caked her mouth and chin and stained the front of her garment, dripping in little rivulets down her bare legs.
How are the kids? Mason thought witlessly. Or should I say, how were they?
The woman pressed her face against the glass and gnashed her teeth. The door was inches away and would open easily, but she made no move toward it. She'd lived in the building for over a year, so surely, even if she was blind, she should be able to find the door. Clearly then, whatever had invaded her body hadn't just taken her sight and given her a taste for human flesh; it had robbed her of her intelligence, too. These people tearing through the streets weren't people anymore. They were animals, with no higher brain function than that which told them to hunt and to kill and to feed.
Mason wondered idly how the nameless woman had managed to escape her apartment. If she couldn't manage to push open a lobby door, how did she figure out the intricacies of a doorknob? Someone else must have let her out, he reasoned. Did one of her children run? Did they make it as far as the lobby? At last, he realized that pondering such things was a futile exercise and only succeeding in creating a horrible image in his mind, so he abandoned the train of thought and took a few quick steps into the doorman's secret alcove. Once tucked away amid the scattered cigarette butts, he felt somehow safer, so he slowed his breathing and concentrated on making as little noise as possible.
There may have been a dozen creatures on the street. Those that weren't actively gorging themselves were alternatively stumbling blindly, listening with head cocked, or charging headlong toward some sound or another in a blind frenzy. And in among all of those homicidal lunatics were the consequences of their savagery. The dead were everywhere. One man was hanging halfway through the driver's window of a car that had piled into the back end of a parked SUV. Another poor bastard had actually been pinned between the vehicles, and what was left of his upper body now lay splayed across the hood of the car. Other corpses lay huddled up against the curb or spread-eagle in the middle of the road or in crumpled heaps amid drying pools of mire. Some were being feasted upon even now, while others had already been stripped to the bone and abandoned. It was a scene of which Dante himself could never have dreamed. And here was Mason, rudely thrust into the nightmare with no idea how to make some kind of sense of it all. He huddled back in his alcove and put his analytical mind to work in trying to make sense of the utterly incomprehensible.
The wild things were blind; that much was obvious. Blind and insane. But what of the others? From what he'd seen, it looked like the whole city had gone blind. Was he the only one who could see? No. Obviously not. Blind men can't drive, so at least he wasn't entirely alone. But why was everyone else blind? Was it more of that blue lightning? Possible, but unlikely. That new flu he'd heard about before shutting out the world? More likely. But could a simple flu turn otherwise normal people into mindless savages? It seemed impossible, but maybe it was more than a simple flu. Maybe it was a terrorist plot, after all. Some new strain of rabies cooked up in a lab in North Korea or Iran and set loose on an unsuspecting American public. Hell, maybe it was even a home-grown nut-job with a PhD and an access card to Plum Island messing around in his basement. Ultimately, though, the cause didn't matter. In a city gone mad, the only thing that mattered was survival.
The building across the street was an apartment building just like Mason's. Twenty stories of glass and stucco. Maybe a thousand residents. He gazed up at row upon row of windows and saw movement behind many. But how many of those shadows were wild creatures, and how many were like him? There was no way to tell, but if the sickness was a recent thing, there would be a lot, and many of them would be as
How are the kids? Mason thought witlessly. Or should I say, how were they?
The woman pressed her face against the glass and gnashed her teeth. The door was inches away and would open easily, but she made no move toward it. She'd lived in the building for over a year, so surely, even if she was blind, she should be able to find the door. Clearly then, whatever had invaded her body hadn't just taken her sight and given her a taste for human flesh; it had robbed her of her intelligence, too. These people tearing through the streets weren't people anymore. They were animals, with no higher brain function than that which told them to hunt and to kill and to feed.
Mason wondered idly how the nameless woman had managed to escape her apartment. If she couldn't manage to push open a lobby door, how did she figure out the intricacies of a doorknob? Someone else must have let her out, he reasoned. Did one of her children run? Did they make it as far as the lobby? At last, he realized that pondering such things was a futile exercise and only succeeding in creating a horrible image in his mind, so he abandoned the train of thought and took a few quick steps into the doorman's secret alcove. Once tucked away amid the scattered cigarette butts, he felt somehow safer, so he slowed his breathing and concentrated on making as little noise as possible.
There may have been a dozen creatures on the street. Those that weren't actively gorging themselves were alternatively stumbling blindly, listening with head cocked, or charging headlong toward some sound or another in a blind frenzy. And in among all of those homicidal lunatics were the consequences of their savagery. The dead were everywhere. One man was hanging halfway through the driver's window of a car that had piled into the back end of a parked SUV. Another poor bastard had actually been pinned between the vehicles, and what was left of his upper body now lay splayed across the hood of the car. Other corpses lay huddled up against the curb or spread-eagle in the middle of the road or in crumpled heaps amid drying pools of mire. Some were being feasted upon even now, while others had already been stripped to the bone and abandoned. It was a scene of which Dante himself could never have dreamed. And here was Mason, rudely thrust into the nightmare with no idea how to make some kind of sense of it all. He huddled back in his alcove and put his analytical mind to work in trying to make sense of the utterly incomprehensible.
The wild things were blind; that much was obvious. Blind and insane. But what of the others? From what he'd seen, it looked like the whole city had gone blind. Was he the only one who could see? No. Obviously not. Blind men can't drive, so at least he wasn't entirely alone. But why was everyone else blind? Was it more of that blue lightning? Possible, but unlikely. That new flu he'd heard about before shutting out the world? More likely. But could a simple flu turn otherwise normal people into mindless savages? It seemed impossible, but maybe it was more than a simple flu. Maybe it was a terrorist plot, after all. Some new strain of rabies cooked up in a lab in North Korea or Iran and set loose on an unsuspecting American public. Hell, maybe it was even a home-grown nut-job with a PhD and an access card to Plum Island messing around in his basement. Ultimately, though, the cause didn't matter. In a city gone mad, the only thing that mattered was survival.
The building across the street was an apartment building just like Mason's. Twenty stories of glass and stucco. Maybe a thousand residents. He gazed up at row upon row of windows and saw movement behind many. But how many of those shadows were wild creatures, and how many were like him? There was no way to tell, but if the sickness was a recent thing, there would be a lot, and many of them would be as
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