I crossed the lobby slowly.
The marble was slick in places. Someone had tracked blood, and the smears had dried into brown ghosts of footprints leading nowhere. My sneakers made almost no sound. The stockpot did a faint metallic tick each time it shifted against my head. That made every eye in the room follow that stupid noise.
The security guard watched me come. His arms stayed folded. His right hand had drifted closer to the holster on his hip. Fifties. Gray hair buzzed short. PARK on the name tag. The shotgun leaned against the wall within easy reach of his left hand.
He's the one who was shooting.
"Twentieth and fifteenth," he said. His voice was gravel. "That all? Anyone else up there?"
I thought about Marco's family. Here was a man with a shotgun and a pistol asking where the vulnerable people were. In any other week of my life, I'd have called that paranoid. Food, water, a defensible apartment with battery lights. If this room went bad, that was where the bad would go first.
Don't say anything. Let Marco decide what he wants known about his family.
"My wife and my girls," Marco said. He said it flat and plain. "Every other door we passed was shut or open with nobody alive."
I let out a breath.
His family. His call.
Park's eyes moved over Marco, taking in the hammer, the sweat-soaked shirt, the black spatter up both forearms. His shoulders dropped a fraction. Whatever he'd been braced for, a father with a hammer wasn't it.
"Frank," he said. He didn't offer a hand. "Frank Park. Building security, nights and weekends. Management gives me a unit on two so I'm on-site."
"You were down here when it started?" I asked.
"I was asleep on two. Heard the front gate go." He jerked his chin toward the barricade, toward the glass beyond it that was smeared with dark palm prints and the long dragging streaks of fingers. "Something came through it. Woke me up. I got to my door and that blue thing was hanging in the air right in front of my face."
"You saw it?"
"Just enough to know it wasn't a dream." His jaw worked. "It was counting down. I didn't stop to read the fine print. I went for the safe."
He tapped the holster. Tapped the stock of the shotgun.
"Came down the back stairs. Figured whatever came through the gate was coming for the lobby next, and the lobby's got glass on three sides. So I started pulling furniture. Kid helped." He nodded at the young man in the leather jacket, who raised two fingers off the bat in a lazy salute. "Then the couple. Then her." The blonde woman with the extinguisher. "Took us maybe twenty minutes to get it solid."
"And the shots?"
"Three of them got in through the garage stairwell before we had that door blocked. I put them down." He said it without pride and without apology. "Then we finished the wall."
He stopped. His mouth flattened.
"The ones outside just stopped. Walked off like somebody called them home for dinner. Whole street cleared in under a minute." He shook his head. "Wasted my back on that desk for nothing."
"Not for nothing."
He looked at me.
"You saw the timer," I said. "Seventy-two hours. They will come back."
Frank held my eyes for a long moment. Then he grunted. Close enough.
"What the fuck was this?" he said. "Does anybody in this room actually know anything?"
Nobody answered.
"My granddaughter." He said it to the barricade, not to any of us. "My daughter was bringing her over today." His hand went to his hip, not to the gun this time, just resting there. "They live across the river. Forty minutes. I've called eleven times. Nothing. Not even a ring."
The lobby was silent.
I hadn't thought about it. My blood had been running hot since the attack, and every scrap of thought I'd had went into the next ten seconds.
Mom and Jess.
Jess's husband, Adam. He's a big guy, played college lacrosse, sold commercial insurance. He should be enough to handle the zombies. But Mom...
I pulled my phone out of my jacket. 31%. No signal. I typed her name into the messages anyway and hit send and watched the little wheel spin and spin and go nowhere.
My hands had gone cold. The knife handle was slick against my palm.
I put the phone away.
The room had started talking. The pressure Frank had cracked open was spilling out of everyone at once.
"The whole fourth floor, I'm telling you, I heard them go door to door."
"I had my hand on the elevator button when the power cut. If I'd been inside."
"It won't stop bleeding. I need something better than a sheet. Does anyone have."
"My son's in the suburbs. My son. I have to."
"Enough."
Frank didn't raise his voice much.
"One at a time. Names. Floor. What you've got." He pointed at the leather jacket. "You."
The kid took the cigarette out of his mouth and exhaled toward the ceiling. Early twenties, lean, dark hair falling into his eyes. The bat across his knees had a dark crust along the barrel.
"Dez. Sixth floor. I bartend." He hefted the bat an inch.
Frank moved on. The nurse looked up from her patient without stopping her hands.
"Nadia. Ninth. I'm an ER nurse, or I was until about eight hours ago." She tightened a knot. "I've got a first aid kit that's mostly gone."
The man on the floor lifted his good hand. Forties. His face was gray and shining with sweat.
"Owen. Eleventh. Insurance. Went through my own balcony door trying to get away from the things." He tried to laugh. "So. Yeah. Glass."
It didn't matter. They didn't know, but you didn't turn from a bite. You only became one of them if you lost the game. If your lives hit zero. If your base was destroyed.
