Away from the wall now, Heather felt dizzy. She had noticed the effect several months ago and she thought she knew what it was. Agoraphobia was a fear of open places. Small animalsrodents, lizards, birds, and fishall had the sameinborn fear. All of them were used to being hunted. A long-ago science class she’d barely paid attention to had taught her that.
She shifted the weighted pipe to her left hand automatically. She had learned the hard way to never leave her weapon exposed to a potential enemy.
That habit saved her life.
The man reached for her and caught her arm. His long, thin fingers curved around her wrist. With a jerk, he pulled her to him.
“Well now, I guess you’ll have to learn better manners, Doris. These are hardtimes, they are. If you’re going to go along, you got to get along.”
His foul breath collided with her face. It smelled like death, like the inside of the morgue Heather had found a few years ago. With the power cut off, the refrigeration units had stalled. The bodies inside the stainless steel vaults had spoiled.
While looking for anything salvageable, Heather had pulled one of vaults open. Her torch beam had revealed the horror within. She could still never say whether the body was male or female, only that it was covered with an infestation of maggots that writhed as they fed.
Even that could’ve been worse, she’d discovered. In some places, the deadlived again and sought only to feed on the flesh of a living.
The man touched her face with his free hand.
Heather’s skin crawled at his touch. With a lithe twist of her hips, shebrought the weighted pipe around in an overhand blow. The man saw it coming in time to raise his arm, but it didn’t do any good. The weighted pipe snapped hisarm like a twig.
The man screamed in pain and cradled his injured arm to his chest. He cursed at her between painful groans.
That was when Heather spotted the long forms of the monsters clinging to the wall of the alley. The lowest one was already at the second floor. Its lips pulled back and revealed double rows of serrated teeth.
Without hesitation, the monster leaped from the wall and landed on the man’sback. The sudden weight dropped the man to his knees. He never had a chance to run. The monster’s jaws open wider and latched onto the side of the man’s neck.He screamed again, but this time it was in fear, not pain or anger.
Bones snapped and crunched, and it was frightening that she knew that sound from experience. Blood ran down the front of the man’s duster.
Heather turned and fled. Even if the man had not tried to assault her, she wouldn’t have tried to help him. Individuals only fell into two different campsthese days. She only helped those in one of them. Neil was in that camp, and the rest of the worldwhatever remained of itwas in the other.
Several blocks later, Heather reached a tube station. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She dug a minitorch from her pocket and flicked it on as she plunged into the stairwell. She jumped the last few feet and landed hard enough that for a moment she thought she’d broken her ankle. She ignored the shootingpain and made sure her foot worked.
“Turn that bloody torch off, you silly cow,” someone said. “You’re going todraw the demons down on us.”
“They’re already coming,” Heather warned.
More cursing followed.
When she swept the torch’s beam across the foyer, Heather saw three young menand two women standing in the tube station. They held pillowcases filled with canned goods.
Around them, skeletons picked clean of flesh lay in wild disarray amid piles of refuse. The foyer smelled like a urinal. Of course, the tube had reeked of piss on occasion even before the Hellgate opened, but the survivors now lived in its stations.
The men and women were young, no more than mid-twenties and worn-looking. Even then, though, Heather couldn’t imagine living to be so old.
“Why did you bring them down here?” someone asked.
“It wasn’t like I had a lot of choice,” Heather retorted.
“We can’t stay here, Byron,” one of the young women said.
The man she talked to stood six feet tall. He carried an assault rifle. Heather felt certain he had gotten it from one of the military men who had fallen in battle. But he appeared to know how to use it.
Byron took the lead and walked back into the tube station as if he belonged there. “What are you doing here?” he asked Heather.
“I’m looking for my brother.”
After he turned the corner, he followed the stairs down to the boarding platforms. His torch flicked on.
“Is your brother out there?” Byron demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“You lost your brother?” one of the women asked. Her tone indicated she believed Heather was incredibly irresponsible.
“I didn’t lose him,” Heather replied defiantly. “When I got up, he was gone.”
“Too afraid to go out and scavenge on your own?” the other women taunted.
“No. Neil’s my younger brother. I’ve been scavenging for the both of us sincethis thing started.”
Byron played his torch in both directions along the tube line. “Feelingespecially lucky?”
“No,” Heather said.
“Make her go another way,” one of the guys said. “If she’s brought bad luck,she needs to take it with her.”
Heather held back a ripping curse. It wouldn’t do to alienate people whomight offer a degree of safety.
“No,” Byron said softly. “We stay together. If the demons have our scent, onemore person can help. There’s safety in numbers.”
No one argued.
Byron shined his torch both ways again, then moved to the left. Within a few feet they were jogging. Heather hated that because she knew the sounds would carry and she wouldn’t be able to hear the monsters coming.
“You called them demons,” Heather told Byron when they paused to catch theirbreath.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because they are demons,” one of the women said.
“Demons aren’t real.” Heather hung on to that thought. She didn’t want tobelieve in demons. Despite everything she’d been through during
