Once we've turned around, we drove off and kept going down the road until it opened to a wider one. The entire street was blocked by vehicles and bodies.

"No. No freaking way," Haskell gasped as passed an overturned truck, boxes of medical supplies spilled out across the road. I followed where he was looking at, and saw that the gates into the Med district had been knocked down.

A bus had rammed its way through the gate, partially splitting it open. I could see the bus driver's dead body hanging across the broken windshield, shards of glass all over his face and torso. There were more bodies inside the bus, all butchered and mutilated. On the ramparts, bodies of soldiers also lay dead. There were no vectors around.

Peter stopped the car. With the gates obstructed by abandoned vehicles, the Range Rover could not fit through the narrow gaps. "Well, I guess we're walking," he said.

"Can't we like, I don't know, ram through it?" I asked. I knew what I said was impossible, but I was frustrated that we're so close on getting to downtown, and now we had this to contend with.

Peter just narrowed his gaze at me and shook his head.

I turned red. It was a stupid question.

I climbed out of the car. We walked toward the civilian entryway, abandoned luggage scattered on the waiting line, a few still in the hands of its owners, now lay dead. I saw a Superman action figure in the middle of a pool of blood. In one of the cracked luggage was a mound of women's lingerie. Another backpack had nothing but canned goods. Bullet casings littered the road, bullet holes were all over the cars and the walls. The plywood barricades over the buildings' windows, supposedly to prevent anyone from walking around the gates, had been pried wide open. I peered in and saw more bodies, though most of them belonged to vectors, their two-pupil eyes gazing up the ceiling, and very much dead.

Luke strode toward the waiting line and knelt over the backpack with the canned goods. Luke shrugged at me. "We never know." Though, he had to leave half a dozen cans because it was too heavy.

"Food is food," I said.

Luke nodded. "Yep. Food is food."

The bag had energy bars of cranberry and walnut, and Luke handed two of each. I quickly opened the first one, realizing I hadn't eaten breakfast, and I was hungry. I kept the last one in my pocket. Peter and Haskell looted the dead soldiers of ammunition, putting two or three extra magazines in their pouches. Luke picked up an M4 carbine on the ground and also handed another one to me. I walked over to a dead soldier and grabbed some more 9mm ammunition for Betty. I caught sight of the soldier's combat knife still attached in its sheath, and so I took it off him and put it around my waist. I felt better now that I had bullets in Betty, an M4 strapped to my back, and an emergency knife. Still, I'd rather fight the vectors ten feet away from me.

"Where did all the vectors go?" Haskell whispered, looking left and right to see if someone might have heard him.

"Where the prey has gathered," Peter answered right away. "Doesn't matter. Anywhere but here."

It had been a couple of hours since the wall fell, enough time to create all this devastation and tragedy. By now, many of the survivors had hunkered down somewhere safe or built their own makeshift shelters. At least that's what I liked to believe. To think that they've joined the ranks of the vectors was terrifying. I wanted to accept that the living still outnumbered the infected, but reality wasn't very kind to such fantasies.

We couldn't go through the turnstiles by the entryway, packed high with dead bodies, and a section of the ramparts had partially collapsed on it. We had to go through the bus sticking out of the gate. Peter and Haskell went inside first, poking every dead body on the way, making sure they weren't vectors. Most of the dead wore scrubs, and I had to look away when some of the bodies were children, a few still had hospital tags around their wrists. I realized they were the same patients being transferred, the same children I saw in the hospital this morning. One of the dead women had her arms around a little girl, and I recognized her as the mother who told her daughter they'd go on a field trip. I suddenly felt sick to my stomach, so when we reached the end of the bus, and Peter pulled the lever of the emergency exit, I hopped off right away and vomited. Luke gently rubbed my back.

The other side of the gate was worse than Pine Hills. More abandoned vehicles crammed the road, blood splatters, and entrails, and all of them still fresh. On the horizon, I could distinctly see the roof of Albany Med. We heard multiple gunshots from a distance, would listen to the cries and screams of the dying from inside the buildings as the vectors attacked. With the latter, we would head off in the opposite direction. We couldn't risk a confrontation when we had no idea how vast the horde was.

We moved slowly along the streets, keeping our steps to the sidewalk, not letting ourselves open for an ambush. Peter always took point. There was a time when we heard a vector behind a taxi, crouched over a body, and Peter swiftly took out his looted knife and stabbed the vector on the skull. We silently killed six more vectors after that.

We had no intention of walking through the district's main center where most of the gunfire was. We kept to the alleys and the narrow streets around the hospitals, going through a building once when we spotted a sizable horde passing by. Eventually, we came upon an overturned ambulance where Luke spotted a wheelchair and brought it over to me.

He expanded it out and patted the empty seat. "Sit," he said to me.

