Just as he raised the blade overhead, Brian grabbed the back of the intruder’s waistband and pulled him out of the car. They stumbled to the ground outside. Brian jumped to his feet and kicked the utility knife out of the man’s hand. It bounced into an oncoming lane where traffic continued unimpeded. The intruder wasn’t interested in Brian, though. He scrambled back to the car and climbed onto the driver’s seat.

  “What’s your fucking problem?” Brian yelled as he pulled the man out again.

  He pushed him up against the rear passenger door, causing Cameron to recoil. They started trading blows. Brian wrestled him to the ground by sweeping his broken leg, but the guy kept standing back up. The intruder was feverish, fueled by a surge of hysterical strength. Between the punching and grappling, he glanced back at Leslie and inched closer to the driver’s door. He only had one thing on his mind.

  The baby.

  Cameron pulled on his door’s handle repeatedly and slapped his window. He wanted to help his father, but the child-safety lock prevented him from getting out of the car.

  “Stop, Cam,” Leslie said while fiddling with her cell phone.

  She had trouble unlocking it because of her clammy hands. The touchscreen didn’t register her taps and the fingerprint scanner couldn’t read her fingerprint.

  “Dad needs help!” Cameron cried, bouncing anxiously in his seat.

  “Honey, he’s okay. We–We’re going to be okay.”

  “No! He’s hurting him!”

  “Cameron, please, you have to...”

  Her voice trailed off as she heard a clack behind her. She turned her head slowly until she noticed the movement at the periphery of her vision. Screaming, she slid to the opposite edge of her seat, the small of her back against the center console. A lanky man with a patchy beard was tugging on the door handle. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was deathly pale. His wide, maniacal grin revealed two rows of yellow, decaying teeth and his bloody, rotting gums.

  “Brian!” she yelled.

  Over the station wagon’s roof, Brian spotted the other man but he couldn’t get a good look at him. He had no idea why these strangers had converged on his car but he could feel the danger in the air. They wanted to harm them. He had to get his family out of there. He grabbed the intruder’s arms—one in each hand—pulled him away from the station wagon, then turned and pushed him into the neighboring oncoming lane.

  As the intruder landed on his knees, a speeding bus plowed into him. With a bang, every bone in his rib cage shattered. His head, caught under one of the massive wheels, burst like a big, throbbing, pus-filled pimple. His beanie flew off his head like a rocket, leaving a streak of blood behind it before stopping at the sidewalk on the other side of the street. The bus dragged him ten meters before completely rolling over his body.

  The bus driver didn’t stop—didn’t even touch his brake pedal. He was driving well over the speed limit while swerving between lanes.

  Back against the rear passenger door, Brian gaped at the aftermath of the crash. A slop of liquefied brain, chunks of detached scalp, a crushed eyeball, and a severed ear were smeared on the asphalt. The man’s mangled legs were tangled together like a braided ponytail. His left shoulder, dragged across the pavement, was whittled down, leaving his arm attached to his torso by some threads of meat. His head was flattened—pulverized.

  A pickup truck sped down the oncoming lane. As the truck hit the human roadkill, Brian turned his back to the gory accident. He heard a moist crunching sound from the dead body.

  In a soft, awed voice, he said, “What the fuck... What the fuck…”

  He began to notice the chaos unfolding all around him. There was a McDonald’s at the corner of the block. A police cruiser was parked in front of the fast-food joint, its emergency light bar flashing red and blue. The driver’s door was open but the cop was nowhere to be seen. A playground was attached to the restaurant. Near a jungle gym, a man lay dead in a puddle of blood between a stroller and a table. He had been stabbed in the neck three times. A child’s ashen, bloodied, limp hand stuck out from a ball pit.

  Two men—one in a suit and the other covered in layers of coats—chased a woman and her baby through a network of transparent tubes in the playground.

  At a park across the street, a group of men and a woman ran through a field, cheering and clapping. One of them appeared to be carrying an infant. A woman lay on a walkway next to an overturned stroller. She was crying for help.

  “They took my baby!” she was saying. “My baby! Oh God, my baby!”