The older couple by the elevators. The man took off his flat cap and held it in both hands like he was in church.
"Walter Abernathy. I taught high school history. This is June. She ran the branch library on Third. We're on three." His voice trembled but held.
June said nothing.
The blonde woman by the stairwell.
"Kris. Eighth. Physical therapist." Her voice was clipped, an accent I couldn't place, somewhere Northern European.
Dez whistled softly. Kris ignored him.
The teenager in the corner didn't look up from his dead phone.
"Kid," Frank said, and got nothing. "Kid."
The teenager pulled one headphone away from his neck as if it had been on his ear. "Kai. Twelfth. I'm a junior. Northside."
"Twelfth?" Marco said. "We came through twelve. That door was off its hinges."
Kai's eyes flicked up. Just for a second. "Yeah."
He didn't elaborate.
Frank turned. The woman at the far end of the lobby hadn't moved. Knees to her chest. Arms around her shins. Dark hair curtaining her face. She'd stopped looking at me, and somehow that was worse than when she'd been glaring.
"Ma'am."
Silence.
"Ma'am, I need—"
"Rachel." The name came out of her like something she'd coughed up. "Fifteen. Corner unit. Personal trainer. Was."
She didn't say anything about Danny. She didn't say anything about me. Her eyes stayed fixed on a spot on the floor about three feet in front of her, and Frank, whatever else he was, had enough sense not to push.
He turned to Marco and me. "You two we know."
Marco nodded. I said nothing. My own introduction had been made for me, and I'd already decided how much of myself I was putting on the table.
Fifteenth floor. Knife. Pot on head. Killed some zombies. That's who Scott is right now. Let it stay that way until you know who these people are.
"Okay." Frank rubbed a hand over his jaw. "Okay. Eleven out of—" He did the math and didn't say the number. "Alright. Let's figure out what we know. Everyone's seeing the blue screens?"
A ragged round of nods. Walter raised his hand halfway like a schoolboy, then lowered it. June closed her eyes.
"Everyone saw the seventy-two hours?"
Nods.
"Did everyone see the part before that? The one that asked you to pick something. 'Select your Class.'"
The room got very quiet.
"I saw it," Owen said slowly. "I thought it was. I don't know what I thought it was. I was trying to get out of the bathroom."
"I saw words," June said. "It said to choose. I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know you could touch it."
"You can touch it?" Kris said sharply.
"You can touch it," Marco said. "Or just look at one. Think about it."
Every head turned toward him.
"You picked one," Frank said.
"Shield Bearer." Marco set the hammer down against his leg. "I didn't read what it did. I saw the word shield and thought it was what I needed. So I took it."
"And?"
Marco was quiet for a moment. I watched him try to find the language for it.
"I'm a big guy, I've got the frame, but I sit in an office and I eat too much and the last time I lifted anything heavier than my daughters was moving the couch." He touched his own sternum with two fingers. "After I selected I was instantly stronger. I hit one with this hammer and it exploded. I've never hit anything like that in my life."
"You threw one," I said. "It came past me like it'd been fired out of a cannon."
"The thing said I had a skill. Shield Bash." He mimed it, a short brutal drive with his lead shoulder. "And I said it. Out loud. And the thing went twenty feet."
"After the fight," he added, "another screen came up. Said I'd finished. Gave me three things to pick from. I took the one that said it made doors stronger." He glanced at me. "Figured it'd help my wife hold the apartment."
Structural pick. Good instinct for a man protecting a fixed position.
Frank was frowning.
"A skill," he repeated. "What's a skill? You mean you're good at it?"
"No," Marco said. "It's a thing you do. That you couldn't do before." He waved a hand at the air. "That the screen gives you."
"Like what? Like a tool?"
"It's like a game."
Everyone looked at Kai.
He was still in the corner. Still with the dead phone in his hand. But he'd finally looked up, and his face had the flat, unimpressed expression of a sixteen-year-old explaining the obvious to adults.
"It's exactly like a game. You pick a class, you say the skill name, it goes off." He shrugged one shoulder. "I've played like fifty of them."
"You picked one," I said.
"Swordsman. Yeah."
I knew the class. Everybody who'd ever opened the Z Royal Defense class menu knew it. New players picked it because the icon was a sword. High damage, no armor, a ranged slash that made the first ten waves feel free. The forums called it the tutorial class. It fell off a cliff around wave sixty.
I kept my face still.
"Show them," I said instead.
Kai's eyes narrowed. "I don't have my knife."
"Dez has a bat."
Dez looked at the bat in his lap.
"Fine." He tossed it. It spun once in the air and Kai caught it by the handle. His fingers closed around the grip and his weight shifted without him telling it to.
He looked around the lobby and settled on the stairwell door we'd come through, the fire door, gray steel with a push bar. He walked over to it. Kris stepped aside without being asked.
