Vern Slupman skulked along the main street of the city. The sun had finally made its way up. It hadn’t poked its nose over the wall of buildings yet, but its presence was felt as the condensation on his suit dried out, and yellow light illuminated his path to the pickup location.

A grey feeling had been gnawing at him since leaving the crew. He regretted leaving the letter. His heart had been in the right place when writing it, but it wouldn’t do anything to lessen the hate the squad would feel for him. All the letter might accomplish would be to someday find its way into MoShun’s hands and finally give the man an excuse to kill him.

He’d been looking over the shoulder of his injured arm all morning. He didn’t fear the squad finding him. If anything, a small part of him hoped he’d see one of them on the horizon, clamoring about how they’d found him. What had him on edge was August’s tale. Zombies. They never told him there were going to be zombies in the city. He glanced back again, hairs on end.

The city had been the designated pickup point from the start. Vern had been instructed to deal with the crew long before they got to the city, but he hadn’t the heart to do it. Not only that, killing them would have forced him to come all this way alone. He’d have been dead. Maybe that was the point.

An ugly brick building hunched before him. An old, peeling stop sign was plastered on the front door. That’s what he was looking for. The building had been an old hospital, abandoned and never repurposed even in the vintage days. It was the pickup point. Vern stopped and looked up at it. The building stood half as high as the others around it, but it was still a long way up, and his ride was waiting on the roof.

Just breathe. One more bit of exertion before you get to go home. He didn’t allow himself to think about what would happen when he did get home. Whatever it was, it was better than being stranded outside the dome among all the dolo and… zombies. If there were going to be zombies anywhere, it would be in an abandoned hospital.

He entered. The first thing that caught his eye was the wall of vending machines. He marveled at the amount of choice the vintage folk had. Every vending machine under the dome had the Slupman look. Here, some were blue, red, green, and each had a different logo. A strange smell tickled his nostrils—something like expired sanitation, like old cleaning products. A few breaths of it made him sick. He marched onward.

Light faded the deeper he went into the hospital, thanks to most of the windows being boarded up. He passed a large reception desk and halted at the mouth of the broadest corridor. It led into an abyss of darkness. He’d have to go in there. Who knows how deep into the darkness his destination waited, and what else waited there with it.

It got dark faster than he’d anticipated. It closed around him like greedy fingers, and the air turned thick as if the hospital were digesting him, just another soul in its collection. He reached into his pack with a trembling hand and retrieved one of the comms he’d taken from the squad. His hand came out with the general’s. A short-lived pang of regret filled him but was quickly pushed aside by fear of what lurked within the dark. He tapped the screen, and just the light of the display would have been enough to navigate by, but he tapped a few commands and initiated the flashlight feature.

He’d put it on just in time. He was two steps away from walking into an empty hospital bed right there in the center of the corridor. The flashlight provided a narrow cone of light, not enough to reveal his entire field of view but enough to get by.

His nerves told him to keep the light flashing directly on the floor before him, just enough to guide him home. Curiosity had other ideas. He painted the walls left and right with faint light. The walls were made up of massive rectangular bricks, painted white, interrupted every few steps with heavy oak doors, some ajar. He refused to look into any of the rooms. He’d calmed a bit. As long as he could see, he’d be alright.

A deep moan creaked from one of the open doors, slow and crackly like a dying music box. Each snap of rotten vocal cords summoned a new goosebump on Vern’s skin. He stopped, dead in his tracks. He could feel the blood drain from his face, light-headed. His tongue was bone dry, and it became difficult to swallow.

He turned at a dying snail’s pace, dragging the heavy light across the dusty floor and up the wall to the open door. Darkness, somehow deeper than the rest, poured from the room with the moan. Feet shuffled, and something that sounded like a shoulder rubbing on a wall joined the morbid chorus. The light touched the maw of the abandoned room. It did nothing to illuminate the area that had been marinating in darkness for Vanno-knows how long. Something stood between the light and the room. That’s why it was ineffective. Yes, something tall and… man-like.

Vern didn’t require any confirmation. He ran. The light was just strong enough to warn him of any coming debris. He jumped and dodged like a track athlete and ignored the chorus of moans growing behind him as best he could.

He zoomed past a heavy red open door, slammed the brakes, and slid about a yard from momentum before finally regaining control. He ran back to the door. It had been held agape by a small wedge of wood. A stairway rose before him like an angel with arms held out acceptingly. The room was a pillar of light as the morning sun pierced in through the many broken windows. He stepped through the threshold and looked up to find a series of winding stairways.

Vern shook the wooden wedge until it came loose and let the door slam shut, muffling the approaching moans. He caught his breath, back against the metal door. He’d make it. As long as his shaking legs could survive the long climb, he’d make it.

A deep boom on the door rattled his bones. He turned. A small window webbed with a thin steel mesh framed the rotten face of a man. Its eyes were absolute black. The patches of skin that were left on its chin were bearded with brittle grey that looked more like steel wool. It roared like a monster from a Gilzak horror flick. Slupman’s bladder nearly gave out, and his knees lost their strength. He mumbled a strange attempt at a scream and backed away from the door, his blood replaced with terror.

He crawled up the stairs with only one arm strong enough to pull his weight. Silent tears streamed down his cheeks, but he couldn’t suck in enough breath to sob audibly. If they’d retained the ability to open doors, he was done for. He fell into a sort of daze where the only thing that mattered was struggling up the next step. The banging faded the higher he got, but each boom shook him to his core.

He finally reached the smaller stairway that led to the roof. He grunted in glee, turned the handle, and pushed the light door outward. Sunshine swept over him like a blanket as he spilled out onto the roof. He fell right beside the most beautiful splash of bird shit he’d ever seen.

“Colonel Slupman?” A man spoke.

He jumped at the sound and looked up. A man in a black suit stood with his hand extended. Another man in the same attire stood a dozen yards toward the center of the roof beside a black aircar with black tinted windows. Vern smiled. He was going home. It didn’t matter what that entailed. He was going home.