. "Searching."
The screens refreshed.
One angled toward the store's side. Another toward the alley. Another toward the street.
Ellis saw the lot shifting again—like something had disturbed it. A narrow corridor opening for a heartbeat, bodies peeling away as if some new noise had drawn them. The swarm's heads turned in unison. It wasn't intelligence. It was instinct so sharp it looked like strategy.
Then—
Ellis saw him.
Not his face. Not a clean shot. Not some dramatic hero moment.
He saw the sweatshirt.
That dark, familiar jacket Ellis had watched Justin throw on a hundred times like it was armor. The sleeve torn near the cuff. The way it hung loose at the shoulders when Justin ran. The way he moved—fast, controlled, like he knew exactly how short his window was.
Ellis didn't need hair color. Didn't need a clear view.
He knew his son the way you knew your own hands.
"That's him," Ellis said.
His voice cracked on the last word.
Mike turned sharply. "Ellis—"
"That's my boy."
The feed showed Justin moving fast—too fast for the camera to track smoothly. He wasn't walking. He wasn't hesitating.
He was running like he'd already decided he didn't get to be careful anymore.
Ellis watched him cut around the building.
And the dead noticed.
You could see it even through jittering pixels—the way heads snapped. The way bodies turned. The way movement rippled through the horde like a current.
Justin disappeared behind the corner.
The camera jumped.
Static flickered.
Then the alley feed cut in.
Ellis's breath stopped.
The alley wasn't empty.
It was packed.
Not scattered bodies wandering aimless.
A dense mass—dozens of them clustered in the narrow space like rot had learned to congregate. Burned ones. Bleeding ones. Bodies missing pieces that should've made movement impossible but didn't. One had a charred forearm down to glossy black bone, fingers curled like claws. Another dragged its own intestines, slipping on them, still pushing forward. A woman's face was shredded down to teeth and tendon, her eyes still intact and bright in her ruined skull.
And Justin—
Justin hit the corner and froze for half a heartbeat.
Ellis watched his son collide with reality.
There was nowhere to go forward.
Ellis's hand crushed the counter edge until his knuckles whitened.
"Justin," he whispered.
Justin turned.
Ran.
The horde surged.
It wasn't cinematic.
It was worse.
Bodies moving too fast for what they were. Hands grabbing cloth. The alley swallowing motion. The camera trying to keep up and failing—blurred limbs, jerking shapes, the smear of Justin's dark jacket disappearing between shoulders and snapping jaws.
Ellis saw an arm hook around Justin's back, yanking. Saw fabric rip—dark cloth stretching, tearing. Saw Justin stumble, catch himself, keep moving. Saw the horde close like a mouth.
Then Justin vanished.
Not behind a car. Not into cover.
Inside them.
The feed stuttered, and for a blink Ellis saw something white flash at the edge of the swarm—bone? teeth? a hand?—and then the picture broke into static again.
No clean ending.
No confirmation.
Just bodies closing ranks like water and the camera choking on it.
Ellis's chest seized.
The feed shuddered.
Static poured back in.
Ellis stood dead still, eyes locked on the white noise like it was a grave.
Mike's hand came down on Ellis's shoulder—firm. Anchoring.
"Ellis," Mike said carefully, "we don't know what happened after he went out of frame."
Ellis didn't blink.
His voice came out too controlled—too sharp. "Don't report this to command."
Mike's eyebrows lifted. "Ellis—"
"If command sees that," Ellis said, pointing at the static, "they call it nonessential. They call it a civilian cluster in an overrun zone and write it off."
Mike studied him for a long second. Then, quietly, he nodded once.
"Okay," Mike said. "Then what?"
Ellis turned away from the screens, jaw tight enough to ache.
"Then I find a way to reach him," Ellis said. "Or I die trying."
A voice behind them broke the moment like glass.
"Dr. Leesburg."
Ellis turned.
A tech stood near the quarantine zone, pale and shaking. "Sir… you need to see this."
Ellis's blood went cold—because it wasn't the same tone they used when a monitor beeped wrong.
It was the tone they used when something changed.
He crossed the lab fast.
Behind the glass partition, three patients lay restrained—two guards and one tech from earlier exposure reports. All had visible markings: reddened scrapes, torn skin, shallow claw-like wounds.