  On the other side of the station wagon, the guy with the patchy beard was hitting Leslie’s window with his fists and elbows. He headbutted it once, unintentionally dazing himself. Another man ran up to the station wagon. He tried to open the rear passenger door, then the trunk.

  Brian got into the car, slamming and locking the door behind him before the other man could reach him. He turned the key in the ignition and put the pedal to the metal. Through the rearview mirror, he saw one of the men tumble and the other give chase. The guy gave up after a few seconds, though. Brian couldn’t hear anything except his own breathing and his thoughts. Everything else—Leslie’s voice, Cameron’s crying, the screaming and the sirens outside—was muffled. He didn’t know where to go, either. It didn’t seem safe anywhere.

  He had to slow down at another intersection. Most drivers were still following traffic laws, but there were enough outlaws on the road for the law-abiding citizens to notice something was amok. Those outlaws were barreling through intersections and weaving through traffic, ignoring red lights and stop signs and even pedestrians. They treated the roads like racetracks and vehicles like bumper cars.

  Stopped at the intersection, Leslie grabbed Brian’s arm. He gasped and looked at her as if he had forgotten she was there. His hearing returned, gradually becoming clearer. Although she seemed to be yelling, Leslie’s voice sounded like a loud whisper. He could hardly hear her over Cameron’s bawling in the back seat. A feeling of uselessness left him with a knot in his stomach. He was old-fashioned to an extent. As the man of the house—the husband, the father, the patriarch—he felt responsible for his family’s safety.

  He was just as scared as Leslie and Cameron. He wasn’t afraid to admit it—wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable or emotional—but he knew it wasn’t the time to show it. Like a contagious disease, panic was easy to spread and difficult to stop. He shut his eyes and calmed himself with a few deep breaths. When he opened his eyes, the traffic light was green. Yet, despite the green light, he stopped over the crosswalk and checked both ways before continuing to drive forward.

  “Are you listening?” Leslie asked, her voice quivering. “What’s happening? What are we going to do? Where are we going to go?”

  “Mom, I’m scared,” Cameron whined, tears spilling down his red cheeks.

  Brian said, “Everything...” His voice cracked right away. He grunted, breathed deeply, then said, “Everything’s okay. We’re going to get away from... from whatever’s happening over there. We can’t go home, not that way anyway, so we’ll find somewhere safe and we’ll call the police. Or we’ll go to a police station or a fire station or a hospital. Just… We will find somewhere safe. You hear me back there, buddy? We’re all okay. I just got a couple of scratches, and Mom and the baby are fine. Right, Les? You’re good, right?”

  Breathing shakily, Leslie looked down at herself. Her dress was disheveled but she was unharmed. Her heart was pounding so hard that she felt some discomfort in her chest. It made her worry more about the baby than herself.

  “We’re good,” she answered. She looked back at Cameron and said, “We’re okay, sweetie. I wish you hadn’t put yourself in danger like that, but... you were very strong, baby. Thank you.”

  Cameron could only snivel.

  Wandering through the city, they noticed a stampede at a shopping plaza. The customers were trying to get away from something or someone. A column of black smoke rose from one of the stores in the back. On another street, they saw a patrol car speeding down a sidewalk with its emergency lights on and its siren blaring. The car clipped an elderly man, launching him into the street. The driver didn’t stop.

  Speaking quietly so as not to alarm their son, Leslie said, “This is… insane. This could be some sort of terrorist attack. Maybe we should avoid the sirens. We can go home and lock ourselves in until there’s some sort of announcement. A state of emergency or an order to evacuate or... or something. All I know is, it isn’t safe out here.”

  “We’d have to go all around the city to avoid that... craziness back there,” Brian said as he turned onto a quiet residential street.

  “Then where are we supposed to go? The hospitals are probably crowded by now. If not, who’s to say they’re not having a ‘hostage crisis’ like that other hospital we passed earlier? It could all be connected, right? And the police… Look at them. They’re out here running over people. You saw that, didn’t you? Who can we trust? Maybe we should just get on the highway and leave town. That could work, right?”

