Prologue. The Last Signal

New Vance City, 2070. One year after the Collapse.

The virus came in on the trains. By the time anyone gave it a name, it was in every tower in the city.

Ander Calloway used to build those towers. He had a partner and a little girl who rode on his shoulders.

Now he hunts the things that took them. People say the shamblers leave him alone.

That isn't true. He just outlasts them.

Chapter 1. The Package

The Package — Chapter 1

New Vance City. Rain, neon, and the smell of rust.

Ander Calloway walks past an overflowing dumpster and stops in front of a cracked mirror bolted to the wall. He waits while it reads his eyes.

The wall slides open. He goes down.

Red floor lights, locked crates, and a woman with neon hair who has her boots up on the table.

Lyra Quinn: Calloway. You're late. I like that in a man who charges by the job.

Ander Calloway: You said urgent. Urgent costs double.

Lyra Quinn: Urgent pays Antigen. Two doses. Sealed and cold, Citadel grade.

Ander Calloway: Nobody pays Antigen for a delivery.

Lyra Quinn: Nobody's ever asked me to send anything through the Graveyard before.

Ander Calloway: Where in the Graveyard?

Lyra Quinn: Memorial Hospital. Fourth floor. You walk in, you drop the package, you walk out.

Ander Calloway: Memorial's full of Walkers.

Lyra Quinn: That's why I called you. People say the shamblers leave you alone.

Ander Calloway: They don't. I just outlast them.

Behind Lyra, the steel door to the back room hangs open. A girl is kneeling in front of its lock with the cover off and a screwdriver in her teeth.

Bella Ridge: Your lock's garbage, by the way.

Lyra Quinn: Excuse me?

Bella Ridge: It's reading the same three wires twice. Anybody with a spoon could get in here.

Lyra Quinn: Nobody with a spoon has ever gotten in here.

Bella Ridge: Nobody with a spoon has tried. There. Fixed it. You're welcome.

Ander Calloway: Who's the kid?

Bella Ridge: The kid can hear you. The kid also has a name.

Ander Calloway: Didn't ask for it.

Bella Ridge: It's Bella. You're welcome for that too.

Lyra Quinn: And Bella is the package.

Ander Calloway: No.

Lyra Quinn: You haven't even heard the...

Ander Calloway: I don't do kids.

A man with a gray beard steps out of the back room. He wears a faded yellow work jacket, and he keeps his left arm close to his body.

Frank Holt: You must be Calloway. I'm Holt. Frank Holt.

Bella Ridge: Nobody calls him Frank. He's just Holt. He only says Frank when he's trying to sound like a grown-up.

Frank Holt: Be nice, Bells.

Bella Ridge: I'm always nice. I'm just also right.

Ander Calloway: I'm not taking the job.

Frank Holt: Give me two minutes. Just two. Then you can walk.

Bella goes back to the lock. Holt steps close to Ander and pulls up his left sleeve.

There's a bandage on his forearm. It's soaked through, and the skin around it is turning gray.

Ander Calloway: When?

Frank Holt: Last night. One came out from behind a car we were hiding at. It went for her and got my arm instead.

Ander Calloway: Then you've got till morning.

Frank Holt: Maybe less. My hands are already shaking.

Ander Calloway: Does she know?

Frank Holt: No. And you're not telling her. She'll try to fix it. She tries to fix everything.

Ander Calloway: Why Memorial?

Frank Holt: Because nobody follows anybody into the Graveyard. Not the Guardians, not the cults, not even the Syndicate. The Walkers live there, and the shamblers leave them be.

Ander Calloway: The Walkers don't talk to anybody.

Frank Holt: They don't have to. I've been trading with them in the hospital morgue for a year. They know about her.

Ander Calloway: How?

Frank Holt: I don't know. That scares me too. But it's the one place in this city where nobody will try to take her.

Ander Calloway: Why would anybody want a twelve year old kid?

Frank Holt: She's worth a lot to the wrong people. That's all you need tonight.

Frank Holt: Please. I can't walk her in there. I won't be me by the time we reach the fence.

Ander looks at the girl. She's talking to a little round drone like it's a dog.

Bella Ridge: Pip, don't. That's Lyra's stuff. Pip. Pip, put it down.

Ander Calloway: Two doses, Lyra.

Lyra Quinn: Two doses when she's delivered. Until then you run on trust.

Ander Calloway: I don't do trust.

Lyra Quinn: I know. That's why you're still alive.

Bella Ridge: Holt? What's going on? Why's he looking at me like that?

Frank Holt: Bells, this is Calloway. He's going to walk you to Memorial. I'll catch up.

