LOGAN

They were back in the suburbs again; only they weren't made of mansions. Instead, these were closely built houses of single-family homes and ranch-style facades, with narrow alleys and rear alleyways for the backyard garages; trees lining up the sidewalk, which provided the streets with natural shade; and many abandoned vehicles scattered bodies in all manners of decomposition. The air reeked with burnt wood, rubber, and decay.

Banners of the CRA propaganda, the military, and even the Alphas' militia symbol—an eagle with its wings spanning upward, caught in the moment as if it's about to leap into the air. It had a pointed, mean beak, sharp-edged eyes slanted, and head slightly turned to the right. Almost wrapped around the wings were the letters SA, which stood for the Sapiens Alphas, the militia's official name. The eagle perched on top of a semi-circle, giving the entire image of the organization almost an hourglass look.

Logan had seen too many of those as of late; the Alphas' message of intolerance and hate was spreading like the disease itself.

Ahead of them, a pile of cars, rubbish, and scraps were piled on top of each to form a makeshift barricade eight feet high. Logan didn't quite like the look of that, especially when there were half a dozen vectors impaled on long poles and stakes, acting like scarecrows to anyone who would dare cross the boundaries. No way he's going to order everyone to climb that death trap.

What's more fucked up was that these vectors were still alive, barely, because some of them were moving, albeit bleeding to death.

Is someone rotating these vectors for new ones every day?

Logan had noticed that vectors' pain tolerance was astronomical. Though they could die from traumatic injuries, it usually took them far longer to succumb to their wounds than an average human would. He gave these vectors by nightfall before someone changed the bodies for the fresh ones, and that image terrified him.

"Something's wrong," Paloma spoke up.

Logan turned around. "What do you mean?"

"Look ahead." She pointed at the blockade.

"Yeah, I can see that."

"But what about everything around it?"

On their right were a row of houses—no way to go around the barricade except moving into the street on the left. The cars were parted slightly from the middle, enough space for a small car to pass through perhaps, or even a bike.

"Something's fishy about that street," Logan finally said.

"Exactly."

"I noticed that, too," Deon said.

There were more dead bodies scattered around the pavement more than he had seen, about half with gunshot wounds to the chest or the head, but others he could not tell the difference whether they died from the crash or torn by vectors.

"What now?" Deon asked.

Logan didn't like how the bodies with gunshot wounds were positioned. Most of them faced the house with a yellow door at the end of the lane.

Beyond that house would be the cemetery.

"We move forward," Logan said.

He hated to turn around and find another way. They were only two blocks away from the cemetery, but they were already ten minutes behind the deadline. If Miguel reached the destination already, they should be moving on to the second meeting point toward the museum, and there they would wait for three hours. Logan hoped he'd see Bren again at the cemetery at least, though he was on the fence of wishing it to happen. He didn't like to imagine Bren being late and be stuck behind with enemies crouching at all sides.

They would have left a note, Logan realized. Something easy for me to spot, something easy to deduce as theirs. But what if I don't find it?

Logan didn't know what he would do if Bren were hurt. He had his back since this all started, but since that roof...Logan shook his head, throwing out that particular memory out of his brain. Why did I fucking do that? He shivered, gripping his rifle, and moved ahead.

Pick your priorities. Compartmentalize. This is how you survive, Logan reminded himself. Right now, his priorities were to keep these people safe until the next meeting point. Until then, he's free to wallow and make up what he should do with Bren. He didn't want to ignore it, but he didn't want to talk about it either.

Focus. Eyes on the prize. Get Bren off your brain for now.

He crouched behind a fence next to a corner house, judging if it was safe to cross the intersection and then into the empty street to their left. But, unfortunately, he couldn't quite see past the pile of burnt cars mangled in a multi-vehicular wreck. Anyone could be behind it waiting to attack, possibly vectors, too.

"Anyone saw anything?" Logan asked quietly.

A pause.

"It looks clear," Deon said, but he sounded unsure.

"I'm not seeing anything," Paloma said. "But we don't know if these houses are empty anyway."

