Chapter3

Before dawn, we loaded the things onto the car.

The Ford Expedition consisted of three people: me driving, Morrison in the passenger seat, and Elena in the back. Three rifles and one pistol, fully loaded with ammunition. Who Ethan Cole was and where he was, we didn't know. We only knew he would be in Hope City.

As the car drove out of the underground parking garage, dawn was just breaking. The sun shone through a layer of grayish-white light against the dark red sky, like looking at the world through a layer of dirty glass.

From Santa Monica to Hope, it normally takes four hours. But with apocalyptic traffic conditions, I allotted it a whole day.

I headed west on Olympic Avenue and turned onto the 110 freeway. This road had become a dead end, a dense jam of vehicles blocking every direction; some cars were still intact, others were burned to charred skeletons. I weaved through the traffic, exited the freeway at 4th Street, and turned onto surface roads.

The infected weren't on the highway. My hand tightened on the steering wheel. If the infected were hunting humans, they should be in the most densely populated areas—the highway is the ideal choice. Thousands of people stuck in traffic with nowhere to escape would be an endless buffet for predators. But there were almost no infected on the highway. This meant they had found a more efficient hunting method.

At the crossroads, I heard crying.

A faint sound came from the overturned Toyota Sienna. The car lay overturned in front of the pharmacy; a woman of about sixty years old sat in the driver's seat, her eyes closed, her lower body trapped in the mangled door. The blood had dried, and dark brown stains ran from the seat to the windows. A sob came from the back seat, intermittent, like a kitten meowing.

I approached with my M4, first eliminating two infected individuals who had come drawn by the smell of blood—one rushed out of the pharmacy, the other ran from across the street. Two shots, two heads. Then I opened the back door.

In the back seat of a car seat, a little girl was secured by a seatbelt. She was about three years old, with brown hair, wearing pink pajamas and only one slipper. She clutched a plush rabbit in her arms, a black stain on its ear. She was crying, but very softly—she had learned not to make loud noises because her grandmother had told her that bad people would come if she did.

What's your name?

"Sophia."

Where are Mom and Dad?

Sofia didn't answer. She held the rabbit up high, obscuring half of her face.

I pointed to the woman in the driver's seat. "Grandma?"

Sofia nodded. "Grandma is asleep. She told me not to make a sound. If I do, bad people will come."

I paused for a moment, then reached out and unlocked the car seat. "Your grandma went to a very far place. She's not coming back."

Sofia looked at me, her eyes still wet, but she stopped crying. "Can I go with you?"

"Can."

I lifted her out, placed her in the back seat of the Ford, and secured her with the seatbelt. Her body felt as light as a feather. Elena turned around from the passenger seat. "What's your name?"

"Sophia."

"I am Elena."

Sofia looked at the scar on Elena's face. "You're injured."

"It doesn't hurt anymore."

Sofia thought for a moment, then handed the plush rabbit to Elena. "The rabbit will keep you company. It will protect you."

Elena took the rabbit and looked at it for two seconds. "Okay."

I started the engine. There were four people in the car: me, Morrison, Elena, and Sofia. Elena and Sofia were in the back seat.

We arrived in Hope in the afternoon. It actually took nine hours – detours, traffic jams, and clearing roadblocks made it twice as long as usual.

All major roads leading into the city were barricaded with concrete blocks, barbed wire, and military Humvees.

"The army has been here."

“They didn’t just come here.” I picked up my binoculars. “They locked down Hope City before the apocalypse.”

Behind the barricades were spent shell casings, bloodstains, and abandoned uniforms. The blockade had been breached—not from the outside, but from the inside. Someone had rushed out from inside, or something had rushed out from inside.

The CDC lab is on the east side of the city. I parked my car about fifty meters away.

“I’ll go in. Morrison, watch the car and the kids. Elena, come with me.”

The two entered through the ventilation duct. I pried open the exterior grille and crawled in first. Elena followed behind. The duct walls were covered in dust and cobwebs, and the air was stuffy and hot. We crawled thirty meters before jumping into the corridor through a maintenance opening.

All the corridor lights were off, except for the emergency indicator lights emitting a ghastly green glow. The air smelled strongly of blood, but it wasn't fresh—it had been there for at least several hours.

I carried the MK18 along the corridor. There was breathing behind the third door. I stopped and listened for three seconds—rapid, irregular breathing with a wet, rattling sound, like something was stuck in the trachea.

