James didn't know what time it was.
He could check. Phone was right there, on the nightstand, screen-down because Evelyn read somewhere that the blue light disrupted circadian rhythms even when you weren't looking at it, which sounded like bullshit but James had flipped his phone face-down every night for three years now because that's what marriage was, adopting your partner's neuroses until you forgot which ones were originally yours.
He didn't check.
If he checked, he'd count. If he counted, he'd spiral. The spiral went like this: hours of sleep (not enough), hours until alarm (too few), hours since Evelyn last slept in this bed (he'd stopped counting that one because the number made him feel like a character in a Raymond Carver story, which was not a compliment, Raymond Carver characters were all quietly miserable people waiting for something bad to happen and James had read enough Carver in his twenties to know he didn't want to be one but here he was anyway, lying awake at—)
He didn't check.
Ceiling. There was a stain. Top right corner, brownish, irregular edges—water damage from the roof leak two years and three months ago. He knew the exact timeframe because the leak had happened during Tiffany's eighth birthday party, water dripping onto the cake, Evelyn trying to move the table while twelve eight-year-olds screamed about the "indoor rain," James on the phone with the emergency roofer who charged $400 for a Sunday visit and another $200 for "expedited service" which apparently meant showing up three hours late and tracking mud on the carpet.
The stain looked like Florida. Or a handgun. Depending on his mood.
He'd promised to repaint. Evelyn had even picked out the color—"Agreeable Gray," from Sherwin-Williams, because apparently paint colors had names now and "Agreeable Gray" was the bestselling interior paint in America, which James only knew because Evelyn had told him and then he'd spent forty-five minutes on a home improvement forum reading about paint undertones when he should've been working, which was the kind of thing James did now, disappear into Wikipedia rabbit holes about subjects he'd forget in a week, anything to avoid—
The stain was still there.
Evelyn's side: cold. Her pillow still smelled like her shampoo. That coconut thing she'd used for years, the one James always pretended to hate but secretly loved because it meant she was close.
James reached over anyway. Touched the pillow. Cotton, 400 thread count, bought during that post-Christmas sale at Bed Bath & Beyond back when Bed Bath & Beyond still existed, back when "20% off" coupons arrived in the mail every week like clockwork, back when the future felt like something that would happen gradually instead of all at once.
Cold.
He sat up. Spine: crack. Lower back, L4-L5, same spot every morning since junior year when Danny Kowalczyk—290 pounds, all-state defensive tackle, went to Ohio State on a scholarship and blew out his knee freshman year, last James heard he was selling insurance in Toledo—hit him from the blind side during the homecoming game. James remembered the hit. Remembered the sky tilting. Remembered his dad in the stands, hands cupped around mouth, yelling something James couldn't hear over the ringing in his—
Crack. Crack.
Three. Always three. He'd counted. Multiple times. Different mornings. Three cracks, then done. His body was a machine that performed the same startup sequence every day, like an old Windows computer loading drivers.
Feet on floor. Left foot first—always left, he'd noticed that too, another thing he'd noticed and catalogued in the part of his brain that collected useless patterns while ignoring useful information like his wife's work schedule or which kid had soccer practice on Thursdays.
Left foot hit something sharp.
"fffFUCK—"
The word came out weird, half-swallowed, because John's room was ten feet away and James was still trying to be a Good Dad even though Good Dads probably didn't curse at 5 AM or whenever-the-fuck this was, but also Good Dads didn't step on Legos because Good Dads made their kids clean up after themselves and James had definitely told Tiffany to pick up her Legos, he remembered telling her, remembered her saying "okay Dad" in that tone that meant I am acknowledging your words without any intention of acting on them, and now here he was, Lego embedded in his heel like a plastic landmine.
Red. 2x4 brick. The platonic ideal of foot pain.
He picked it up. Considered throwing it. Didn't. Put it on the nightstand, next to the phone, next to the half-empty water glass that had been there for—two days? Three? The water had that stale look. He should throw it out. He didn't.
Hallway. Dark. John's door, half-open, blue glow leaking through the gap—phone screen, had to be, the kid was either still awake from last night or already awake at dark-o'clock, and James felt the familiar surge of I should say something followed immediately by what's the point followed by is this depression or just realism followed by nothing, his brain just kind of... gave up mid-thought and moved on.
