Their ride along the Willamette was quick, and blessedly uneventful, save for a few terrifying seconds. They were moment away from reaching Morrison Bridge and Washington Street when all three of them heard a large sloshing sound. Qadira let out a short shriek that she cut off by covering her mouth with one hand. A gray, slick shape larger than a bus broke the dark surface of the Willamette. It had a series of fins along its side that each flapped as they cut through the water, and then it submerged again with a splash.

“Staying out of the water was a good call,” Matsuda said.

“Maybe think about staying away from the coast?” Wil whispered.

“Right next to the beach? Yeah, not such a slick idea anymore. But the Air National Guard base should still be okay,” Matsuda said and pedaled on.

Morrison Bridge had been destroyed in much the same way as Broadway: the middle had been smashed or crushed wrenched away from either end, leaving two stubby, broken bones of iron and asphalt to jut out over the Willamette River, a few cars perched on their edges.

“What do you think did it?” Wil asked as they reached the base of the bridge.

“I heard it yesterday,” Qadira said. “Explosions or something. It was around the time there were a bunch of jets and helicopters going by.”

“Hm,” Matsuda said and then turned his bike toward the city. He rode across Pacific Highway and into a parking lot beyond and the remains of Morrison Bridge sloped down into Washington Street. He stopped in the middle of the parking lot and waved at Wil and Qadira.

“My knowledge of the city is limited. I only came in rarely. Wil, you’re up front, and I’ll take the rear,” Matsuda said.

“Okay. It’s not much farther,” he said.

“And if we get there, and we see your lady ain’t there, we can get out of here for good, right?” Qadira asked.

“She’ll be there,” Wil said and frowned at her.

“And if she’s not?”

“She will——”

“Wil, it might be worth considering that she isn’t,” Matsuda said. “Not that she’s dead, just that something made her leave. Maybe her family, or a close friend convinced her to go. If that is the case, we should have an exit strategy.”

“Fine,” Wil said. “But first we have to get there.”

“First we have to get there,” Matsuda confirmed, and then the mid-afternoon quiet was shattered by something roaring in the distance. It was a huge sound that covered the city, inhuman in both its vocalization and the depth of raw fury it contained.

“First we gotta not run into whatever-the-hell that was,” Qadira said. Wil took the lead and pedaled past the Morrison Bridge exit ramp and into downtown Portland. It was just as bad and soaked in blood and viscera as the street off Burnside Bridge had been, and worse, there were still zombies present.

Will immediately noticed several dozen shuffling black-eyed figures up and down the sidewalks and between cars. They hadn’t noticed Wil or the others yet, and seemed content to limp awkwardly around. A few of them clutched pieces of people in their gray fingers and gnawed on them. Wil watched one of the undead creatures sink its teeth into the meat of a severed forearm and pull a mouthful of red muscle and sinew away.

“Hell,” Wil whispered. It certainly looked like it. There were more tall buildings along Washington than there had been on Burnside, but they only showcased more destruction. A helicopter stuck out of the side of a tall white building, having crashed into it and blown out the upper floors and replaced them with smoke. Deep impacts marked the stone and concrete sides of other buildings, as if something had dug thick fingers into the structure itself and crawled across it.

And along the street, mixed with the gore from the countless victims, there was something else: something like reddish-purple vines snaked across the road. They crawled up the side of several shops and boutiques in a spreading web of greasy botanical tangles. Bulbous pods bigger than watermelons sprouted from the thickest vines, usually where several of them met at a nexus.

“Haven’t seen those before,” Qadira said.

“Best to keep our distance,” Matsuda replied and Wil silently agreed.

“It’s only five blocks up from here,” Will said. “We can do it.”

Wil pedaled forward, and several of the black-eyed zombies looked up as he approached. Wil thanks his luck that they were the slow kind. They stretched their arms toward him and let out low growls and liquid gasps as they lunged toward him. It was easy enough to outmaneuver and outdistance them on the bike: a quick juke around a car, a swerve on the sidewalk, and then a couple quick pumps on the pedals and he was past them.

True, there were more ahead, but thanks to the relative silence of the bike, they never saw him coming. Their black-eyed kin’s moans and croaks were too quiet to reach very far along the street either, and Will once again thanked whatever luck or god might be looking out for him, and gave a silent prayer that they had spared some time for Naomi as well.

