Together we pull, metal creaking in protest, until the door cracks open just enough for us to slip through sideways.

Inside, darkness swallows us whole.

“Hang on,” Dina whispers. I hear her rustling through the gear we grabbed from the dead psychos. “Got it.”

A beam of light cuts through the darkness. The flashlight’s weak, but it’s better than nothing.

I peer down the concrete stairwell, disappointment sinking in my gut. The stairs are too narrow for the Harley. I could restart the bike with another omega wave, but now there’s no point. This is the only way down, and we’ll have to go on foot.

We start down the stairs, our footsteps echoing despite our attempts to move quietly. Something doesn’t feel right.

“Let me take point,” I whisper, bringing the rifle forward.

Three floors down, a sound stops me cold. A single, mournful note—like someone blowing into a trombone with no skill or rhythm. Just one flat honk.

A short time later, cymbals crash, the sound jarring.

“What the hell was that?” Dina whispers, her voice tight with fear.

“No idea,” I respond.

“Jade, I don’t like this.”

I turn to face her, keeping my voice low. “We’re not looking for trouble. If whoever’s playing those instruments isn’t blocking our exit, we just ignore them, okay?”

Before she can respond, a door bangs open on the floor above us. Something charges down the stairs—a flash of red and gold, tattered fabric fluttering. It’s a zombie in a USC majorette uniform, her dead eyes fixed on us, teeth bared.

Dina fires her .38, the shot deafening in the stairwell. The bullet punches into the zombie’s chest, but she doesn’t even slow down.

With Dina in the way, I can’t get a clear shot. The thing leaps, slamming into Dina. They tumble into me, the zombie’s teeth sinking into Dina’s shoulder.

As Dina screams, I smack the zombie hard in the head with the butt of my rifle. When it stumbles back, I jam my barrel into the zombie’s eye socket and pull the trigger. The back of her head explodes in a spray of gore, her body falling limp onto the stairs.

I kneel beside Dina. “How bad?”

“Bad enough,” she gasps, hand pressed to her bleeding shoulder.

Shit. There’s no time to treat the wound. We’ve got to get out of this building first.

I help Dina down the remaining stairs, and we hurry into the lobby.

I’m not prepared for what we find.

The space is decked out in faded red, white, and blue streamers—remnants of a bicentennial celebration frozen in time. And standing among the tattered decorations is a horde of zombies in USC marching band uniforms, some with instruments clutched in their gaunt hands.

I don’t have the ammo to shoot them all.

“Run!” I shout to Dina.

We sprint for the exit, the zombies giving chase with surprising speed. I crash through the double doors, Dina right behind me. The zombies are closing fast.

Outside, I slam the doors shut and slide my rifle through the handles.

As the zombies pound on the other side, I scan the ground outside, spotting a thick tree branch. “This’ll work.”

I jam the branch through the door handles and then yank my rifle free.

As the zombies continue to press, the branch bends but doesn’t break.

Dina sinks to the broken pavement, clutching her wounded shoulder.

I dig through our stolen supplies, hoping for heal-it or antibiotics.

I find nothing. Not even a basic first aid kit.

“Sorry, Dina. No heal-it.”

She waves her hand. “No worries, they aren’t like the movie zombies. I won’t become one of them.”

I pour some water over the wound, cleaning it as best I can. Then I tear a strip from the bottom of my shirt, binding it tight around her shoulder.

“This will slow the bleeding, but not infection,” I say. “We need to get you to Griffith.”

“How far is that?” she asks.

“Not sure,” I respond as I scan the broken campus, getting my bearings and facing north. “Without Mensa, I’m working from memory. But it could be a half-day of walking, or maybe a full day. Are you strong enough for that?”

Dina rises to her feet, nodding confidently. But I see that she’s swaying a little.

“We have two options,” I say. “Surface roads would be safer, less exposed. But slower.”

“Or?” Dina asks.

“Or we take the 10 freeway west to Western Avenue, then head north. It’s faster, more direct. The 10 is real close to us.”

Dina winces as she adjusts the makeshift bandage. “Freeway’s dangerous.”

I nod. “True, but we might get lucky and run into a Rad Roller. For some reason, the couriers seem to like me, and they usually carry heal-it.”

Behind us, the branch cracks as the zombies continue to batter the doors.

“Freeway it is,” Dina says. “Let’s move before that branch snaps.”

☢

The 10 freeway stretches before us like an auto graveyard. Cars sit abandoned, their windows shattered. We’re still in the Downtown heavy zone, where the bomb’s shockwave wreaked havoc. Some vehicles still contain their drivers—skeletons wilted in their seats like dead plants.

I keep my eyes forward, focusing on the cleared lane that cuts through the chaos. Someone pushed these wrecks aside years ago, creating a path for the lucky few with fission vehicles. But we’re on foot now, and that really sucks.

Dina stumbles beside me, her face ashen. We’ve barely covered half a mile, and already she’s faltering.

“Need a minute,” she mumbles, leaning against a big Oldsmobile with a paint job like green mold.

I scan our surroundings, rifle ready. The freeway feels exposed, vulnerable. Anything could be watching us from the hollow shells of buildings that line either side.

The front passenger door of the Oldsmobile is cracked open, and I yank it wider. The steel groans and the sound echoes across the freeway.

I sit Dina down sideways in the front seat, her feet out on the glassy asphalt.

“Let me check that wound,” I say as I peel back the makeshift bandage. The zombie bite looks angry, the surrounding flesh swollen and red, and it’s still bleeding.

“You think it’s infected?” she asks, her voice thin.

“No, it hasn’t been long enough.” I replace the bandage, trying to keep my face neutral. The truth is worse than infection. The bleeding should have slowed by now, but the cloth is soaked through.

Dina reads my masked expression. We’ve been friends too long for me to hide something from her.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” she asks.

“We just gotta keep on steppin’,” I say, avoiding a direct answer.

Dina takes a shaky breath. “Jade, you should go on without me.”

“Not happening,” I say firmly.

“I’m serious.” Her eyes meet mine, steady despite the pain. “You can move faster alone. Bring back help.”

“No.” The word comes out harder than I intended. “I’m not leaving you.”

She nods grimly. “Figured. We should get moving then.” She takes a deep breath, grimacing as she pushes herself up from the car seat.

As she rises, my danger sense screams. The world slows, and a certainty floods my mind—a threat, immediate and deadly. Without thinking, I shove Dina back down inside the Oldsmobile.

“Get down,” I yell.

The crack of a rifle shot follows an instant later, the bullet whizzing through the space where Dina’s head had been a moment before.

The shot was meant for me. And Dina almost got in the way.

I feel the impact of the bullet like a sledgehammer on my chest.