The infected held. The whole yard stayed quiet.
I stood beside the body and let my eyes go out across the street.
Hundreds of them. Standing exactly where they'd stopped. Heads down, arms loose, nothing moving anywhere on that road.
My body was finished.
I could feel it underneath everything the system was closing up and it wasn't the wounds. The wounds were going. This was the other kind. The kind the plain had taught me: the empty tank, the body that had spent its last reserve and was now only standing because standing was the instruction it had left.
The street lamps steadied.
All of them at once, the whole length of the road, and stayed lit. No stutter. No pools of dark.
From the far side of the building, somewhere I couldn't see, something started moving.
Slow. Dragging. Coming around toward me.
I didn't move.
I stood where I was with my brother at my feet and let myself look at it properly.
