Without pausing, I sprint to the fire escape and bolt down the stairs two at a time. In the street below the plague rats sense me and turn their faces up, their mouths gaping wide. There are so many it’s like looking at a writhing mass of maggots twisting and wriggling in the body cavity of a dead animal. They scratch at the old bricks, pressing against brittle-looking wood blocking the large entrances on the ground level.

At the first open window I come across, I duck inside, grateful to be away from the sound of the dead. I’m met with a long narrow hallway, the floor stained and walls cracked. The only light filters in from the window behind me and for a moment I don’t want to leave its safety.

Ahead of me is nothing except dim shadows, but I know the Recruiters are behind me. I have no other option but to press forward. Taking a deep breath, I square my shoulders and start throwing open every door I come across, looking for a stairwell. I desperately want some sort of weapon larger than my little knife—my hands feel useless with out one.

Most everything’s picked clean, though, and I spiral down the staircase at the end of the hall, barely noticing the remnants of the before time—old wallpaper clinging to plaster, a painting tacked up here and there.

Finally, toward the bottom floor I find an apartment that looks like it was lived in not too long ago, the smell of stale food hanging in the air. I bust open the door and it’s a room with a crude table and bench under a window. A machete’s casually propped against the far wall. I step inside and grab it, happy to have the heft and weight of it in my hand.

I’m about to leave when something makes me pause, a tingling on the back of my neck. I tilt my head, listening. From outside I hear only the moans of the dead, the shuffling of their feet. There’s nothing to indicate the Recruiters have made it to this building yet.

“Hello?” I ask the emptiness. I push farther into the flat, knocking open a cracked door. It swings slowly, revealing a sagging bed with a pile of blankets on top, a lump clearly visible. Everything’s coated with dust and a thin layer of grime, the boarded window admitting barely any light at all.

A lantern and flint rest on a crate next to the bed, and carefully I move into the room and reach for them. But I can’t stop staring at the bed and something makes me grasp the edge of the blanket and tug—unveiling the tip of a skull, the remains of hair and tattered clothes.