Kai held the bat in both hands. The way you'd hold a hilt.
"Slash."
He swung.
Aluminum blurred and released a tearing rip, and a curved sliver of distortion flashed in front of the bat's tip for half a second, the color of heat shimmer on a highway.
It hit the door.
Steel parted in a clean diagonal line from the top left corner to the middle of the right edge, and the upper section sagged forward on its remaining hinge and then the weight of it pulled it loose and it hit the marble with a clang. June cried out.
The edge glowed faintly orange for a second before it faded.
"Yeah," Kai said. "So. That."
"Jesus Christ," Dez said softly.
Frank walked over to the door. He crouched, ran his thumb along the cut edge, snatched it back. Still hot. He stood up slowly and turned around and looked at the room. Eleven people. Two with classes. One of them could cut through a fire door with a baseball bat.
"How many of you," he said, "still have the screen. The one asking you to pick."
Kris raised her hand. Nadia, without looking up. Owen, weakly. Walter, then June after a long hesitation. Dez lifted two fingers. Rachel didn't move, but her eyes had come up off the floor.
"Then pick," Frank said. "While it's quiet."
The lobby went still. Eight people staring at nothing, eyes tracking across the empty air, lips moving occasionally. Walter whispered the words as he read them. June's hands had stopped clutching the purse. Nadia had actually paused with a strip of sheet half-wrapped around Owen's arm, and Owen didn't look up.
I saw Kris's shoulders drop a quarter inch and her free hand flex, once, hard. Nadia blinked and looked down at her own fingers. Dez sat up straighter on the vending machine, then laughed under his breath, a short surprised sound. Owen's color changed. It was subtle, but the gray in his face pulled back a shade.
Frank's eyes moved across a menu I couldn't see. His hand rested on the shotgun stock the whole time. When he was done, he exhaled through his nose and said nothing about it.
Nobody's saying what they took.
Rachel's eyes stopped moving. She went back to looking at the floor.
The questions came after. Could you pick more than one. Could you change it. What happened if you didn't pick. What did seventy-two hours mean. Marco answered what he could. Kai answered more, in the bored monotone of someone who'd explained mobile game mechanics to a parent before. I answered only when something was asked of me directly, and I answered short.
Frank waited until the last one had died. Then he pushed off from the wall and stood in the center of the lobby, in the middle of that wide expanse of stained marble, and looked at each of us in turn.
"Alright. Hard part."
Nobody spoke.
"There's no power. The water on floors five and up comes from the roof tank, and the roof tank gets filled by the pumps in the basement, and the pumps run on the grid. Tank holds maybe two days of normal use for a full building. We're not a full building. So call it a week if we're careful, and then the taps go dry on every floor above four." He let that sit. "Below four, there's street pressure. For a while. Until the city's system fails, and I don't know when that is."
"We've got one working stairwell door and one that Kai just cut in half. There's a garage with a gate that's already been knocked down. Look. This is not a good place. But it's the place we've got, and I'd rather spend the next three days making it less bad than spend them arguing about it."
His hand went to his hip again, that pressing gesture.
"So I need to know. Who's staying. Who's going. Because I'm going to put together teams, one to work on the entrances, one to clear the apartments floor by floor for food and water and anything sharp, and I need to know who I can count on."
Nobody answered.
Walter spoke first. "We stay." He looked at June. She nodded once. "Where would we go?"
"Staying," Kris said. "I have nobody here. But I need defense."
"I'm not going anywhere on this arm," Owen said.
Nadia finished the knot she'd been tying. "I have a brother in the North district. I don't know if he's alive." Her voice was steady. Her hands weren't. "I'm staying for now."
Dez shrugged. "Staying."
Kai said nothing. "Staying," he finally said, and did not say anything about the twelfth floor, and nobody asked.
Rachel didn't answer. Frank looked at her and then looked away.
Marco's turn. "I'm not moving my family through streets full of those things. We stay."
Frank nodded. Then he looked at me.
I looked at my feet.
In the game you'd kill for a twenty-story tower with two stairwells and a barricadable lobby.
But the game had supply drops. The game gave you resources between waves that didn't come from anywhere. I don't know if we'll get something like that. What's here is a hundred and eighty apartments of whatever people had in their fridges on a Thursday night, a water tank that runs dry in a week, and a garage full of cars we can't drive without gas we can't get.
Eleven million people in this city. That's eleven million pantries being emptied at the same time. That's eleven million reasons the streets around this building will be picked clean in a month. In the middle of the densest part of the densest city on the coast.
I need a place where you can grow something, or collect water off a roof, or at least see a horde coming from a mile out instead of from across the street. A place where the waves have to funnel.
And you need it before wave ten. Because the Engineer curve doesn't start bending upward until you have a base to build on, and I'm not going to get that here.
And Jess is five kilometers that way.
I looked up. Rachel was watching me. I don't know when she'd started.
"I'm staying until the next wave," I decided.