Dead Signals in the Dark

Story So Far

Lena hears an impossible ambulance transmission claiming Dev Reyes is alive, while something trapped in a lab transport begs not to be opened. Lena and the others sprint to the rear of the transport and find a man in a torn lab coat trapped in the doors, with a gash on his chin and a cracked badge reading DR. FELIX MARA.

They check Mara for bites and grayness, find none, and cut the padlocked chain with two axe swings. The doors burst open as Mara half-falls out, tells them they need to move, warns that four infected track sound, and points them toward a maintenance shed two hundred meters away.

Mara catches himself on the bumper, wearing cracked glasses, while the infected remain about thirty meters away in the tall grass. He asks about the radio as they run along a highway packed with dead cars, and the protagonist grabs Mara’s sleeve and pulls him into a run toward a concrete shed.

The shed door is open when they reach it, the infected pass outside, and Mara leans on a workbench breathing hard with his cracked glasses back on. In the small, closed shed that smells of motor oil, something scrapes the asphalt once and goes quiet outside.