– Joe.

The boy steps up.

– I had the number. It gets passed around. Coalition, Society, people in need can find a number to call to talk to someone at Cure house. I think they ran a help desk when they first started. Or a crisis line. But I had to call a few times before anyone answered. Sela. I told her who we were, what we needed. What Delilah is carrying. She told us to come to the building over there.

He points north.

– On Seventy-second. Cure owns it. Buzz the super and it rings upstairs here and they let you in. Go straight back, Sela was in the alley waiting to bring us into here.

The girl shakes her head.

– That was the first sign that all was not well.

Phil clears his throat.

– Joe.

The boy is nodding.

– Yes. Sela didn’t look very. Healthy. And as soon as we got inside, we could see the situation was not what we were looking for.

The girl points up the stair.

– The Horde woman seemed all but mad. She spoke to comfort us, encouraging us to stay, but I sensed something.

The kid touched his forehead.

– Delilah can see things sometimes. Like she has the sight.

She raises a palm.

– Just what is given to me. And I sensed she had mad designs on the child. Soon, my fears were confirmed. She gave us drink, but it was drugged. We slept.

I’ve got my face close to the door, my nose at the crack.

I can hear that chain-scraping sound. Moaning. Can’t tell how many. Smell Vyrus. Wrong Vyrus. Something wrong. Smell dying. Smell wet concrete and mold and shit.

– Joe.

I look at him.

– What, Phil?

– Joe. We shouldn’t open that door, Joe.

– Why’s that, Phil?

– It’s bad in there.

I look around the space.

– Well, you can stay here and choke on exhaust fumes until Sela gets it together and Amanda opens that door up there for her.

He’s staring at the garbage against the wall.

– She stopped feeding them is all.

I take a closer look at the garbage.

I.V. bags, dry and crusted. No wonder I feel light-headed. Thought it was just the way the girl smells. All that extra blood pumping around inside her.

Phil points up.

– Why Sela is like she is, the blood, what was left, it’s been coming down here, to keep them alive. But Horde stopped.

– Not like it’s a secret her people are starving, Phil.

He shakes his head.

– Uh, no, that’s the thing, I’m not like an expert in the field, but what I’m saying is, on the upstairs floors, those are her people. People who, you know, came here to join, to join Cure and get the, what she promised, get the cure. And yeah, they’re starving too. But this?

He points at the door.

– This is where she keeps, and I’m just the messenger here and I tried not to let you take us down here so don’t be uncool about this, but this is where she keeps her experiments.

He scratches his head.

– In what she call, um, cross-splicing. Which, I don’t know what it means, so don’t ask, but if I were to guess I would say it means like, experiments in playing god. Or something. And what I’m saying is, that these …things… they don’t just, this is the scuttlebutt, they don’t just get into uninfected blood. Sure, yeah, that’s the flavor of choice, but they go any which way.

He points at me.

– If you’re following what I’m saying.

He scratches his head.

– Which is, I’m saying, they drink infected blood too.

The door at the top of the stairs rattles.

The girl points at me.

– Can you not fight?

The kid puts an arm around her shoulders.

– I’ll stand with you, man.

The girl makes a fist.

– And I. She wants our baby. She wants our baby to experiment on. And I will die to save our child.

I sort keys, find the ones that match the brands stamped on the locks.

– No.

She steps back.

I open the first lock.

– She won’t do anything to you or your baby. Not yet.

I open the second lock.

– You’ll be safe.

I fit the key to the last lock.

– Until I get back.

I pick up the iron bar that I took away from the door.

She sticks a finger at me.

– You said you knew a way out.

I heft the bar.

– I was probably wrong.

She steps back.

– We are abandoned.

I could tell her again that I’ll be back, but who the hell am I? What would it mean to her? And I’d probably be wrong anyway.

I get both hands on the bar.

– Open the door, Phil.

– I don’t want to.

– Do it anyway.

He puts his hand on the key.

– Story of my whole life.

He turns the key.

– I don’t wanna do it, but I’m doing it anyway.

He pulls on the door.

– Shit.

It sticks.

– Shit I wish I was high.

He’s not the only one.

They drink infected blood too. Like I don’t have enough to worry about, I got to worry about something trying to go for my neck.

Phil gives the door a good yank and it comes unstuck and something whips out of the darkness and there’s a mist of blood and Phil is gone. So it looks like it really does prefer uninfected blood, and I’m running after, swinging the iron bar, beating on something that has my friend.

Huh. Phil Sax. My friend. You think the craziest shit when things get all fucked up.

I don’t get a look at it.

Not a good one anyway.

It’s brittle is what I know. Fast, but brittle. Every time I bring the iron down, bits of it snap off and clatter to the ground. So I keep hammering, breaking it down, beating a hole in it, trying to ignore the thing sticking up from its shoulder that looks like another head, until I hit it and it snaps off too. Stuff is running down the bar and my bad hand keeps slipping off when I make contact. It’s come away from Phil to rake its claws at me. Gets my thigh, back of my left arm. Lift the bar over my head and bring it down tip first, jamming it into the wound where the head thing was and there’s a sound like when you pull the neck of a balloon and let the air keen out, only loud, and it runs into a wall, bounces off, runs into the wall again, and again, and collapses into a heap stippled with broken spines, looking like one of the slides Amanda showed me.

I’m yelling at the kid to close the door for fuck sake. He starts pushing it closed. I catch a glimpse of Chubby’s daughter throwing up behind him. Their names come back to me: Delilah and Ben.

I hope Sela doesn’t kill them.

Door closes, locks lock.

I keep still.

– Aw shit.

I move forward a step.

– Aw shit, Joe. I think it ate part of my stomach.

Smells like water ahead. Smells like water and waste and wet rusty metal. Smells like sewer grate.

I know where to go.

Phil’s gonna die.

There’s a hole in his side I can stick my hand in. And that’s what I’m doing, trying to shove his shredded shirt into it to slow the blood. Most of his scalp is gone, an ear. His right foot has been twisted around backward. There are pinholes in his cheek. When he talks, little bubbles of blood pop out of them.

He’s gonna die, but there’s still a lot of blood in him.

Enough to do me right.

– Joe.

Light is coming from a blue safety lamp up at the junction that takes you out of this access duct and into the tunnel. The Lexington line. Somewhere close to a platform I think. I can smell people.

It all smells like fresh air.

After the Cure house basement, even the sewer smells like fresh air.

I found the grate not far from the door. Found it when my heel caught in it and I dropped Phil. He started screaming and I thought the rest of whatever was in there would be on us, but they just howled and pounded walls. The one I killed, the only one that had gotten free of its cell. Too dark to know how many more. Ran my hand down the wall, felt at least seven doors, dead bolts, felt some kind of jury-rigged motors hooked to them, wires. Seven doors I could feel, but it’s a big basement.