Stairs.
Kitchen.
The espresso machine sat on the counter like a small chrome altar. Breville Barista Express. $699 retail, $549 on sale, birthday present from Evelyn four years ago, wrapped in newspaper comics because they'd run out of wrapping paper and she'd said it's either this or tin foil and James had said tin foil would be funnier but she'd already started taping the comics and the whole thing fell apart the second he touched it and inside was this beautiful ridiculous machine that made espresso better than any coffee shop and James had cried a little, which he'd blamed on allergies, which Evelyn had pretended to believe because that was also what marriage was.
He filled the reservoir. Measured the beans. Tamped the grounds. The ritual took ninety seconds, give or take. Ninety seconds of whirr and hiss and gurgle where James's brain, through some Pavlovian miracle, actually went quiet.
Not today.
Today his brain was playing a highlight reel. Bit a nurse. That's what Evelyn had said. Yesterday? Day before? The days were Xeroxes of Xeroxes now, each one slightly more faded than the last. One of the meteor patients. Fever spiked, then he just—bit her. Right on the forearm. Security had to—
She'd stopped there. James hadn't asked her to continue. He'd been watching something on TV, half-listening, the way you half-listened to your spouse after thirteen years because you'd heard most of their stories already and the new ones usually weren't that different from the old ones except this one was different, wasn't it, this one had the word bit in it and that was a weird word, bit, not a hospital word, not a word that belonged in—
The machine beeped.
Coffee. Black. No sugar because Evelyn had declared war on refined sugars and James had surrendered immediately because he always surrendered, not out of weakness but out of efficiency, marriage was a series of battles and you had to choose which ones mattered and sugar in coffee didn't matter, nothing about coffee mattered, it was just caffeine delivery and if Evelyn wanted him to drink it black then he'd drink it black and eventually he'd forget he ever liked it any other way.
He forgot most things eventually.
Living room. TV on, volume at 3. James had spent an embarrassing amount of time finding that number. 2 was too quiet—the house felt like a mausoleum, every creak amplified, every silence suspicious. 4 was too loud—you could make out words, and words meant news, and news meant anxiety. 3 was the Goldilocks zone. Just enough sound to trick your hindbrain into thinking you weren't alone.
He sat.
The TV showed a reporter. Blonde, mid-thirties, the kind of generic attractiveness that news channels cultivated like a crop. She was standing in front of a hospital—St. Mary's, James recognized the logo, Evelyn had a mug with that logo, she'd gotten it at some work function—and behind her, people in hazmat suits were moving with the kind of urgency that looked bad on television.
He should turn it up. Find out what was happening.
He changed the channel.
SpongeBob. Because at 5-whatever AM, your options were news or cartoons or infomercials, and SpongeBob was the least likely to spike his cortisol. The yellow sponge was laughing about something. Patrick was there. The pineapple. James had watched enough SpongeBob with the kids to know the lore, which was a sentence that would've baffled his twenty-year-old self but made perfect sense now.
"I'm ready! I'm ready! I'm ready!"
Sure you are, buddy.
Phone. Buzzing. James startled awake—wait, had he fallen asleep? He didn't remember falling asleep. He was on the couch, coffee cup in hand, still warm, SpongeBob replaced by some other cartoon with a pink bear or possibly a dog, the animation style was that modern CalArts thing where everyone had noodle limbs and big eyes—
Phone.
Greg.
Video call.
James answered without checking his face, which was a mistake, Greg's expression told him that immediately.
"Dude. You look like shit."
"Thanks."
"Seriously, did you sleep?"
"Define sleep."
Greg's face on the screen: unshaved, bags under eyes, hair that had given up. Behind him, the usual disaster—his bedroom looked like a distribution center had exploded, clothes and energy drink cans and what appeared to be a pizza box balanced on a stack of books. Greg was thirty-six, MBA from Northwestern, made $140K managing supply chain logistics, and lived like a college freshman whose parents had stopped visiting. James found it oddly comforting. At least he wasn't the only one failing at adulthood.
"Check the work chat," Greg said.
"Which one."
"The gossip one. HR and Marketing."
"That one's muted."
"Unmute it."
