The gurgling screams had found them. They echoed up the concrete stairwell, a wet, hungry sound that mixed with the thud-thud-thud of his own family's frantic footsteps. The air was thick with the copper-and-salt tang of vaporizing sweat and the stench of iron, a smell so potent it made Ahi dizzy, but the adrenaline burned hotter than the terror.
He rushed upstairs, repressing the urge to look back. He couldn't.
His mother and sister were just ahead, a blur of motion in the dark. His father, Saanj, was right behind him, a human wall between Ahi and the bloodhound beasts.
They burst onto the roof and into a wall of water. The afternoon sky was a bruised, roaring black. Rain hammered them, driven by a wind that howled. In the center of the terrace, a rescue helicopter sat, its rotors already spinning, its red and green lights slicing through the storm.
"Go! Go!" Saanj roared, shoving Ahi forward.
His mother's wailing eyes met his. Go! his look replied. Don't wait for me!
She grabbed his sister Kritika's hand and ran barefoot through the puddles, leaving her son and husband behind.
"Ma'am, give your hand!" a ranger in a fluorescent jacket shouted over the rotors, pulling them in.
Ahi was next, scrambling into the cabin. He turned, hand outstretched for his father.
Saanj was right there, just meters away, but he stopped. He wasn't looking at the helicopter. He was looking back at the stairwell door. He had assessed the situation. He knew they weren't all going to make it.
"Dad! What are you waiting for?" Ahi screamed.
The metal door to the roof buckled. A dozen blood-stained, grasping hands punched through the gaps.
"Don't do it, Saanj, please!" Ahi's mother shrieked from inside.
Saanj looked at his son. His gaze was so fixed it felt like a physical embrace, a final, invisible hug. His eyes were full of determination and a pain that ripped Ahi apart.
The helicopter's engines screamed, and the craft began to lift, edging away from the new, immediate threat.
"No...!" Ahi yelled. "Papa!"
He didn't think. He didn't plan. He just saw his father grab the grill of the door as the horde smashed through it.
Ahi lunged. He shoved past the ranger, ignoring the man's shout, and threw himself out of the helicopter.
He didn't jump. He fell.
The world vanished into a blur of noise and rain. The moment he propelled himself out, he realized what he had committed. The roof was already twenty feet below him. His mother's mournful scream was a thin line in the air, and then the concrete roof hit him like a freight train.
Agony. He hit the roof hard, tucking his body by pure instinct and rolling with the impact. White-hot fire shot from his left ankle up his entire leg. He heard something snap. His shoulder slammed into the cement, sending a jolt of pure pain through his upper body. He screamed, but the storm ate the sound.
His momentum carried him, scraping him across the concrete, towards the stairwell. He saw his father's struggling form. Pushing off with his good leg, Ahi slammed his foot into the grills, helping to shove the mass back.
Then, together with his father, he shoved away the rest and managed to drop the locking bar.
The danger was held at bay. The helicopter was gone.
His father collapsed, sliding down the wall.
"Dad? Dad, are you alright?" Ahi asked, his voice a choked gasp. He tried to stand, but his ankle gave way, sending him back to his knees.
"You fool!" his father roared, his voice tight with pain. "You absolute fool! What have you done!"
"I... I couldn't leave you," Ahi rebutted, crawling toward him.
His father was breathing in ragged, wet gasps. Ahi saw it then. The dark stain soaking his father's white shirt wasn't just rainwater. It was blood.
It wasn't a bite. It was a gash, a chunk of flesh torn from his side, ripped away by the hands at the gate.
"You have committed a great blunder, Ahi..." Saanj wheezed. He was angry, but the anger was already fading, replaced by a gray, spreading shock.
"I get it... don't talk. Save your strength." Ahi's hands shook. He ripped a part of his own T-shirt, pressing it against the wound, but the blood soaked through it instantly.
"Ahi..." Saanj's voice was different. Thinner. "My body... it's... it's burning."
"You're in shock, Dad. Just hold on."
"No." Saanj grabbed his son's wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. "It's a... a cold burn." A violent shiver wracked his body, his teeth chattering. "Arrrrhhhhh..."
"Calm down, Dad! You are alright!" Ahi pleaded, his denial a wall against the obvious.
"No... Ahi... it's... it's in me." Saanj's eyes were wide, staring at something Ahi couldn't see. "It's moving. I can feel it."
His father's back arched off the wall. A low groan, half-pain, half-rage, tore from his throat. His eyes bulged, and the scary sight of his veins, dark and protruding, terrified Ahi. Saanj's face grew darker, his limbs starting to tremble and then to seize, his muscles tightening into knots.
He was turning. And he knew it.
Ahi watched, frozen in horror. The man, his father, was being erased.
But Saanj wasn't gone. Not yet.
He looked at Ahi, and for the first time, Ahi saw tears in his father's eyes. The trembling stopped. For one second, he was in control.
"I love you, son..." he said, his voice a frail whisper. "I... I love you all..."
Then his face contorted. "It... it hurts."
"Dad..."
"Get... back!" Saanj shoved Ahi away with a final burst of human strength.
With the last bit of consciousness left in him, Saanj used the wall to heave himself to his feet. He didn't sprint. He staggered, a broken man, fighting his own body with every step, and threw himself toward the boundary.
By the time Ahi could process anything, his father was gone.
A second later, from the street five stories below... a dull, squashing thud.