She needed to sneeze, but she chewed on her tongue until the feeling passed.
Around the corner, the whispered wheeze rustled through the calm.
It halted, then began again, louder. And then it was joined by a second hacking gasp, and a third, and then there were too many to count.
Briar wanted to crush her eyes closed and hide from the noises, but she couldn’t even take a moment to peer around the side of the building to see what was making the cacophony, because it was escalating. There was nothing she could do but run.
The middle of the road was mostly clear, so she took it, weaving between the overturned carts and leaping past slabs of earthquake-loosened walls that had collapsed into the road.
Silence was no longer an option.
Briar’s feet smacked against the bricks and her rifle slapped up and down on her hip as she charged downhill, even though she’d meant to go the other direction. She couldn’t run uphill; she didn’t have enough air to struggle any harder. So down, then. Down the hill but not—she thought in a flickering moment of hope—strictly the wrong direction. She was running alongside the wall, and alongside the water behind it. Commercial would go down, yes—but it flanked the hill all the same and she could follow it as far as she needed.
She risked a glance, and then a second glance, and then she stopped trying, because she’d been terribly, terribly wrong—and they were coming in fast.
Those two quick looks had told her everything she needed to know: Run, and for heaven’s sake, don’t stop.
They were not quite on her heels. They were rounding the corner in a loping, ludicrous hobble that was shockingly fast despite the awkward gait. More naked than clothed, and more gray than the proper color of living flesh, the rotters pressed a rollicking lurch that tumbled in a wave. They rolled forward, over everything, past everything, around everything that might have otherwise slowed them down.
Without fear and without pain, they beat their ragged bodies against the litter in the street and bounced away from it, not deterred and not redirected. They smashed through water-weakened wood and stomped through the corpses of animals, and if any other rotters tripped or fell they crawled a vicious assault over the bodies of their own.
Briar remembered all too well those first sad, shambling people who’d been poisoned by the Blight. Most of the victims had died outright, but a few had lingered—and they’d groaned, and gasped, and consumed. They had no other thoughts beyond consuming, and they wished for nothing but fresh, bloody flesh. Animals would suffice. People were preferred, insomuch as the rotters had any preference for anything.
And right then, they had no preference for anything but Briar.
The first time she’d taken a backward look, she’d seen four. The second time, a half moment later, she’d seen eight. God only knew how many were on her tail by the time she’d reached the next road down.
She stumbled over a curb and hit the walkway running.
In passing, she saw a line of tall letters engraved into the surface of the sidewalk, but she was moving too quickly to read it so she didn’t know which cross street she’d passed. It didn’t matter. The cross street was heading up the hill, and she never would have made it.
Her air was already too low, from even such a short and incline-assisted flight. Her throat was burning from the stress of it, and she had no idea how long she could continue. Her slim lead shrank as she dodged and ducked through the fog.
A narrow iron pole zipped past her vision, followed closely by a second one.
It was a ladder for a fire escape, or so she realized only when it was entirely too late to grab it and begin climbing.
She couldn’t decide if the missed opportunity was just as well or not. It might only exhaust her further, trying to rise so drastically above the fray; but then again, it might have saved her. Could the rotters follow her up?
The gargling gasps of their furious hunger hit closer to Briar’s ears, and she knew they were gaining ground. It wasn’t only that they were quick. It was that she was slowing, and there was nothing she could do to move herself harder. Try as she might, she couldn’t pant or puff, and there was only so much escaping she could do.
The mist never parted, but it thinned in spots and thickened in others. For one revealing second the side of another building came into view and another iron ladder blinked into range.
Briar almost didn’t see it. The fog at her left eye nearly hid it.
She didn’t have time to reconsider or weigh the pros and cons; she just seized the ladder, jerking herself to a stop against her own inertia. She locked her hands around the ladder’s legs and pulled with all her weight.
Her feet kicked against the wall and against the bottommost rungs, then they caught footing enough to scramble up one step.
The closest rotter missed her boots, but snagged her father’s duster and gave it a yank.
Briar’s gloved hands slipped and skidded on the rungs, but she clamped down hard and held her position. She wrenched her arms up under the rusty bars and anchored herself so she could kick, and kick she did. She couldn’t hope to harm the things, but she could push them back or break their fingers—anything to force them to let go.
