Chapter 4

Daisy's POV

Once I lit the fire on the stove, I never let it go out.

The signal came and went. A message took forever just to send, and of the ones I sent to a few friends, not one came back.

That was about when I started keeping a journal.

Day one of the outbreak, city hall was still saying it was under control. More cars than the day before were coming and going below, people in hazmat suits walking back and forth.

Day two, the temperature flipped all the way over. Hot enough by morning that a T-shirt was too much, cold enough by night that nobody could stand it, nearly a sixty-degree spread in a single day. Fortunately the water, the power, and the heat were all still fine.

Day three, a water main broke. The rabies outbreak they kept announcing to the public started getting away from them, and the blackouts ran longer every time. The longest one went two nights before the power came back. I barely slept for three days, cooking most of my food while I still could. Eventually I stopped making anything with a smell to it, because one pot of meat carried through the whole floor. After day three, nobody brought food around anymore. The street below emptied out, not a single person left, and no cars came.

Day four, the tap water started to smell. Nobody would touch it. That afternoon some people couldn't take it anymore and wanted to go out and look around, and plenty of us upstairs shouted at them not to.

"What, we're supposed to sit here and die of thirst?"

"You're just scared. We're going."

"Yeah — what if they leave us behind and take off? The EMTs didn't even show today. We're supposed to just sit here and wait?"

The ones who weren't afraid wouldn't listen at all, and the rest had been pushed to that point by the last few days. No matter how we shouted from upstairs, not one of them looked back.

Just as they were about to head out, a figure in a hazmat suit appeared at the corner. A few of them let out their breath and waved, shouting for him, and one even swore at him.

"We figured you were going to let us starve and die of thirst up here. You know the tap water smells like something died in it?"

"Yeah — go fix the water already."

But while they were shouting, I saw the way the man walked. His knees were stiff, one leg dragging behind him, both arms swinging out of any rhythm.

The shouting from below got louder. He never once turned around.

I knew it then. Nobody was coming.

Screaming came up from below. The ones who'd been about to leave were yelling like lunatics that this EMT had turned too. The whole building went quiet at once, and almost everyone ran back to their own door and locked it.

The Apocalypse Survival Guide had the day written out already, not off by one. The fourth day.

I wiped my tears. From here on it was on me, and I had to make it through the stretch ahead.

That night the screaming got worse, heavy things hitting the ground one after another, and from below something like the howl of an animal. The other buildings had started fighting each other over supplies. I could smell what drifted up through the vents, a lot heavier than the two days before.

While I still had signal, I read through what was left of my messages. Almost all of it was despair. I quit halfway. Anyone else would have lost their mind by then. I still had the space to fall back on, so when someone knocked on my door, I didn't make a sound.

Two more days, and the water and power were gone. No more living voices anywhere in the building. Below was nothing but wandering zombies, scratching at doors every day. The early ones still couldn't knock a door down, only scratch.

The living fought over supplies harder and harder, though, and my door got pounded more than once. Outside, somebody said quietly that this apartment's door was too solid, that no matter how hard they hit it, it wouldn't give. They didn't know I'd stood behind it for a whole night with my hand on the chainsaw's pull cord.

But slowly, I started going wrong myself. My head got slow. My body got dull. My tongue too.

Day ten, I admitted it. I'd turned.

I was so angry I stayed in bed for ten days.

My mouth wouldn't open. All I could force out of my throat was a low, hoarse sound, and I kicked my legs in frustration.

After a few kicks I noticed my legs moved, so I got up off the bed.

Some of the stiffness in my body eased, but my tongue was still clumsy, maybe because I hadn't spoken to anyone in so long.

I tried to talk and got the same two dull sounds, my cheeks puffing out. I curled up on the bed and thought for a long time before it occurred to me to open the journal. Writing, I found my head hadn't come back either, slower than before, half a day to get one sentence out.

Once I'd worked that out, I lay there another three days.

Later I found out I could live without eating.

At the start of all this I'd stockpiled so much food and water, and now that I'd turned I couldn't eat any of it.

I wanted to cry. Zombies don't have tears.

I shut my mouth, dug something out of the space, and chewed it dry. All I got was cold. Nothing else came through.

By then it had been a little over two weeks since the start. I'd lain down and gotten up more times than I could count. What was going on outside, I didn't know.

The building was hollowed out. Below, the zombies kept multiplying, and some of them could climb walls.

There were still living people. In the daytime you could hear them out scavenging.

They tried to jimmy my door more than once, couldn't get it open, and gave up. I couldn't be bothered with them. I wasn't human anymore anyway.

I'd meant to just keep lying there. Then on the morning of the twenty-sixth day, artillery fire broke over a quiet San Francisco.

The rescue had finally started.