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"Well, Beverly’s started eating shoes…" Nathan began, and I sat quietly and listened to hian to feel liketo be okay after all

Break the uise

Everything is changing now, it’s too late to go back

Caterpillar child of n,

Here at last you’ll find the things you can’t afford to lack

The broken doors are ready, you are very nearly hoo out alone

–FROM DON’T GO OUT ALONE, BY SIMONE KIMBERLEY, PUBLISHED 2006 BY LIGHTHOUSE PRESS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT

--hear me? This is Harry Lo of KNBR, the Bay Area’s real rock, broadcasting live because I have nothing else to do and no other way of getting the e that I’m still alive in here out to the world I have now been broadcasting for twenty days straight It’s al, I reco this year, because the streets are alive with the actual undead, which may make it hard to tell the kids in costu I re Those of you who tuned in yesterday--and if any of you tuned in yesterday, why aren’t you calling to letyou--you may recall that I ate the last of the crackers fro tissue paper, since ht loss aid I’ve also eaten an entire bottle of Vicodin, taken from our former lead anchor’s purse, and I’m about to folloith the last of the tequila

This is Harry Lo, signing off I hope that if you’re out there, you have better options left than I did

–FROM THE FINAL TRANSMISSION OF HARRY LO, KNBR, RECORDED ON OCTOBER 28, 2027

Chapter 10

OCTOBER 2027

The sound of tires on the street outside made me stand and stick ed cellphone in s that aiting in the dark I’d been sitting silently since Nathan hung up, watching the phone’s battery bar slowly fill and wishing that he had been able to stay on the line Apparently, it was unsafe to have tooin or out of the new lab location; Fishy wasn’t the only person who kne to trace a call With the cell network on the verge of collapse thanks to neglect and a lack of callers, anyone as stillBy the government, definitely But also, apparently, by Sy to "help" anyone who had been i to what Nathan had been able to tellour short ti to hit the fan by three days That was the span between o into a sleepwalker frenzy on live television That would have been a big deal no matter who did it, but that first victim was Paul Moffat, thea speech about the crisis, one that was mirrored to the local public television station, less because anyone thought he had anything new to say, andbudget

People started caring a lot more about what he had to say after he ripped somebody’s throat out with his teeth That probably wasn’t the kind of attention he’d been looking for

By the ti the footage of his conversion and subsequent attack According to Nathan, that segment had aired on an almost constant loop for three days, and even Dr Cale had put it on thesure everyone had the chance to see it Then she’d turned off the screen and announced that while they were not abandoning the search for er Things were destabilizing too fast

She was right about that, since by that point, no one really cared about the mayor who’d freaked out and eaten a few people They were too busy worrying about their friends, their neighbors, their parents, their children… thens had been there, and they had been ignored, one bellwether after another, until their weight beca down

It took less than ten days for my cousins to incapacitate A food chains, causing power outages and hospital shutdowns, and in so the evacuation of entire cities There were still news feeds and Internet reports coot scarcer each day as the people behind theuess maybe I should have been proud of that, except I was a tapeho thought of herself as a huht of themselves as tapeworms We were on different sides, and whenever there’s a conflict, so one

I just didn’t want it to be my side, even if I still wasn’t sure what side that was

Footsteps on the ay in front of the house snapped unshots They came quick and efficient, one after the other, like so a typewriter Then the shots stopped, and so!" I still couldn’t run, but I could hobble quickly Two et to the front door, which I unlocked and opened to reveal the wild-eyed face of Nathan Ki a black uniform I’d never seen before, and had an assault rifle in one hand It looked out of place against the backdrop of entle, scholarly boyfriend So did the bodies that were littering the lawn Fang and aback-to-back behind hi the area as they watched for more sleepwalkers