Something in Greg's voice—not panic, Greg didn't panic, Greg had been in a car accident once and his first words to the EMT were is my podcast still playing—but something adjacent to panic. Panic's neighbor. James opened WhatsApp, scrolled, found the group.
Office Chaos 🔥 (someone had renamed it)
Sixty-three unread messages.
The first twenty were noise. Someone's kid's birthday. A meme about working from home. Linda from Accounting asking if anyone knew how to unjam a printer remotely, which wasn't possible, but Linda asked questions like that.
Then:
"ok what the fuck is this"
A video. Forwarded.
"is that real"
"no way"
"dude my cousin works there she says"
"STOP this is scary"
"its fake look at the lighting"
"ITS NOT FAKE"
James pressed play.
The video was forty-seven seconds long. He would remember that number later, the way you remember numbers that become important—his anniversary, his kids' birthdays, the exact duration of the video that cracked his reality in half.
Hospital corridor. The camera shaking—running, the person holding it was running. Fluorescent lights, half dead, casting everything in that sick yellow that hospitals had, that no one is healthy here yellow. Audio was garbage, compressed and recompressed through a dozen shares, but underneath the static there was screaming. Definitely screaming.
And at the end of the hallway.
Something.
Someone. No. Something.
It was shaped like a person but it didn't move like one. The legs were wrong—stiff, shuffling, one dragging behind. The arms hung at angles that suggested the shoulders weren't doing their job anymore. And the head, the head was—
James paused.
His thumb had moved. He stared at the frozen frame. The figure was blurry, mid-motion, but even frozen you could tell something was wrong with it. The proportions were human but the posture wasn't. Like a puppet with half its strings cut.
"James."
Greg's voice, from the laptop. James had forgotten the video call was still going.
"That's St. Mary's." Greg said it like a question even though it wasn't.
"Yeah."
"My wife works there."
"Yeah."
James put the phone down. Picked it up. Put it down again. His hands were doing things without consulting his brain, which was stuck on the frozen frame, on the shape at the end of the hallway, on the word bit bouncing around his skull like a pinball—
He called Evelyn. *Come on, Ev. Pick up.*
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
"The number you are trying to reach—"
Again.
Ring.
Ring.
R—
"James?"
Her voice.
But wrong.
Too quiet. Too flat. Like she was reading from a script and trying very hard not to look at something happening off-page.
"Ev. I've been calling. I saw—there's a video—""Ev. Thank God. I've been calling—are you okay? I saw a video—"
"I know."
"What's happening? Are you okay? The news is saying—"
"James." She cut him off. She never cut him off. In thirteen years of marriage, Evelyn had never once—
"Listen to me. I don't have long."
"What do you—"
"The videos are real."
Three words. James's brain snagged on them like a nail on fabric.
"The meteor patients. Some of them—" A breath. Shaky. "They died. And then they didn't stay dead. And now they're—" Another breath. "They're biting people, James. They're—it's spreading. We tried to quarantine but there's too many and they locked the building, they won't let us—"
Sound.
Something in the background.
Glass breaking?
Metal?
Evelyn's breath, suddenly close to the phone, like she'd pressed it hard against her ear. When she spoke again, her voice was a whisper.
"Don't come here. Whatever you see on the news, don't come. Keep the kids inside. Don't let them—"
A scream.
Not Evelyn's.
Somewhere nearby.
"I have to go. James, I love—"I have to go. I love you. Tell the kids I love them. Jamie—"
Nothing.
The call display: 1:14.
One minute and fourteen seconds.
James stared at the phone.
The screen went dark.
His reflection stared back. Forty-one years old, though his reflection looked older. Tired. Scared. The kind of scared that hadn't fully arrived yet, that was still en route, that would hit him later like a delayed invoice.
"James." Greg's voice, from the laptop. "James. What did she say."
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"She said—"
James was already moving.
Keys. Where were the keys. Counter, no. Hook by the door, no. Jacket pocket—there. He had them in his hand before his brain caught up with his body.
"James, what are you—"
"I'm going." The words came out strange, too loud, not his voice. "I have to—she's in there, Greg, she's—"
"The hospital's locked down. There's military—"
"I don't care."
He was at the front door. Hand on the knob. Ready to—
"Dad?"
