Realizing who shot Nat, Bobby quickly turned the barrel and aimed it toward Logan's back.

But I was already onto him, tackling him to the ground. I pushed the barrel upward, both my hands on the barrel and forearm, and I felt it shuddered as Bobby pulled the trigger, felt the intense heat on my palms. The shot went through the ceiling as we tumbled to the floor, showering us with wood fragments, torn insulation foam, and clumps of dust.

I wrestled with the weapon, yanked it off of his grip. I rotated it around with the barrel facing up, bringing the butt of the shotgun down on his head. Bobby whimpered loudly, clawing at his head, shocked and dazed. Blood started streaming out of his nose.

Bobby cried out, "Yuh bruk meh fuhrking nuuse!"

I struck Bobby on the nose again, using the butt of the gun. "That's for Joe and Daniel, motherfucker!"

"You tried to kill me!" Nat screamed, pointing her bloody fingers at Logan. "We're done! Do you hear me? We're over!"

"I aimed in front of you, not directly at you," Logan said calmly.

"You tried to kill me!"

Logan picked up Nat's rifle on the ground. "You'll live, Nat."

"You ruined my face!"

I got off of Bobby as Logan handed me back the duffel bag. I put the extra shotgun inside the bag and reunited with my trusty Mossberg. I then placed the knife back on the sheath, fiddling with the loosened straps of my vest during the scuffle, and secured it.

"I won't do you that dirty, Bren," Logan said, a faint smile forming. "I got you."

I returned the smile. "Thank you."

"I don't know how long that door will hold."

"Yeah. Let's get downstairs quick."

"You're just gonna leave us here?" Nat whined, still clutching her bleeding face.

I shrugged. "It worked for you. Why not for us?"

Nat glared at me, but she turned her attention back to Logan. "And you're just going to leave your ex-girlfriend just like that? Like the past few years meant nothing to you?"

"I don't know, Nat. You did say I can forget about all of it not a minute ago."

"Wow. I see how it is. Logan Hardy is taking it up the ass." She eyed me up and down with a stinking glare. She regarded Logan once again, added, " I knew you weren't a real man."

"And you're not a human being," Logan spat back. "You left a kid to die, Nat. Whatever semblance of respect or concern left that I have for you, it's gone for good."

Logan didn't look at her after that, and I realized he meant everything that he said. He was shaking, fists clenched, and he briefly closed his eyes before walking toward the emergency stairwell, said, "Come on, Bren."

And it all happened at once.

I didn't see that Bobby was already back on his feet behind me, taking advantage as I was distracted watching the exchange between Logan and Nat. I didn't even anticipate the guy tackling me against the wall, fighting for my shotgun, cursing and spitting at my face like a vector, calling me names under his breath as he tried to yank the weapon off of my grip.

It was then the door of 2022 flung open, and nine riled-up vectors ran out of the apartment. Logan whirled around, aimed his rifle, and started firing.

Nat sprung into action. She dove for the keychain that slipped out of Bobby's middle finger, rolled over to the side, and made a run for the elevator, quickly pushing the "down" button.

I glanced at Logan, saw him successfully took out three vectors and put two more on the floor, writhing and screeching from his shots. Some of the vectors jumped out of the way, hid behind the other apartment's open doors, out of Logan's line of sight.

I pushed back against Bobby, but my ankle pivoted wrongly, lost my balance, and he shoved me back against the wall. Coupled with the duffel bag and the gun sticking inside it, the items jammed right into my back, felt like my spine was on fire, fearing he broke it.

The elevator dinged.

"Nat! Don't you dare!" Logan screamed back without peering his eyes away from the charging vectors.

"Bitch! Wait for me!" Bobby yelled after.

"Fuck all of you! I'm out!" Nat yelled back.

The elevator doors parted.

Snarls joined the cacophony coming from the elevator. I saw people dressed in nightgowns, business suits, tracksuits, baggy hoodies, and one woman with nothing at all. The elevator walls were painted in black dried blood. Loose guts were strewn on the floor.

Seven pairs of hands and arms shot out of the opening doors, instantly reaching out for Nat. In a split second, a vector got her left arm. The swift motion hiked up the sleeves of her jacket, exposing her bare flesh.

The vector bit Nat's arm.

Nat screamed and jerked back, desperately tugging on her arm, her shrills piercing with frenzied alarm. She dropped the keychain, flung it back close to where Bobby and I still struggled with the shotgun.

With her other hand now free, she tried to scratch and punched her way out of their firm hold.

It didn't work.

One vector slipped out of the elevator, peering away from the mass of bodies falling on the poor woman, transfixed on Bobby and me. He rushed toward us, bringing the most piercing shrieks he could muster.

Bobby was still fixated on Nat and the vectors, and I took that into my favor. I shifted off to the side, only an inch or two off to his left, and stepped hard on his foot. Bobby wailed, and the shotgun suddenly went off, realized I had my finger on the trigger, accidentally pulling it. Bobby's right leg was gone, sheared off just below his knee.

I quickly examined my legs, still both intact, albeit covered in Bobby's blood and bits of his flesh.

Bobby clung to both my arms as he lost his balance, leaning more toward me, and I knew if I didn't move, he'd take me down on the floor, and the vector would be on top of us.

The vector hopped onto Bobby's back, nails, teeth, and all, quickly taking him down to the floor. Bobby tried to fight back, but the vector bit on his lower lip, as if it was giving him a massive and mouthful smooch, and then I heard the stifled tearing of muscle and the crack of broken bones.