They passed 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Avenue like this within minutes, and Wil found himself wanting to go faster, to be more reckless as they approached 9th Avenue. Naomi was so close, and every second counted.

“Wil!” Qadira hissed behind him.

“Wil!” Matsuda added. Something hit the back of his head and Wil almost tumbled off his bike. He managed to skid to a stop and look behind him. Somebody had thrown a bottle of water at him, and it rolled on the sidewalk next to him. Qadira was nowhere to be seen, but Matsuda had his head sticking out from a corner on 5th Avenue and pointed up. Wil looked up the length of Washington Street and saw nothing but more shambling zombies. Then he glanced up and froze.

To the left of Washington Street, just before 6th Avenue, was a tall white building with decorative window arches and a green awning over its main doors that identified it as the Hotel Monaco. A creature as long as a limousine clung to the side of the building. It resembled a cross between a cockroach and a lobster, with a slick brown carapace and a narrow, angular head. It possessed squirming mandibles that waved in the air, and six narrow, armored legs covered in barbs of bone. The shell on its back split and lifted to reveal a mucus-covered back made of fist-sized transparent bulbs. Embryonic forms squirmed blindly within the bulbs, hundreds of them, each curled up and white, almost like shrimp.

The narrow head of the huge creature swung towards Wil, but it lacked eyes. Instead its waving mandibles extended and beckoned the air closer to it, as if savoring its tastes. Several delicate antennae sprouted from its head and twitched in different directions. Wil backed away, slow and steady, until Matsuda guided him back around the corner of 5th Avenue.

“What the fuck,” Wil breathed.

“You need to slow down,” Matsuda said. “You’re no good to your girlfriend if you’re dead.”

The sound of creaking metal echoed along Washington Street and Will and the others froze. Glass broke not far ahead of them, and a tire popped as something settled its weight onto it.

“It’s coming,” Matsuda said and Qadira groaned.

“Hey!” a voice hissed above them. Wil looked up and saw a pale hand waving out a window. It was followed by an equally pale face of an old woman with short, curly gray hair and thick glasses. She pointed down the street and continued, “Green door, go!”

Wil looked away from Washington Street and back down the length of 5th Avenue. A number of the doors had been for shops and were made of glass. They’d all been broken or unhinged from their respective buildings entirely. However between one building and the next was a metallic green access door with an “Employees Only” sign on it. Wil left his bike against the side of the building and hurried after Qadira, who was already at the green door.

She tried to wrench it open, yanking on the door knob and grunting with panic.

“It’s locked!” she said as Matsuda and Wil ran up next to her. Matsuda unslung his rifle and aimed it at the corner they had just come from. Another car crunched from around the corner, closer. Qadira patted her hand on the door in a desperate but quiet knock. “C’mon, c’mon!”

Wil heard muffled voices behind the door, barely audible, but he caught the tone: it was an argument. Wil approached the door and whispered as loud as he dared.

“We’re about to die! Let us in!” he hissed. He glanced toward the corner of 5th and Washington and gulped as a pair of delicate antennae poked into view and another car squeaked and crunched as the huge insectile creature stood on it.

The voices behind the door rose in intensity, but Wil wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying. If that thing rounded the corner, they were dead. It was at least twice the size of the bear, and its shell looked at least as thick as the metal on the cars.

“If you don’t let us in now I’ll make sure this thing knows you’re all in there before I go down,” Matsuda said.

Silence from the other side of the door.

Click.

Qadira flung the door open and all but threw herself inside. Wil followed and Matsuda came last, swinging the door shut as silently as he could and locking it behind them. Wil took a deep breath as he looked around Qadira and saw a small crowd of people at the foot of a flight of stairs.

The old woman from the window was there, as well as a middle-aged man with red hair and a sizable paunch. A dark-haired woman stood beside a slightly behind the man, and a teenage boy with long black hair stood next to her. Two more people stood at the top of the stairs: a young man with thick glasses and a beard, and another woman about the same age, with a tattoo of a fish swimming up her neck.

The old woman with curly gray hair smiled at them and said, “Welcome. Why don’t you come inside and tell us why you’re stupid enough to be out on the streets?”