Footsteps. Stairs.John appeared in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light. Behind him, smaller footsteps. Tiffany, rubbing her eyes, stuffed elephant dragging on the floor.
"Dad? Where are you going?"
James froze.
His hand was on the doorknob. His keys were in his other hand. His wife was in a hospital full of things that used to be people, and his children were standing in front of him in their pajamas, waiting for him to tell them everything was okay.
Evelyn's voice, echoing: *Keep the kids inside. Don't let them—*
She hadn't finished that sentence. She'd been cut off. But James could fill in the blanks.
*Don't let them be alone.*
He looked at John. Fourteen, trying to look brave, failing. He looked at Tiffany. Ten, not even trying, just scared.
If he left, they'd be alone. In a house. While the world—
If he stayed, Evelyn would be alone. In a hospital. While—
His hand didn't move from the doorknob."Dad?" John's voice cracked. "What's happening?"
James let go of the door.
It was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Harder than any decision he'd made in forty-one years of life. His wife was out there, and he was choosing to stay here, and he would hate himself for it, he already hated himself for it, but Evelyn had said *keep the kids inside* and she'd meant it and she was smarter than him, she was always smarter than him, and if she said stay then he had to trust that she knew what she was doing.
He had to trust her.
He didn't have a choice.
"Nothing," he heard himself say. The lie tasted like ash. "Just—I thought I heard something outside. It's nothing."
He put the keys back on the hook.
John didn't believe him. James could see it in his face. But John didn't push—just stood there, watching his father with eyes that were too old for fourteen.
"School's probably canceled," John said quietly. "Group chat's blowing up—someone said there's military trucks on the freeway. And Twitter's saying St. Mary's is on lockdown." His eyes flicked up. "Isn't that where Mom works?"
St. Mary's.
Evelyn.
James nodded, but his brain had snagged on those two words. Military trucks. Lockdown. The phone call from earlier—*they locked the building, they won't let us—*
Fourteen. Still a kid. Still young enough to think his parents had answers. Still young enough to believe that when something went wrong, an adult would fix it. James remembered being that age. He remembered thinking his dad knew everything. He remembered the exact moment he'd realized his dad was just guessing, same as everyone else, and how that realization had felt like a small death.
John was waiting for an answer.
"Breakfast," he said. "I'll make breakfast."
Kitchen.
Fridge.
Eggs.
Four left. He'd meant to order more. The delivery slots were always full. Everyone was ordering groceries. Everyone was staying home. Everyone was waiting.
He cracked an egg into the pan. His hands were steady. That seemed wrong. Shouldn't his hands be shaking? In movies, people's hands shook when they got bad news. James's hands were perfectly still. Like they hadn't received the memo.
Second egg.
Third.
The butter was sizzling too loud. He'd forgotten to preheat. Evelyn always preheated. Evelyn was better at—
"DAD!"
Tiffany. From upstairs. The particular pitch of sibling warfare.
"JOHN TOOK MY—"
"I DIDN'T TAKE ANYTHING—"
"YOU DID, IT WAS ON MY—"
"THAT'S NOT EVEN YOURS—"
The eggs were burning.
James could see it happening. The edges going brown, going black. Smoke starting to curl. The smell hitting—acrid, wrong, the smell of something ruined.
He should turn off the stove.
He didn't.
The smoke detector started screaming.
High-pitched. Relentless. The sound designed to be impossible to ignore.
James stood in front of the stove, smoke rising around him, alarm shrieking, kids yelling upstairs, and thought: I should be there.
He should be in the car. Should be driving. Should be at St. Mary's right now, breaking down doors, finding her, bringing her home. That's what husbands did. That's what heroes did in movies. They didn't stand in their kitchens burning eggs while their wives—
But the kids were upstairs. The kids were here. And Evelyn had said stay.
So he stayed.
And hated himself for it.
He'd always known what to do. His whole life, he'd known.
Go to school. Get a job. Get married. Have kids. Pay the mortgage. Save for retirement. The steps were clear, even when they were hard. There was a path. You followed it.
The path was gone now.
He could feel it—the absence. Like a floor that had been there a second ago and wasn't anymore.
The smoke detector kept screaming.
James didn't move.