The tunnel emptied them into the boiler room of Jefferson High. The rusted door hung crooked on its hinges, its window shattered inward by some long-ago violence.
"Watch your step," Sarah muttered as Quinn nearly tripped over a mop bucket. "Place is falling apart faster than the rest of this godforsaken town."
Quinn kicked aside the brittle plastic fragments. "Charming alumni you've got here."
A faded poster on the wall declared Homecoming Week in cheerful letters above a smear of something dark and flaking. Sarah snorted, dragging a finger through the crusted stain.
"Senior class of 2024. Last ones to graduate before SIF hit." She lit a cigarette with practiced ease, the flame illuminating hollows under her eyes. "Kids got their diplomas on a Friday. By Monday, half of them were bedridden."
She offered the pack to Quinn. He stared at it for a beat before shaking his head.
Sarah shrugged, tucking the pack away. "Your lungs, Marine."
She exhaled smoke toward the broken ceiling tiles. "This was ground zero for our district. School nurse spotted the first cluster." Her boot nudged a pile of yellowed hall passes that skittered across the tile like dead leaves. "They called it 'teen fatigue' until the teachers started dropping."
The air carried the ghost of industrial cleaner beneath the heavier stench of rodent nests and slow decay. Somewhere above them, a loose shutter banged in the wind.
Quinn tensed. "We moving or what?"
"Patience, jarhead." Sarah tapped ash onto a faded Drug-Free School Zone sign. "Vance's crew patrols the east quad at sundown." She took another drag, watching him through the smoke. "You really don't remember any of this, do you?"
They moved through the abandoned corridors, past classrooms frozen in mid-collapse. A skeleton in a letterman jacket slumped against a trophy case, its fingers still curled around the neck of a broken bottle. Quinn avoided looking at the smaller bones nearby.
The front doors had been barricaded with desks and chairs now reduced to kindling. They picked their way through the debris, emerging onto the cracked concrete of the school's entrance plaza. The remains of a pep rally banner flapped listlessly against a lamppost, its faded red letters reading GO PANTH before the fabric tore away.
They moved without speaking. Quinn's boots found every piece of loose gravel, every shard of broken bottle. Sarah's tire iron never stopped moving—a slow pendulum sweep at knee-level, ready to crack bone at the first sign of movement.
The street stretched before them, a graveyard of abandoned cars and wind-scattered trash. A newspaper headline fluttered against Quinn's ankle: WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION ISSUES URGENT ALERT. He kicked it away.
Sarah's shoulders tensed with each step, the muscles in her jaw working like she was chewing on words she didn't want to say. Quinn watched her sidelong—the way her fingers kept checking her belt for weapons that weren't there, the way her nostrils flared at every new scent. Military habits died hard.
"Back there," Quinn said. The words tasted like tunnel dust. "You mentioned Vance."
Sarah's step hitched. Just enough. "Not here."
"Here's as good as anywhere."
She stopped so suddenly Quinn took two steps past her before turning. Her eyes were flat, dull as old bullets. "You want a history lesson? Fine." She jerked her chin at a collapsed bus shelter. "But we do it watching our six."
They crouched in the shelter's wreckage, backs to what remained of the plexiglass. Sarah kept her gaze scanning while she talked, her voice low and rough.
"It started with coughs. Not the kind that make you worry—just dry little hacks people wrote off as allergies." Her fingers tapped a rhythm on the tire iron. "Then the fevers hit. Low-grade. Persistent."
Quinn watched a shred of plastic wrap dance across the street.
"Hospitals filled up overnight." Sarah's thumb rubbed at a rust spot on her weapon. "Not with the dying. With the tired. People who just... couldn't stay awake anymore."
A gust of wind carried the smell of spoiled meat from somewhere nearby. Sarah's nose wrinkled, but she didn't pause.
"They called it SIF. Systemic Immune Failure." She barked a laugh with no humor in it. "Fancy name for 'your body's giving up.'"
Quinn picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. "How'd it spread?"
Sarah's shoulders lifted in a shrug that wasn't casual. "Air? Touch? Nobody knew. Just that one day your neighbor's coughing, next day he's a pile of clothes on the sidewalk."
The plastic wrap caught on a jagged piece of metal, fluttering like something alive.
"Then they got back up." Sarah's voice dropped lower. "Not sick anymore. Not human anymore. Their fingers curled into claws, their eyes glazed over. They could sound human when they wanted to, but their weights had reduced, their movements... wrong. Fast. Hungry. Working together like—"
"Like a hive," Quinn finished. "And the way they whisper... Christ. 'Whisperers' fits too damn well."
Sarah's eyes flicked to his, then away. "You've seen them."
"That's when the real monsters showed up. Not just the infected. People like Vance." Her grip tightened on the tire iron. "That scavenger bastard took over what was left of this district. Killed anyone who wouldn't kneel. Took women like they were supplies to be rationed."
She spat onto the broken pavement. "Had a crew when this started—people from my block, some I'd known since grade school. Vance hung them from the football goalposts when they refused to hand over our cache. I only got out because Jamal shoved me in a dumpster and lit himself on fire as a distraction."
"Jesus Christ," Quinn muttered, wiping a hand down his face.
Sarah suddenly barked out a laugh, the sound jagged as broken glass. "Fuck, I wish. Nah, I just stabbed a guy in the balls and ran like hell." She grinned, all teeth. "But the flaming martyr bit gets people to stop asking questions."
They sat in silence for three long breaths. Somewhere distant, a metal shutter banged in the wind.
"Sarah pushed to her feet. 'Now you know,' she said, adjusting her grip on the tire iron before adding, 'I'm heading back.'"
Quinn studied her profile—the tightness around her eyes, the way her free hand kept flexing. "They won't take you back. Not after you walked me out."
Sarah's jaw worked. "Not your problem."
She stopped abruptly, her head cocked toward the east. From somewhere beyond the ruined football field came the sound of a dog barking—sharp, desperate, then abruptly cut off.
Quinn's hand found his knife. Sarah's fingers tightened on her tire iron. Neither spoke as the silence stretched.
Then—movement.
When the attack came, it came fast.
Sarah crushed her cigarette underheel as the first Whisperer lurched from the pharmacy. "Christ. Fucking hate these things."
The Whisperer's voice slithered out, ("Heellllp...me!…Ssstarving"), before crumbling into choked gurgles as Quinn's knife sawed through its throat. Black blood arced across his sleeve in a thick, stinking spray.
"Save the dramatics," Sarah snapped, yanking him backward. Her tire iron connected with another Whisperer's temple. "That one's not starving anymore. You will be if we don't move."
From the surrounding streets came the answering chorus—barks, howls, the skitter of claws on pavement. Getting closer. Fast.
"Move!" Sarah snapped.
They ran.
A pack of Whisperers burst from an alley, their movements jerky and unnaturally fast. One leapt at Quinn, its breath reeking of spoiled meat. He sidestepped, slashing its hamstring. The Whisperer went down with a shriek, but three more took its place.
Sarah's tire iron crunched into a skull. "There!" She pointed to an office building with intact ground-floor windows.
Quinn didn't hesitate. He drove his knife through the gap in the doorframe, felt the blade bite into something soft on the other side. A howl answered from within. Sarah smashed the sidelight with her tire iron, reached through the jagged teeth of remaining glass.
The lock clicked. The door gave.
They spilled inside as the first wave of Whisperers reached the sidewalk. Quinn spun to slam the door just as a pale hand shot through the gap. The heavy wood crushed bone with a sound like stepping on wet branches. The severed hand flopped onto the tile, fingers spasming in slow arcs.
Outside, the barks became a chorus. Inside, the darkness was unnerving.