He took the second doorway on his right.

Quietly shut it after him and flicked a lock that didn’t stand a chance of stopping anything.

There was a claw-foot tub under a window of frosted glass.

As he moved toward it, he could hear the abbies through the door.

Eating.

Ethan set the shotgun on the pedestal sink, stepped into the bathtub.

He flipped the hasp on the window.

Raised it two feet off the sill.

Tight squeeze.

He climbed up onto the lip of the bathtub and looked out the window into a small backyard, fenced and empty.

The staircase creaked, the abbies coming.

Out in the hall, there was a great collision, like something had crashed at full speed into one of the doors.

Ethan stepped back down into the bathroom and grabbed the shotgun.

An abby screamed on the other side of the door.

Something slammed into the bathroom door.

The wood started to split down the middle.

Ethan racked a shell and shot a slug through the center of the door, heard something thunk into the wall on the other side.

There was now a slug-size hole in the door, and a puddle of blood leaking underneath it, beginning to spread across the checkered tile.

Ethan climbed up onto the rim of the bathtub.

He dropped the shotgun on the roof and squeezed through the window as another abby smashed into the door behind him.

Kneeling under the window frame, Ethan fed eight shells into the tube and then draped the strap over his shoulder.

The abby was still trying to beat down the bathroom door.

Ethan closed the window and sidestepped carefully down to the edge of the roof.

It dropped twelve feet to the backyard.

He got down on his hands and knees and lowered himself over the edge, clutching the gutter until he’d managed to extend himself fully and reduce the drop to five feet.

He hit the ground hard and let his legs buckle to absorb the impact, rolled, and quickly regained his feet.

Through the panes of glass in the back door, he could see things running inside the house.

Ethan jogged around the brick patio, his muscles, his bones, every square inch of real estate on his body caught in a trajectory of increasing agony.

The fence was built of weathered one-by-sixes, five feet high, with a gate that led out into the side yard.

He peered over the top—no abbies that he could see.

Threw the latch and tugged the gate open just enough to slide through.

Up on the second floor, he heard glass explode.

He jogged alongside the house and slowed as he reached the front yard.

For the moment—empty.

He stared at the two cars parked along the curb in front of Maggie’s house.

An old CJ-5 Jeep with a soft top.

A white Buick station wagon that looked prehistoric.

He dug the keys out of his pocket.