"There could be monsters," Edgar added.

Like that hasn't crossed my mind. "Alright." He looked at the intersection. There were two cars in the middle of the road that he could use as cover, borrowing from Bren's playbook when they tried to escape New York. He hoped it would be enough.

"Follow my lead and one man at a time, alright? We're going to go from cover to cover, using each car as defensive markers, islands, if you will. Someone could start shooting at us from one of the houses, or who knows? Vectors might be watching from the windows, too. If they caught sight of you, they might break out, and we'll have a problem in our hands. So it's best if no one spotted us while we head for that house with the yellow door."

"What are we going to do there?" Marie asked.

"We're going to hop the fence over their backyard. The cemetery should be a block away from then onward. I have my CB radio with me, and Deon has one in case I need to contact you across the street."

Noodle nodded. "That sounds like a good plan to me."

Deon said, "Me, too."

"Sounds risky, you mean," Nico said. A shiver went up to his spine.

"It's okay. Just hang back if you don't feel comfortable, but when you find that courage, follow everyone's lead: where they step, where they crouched, and absolutely make no noise. Remember, we don't want to draw attention. Here. I'll go first."

Logan borrowed from Bren's playbook when they tried to escape New York. He hoped the trick would work this time because it didn't quite go well when the vectors had sensitive hearing. Or when they literally jumped over an overpass to form a macabre waterfall made of human bodies just to get to us. There was no overpass here, so he thought it was safer.

Logan pulled himself out of cover from the fence and crouched toward a van, taking shelter from the rear. So far, no movement had occurred ahead. Not event the vectors from the barricades noticed him. Finding a little courage, Logan crossed the street one car at a time until he reached the tree on the opposite side.

Logan took out the radio. "Anything?" He asked.

Deon's voice came through. "Nothing. No movement."

That's good. "Alright. We're gonna do this slow, but keep moving forward."

Logan crossed from the tree to an overturned pickup, hiding behind the damaged hood, avoiding his knees from scraping on the broken glass. I looked through the broken gap between the asphalt and the mangled bed of the truck and found no movement ahead. From behind, Paloma and Edgar just took the first two cars, waiting there for a few seconds before Paloma dashed toward the tree Logan came from.

It felt like they were tiptoeing across a minefield, wary of which step would explode into chaos. Still, he had his weapon ready just in case trouble reared its ugly head. Logan was almost halfway across the road by the time everyone was already behind cover, moving closer and closer toward the house. So far, he didn't see any vectors from the windows or other survivors peeking from the curtains. Deon reported the same thing.

"I'm beginning to think there's nothing out here," Deon said.

"It wouldn't hurt to be careful." Logan bent forward and stalked toward another tree, and pressed his back against it. From behind, Noodle and Magnus replaced his spot. They gave Logan a curt nod; Noodle's pistol at the ready.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, he thought. But the neighborhood's ghostly stillness unnerved him.

Maybe Deon's right—!

A shot rang out, reverberating across the street, cutting deep into the silence. Logan flinched and ducked, but he heard Noddle cried out, and when he turned, Magnus was already on the ground, half his face carved into his right eye socket.

"Magnus!" Deon shouted.

"He's dead!" Noodle shouted back.

More shots followed one after the other; one wheezed over Paloma's head after Edgar pulled her down behind the overturned truck. Everyone was screaming and shouting.

"Sniper! We got a sniper!" Deon screamed over the radio.

Shit! What to do? What am I going to fucking do?

The sniper turned his attention to me behind the tree, raining at least three bullets along the side, carving and slicing the bark. Fortunately, they were walnut trees with thicker trunks and sturdier branches. Unfortunately, they would have to take a machine gun to shear through it and get to him.

Back. We have to go back and find another way. There was no way around it, and they were no match against a sniper with a vantage point of the entire street.

But the way back was too open, the vehicles too far apart from each other to run for cover. So instead, Logan realized the sniper was waiting for them to enter the middle, the killing zone, where they could no longer escape but to hunker down and hold for dear life or push forward.