  “Wait, we... we’re close to Tommy’s place right now. We can hunker down with him. At least until we get an idea of what’s going on.”

  “Tommy? Oh jeez, I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Brian.”

  Snorting between words because of the mucus dripping from his nose, Cameron said, “We’re... gonna... see... Uncle Tommy?”

  At 34 years old, Thomas ‘Tommy’ Turner was Brian’s younger brother. He had a history of drug and alcohol addiction. He was now on his longest streak of sobriety since his teenage years. Using the connections he had made as a security guard, Brian had helped him find a job at a power plant.

  Leslie supported Tommy through his struggles, but she didn’t want Cameron spending too much time with him. She feared he was always on the verge of relapse. Cameron had only met him for the first time a few months earlier. He didn’t notice anything unusual about his uncle, but due to his unkempt appearance, he believed Tommy was older than his dad.

  Brian took another turn. He rolled his window down an inch. The neighborhood was calm. He detected some movement inside the duplexes to his left. A sedan rolled down that same road. It turned into a driveway. The driver—a portly guy with a white mustache and a trucker cap on his head—exited the vehicle. He was in no hurry.

  On another street, they saw a teenager strolling down a sidewalk while dribbling a basketball. He listened to music through his Bluetooth earbuds. They couldn’t tell whether he was unaware of the pandemonium spreading through the city or he simply didn’t care about it. Feeble echoes of pain—groans, cries, shrieks—reached the street from other neighborhoods, too.

  Brian parked on the side of the road next to a palm tree. To their right, there were two three-story apartment complexes. The one behind them had a green and white exterior. Its walls were sprayed with graffiti from the local gangs and tagging crews. The other building had an orange exterior. The bird shit on the walls resembled white polka dots.

  Tommy lived in the orange building. A sign on the side of the building read: Sunny Vista. From their parking space, they could see the pool behind the apartment complex.

  “Wait here,” Brian said as he took his seat belt off.

  “Huh?” Leslie responded.

  “I’m going to head in by myself. I have to make sure it’s safe before I let you waltz in there.”

  “You don’t have to ‘let’ me do anything. I can make my own decisions.”

  “Leslie, I heard what that guy said back there. I saw the way those other guys looked at you. I don’t know why, but… they wanted you. They wanted our baby. I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks. I’ll go in there and make sure the coast is clear. You wait here with the doors locked. If anything goes wrong—if someone approaches you, if you hear me scream, if you just have a bad feeling in your gut—you drive off.”

  Leslie frowned and asked, “You want me to just leave you?”

  Brian held her hand, gave her a reassuring smile, and said, “I’ll find a way to catch up to you. Circle the block a couple of times and maybe you’ll see me running after you. Go home. Go to your mom’s. Go to your obstetrician or Cam’s pediatrician.” He laughed half-heartedly, then said, “One way or another, I’ll find you. Let’s not dwell on this, though. We’re talking the worst-case scenario as if it’s guaranteed to happen. I’ll be okay. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  “Yeah, I... I guess you’re right.”

  “Daddy, I wanna go with you,” Cameron said.

  Brian exited the car and, while helping Leslie climb into the driver’s seat, he said, “I’ll be right back, buddy. You have to stay here and take care of your mom. Okay? You can do that, right? You’re our big boy, aren’t you?”

  “Ye... Yeah.”

  “Attaboy. I’ll be right back. Give me five minutes, okay? Five minutes.”

  He closed the door gently to avoid making noise, then he hustled over to the orange building. He had been there before, so he knew his way around. The front door opened to a hallway with more doors on each side. At the other end of the corridor, an exit led to the pool area behind the building. The laundry room was to his left and the superintendent’s office was to his right. Directly beyond the office, a flight of stairs led up to the other floors.

  The apartments appeared to have paper-thin walls. Muted voices—in English and Spanish—clashed in the hallway, joined by the ceaseless barking from a chihuahua.

