Lake Oswego, Oregon

A year and a half ago

Wil had been at a Fourth of July party with Naomi, invited along as her plus-one. The party was at a friend of the family’s house, somebody close to Mr. and Mrs. Van Buren, Naomi’s parents. It was a huge place, cozied right up next to Oswego Lake. It had its own private dock with a pair of jet-skis and a small yacht to match. It probably cost more than Wil would earn in twenty lifetimes even if he could make his own way with his own art. It was all a very new and uncomfortable experience.

Wil had spent most of the party sticking to Naomi, feeling that if he ever left her side, he would immediately be declared an outsider, a vagrant, an intruder, and thrown out by security. A backyard cook-out with its own security detail was also a new and uncomfortable experience. Prior to this, Wil’s idea of a fancy Fourth of July involved everybody getting their own steak, and maybe some craft beers. This place had its own catering staff: people in black slacks and vests and bow-ties wielding gleaming silver trays and wearing smiles that reminded Wil of department store mannequins. You saw the food before you saw the people, and that was how it should be.

“Oh! There’s my old neighbor! You wanna come say hi?” Naomi asked him. She appeared oblivious to Wil’s discomfort, though to be fair, he was doing his utmost to hide it. He’d lost track of the number of successful, happy, close-knit people he had met so far.

“Actually I’m gonna go fill up my drink,” he said and rattled his empty glass. He was not so foolish as to become drunk, but his heart was beating a little too fast for his liking, and if he shook somebody’s hand right now, they’d likely need a napkin after from how sweaty his palms were. Just enough booze to sit on the anxiety would do. Naomi leaned up and pecked him on the cheek.

“Hey Asshole. Love you,” she said.

“Love you too, Shithead,” Wil replied, a bit too loud. He drew a couple disapproving glances from well-dressed party-goers. He blushed and hurried away to the bar. The bar was a horse-shoe shaped table draped with a pristine white cloth set up at the edge of the rolling emerald yard, near the private dock and the placid waters of Oswego Lake. It was attended by another neutral-faced caterer who stood behind rows of bottles of alcohol like a bored general at the back of his faceless troops.

“Jack and Coke, please,” Wil said and set his glass down. The caterer took the glass and instead of refilling it, gave Wil a new, clean one before he could protest. He’d spent time as a dish-washer in college, and silently apologized to whoever was having to clean and re-clean single-use crystal glasses behind-the-scenes. Wil took his drink with a quiet thanks, then turned to find Naomi. Before he had finished scanning the crowd, a tall man with short black hair turned white on the sides and with a thick, dark mustache approached the bar.

“Suntory Yamazaki, neat,” the man said as if he were asking for a glass of water and not a glass of Scotch from a bottle that cost almost $6,000. The caterer poured it and handed the glass to the man Wil knew as Mr. Van Buren, Naomi’s father.

“Uh, hello, sir,” Wil said.

“Wil,” Mr. Van Buren replied. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Yeah, everybody’s been really great and it’s great to meet all of Naomi’s friends and it’s…great…” he trailed off.

“I suspect you don’t get out to these sort of parties much,” Mr. Van Buren said.

“Well, I get out to the occasional fancy gathering. The last one I went to actually had name-brand soda,” Wil said and laughed.

Mr. Van Buren did not.

Wil cleared and his throat and took a drink as Mr. Van Buren idly swirled his glass of liquor that cost more than what Wil earned in a day. Maybe a few days.

“Naomi talks a lot about you,” Mr. Van Buren said.

“Hopefully good things.”

“All good things. She loves you.”

“I love her too.”

“I know. That’s why I’d like you to leave,” Mr. Van Buren said.

“What? The party?” Wil asked. He wasn’t sure he understood.

“No, my daughter.”

Wil blinked at the older man.

“What?” he asked.

“You have no career. You have aspirations but lack the ability to fulfill them. Naomi hasn’t said anything directly, but you have some form of mental handicap, from what I’ve gathered. Is any of this wrong?” Mr. Van Buren asked. He did nothing to lower or raise his voice. He spoke in the same flat, direct manner as somebody else discussing sports teams or weekend plans.

“I—what the hell?” Wil stammered. “You want me to leave Naomi because I—”

“Because we both know she’d be better off,” Mr. Van Buren finished. “And no, I’m not going to do something cliche like offer you money. She loves you. I’ve seen my daughter with boyfriends before. This is different. I think she might want to marry you. And then what? She supports you? You and any children? While you whittle away your life, probably hindering her out of her concern for you?”

“I—” Wil started to say.

“You love her,” Mr. Van Buren said, “and because you do, you want her to succeed, to be happy, to be the best she can be. How could she ever be any of those things if she has you holding her back?”

Wil stood there, in front of the bar, Jack-and-Coke in-hand, his mouth limply open as Mr. Van Buren spoke to him. The weight on his back magnified, threatened to crush him right there on the emerald lawn.

“I don’t hate you, Wil,” Mr. Van Buren said. “I can see why Naomi likes you. I like you myself, a bit. But I love my daughter, and want what’s best for her. And if you love her, you will too.”