Bella Ridge: You'll what? No. We go together. That was the whole plan.

Frank Holt: Plan changed. I've got to settle some things with Lyra first.

Bella Ridge: You're lying. You do the thing with your beard when you lie.

Frank Holt: I don't have a thing.

Bella Ridge: You have a whole thing.

The lights on the lock Bella just fixed flash red. Then something heavy hits the door from outside.

Lyra Quinn: That's not a knock.

Ander Calloway: Back room. Now.

The door blows in. Four soldiers in faded yellow power armor come through the smoke with lights on their rifles.

Anya Brights: Solar Guardians! Nobody moves!

Anya Brights: Holt. You took something that belongs to the grid.

Frank Holt: She's not a something, Captain. She's a kid.

Anya Brights: She's radiant-born. That makes her the grid's business. Hand her over and walk away.

Ander Calloway: Radiant what?

Lyra Quinn: Calloway, whatever you're about to do, please don't do it on my floor.

A Guardian grabs Bella by her vest and hauls her toward the smoke.

Bella Ridge: Let go of me! Holt!

The Guardian gets two steps with her.

Ander doesn't think about it. He just fires.

The yellow armor goes back through the door the way it came in.

Bella Ridge: You... you just shot a Guardian.

Ander Calloway: His armor took it. He'll live. Move.

Ander Calloway: The vent. Up. Go.

Frank Holt: I've got the hall. Take her.

Bella Ridge: No! Holt, come on, there's room!

Frank Holt: Bells, listen to me. You do what he says. Every word. Promise me.

Bella Ridge: Holt...

Frank Holt: Calloway. Promise me.

Ander Calloway: I'll get her there.

Holt takes the corner with an old shotgun and a bad arm.

Ander takes the ladder with Bella over his shoulder. She screams his name all the way up.

The last thing she sees is Holt, smiling at her like he's the one who's going to be fine.

Two floors up, the vent opens onto a flat roof in the rain. Behind them, the gunfire stops.

Bella Ridge: Go back.

Ander Calloway: No.

Bella Ridge: Go back! He's down there! You've got a grenade launcher, go use it!

Ander Calloway: Keep your voice down.

Bella Ridge: Don't tell me what to... what the h...

Ander Calloway: Language.

Bella Ridge: I didn't even say it!

Ander Calloway: You were going to.

Bella Ridge: He always catches up. He always does. He'll catch up.

Ander Calloway: Yeah.

Yellow flares go up over the block. Guardian drones sweep the street with white light.

Bella Ridge: Why are they lighting everything up?

Ander Calloway: To flush us out. And because they don't have to walk where we're going.

Past the wall at the end of the street, the dark is crowded. A hundred gray shapes stand very still in the rain. One by one, their heads turn toward the light.

FIELD NOTE. SHAMBLER. What's left after the virus takes someone. They stand still for hours, then they run. Noise, light and warmth bring them.

Bella Ridge: Those aren't people.

Ander Calloway: Not anymore.

Bella Ridge: And that's where we're going.

Ander Calloway: Stay close. Stay quiet. If I say run, you run.

Bella Ridge: What if you say run quietly?

Ander Calloway: Then you run quietly.

Ander Calloway: Welcome to the Graveyard.

Chapter 2. Graveyard Shift

Graveyard Shift — Chapter 2

The Shambler's Graveyard. Dead apartment blocks, cars left where they stopped, and weeds pushing up through the road.

It's quiet. It's always quiet here, right up until it isn't.

Bella Ridge: How long do we have to whisper?

Ander Calloway: Till we're out.

Bella Ridge: That's the whole city.

Ander Calloway: Then the whole city.

Bella Ridge: I hate whispering. It makes everything sound like a secret.

Ander Calloway: Everything out here is a secret. Watch your feet.

Ahead, twenty shamblers stand in the middle of the road. They don't move. Rain runs down their gray faces.

Bella Ridge: Are they asleep?

Ander Calloway: They don't sleep. They wait. Hold my strap. Step where I step.

They pass close enough to smell them. One of the shamblers twitches. Ander stops, and Bella stops with him, and neither of them breathes.

Then the shambler goes still again.

Bella Ridge: How did you know to stop?

Ander Calloway: Its fingers moved first. Always watch the fingers.

Bella Ridge: Huh. That's actually useful.

Ander Calloway: Try not to sound so surprised.

An old laundromat with its shutter halfway down. Ander checks every corner before he lets her in.

Bella Ridge: Oh, these are old machines. Real motors. Do you know what I could build with these?

Ander Calloway: Quietly? Nothing.