  Brian hurried up the U-shaped stairs but stopped in his tracks as he reached the top of the steps on the third floor. The door in front of him was cracked open. It had the indentation of a boot on it. The edge of the door was splintered and bloodied, and the doorknob was barely attached to it. Slivers of wood and screws were scattered across the threshold. An episode of SpongeBob SquarePants was playing on a TV inside the apartment. Weak moans emerged from the home as well.

  Brian cast his eyes down at the dark splatter stains on the floorboards. Blood, he thought. He followed the trail with his gaze to the apartment at the end of the hall to his right.

  Tommy’s apartment.

  He sidestepped down the hall, ready to run at the first sign of trouble. He kept glancing back at the broken door. He knew something terrible had happened in that home. People didn’t kick down doors just to say hello after all. He wanted to call the police and check on the residents, but he was more concerned about his brother. The same question ran laps in his mind: What have you done, Tommy?

  The plaque next to the door read: 308.

  Brian raised a clenched fist but stopped before he could knock. His heart sank as he saw the blood smeared on the doorknob. He let out a shuddery exhale as he turned the knob. It was unlocked. Curtains closed, the home was poorly lit by a single lamp. Dirty laundry and trash—cereal and pizza boxes, empty two-liter bottles of soda, crushed cans of beer, crumpled plastic bags and sheets of paper, shards of glass from broken Mason jars, plastic eating utensils and burnt silverware—flooded the living room. The stench of urine, sweat, and alcohol stained the apartment.

  Brian had flashbacks to Tommy’s past relapses. Over the bar separating the living room and kitchen, he could see his brother standing in front of a counter.

  Tommy had curly black hair like Brian but his was thinning. With some fresh blood oozing out, he had recently given himself some bald patches too. He had ripped locks of his hair off his head because he felt like something was crawling under his scalp. His cheeks were cratered with pitted acne scars while a rash of blackheads spread across his nose and chin. Mazes of squiggly blood vessels surrounded his brown irises.

  His right arm was stretched out in front of him, only his index finger unfurled. It looked like he was pointing at something on the counter. Blood leaked from a gash on his palm. His knuckles were red, swollen, and scraped. There were scratches on his forearms, neck, and face, too. The neckline of his striped t-shirt, dappled with drops of blood, was stretched, as if someone had been pulling at it during a fight.

  Brian slunk into the room, walking with extreme caution as if he believed there was a landmine hidden somewhere under the garbage. His face scrunched up in a grimace of sadness as he heard his brother’s indistinct rambling and whimpering. He could feel his regret—his shame. He gasped and slapped his hand over his mouth as he reached the middle of the living room. Tears came to his eyes in an instant.

  He could finally see past the microwave on the counter. Tommy wasn’t pointing at something. His index finger was on the START button of a large commercial blender on the counter in front of him. A small baby boy, no older than two months old, was stuffed into the blender’s pitcher. The blades sticking out of the mixer rod at the center of the pitcher cut into the boy’s flabby legs and abdomen. He was naked and unconscious.

  Brian lowered his hand slowly. His mouth was wide open but he couldn’t force any words out. He was only able to croak and grunt. He was so distraught by the discovery that he had forgotten to breathe. After hearing the raspy noises coming out of Brian’s throat, Tommy noticed him from the corner of his eye. He looked away and, with his free hand, he wiped the tears from his cheeks.

  “Brian?” he said wonderingly.

  ‘Yes.’ The answer was trapped in Brian’s throat.

  Tommy asked, “Is–Is that you? A–A–Are you real?”

  “It’s... me,” Brian squeaked out.

  Tommy looked his way. His mouth alternated between a smile and a frown, switching every other second. The expression of horror remained on Brian’s face.

  He stuttered, “Wha–What is this?”

  “It’s a baby... in a blender.”

  “I can... I can see that. Where did you get him?”

  “The–The blender? It’s nice, huh? Roomy. I got it from that, uh… that smoothie place down the–”

  “Him,” Brian interrupted. “I said ‘him.’ The baby. Where did you get him?”

  “Oh, him. He’s... Well, um... He’s my baby,” Tommy said, forcing the smile to stay on his face a little longer while shrugging a shoulder.

 

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