Mr. Van Buren patted Wil on the shoulder, gave him a thin-lipped smile, and walked away. Wil dumped his drink out on the lawn, put his empty glass on the white surface of the bar, and ordered a Suntory Yamazki. Double.

Portland, Oregon

Now

Something burned in Wil’s leg and he woke with a groan that turned into a scream.

“Easy! Easy there,” somebody said. Matsuda.

“Ah, shit,” Wil said. “What happened? Ah! My leg!”

He looked down and saw his pant leg had been ripped off from just below his mid-thigh. Below that his pale leg was a splotchy mess of blood and bandages. More blood was on the floor of the stairwell he was in, along with Qadira, Laura, Tyson, Steve, and Jenn. All of them were smudged with soot and streaked with blood. With the exception of Tyson and Matsuda, all of them had the same wide-eyed, frightened look to their faces that were all turned up the stairs, towards the burning bar and the monster inside. Tyson had the empty look of a shell-shock victim while Matsuda was focused on him and getting the bandages secured around his leg.

Wil reached up as he felt some tightness around his skull and felt more bandages there, along with some sticky, wet hair. When he pulled his fingers away, he saw they were wet with blood.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You fell down the stairs. The stairway is filling with smoke and one of those grub things came down a few seconds ago. Steve killed it,” Matsuda said and nodded at the young man with the beard. He was favoring the leg that hadn’t been struck up in the bar, one hand on the other.

“We gotta get out of here!” Qadira hissed. “Even if all of those freaky things are dead, the smoke is coming.”

“Well not that Wil’s up, we can be on our way,” Matsuda said.

“Not with two people with injured legs,” Laura said. “Well, we could, but we won’t be going very far or fast.”

“I don’t need to go far. Naomi’s place is a couple blocks away,” Wil said and struggled to his feet. His head spun and tightened and he grit his teeth as he felt his brain compressing between the walls of his skull.

“You’re still on about that?” Qadira asked. “The city is still fucked. I thought it might have cleared out a little by now, and it’s not as bad as yesterday but it’s still a damn deathtrap! We should head back to the Willamette bike trail and follow it up and out of the city!”

“Fuck you,” Wil grunted and leaned back against the wall. He still, somehow, had his axe with him and used it as a cane, the metal head clanking against the concrete floor. “Go if you want. Nobody forced you to come.”

Matsuda sighed and turned to Qadira and the others. “She’s right. Following the Willamette out of the city is probably the safest route. It’s not really a road, so there wasn’t any traffic blocking the way out. If you an get a car, you can drive. Just stay away from the riverbanks. Something’s in the water. If you can’t find a car, there should be enough bikes, and Steve can ride tandem with somebody if he can’t pedal.”

“I can’t run right now but I should be able to keep up on a bike,” he said.

“Qadira: lead them back to the river, the exact route we took back since it should still be clear. Do you know where the Astoria Airport is?” Matsuda asked.

“I do,” Jenn said. “It’s about a two hour drive from here.”

“And a ten minute drive from Camp Rilea and the National Guard,” Matsuda added. “If you follow the Willamette north you’ll make it there. If the river ever forks, you take the Western or left fork, got it?”

“Left fork,” Qadira said.

“The 26 goes there too,” Jenn said, “but it goes through forests, and it’ll probably be clogged with cars.”

“Better off sticking to the river, but remember, away from the shore,” Matsuda said.

“What’re you going to do?” Qadira asked.

“Go with with Wil,” the old man replied. Wil had been collecting his thoughts and trying to get his equilibrium back but shook his head.

“No. Screw that. You go with them,” he said. “They need you more than I do.”

“Wil—” Matsuda started to say.

“No. Listen! There are five people here: Three women, an injured man, and a kid. I’m one idiot doing something selfish. I don’t know what your deal is, but you’re the only one here with the skills or training or whatever to get them out alive. You’ve been in the city, you’ve seen what there is to see. Another two blocks isn’t going to help you. Get them to the base.”

Matsuda looked at Wil, his eyebrows meeting together over the bridge of his nose and mirroring the disapproving flat line of his mouth.

“Mm. You’re sure?” he asked. “I doubt you’ll make it those two blocks.”

“Maybe, but if you’re with them, you’ll all make it out of the city.”

Matsuda nodded with a sigh. He took Wil’s hand and shook it as he approached the metal fire exit door that stood nearby at the foot of the stairs.

“Good luck, Wil. Be careful. I hope you and your girlfriend can meet us later,” Matsuda said.

“Me too,” Wil said.

“I think you’re fucking crazy, but try not to die, okay?” Qadira said and gave him a perfunctory pat on the arm. Matsuda cracked the door open and peered outside into dark gray light of later afternoon. He gave them a thumbs up and then crept out the door, rifle at the ready. Qadira followed, and Jen helped her husband out.

“Come on, Tyson,” Laura said gently to the young man. Tyson followed her robotically, neither offering resistance or acting on his own, content to be led away. Wil was surprised the boy was even moving, having watched his parents die brutal deaths in the span of minutes. Wil wanted to say something, but what do you say to somebody who watched their father have his face devoured by an alien grub?

They passed, Laura giving him a brief nod, and then they were out.

And for the first time since he’d run into Gutierrez back at Oak Rest, Wil was alone.