Bella Ridge: Quietly a lot, actually. Pip needs a new motor anyway. He's been pulling left for weeks.

She sits on a washer, opens up the drone, and rolls up her sleeve to get at the wires.

There's a scar on her forearm. A ring of teeth marks, pink and healed.

Ander's pistol is out before she looks up.

Bella Ridge: Whoa. Whoa, whoa, okay. Hey.

Ander Calloway: Sleeve up. Both hands where I can see them.

Bella Ridge: It's old, okay? It's three weeks old!

Ander Calloway: Nobody gets bitten and lives three weeks.

Bella Ridge: Well, I did! If I was gonna turn, I'd be chewing on your face already!

Ander Calloway: Fever? Shakes?

Bella Ridge: No! Look at me. Do I look confused? I just rewired a drone in the dark.

Ander looks at her for a long time. The gun doesn't move.

Bella Ridge: Please put it down. Holt never pointed anything at me. Not even when it happened.

The gun comes down.

Ander Calloway: Radiant-born.

Bella Ridge: That's what the Guardians called it. Like it's a prize. A shambler got into our tower and got my arm. Holt cleaned it and cried all night and waited for me to go.

Bella Ridge: I didn't go. I just got really hungry and kind of grumpy.

Ander Calloway: Kind of.

Bella Ridge: Very funny. Then Captain Brights found out and said she wanted to understand me. Holt said understand meant a table with straps on it. So we ran.

Ander Calloway: You're a cure.

Bella Ridge: I'm a kid with a weird arm. Nobody knows what I am.

Ander Calloway: Everybody's going to want to find out.

Bella Ridge: Yeah. That's why we're going where nobody goes.

She snaps the drone shut. Then she looks at him.

Bella Ridge: Okay. My turn. What aren't you telling me?

Ander Calloway: Nothing.

Bella Ridge: You just did the Holt thing. The face thing. Only with no beard.

Ander Calloway: Leave it.

Bella Ridge: No. He kept saying he'd catch up. And he kept his arm inside his jacket all night.

Ander doesn't answer. That's an answer.

Bella Ridge: He got bitten. Didn't he?

Ander Calloway: Last night. Behind a car. It was going for you.

Bella Ridge: And you knew. You knew, and you let me leave him.

Ander Calloway: He asked me to.

Bella Ridge: I don't care what he asked! I could have done something! I fix things! That's the whole thing I do!

Ander Calloway: Bella. Quiet.

Bella Ridge: Don't tell me to be quiet! Somebody should be loud about it! Somebody should...

Far down the street, something screams back.

It's a long, wet shriek, like a siren full of water. Then the whole street answers it.

FIELD NOTE. HORDE-CALLER. Its throat swelled into a sac. When it screams, every shambler for six blocks screams back and comes running.

Ander Calloway: Run.

Bella Ridge: Quietly?

Ander Calloway: No. Just run.

It screams, and the whole Graveyard screams back.

Every doorway on the street empties at once.

Ander doesn't say run quietly this time. He just says run.

An old subway entrance. They take the stairs three at a time, down into the dark.

Bella Ridge: They're right behind us!

Ander Calloway: Gate at the bottom. Get it shut.

One of them comes down the stairs faster than the rest. It freezes. Then it jerks forward, too fast, like frames are missing from a film.

FIELD NOTE. LURCH-RUNNER. The virus wrecked its nerves. It freezes, then snaps forward faster than you can aim. The fast one.

It hits Ander in the chest. The thumper spins away across the tiles. He's on his back with its teeth an inch from his face.

Ander Calloway: Bella! Go! Get through the gate!

Bella Ridge: Not a chance! Pip, come on, come on, wake up!

Bella Ridge: Okay, buddy. You know how I always told you never to overload your cells? Forget I said that.

The runner has him, and the launcher is out of reach.

Bella has one thing left.

She tells Pip she's sorry, and she throws him as hard as she can.

Smoke fills the stairwell. The runner lies still. Pip is a black, melted shell on the floor.

Bella drags the gate shut. On the other side, the horde hits the bars and keeps hitting them.

Bella Ridge: Oh, Pip.

Ander Calloway: You blew up your drone.

Bella Ridge: He was a good drone. He pulled left, but he was a good drone.

Ander Calloway: Thanks.

Bella Ridge: That's one for me, by the way.

Ander Calloway: You're keeping score?

Bella Ridge: Somebody has to. You got me out of the stash house. I got you off the stairs. We're even.

Ander Calloway: I carried you up a vent.

Bella Ridge: While I was screaming. That's not teamwork, that's luggage.