Bobby screamed. I saw the blood flew up in thick, viscous spurts over the hunched man. The vector's hands grazed around his victim's eyes, and in one swift thrust, plunged his thumbs deep through both of Bobby's eye sockets.

Another howled scream.

I peered away, forced myself to move and find the damned keys. It took a couple of seconds to find it on the floor. I grabbed it and ran back toward the emergency door.

The vectors close to apartment 2022, spurred on by their reinforcing infected, stormed toward us.

"Run!" I said to Logan.

I spared a glance behind me to the elevator.

Nat was still alive, screaming as if her vocal cords were being ripped apart. Two vectors tore through her belly, and she watched in horror as they pulled out her insides like twine. Two more ripped off her right arm, the one where their jaws already latched onto her flesh. The last vector grabbed her by the head, hooking his hands in her open, screeching mouth, and pulled hard, breaking through cartilage and bone, exposing her tongue and her palate out in the open.

Natalie's screams died out in a gurgled mess; her one intact arm slumped to the side.

The vectors dragged her body into the metal box before the elevator dinged again, and the doors slid close.

Logan rushed into the stairwell as one vector closed in. I racked the forearm, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The vector's chest caved inward and flew twelve feet back down the hallway, hitting another vector on the way. They both went down on the floor in a tumbled heap.

I ran through the emergency door, hearing as more vectors fell upon Bobby, his screams intensifying as the building shook from the chaos, the sound of the dinner bell ringing.

Looking up, I saw shadowed figures running down from the upper floors—the same thing below us.

We were boxed in.

The building began to stir awake.

I didn't dare stop even when I could feel them breathing down my neck, and I would turn, take a shot, and the echo reverberated through the stairwell and almost shattered my eardrums.

Each level we passed became a blur. All there was were the hundreds of steps that waited before us, and I would sometimes skip and hopped, hoping a little it would put more and more distance between the vectors and my own hide.

I tried to push the thought of Nat and Bobby's mangled, torn bodies, their screams ringing in my ears. Did I kill them? Was it partly my fault? Or could I have avoided it, found some way to save them from such a horrible fate? I didn't know. I didn't want to know.

But what bothered me more was that I didn't feel any semblance of pity watching both of them die.

Frankly, it was gratifying to see that they did, equally elated, and that scared me even more.

More pounding against the emergency doors. More vectors from each floor were clamoring to join in the fray, salivating over the dinner bell of our gunshots.

My breathing ragged, lungs strained as I forced myself onward, the pain in my thighs, legs, and ankles like nothing with the jaws of the infected, or so I told myself. Like an instinct, I held onto that primal drive that had pushed humans to survive for thousands of years, tapped into that reserve wherever I could find it in my body, embraced it to keep me going even when everything seemed pointless.

I managed to look at the sign next to the emergency doors.

Tenth floor.

Keep. Going.

If I stopped even for just a second, I'd surely die.

My voice joined with the vectors as they chased after us, maybe two or three flights up the stairs. It might not mean much now, but they were getting closer, frenzied, and enthusiastic with each gain they made.

A vector burst out of the 8th floor and snarled at me.

I ran toward her, didn't even gave her a chance to take a step as I blew a hole on the side of her belly, sent her flying back against the wall in a crumpled heap. She tried to get up. Logan finished her off with a bullet to the head. The scent of gunpowder filled my nostrils.

We kept going, like water swirling down the drain. It felt like I was standing so close to the large blaring speakers in the homecoming dance, so loud that I knew I'd temporarily lose my hearing when I stepped outside. I fished the bus's keys in my pocket and hooked my forefinger into the ring.

We finally reached the ground floor, and Logan closed the door behind us.

I yelled, "Anyone knows how to drive a freaking bus?"

"Here!" Miguel answered.

I threw the keys to him, and he caught it midair. "Get to it! Now!"

Miguel ran toward the bus and hopped onto the driver's seat. Logan handed his spare rifle to Luke, who seemed unsure to handle it. Between the two of them, he had less experience handling the weapon.

"Luke, watch the street. Shoot anything that moves toward us. Logan, you're with me. Eyes on the lobby," I barked the orders. Logan was the first to nod without hesitation, and Luke took the position closest to the bus's entrance, watching the sidewalk.

The bus's engines rattled as Miguel turned the keys. The vectors reached the doors and started pounding against it, the hinges buckling from the dozens of combined weight.

"Any second now," Logan muttered.

Miguel turned the ignition again, and the bus clamored for life.

A door hinge popped out of its bracket.

Logan muttered again, "Any second now."

"Miguel, what's the holdup?" Luke hollered nervously.

"I'm trying!"

For the third time, Miguel turned the ignition on. The engine roared mightily like music to my ears.

The stairwell door buckled and fell with a loud thud, and a wave of the vectors poured out of the narrow doorframe. They quickly spotted us on the sidewalk, next to the bus, and started sprinting.

"On the bus! Now!" I said.

Logan got a couple of shots into one vector, one on the shoulder and one on the stomach, and he keeled over, rolling onto the ground.

I was the last one in, whirled around and shot the vector getting too close to the bus's door, and took a chunk out of his right shoulder. Miguel stepped on the breaks as the doors closed.

"Lose them," I told Miguel. "They'll keep following us. We don't want to lead them directly to the cathedral."

The route we took was a little longer, and we did encounter a few more vectors, but on the twelfth corner we turned, we didn't see any more of those freaks.

Luke and Miguel didn't ask what happened to the others. Me and Logan's gloomy pout was obvious enough to interpret. But they did notice that we got back most of the stuff they stole.

I paused to think over my next moves or any of my available steps. I delved into my pocket and pulled out Bobby's boss's keys. We had to get to that boat.