I used a jackhammer to force the door open. A man was huddled in the corner of the conference room, wearing a CDC uniform with a name tag that read "DR. HARRISON MILLER." He held a scalpel in his right hand, and there were three deep wounds on his left arm. His eyes were clear.

"Dr. Miller? Santa Monica Police Department."

Dr. Miller looked up, his gaze unfocused for a few seconds before settling on my face. "You shouldn't have come here."

He reached out and handed me a USB drive. His hand was trembling, but his movements were resolute. "Gene sequence. Complete sequence of the zero-generation pathogen. Vaccine target labeled. Take it. Go."

I took the USB drive. "How did you know I'd come?"

Dr. Miller's gaze passed over my shoulder. I turned around—

A man in his forties stood in the doorway. His hair was graying, and he had two scars on his face, one running from his right eyebrow to his lower left jaw. He wore military green tactical pants and an M65 field jacket, and held an AR-15 with a silencer, muzzle pointing downwards. A bunch of car keys hung from his tactical vest. His grip was far from amateurish—muzzle down at a 30-degree angle, right hand on the grip, left hand supporting the handguard, index finger resting on the outside of the trigger guard.

"Ethan Cole?"

"It's me."

How did you know we would come?

Cole entered the room. “I received a warning a month ago. This world will end today. You’ll come here to get the genetic sequence.”

I scanned his gear. "Where's your car?"

"East parking lot. Black Tacoma."

"Granite Mountain?"

"Northern Command Underground Command Center. Springs Town."

I turned to Dr. Miller. “You’re coming with us.”

Dr. Miller shook his head. “I’m infected. Not by pathogens, but by information. If I walk out of this building alive, those things will find me.” His voice was calm, unlike that of a dying man. “Go now.”

I put the USB drive into the waterproof pouch on my chest. I looked at Cole. "Are we coming or not?"

Cole picked up the AR-15. "Let's go."

The three of them retraced their steps. I went first, Elena in the middle, and Cole at the rear. When we climbed out of the ventilation duct, Morrison had already driven the car to the nearest exit.

"Two cars. Go separately. Meet outside the city."

Morrison drove the Ford, and I sat in the passenger seat. Cole ran towards the east parking lot, and a few seconds later a black Toyota Tacoma emerged from behind the rubble.

The two vehicles drove through the street blocked by roadblocks and headed northeast.

How long until the second wave?

"Less than an hour."

Ford accelerated to 110 km/h. Tacoma followed 100 meters behind.

Forty minutes later, I saw the light in my rearview mirror. It wasn't sunset orange, nor fiery red. It was white. Pure white, white that could burn your retina in an instant. The light rose from the direction of Hope City, like a small sun exploding on the horizon.

The shockwave arrived seconds later. The rear window shattered, and shards of glass flew past the back seat. My ears went deaf instantly, leaving only a piercing white noise. I gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands. I glanced back at the back seat—Sofia was huddled in Elena's arms, Elena shielding her head with her hands, both of them covered in shards of glass.

In the rearview mirror, a mushroom cloud rose from the direction of Hope City. The second wave of meteors struck the city precisely.

More than an hour later, we crossed the Silver State-Yute State border. I parked the car at a rest area and turned off the engine. I leaned back in the driver's seat, closed my eyes, and listened to my heartbeat.

The group consisted of: me, Morrison, Elena, Cole, and Sofia. The Tacoma followed and stopped. Five people, one Ford and one Tacoma.

Sofia nestled in Elena's arms, a thin scratch on her cheek from a shard of glass. Elena disinfected the wound with iodine, and the little girl flinched in pain, burying her face in Elena's chest.

Morrison was smoking, his fingers trembling, but the fingers holding the cigarette were steady. This was a contradiction only someone who had been on the battlefield would have—his body was afraid, but his muscles were pretending not to be.

I took the USB drive out of the waterproof bag. "You said there were three in the second wave. How far is Denver from Granite Hills?"

"Less than 100 kilometers. But Granite Mountain is still there. The mountain has a 1,000-meter-thick layer of overlying vegetation. Even a direct hit from a meteor wouldn't destroy it."

How did you know?

Cole turned his head. "I told you."

I started the engine. "Granite Hill. Let's go there first."

The two vehicles resumed their journey. The Ford was in front, and the Tacoma behind. They headed east from the ruins of Hope, across the desert, towards Colorado.