The darkness outside did not act as before.
It did not press gently on the panes or lay heavy over the roads. It oozed. Like a puddle of spilled ink falling from some point much higher than rooftops, leaking into cracks, soaking sound away. The broken lamppost complained not at all. The others along the street hung limp like quenched stars.
Edward had not moved for more than thirty minutes.
He was on the floor now, against the wall of the living room, the blue glow of his phone screen gone out a long time. The video in his mind, involuntarily—each warped frame sharper now, seared into memory. The woman on the hospital table rising up after six hours. The warning in that desperate voice:
"Everybody's infected."
His own blood still throbbed faintly in his finger where the CDC had taken their sample. Recorded. Stamped. Taken away like it might one day be summoned to sentence him.
He didn't entirely believe the video.
But he didn't entirely rule it out either.
And that was worse.
Down the corridor, the house groaned again. This time upstairs. Edward braced, eyes scanning the ceiling as if it would roll back and reveal something lurking. He'd made sure all the windows were locked. All the doors. He knew the house was safe.
He stood up, slow and deliberate, the motion scraping his spine like corrosion. Movement did. Not because it kept him safe, but because silence was starting to feel like failure.
He strode past the front door and peered through the peephole. Nothing. No one. Laura's porch was dark and unbroken—door at last closed, the doorway empty. But the concrete still bore a faint shadow. A memory in blood which the wind had not quite washed away.
Then—
A knock.
But not from the front.
The back.
Edward whirled about suddenly, heart thudding into his ribs.
Another knock. Louder.
He shifted through the kitchen in slow, deliberate steps. The back door loomed before him—its vertical pane of glass blocked by a dense black drape he'd stapled down along the bottom and tacked at the corners with thumbtacks and duct tape. No light in. No light out. No view.
A third knock. A firmer one.
Then a full-out pound—an open-palmed one or some other, banging hard against the glass enough to rattle the frame.
Edward stepped back, knocking over a chair in his dash for the drawer. The knife block remained there—he grabbed the largest one, his hand slippery.
Another crash.
THUD. THUD.
The curtain did hold. The tacks and tape didn't budge. But the sound on the other side of the door changed.
Movement. A smear down the glass. Not words. Not claws.
A body. Pushing.
No breath. No words.
It was sensation.
Edward said nothing. Didn't complain. Stood frozen, white knuckles around the knife, unable to make his feet move back.
Then—out there somewhere—the heavy mechanical roar of an engine.
A car. Big. Not a vehicle. Edward shifted reflexively to the side window and pushed the edge of the curtain far enough aside to look around it.
The CDC cruiser had returned.
Same matte green military. No decals. Headlights down. The car slowly, intentionally, stopped two houses from where it had started out. Two men exited—suits. Quickly moving. Rifles at shoulder, not strapped. This wasn't a sweep.
This was a reaction.
Edward rolled back into the kitchen.
Knocking on the back door stopped.
No receding footstep. No shouting.
Just gone.
He did not stir for five seconds. Ten.
Then, quietly—almost too quiet to be real—he heard it.
Movement.
Outside. Still in the back of the house. Gravel crunching. Something changing weight with jerky, uneven rhythm.
It was moving toward the sound. Toward the approaching cruiser.
Edward slid back behind the couch and knelt, the knife resting across his thigh, his phone in the other hand.
Another knock didn't come.
Instead—shouts. Outside. Crisp orders. Not fear. Control.
Then gunfire.
Short burst. Two shots. Then stop. Then three more.
Edward clenched his teeth.
He didn't want to see.
And he didn't have to.
Because the last sound wasn't a voice or a gun.
It was a scream.
Not human. But once.
And then the kind of silence that comes to a place not because it is safe—
—but because everything that could make noise is away.
The rest of the night in fragments.
Edward did not sleep. Did not sit. He paced the living room until his legs pounded, checking on the back door every so often to see if anything had altered. Nothing had. The curtain still hung there. But he could have sworn the air inside was chilly. Wrong.
Finally, about 3 a.m., he sat once more in the armchair, phone in low hand, screen still set on the same video connection.
The comment space had exploded.
"Fake as hell. Good editing though."
"This is just a modded Arma clip, you guys are so gullible."
"My uncle is with FEMA and tells me that all this is being handled. Stay indoors."
"No. Listen. I saw something last night. They were dragging my neighbor out of his garage and he didn't have a face."
"You people are disgusting. This is fear-mongering. That woman on the hospital video was an actress."
And then, tucked away in the middle:
@SixthStreetSurvivor:
"I had one in my backyard. I thought it was my sister. It wasn't."
Edward stared at the post for a very long time.
He didn't scroll down any further.
He just turned the phone off, placed it face-down on the table beside him, and sat in the darkness.
Waiting for morning.
If it came.