"No, I'm good."

"No, sit. You've opened up your wound."

I looked down. I hadn't noticed that there was a couple of quarter-sized blot of blood on my sweatpants. I looked into my pants and saw that more blood soaking my bandages. "It's not that bad," I said, hoping.

Luke was less than convinced. He guided me to the wheelchair as I failed to come up with excuses, but once my butt was on it, I didn't bother to argue. I was tired, my feet were killing me, and I desperately needed a painkiller. Now that Luke pointed out my wound, I had the urge to itch, prod, and jab it. I also had a mild headache from all that running and fighting with an empty stomach. Luke also grabbed a pair of leg rest and attached it to the wheelchair, propping my feet off the ground.

Haskell rummaged through the ambulance and handed me a few bottles of pills. He gave me the aspirin first. I shook my head. "For your headache and your leg," Haskell said.

I put the aspirin aside. "Aspirin inhibits keratinocytes and blood coagulation," I told him. Haskell just blinked at me, confused. I sighed. "It'll fuck up my wound and make it longer to heal." Haskell, rolling his eyes, gave me the selection of bottles he had looted and put it all on my lap. I rummaged through them and opened Tylenol, popping a couple into my mouth. I also took some amoxicillin to prevent bacterial infection. "There. That should take care of both of them," I said, gesturing to my leg and forehead. Luke grabbed the pill bottles and placed it inside the backpack.

We kept at a turtle's space across the Med district, often having to double back to a doughnut shop and ended up stuck in there for two hours because a large group of vectors chased off a man into a pawn shop. We couldn't save him in time before we heard his screams, but then again, if we did help, our situation might be different. By ten o'clock in the morning, the vectors finally got distracted when gunshots went off only a couple blocks away. They left the vicinity, and we continued on our way.

Throughout this time, Luke wheeled me around with the M4 on my lap.

A groan from behind a van alerted us to a vector. Peter raised a fist (a gesture for stop) and slowly crept toward the van. There, a vector stood in the middle of the pedestrian lane with its back facing us. Its body twitched and jerked, making croaking noises like it was choking deep in its throat. Peter raised his knife, but in a split second, the vector turned to the side, and he ended up stabbing him on the shoulder. The force brought the vector on his knees, letting out a pithy squawk before Peter wrapped his huge hands around his lower jaw and snapped his neck.

Peter turned around with a crooked smile and a thumbs up.

"Good lord." Haskell put his palm over his face and shook his head.

And that was when we heard it, a piercing cry I had not encountered since New York. I whirled around and saw the vector child standing in the middle of the road a block away. The little girl was dressed in a pink parka coat and a pink pair of rain boots. Her entire face was covered with fresh and dried blood. Luke quickly took a shot at the vector, but she was too fast, scampering behind a truck. We only managed to graze her coat, sending fake feathers flying everywhere.

The vector's shriek, coupled with the gunshot, rang the dinner bell for all the vectors within a half-a-mile.

"Run!" Peter bellowed.

Luke grabbed the handles, whirled me around, and darted off to the next street. More vectors answered the child's cries, a choir of death reverberating into my bones. Shadows moved from the corner of my eyes, vectors jumping off two-story windows onto the roof of vehicles, some scurried out of the alleys, others bounced off from inside and underneath the abandoned cars.

"Children are bad, right?" Peter asked as he ran beside me.

"It's a horrible sign," I said.

I could already see some of the vectors acting strangely. They did not outright charge at us, keeping their distance to the sidewalk while we ran further. Some disappeared into the open storefronts, others had gone to an alley, only to reappear several feet closer to us from the opposite end.

They were coordinating. The vectors hid behind the vehicles and the corners every time Haskell and Peter turned around to shoot, others merely maintained their distance, showing such reserve I had not seen on a vector, yet they still kept up to us. A couple of them did try to attack, but Peter quickly put a bullet through their head.

We turned to the next street, but I quickly realized it was a mistake. Just at the end of it was a huge four-car accident on the intersection, completely blocking the entire road with upturned cars and bodies.

"Fuck. They're herding us!" I exclaimed.

"Do you see the kid?" Luke asked.

"Negative! Peter shouted. "Here! Turn right!" Peter veered off to the right—to a narrow alley—just as vectors climbed over the pile-up, realized the majority of them were waiting behind the barricade for us.

"They're trying to ambush us!" Haskell screamed. He fired to the crowd, putting down three vectors in quick succession.

Peter led the way while Haskell protected our rear. I was left to the middle, bound to the wheelchair because I could neither move fast on my own feet. I had my rifle with me, ready to shoot anyone who so much as breathe our way. Luke couldn't do anything but kept pushing on my wheelchair, the wheels squeaking beneath me.