She couldn’t rise with the rotter’s weight dragging on the coat, so they hung there, suspended, as the rest of the horde swarmed in for the kill.
Briar swung her body back and forth, trying to shake the thing loose. Its elbows and skull thunked dully against the wall and made a little twanging echo when they hit the metal ladder.
Finally, some magically lucky combination of kicks and shakes cast the beast down to his fellows. The other rotters tried to step on him to give themselves more reach as they grabbed with their bony, chewed-looking hands, but Briar was high enough that they couldn’t reach her unless they scaled the rungs.
But could they?
She didn’t know, and she didn’t look. She only climbed, one hand up, one foot up. Other hand up, other foot up. Soon she was beyond the grasp of even the tallest, longest-armed monstrosity. But there was no stopping, not yet. Not when the shaking and rattling of the ladder suggested that yes, they would follow—or, if not follow, they would pull the ladder off the wall and bring her back to them. As far as the rotters were concerned, there was no such thing as a “hard way.”
Bolts on either side of Briar’s head began to squeal as they split and tugged away from their moorings.
“Oh God,” she gasped, and might’ve used worse language if she’d had any breath to do so. Up ahead, the ladder’s destination was obscured by the yellowish stain of the fog. It might end in ten feet, or in ten floors for all Briar knew.
Ten floors were not an option. She’d never make it.
The ladder swayed and popped with a terrifying jolt, and one supporting rail gave way. Before she could be swung out over the street, Briar slapped a hand down on the nearest window ledge and hung on—her grip split between the wide stone sill and the remaining leg of the ladder. The ladder was swaying and bending, and she would not have it long.
Under her arm, the rifle clattered against the sill.
She braced as much of her weight as she dared on the wobbling rungs, let go of the sill, and swung the rifle around hard. It exploded through the glass, and Briar barely had enough balance to hang on as she leaped toward the window.
Her leap failed, and only her right leg made the catch.
Splinter-sharp shards dug into the underside of her leg, but she ignored them and tightened her thigh to pull herself closer to the window.
Locked that way, half inside and half outside, she brought the rifle around and pointed it down. One bald and deeply scarred head reared into view, and Briar thanked God that she’d loaded the gun while she had the chance.
She fired. The head split and exploded, and bright brown bits splattered against her gas mask. Until the bloody flecks of bone slid down her lenses, she hadn’t known that the thing had made it so close.
Right behind the first rotter was a second, pushing its way higher.
It didn’t get very far. Its left eye burst into a watery splatter of brains and bile and it fell away, leaving one of its half-decomposed hands behind it, still clinging to the rung. The third rotter was farther down the ladder, and it took Briar two shots to knock it away: The first grazed the thing’s forehead, and the second one caught it in the throat and broke the important bones that held its head in place. The jaw dropped down and fell off just as the head lolled back and snapped free.
Rotter number three’s downward fall forcibly removed number four from the climb, and rotter number five’s face shattered when a bullet went up its nose.
More were coming, but the ladder was cleared. Briar took the brief respite to haul herself into the broken window. Small slivers of glass still stung in her leg, but there was no time yet to remove them, not when more rotters were figuring out the joy of climbing.
She braced herself from the inside and reached out with her rifle, not firing again but using it as a lever against the half-ruined bolts that held the iron structure in place. One side was already gone, and the second one screeched and stretched as she worked the rifle back and forth, wiggling the old bolts loose until they abandoned their moorings. Slowly, but without any real protest, the ladder came leaning away from the building until the angle was too steep to hold it anymore, and it collapsed.
Rotters six through eight went down with it, but did not stay down, and there were more behind them.
They writhed and raged below, three stories below by Briar’s count.
She retreated from the window and tried to catch her breath—which was a permanent activity, now; then she twisted herself around to pick at the glass that had lodged in her leg.
She winced as she smoothed the back of her pants. She hated to expose any skin to the Blight, but she couldn’t feel the damage without removing her gloves. She pulled the right one free and did her best to ignore the slimy wet air.
It could’ve been worse.
She didn’t find anything bigger than a sunflower seed. There was hardly any blood, but the broken fabric let the Blight irritate the scratches, and it stung more fiercely than it should have. If she’d had bandages, or wraps, or any other stray and clean piece of fabric she would’ve wrapped the minor injury. But she had nothing, and there was nothing to be done except to make sure it was free of glass.