"We need to get back!" Darren exclaimed and ran back to the previous cover, behind a Toyota hybrid where Marie was hiding.

"Come on, Darren!" Marie waved for him to hurry.

"No, wait! Darren, stay—!" Logan shouted.

But he was too late. One bullet passed clean through Darren's shoulder, bringing him down onto the ground. He was still alive, thrashing and crying out in pain. He tried to crawl toward the Toyota as Marie urged him on. "You can do it! Come on!"

But then the sniper had his sights on him again, and Darren's head exploded. Blood splattered all over Marie's face, and she let out a piercing scream, crawling back to the safest part behind the Toyota and hunkered down into a fetal position.

Fuck!

I grabbed the CB radio again. "Deon! We're gonna have to flush this motherfucker."

"Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing! Do you have a plan?"

Logan sighed. "Yeah. It's a crazy one, and I don't think you're gonna like it."

"Well, I'm willing to work with anything. Whatcha got?"

Logan took a deep breath and said, "We're gonna be the bait."

——

BREN

"Well, that's not gonna fucking happen," I said.

It took my mind a couple of seconds to figure out what I'm looking at the mangled mess of jutting metal rebars, cables, anchorage, chunks of asphalt and concrete, and various cars piled on top with one another.

Someone had bombed the underpass a long time ago, probably the military, to reduce the traffic of anyone entering the city. Which meant we were very unfortunate to miss demolishing day. I swore I could see a rotting hand sticking in one of the SUV windows weighed down by thousands of tons of debris.

Yeah, no one's coming out of that alive.

The military had blockaded the sides with chain-linked fences with coiled barbed wires on top, as well as anything they could pile up from the rubble to prevent anyone from climbing over.

"It is a bit sketchy to climb..." Alfie started, but he caught a hint of a smile. "It's a challenge for me."

Alfie was the mountain climber before the pandemic began. "Okay, Mr. Instagram. I'm sure you can take that on, but one wrong move, one took the wrong step, we could end up swallowed into a pit with a broken leg or a broken neck," Yousef said. "The thing looks unsteady."

'"I agree with Yousef here," said Haskell.

Alfie chuckled. "Ah, wussies."

I patted Alfie on the shoulder. "No one doubts your prowess, man. You do you." I turned around and caught sight of Aria comforting the other girls about Sarah's death, and my smile dropped. So here we were, joking around while three women just lost someone close to them, and I had a hand in it. Some part of them understood why I had to do it, but it was still jarring to see someone you cared about shot on the face right in front of your eyes without warning.

"So? Where should we go if you cowards can't climb a mound of nothing?" Alfie asked, placing his hands on his hips into a power pose.

Haskell pointed to the right. "That looks promising."

To our right was a strip mall that had once been converted into a shelter by the military. I could still see the various logos and symbols of FEMA, CDC, DHS, and the CRA littered along the walls, replacing the billboards and banners with scantily clad models in their obscenely high beauty standards. Now, it was a former husk of itself. The barricades still stood, blocking the pathways into the mall, but I could spot a few gaps through the storefront windows covered by plywood sheets. Nothing like a good crowbar could do to loosen up the nails and take one apart. I was nervous about what we might find inside.

But what mattered more was that there's another entrance facing the south side of the mall. An entrance is someone's exit, didn't they use to say? So that would be our way around the collapsed underpass.

"It seemed the military had abandoned this side of the city," I said.

Peter nodded. "They're probably retreating into downtown. Better to concentrate their defenses than spreading themselves too thin."

But that would only leave the Alphas to retake what they left behind, I thought. Or the vectors could swallow it and turn it into their nest. Both outcomes were still terrible.

"We're gonna have to leave the Humvee, aren't we?" Yousef asked.

Peter sighed defeatedly. "Yeah. We're gonna have to leave her."

I didn't want to leave the Humvee, but it was what we must do if we're going to move forward. The cemetery was only five blocks away, an easy walk.