And all three were still—awake, frightened, exhausted.
Human.
One of the guards was whispering to himself, eyes squeezed shut, like he could pray his skin into staying normal. The tech kept flexing his fingers over and over, checking that they still belonged to him. Their breathing was ragged, panicked, but it was human panic—messy, conscious, desperate.
Scratches.
No turning.
Yet.
In the next bay over, behind an additional barrier, a single patient was strapped down harder—ankles, wrists, chest, throat strap—like they'd learned the lesson already.
A bite victim.
His skin was clammy and gray around the wound. The flesh at the bite site looked wrong—angry, swollen, raised in ridges like something was burrowing under it. The veins around the bite were dark—almost ink-black—branching outward in jagged lines that climbed up his arm like a map drawn by rot.
Ellis stopped at the glass.
"What's his baseline?" he asked.
"Aggitated," the tech said quickly. "But coherent. He was talking. Asking for water. Asking for his wife."
Ellis's eyes flicked to the bitten man's face.
The man's lips were parted.
Something glossy clung at the corners.
His eyes were open.
And they weren't looking around like a scared person.
They were locked.
Focused.
Hunting.
The bitten man's head snapped toward the glass with a violent precision that made the whole room flinch.
Ellis felt it in his bones: the shift from person to predator.
The bitten man lunged against the restraints so hard the gurney rattled. A wet, broken sound tore from his throat—not quite a scream, not quite a growl, like his vocal cords were being used wrong. Saliva frothed at his mouth, thick and white, bubbling with each ragged breath. It dripped down his chin in ropes, mixing with sweat and streaking over his neck in shiny trails.
A nurse stumbled back, hand over her mouth.
"He's turning," someone whispered.
Ellis didn't move.
"Sedate," Ellis barked. "Now."
A tech rushed in with the syringe.
The bitten man jerked again—harder—shoulders straining against straps until the restraints creaked. The skin under the straps was already bruising purple, swelling up around the edges like the body was trying to reject the things holding it down. He snapped his teeth at the air, jaw clacking, then slammed his head sideways—once, twice—until his temple split open and blood began to slick down his face.
He didn't stop.
He didn't even flinch.
He only strained harder, eyes wide and empty and hungry.
The syringe plunged into his thigh.
The tech pulled back fast, like even touching him too long was dangerous.
The bitten man didn't slow.
He bucked the gurney so hard it squealed on the floor, metal screeching. Foam sprayed from his mouth in little flecks. His lips peeled back from his teeth, gums bleeding, and he made that sound again—wet and wrong—like something inside his chest was learning how to use breath.
Ellis watched his eyes.
There was no confusion in them.
No fever haze.
Just fixation.
Just hunger.
Mike stepped up beside Ellis, voice tight. "That's the difference we were waiting on."
Ellis's gaze flicked to the scratched patients again—trembling, crying, alive.
Then back to the bitten man, straining like something inside him wanted out.
The bitten man slammed forward again.
Hard.
The gurney bucked.
One of the restraints popped a fraction—just enough to make everyone in the room recoil.
A scream tore from one of the scratched guards—high, breaking. "Please—please don't let me be like him—please—"
The bitten man's head snapped toward the sound.
Instantly.
Like a switch.
His mouth opened and he lunged again, even sedated, even foaming, even bleeding.
Ellis leaned closer to the glass, eyes hard, voice low.
"Hold him down."
The staff surged in.
Hands pressed to shoulders. A forearm pinned his hip. Someone tightened a strap until it dug into flesh.
The bitten man kept fighting anyway, teeth snapping, spit flying, eyes locked on the nearest warm body like it didn't matter who it was—only that it was alive.
The scratched tech sobbed silently, shoulders shaking.
The bitten man slammed once more—violent, relentless.
A strap squealed.
Metal groaned.
Blood smeared across the pillow under his head.
And the only thing Ellis could hear over the rattling gurney and the wet, animal sounds was his own pulse pounding in his ears, because the last image on the monitor hadn't been data or charts—
It had been Justin's jacket disappearing into a wall of bodies.
The bitten man's mouth worked like he was trying to chew through the air.
The nurse gagged and turned away.
The scratched guard started praying out loud, words tripping over each other.
The bitten man jerked so hard the gurney skidded an inch across the floor.
Ellis didn't blink.