A vector lady in a crisp-black business suit burst out of a window and landed on an emergency staircase over us. She snarled down at us, but I quickly aimed my rifle and shot her before she could do anything. I hit her on the stomach, and she lurched back, caught herself on the railing, and fell backward onto the pavement. She cracked her skull on the garbage container parked below it. In front, Peter shot two more vectors coming out of the alley doors until we reached the adjacent street. We turned left.

I turned around, and my jaw dropped. I hadn't realized how many were behind us. I saw Haskell struggling to kill them as their advancing front line was replaced by two more heads. There were hundreds of them.

We turned to the right again, a street on a slightly downward slope, making it easier for Luke to push me while shooting back at the vectors. At this time, we were totally lost, our minds focused on putting as much distance from the vectors.

"Reloading!" Haskell cried out, letting Peter know that he was reloading and that he wouldn't be able to stop the vectors chasing behind us. I was surprised to hear a resounding BOOM instead, shattering the glass of nearby the buildings. I glanced back and saw that Haskell had thrown a grenade, breaking the vectors' vanguard, causing them to retreat a little further back.

It bought us some precious seconds.

"Luke, turn me around." I barked.

"What? Why?"

"Just do it!" Luke hesitated for a second, but then turned me around until I was facing the massive horde. "Pull and keep a tight pace!" Luke's eyes glinted and shot me a wide grin.

I raised my M4 and started firing. The man in a leather jacket went down first, spurting arterial blood from his neck, and when he went down, he took two more vectors off from behind him. The next one was a man with nothing but his bathrobe, and then I aimed for the vector lady in purple leggings right behind him. I missed some by only grazing them at the side.

I realized I could maximize the damage if I aimed for their legs. Since they were crammed together, taking one of them out would cause a domino effect, and the vectors' forefront was an avalanche of dead bodies tumbling down a hill, trapping them in a massive stampede. They were fucking doing the work for us, stepping on their comrades' skulls, and breaking their bones against their weight.

There was still no sign of the girl. Perhaps if we killed her, it might stop the horde.

When my bullets ran out, Haskell threw me an extra mag before I started firing again. "Keep at it, Bren!" Haskell cheered.

One-by-one, they went down. The downward slope went on for four more blocks. There was a point where the wheelchair had reached a steady velocity that even Luke didn't have to pull on the handles anymore, protecting my flank, and only nudging me occasionally in the right direction.

I ran out of bullets on my M4, and Haskell was down to his last magazine. Eventually, the road leveled out, and Luke had to push me again, turning the wheelchair around as we darted off to the next street.

A humvee waited for us.

Three humvees.

At least six soldiers were down on their knees, rifles raised and aimed toward us. On each turret, a soldier positioned their machine guns.

A voice boomed, "Get down!"

Peter and Haskell immediately ducked. Luke tackled me to the ground, and I was afraid that I might have worsened my wound, but now was not the time to think about it. I put my hands over my ears as the gunfire erupted, like massive popcorn bursting next to my ears. I screamed, I didn't know why, but I screamed against the sound, as if some faint ancestral instinct wanted me to release the pulsing adrenaline and horror trapped inside me. Gunpowder filled the air fusing with the stench of blood and the loose bowels of the dead.

I pressed my back against Luke as he held his arms around me, face tucked at the nook of my neck and shoulder, could feel his body tensed as he tightened his embrace, pulling me closer.

The gunfire died down, and I opened my eyes. Thirty feet away, dead vectors looked like piled sandbags. I could see a few surviving vectors running away (again, I had never seen that before), some jumping into an opened building and retreated deeper.

My ears were ringing until I could only hear muffled voices. I looked over to Peter, already on his knees as another soldier was right in front of him, the barrel of the soldier's rifle aimed for Peter's head. I didn't know what they said, my hearing was still adjusting. After a couple of seconds, the soldier suddenly lowered his rifle and helped Peter up to his feet. Peter then strode toward me and helped me up. I tried looking for my crutches, but I must have dropped it along the way.

Peter put my arm around his shoulders. "They're here to help," he said. Luke guided my other free arm around his shoulders, and we started heading for the humvee.

"Where are they taking us?" I asked.

"Where else? They're gonna give us a ride to downtown."

-----

: I don't normally add an author's note to my stories (the first for this book), but I just want to put out a quick update. For those who are wondering and asking questions of when this will be finished, this book is about 45-50% done per my outline's timeline! As of this writing, this book currently has 207,000+ words, which amounts to a 620-page paperback-length novel (and the longest novel I've ever written). Maybe more if I add to my outline.

I mean, I expected this to become a behemoth of a project, and I am so glad for everyone's love, patience, votes, and support. Thank you for continuing to read my works! Love you, all! Be safe out there! PS. I do enjoy reading everyone's commentary. Keep it up!