We packed our bags quickly before anyone spotted us. Haskell took down the M240B machine gun, insisting on carrying it himself—all thirty pounds of it—saying it would be helpful against a horde if we got caught in it. It was good to be prepared, but it was going to be a bitch to carry around. Haskell decided to pack lightly on his bag, letting the others take the supplies we had in the Humvee.

Though the strip mall was surrounded by chain-linked fences, someone had smashed their way into the gate, tearing a good chunk of the barrier with them. Either it was some Alpha or another survivor, in the end, they got burnt into a crisp from the charred husk of a truck mangled at the front gates. Lucky for us, it was our way into the parking lot.

We crossed the parking lot in silence, navigating around the scattered remains of the military tents and pavilions, once in a while looking in to make sure there's something valuable inside. Unfortunately, it was all junk, bodies wrapped in dirty white linens, empty crates, and boxes long emptied and discarded. Finally, we reached the storefront windows covered in plywood sheets, and Peter tried to look for an opening.

He found it by Macy's. "This will do," he said, pointing at a particular plywood sheet that was worse for wear than the others. It was a little moldy on the edges, a little damp at the top, and I could see through the gaps between the window and the wood cracking under the strain of crumbling wood. But, unfortunately, it was too dark to make out what was inside.

"Are you sure?" I asked him.

"Yeah. It looked rotten, probably because it's right underneath that storm drain. Whenever they put this up, it's been leaking into the wood without drying it, makes the sheet brittle and easy to pull out."

Alfie handed Peter the crowbar, and he started dismantling the nails clinging to the side. Eventually, he managed to open it, and I helped him put it down onto the ground.

"I take point?" Peter asked me, and I nodded. He smiled. He then handed me a flashlight and a bayonet from his backpack.

I stared at the latter. "A bayonet?"

"For extra protection. I got it from the outpost," Peter said.

I had never attached a bayonet on a rifle before, and Peter helped me put one under the shotgun's muzzle while I attached the flashlight at the top. Then, he handed another bayonet to Haskell, which he put on his M4.

There's a first time for everything, I thought.

"Wait a minute," Donna started. "What about us? Aria's got a gun, even these two boys who don't look like soldiers got one. What weapons do we get?" She asked. Her eyes flicked into the dark inside the department store, where you couldn't even see anything past ten feet from you.

She was right. Aria had a pistol I gave her earlier that morning, and Yousef and Alfie had their own stash of weapons that they carried with them: knives, an M4 carbine, a Beretta pistol, and some ammunition. Sure, they weren't a good shot than most, but they could still aim and a higher chance of hitting their targets, just not when it's from a considerable distance.

It was careless to keep some people weaponless when we're entering a potentially dangerous area. A little protection could go a long way from certain death, so I pulled out my blade from my sheathe and handed it to Donna. "You can have this." I turned to Peter and Haskell. "Give your knives to Brighton and Lauren as well."

Peter and Haskell handed the blades to them, but they hesitated at first. They only took them once Donna urged them.

"Peter's gonna take point while I'm gonna guard our back," I said. "Jun, Haskell, you're gonna have to be in the middle. Anyone who doesn't know how to fight, stay in the middle and don't wander around. Understand?"

I made sure I saw everyone nodded and met my eye, making sure they were on the same page. Then, I made sure to get a headcount on how many people I had in the group just in case we got lost inside. I counted ten heads, including me.

"We're going in?" Peter asked, making sure everyone was ready.

I nodded. "Ready when you are."

And we went in.

The department store had barely any light on except for the one streaming through the broken window that we used to come in. I held my breath, realized it wasn't only me as I stared into the pitch blackness. No one dared make a move into the dark, not even me, and who knew what else lurked behind the aisles, hidden behind the racks of shirts, jackets, jeans, and other apparel? There was still that sweet, luxurious scent of citrus, rose, cherry, and lavender hanging in the air from the perfume aisle not too far from where we stood.

"Turn on your flashlights," Peter whispered, and I did.

There were only four others with flashlights aside from Haskell, Peter, and me. Aria, Yousef, Jun, and Alfie switched their flashlights on, dancing in the darkness like fireflies.

Something smelled dead nearby. I was sure of it.