By morning they're up on a broken highway overpass, above the worst of it. Past the rooftops stands a tall white building with every window blown out.

Ander Calloway: Memorial.

Bella Ridge: It looks like a tooth.

Ander Calloway: It's a hospital.

Bella Ridge: A hospital that looks like a tooth.

Ander sleeps sitting up for twenty minutes with his rifle across his knees. Bella goes through his bag looking for food.

She finds a photo instead. A little girl on a man's shoulders, both of them laughing. The man has normal eyes.

Bella Ridge: Who's this?

Ander Calloway: Put that back.

Bella Ridge: Is that you? You had regular eyes.

Ander Calloway: I said put it back.

Bella Ridge: Okay. Okay, it's back. Sorry.

He looks out at the rooftops for a long time.

Ander Calloway: Her name was Lily. She was six.

Bella Ridge: The first breach?

Ander Calloway: The first breach.

Bella Ridge: Holt says people who lost somebody walk like they're carrying something heavy. You walk like that.

Ander Calloway: Holt talks a lot.

Bella Ridge: Holt never stops talking. It's the worst. I love it.

Bella's datapad crackles. She built it to listen to Guardian radio, and it's picking some up now.

Anya Brights: ◉ ▂▄▆█ All units. The Syndicate sold us the rest. The runner's taking her to Memorial Hospital.

Anya Brights: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Don't chase them through the Graveyard. Get there first. We'll be waiting.

Bella Ridge: Lyra sold us out?

Ander Calloway: Lyra sells everybody. It's nothing personal.

Bella Ridge: So she knows where we're going.

Ander Calloway: Then we get there before her.

Bella Ridge: And if we can't?

Ander Calloway: Then we go through her.

Chapter 3. Red Lines

Red Lines — Chapter 3

New Vance City Memorial Hospital. It's where the first infected were brought, and where they locked the doors with everyone still inside.

Red lines are painted across the lobby floor, leading off into the dark.

Bella Ridge: Why are there lines on the floor?

Ander Calloway: Scavengers painted them. Follow the red and you might walk back out.

Bella Ridge: Might.

Ander Calloway: Three rules in here. Stick to the red lines. Don't run. Don't scream.

Bella Ridge: Those are just your rules for everything.

Ander Calloway: Then you already know them.

Bella Ridge: Holt came here every week. He used to bring me back weird stuff. A teapot. A hand made of wire. A little bone bird.

Ander Calloway: He got those from the Walkers?

Bella Ridge: He said they liked him. He said they were like me. I thought he was just being nice.

A long hallway with flickering lights and tipped over beds. Something is coming the other way.

It's three people in rags and gauze, wearing masks of bone and scrap. They walk slowly, close together. Behind them come a dozen shamblers, following like dogs.

FIELD NOTE. SILENT WALKER. They live with the infected, and the infected leave them alone. Nobody knows what they are. They have never said a word.

Bella Ridge: Ander...

Ander Calloway: Don't move. Let them pass.

The Walkers pass close enough to touch. The shamblers pass with them. Not one of them looks at Ander.

The last Walker stops in front of Bella. Its mask tilts, like it's listening to something only it can hear.

Then it walks on.

Bella Ridge: It looked at me.

Ander Calloway: Yeah.

Bella Ridge: Why did it look at me?

Ander Calloway: I don't know. Keep walking.

Bella's datapad crackles again.

Anya Brights: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Calloway. I know you can hear me. That girl's datapad has been talking to our network all night.

Bella Ridge: Okay. That one's on me.

Anya Brights: ◉ ▂▄▆█ You're working for a dead man. Holt was bitten. You know that.

Ander Calloway: I know.

Anya Brights: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Then hear me out. She's the only one we've ever found. One girl, and maybe nobody in this city ever turns again.

Anya Brights: ◉ ▂▄▆█ You'd make that trade if you'd lost someone.

Ander Calloway: I did lose someone.

Ander Calloway: I still wouldn't.

Anya Brights: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Then I'm sorry. For both of you.

The datapad goes quiet. Bella stares at him.

Bella Ridge: You didn't even think about it.

Ander Calloway: Didn't have to.

Bella Ridge: That's the nicest thing anybody's said about me since Holt.

Ander Calloway: Don't make it weird.

Bella Ridge: Too late. It's weird now. You're stuck with it.

The fourth floor. The Quarantine Ward. Rows of beds behind cloudy glass, and at the far end, a pair of steel doors welded shut.

Something on the other side of the welded doors is breathing.

Bella Ridge: Please tell me that's a really big fan.

Ander Calloway: That's not a fan.

Bella Ridge: Okay. Cool. Love that. Where do we go?

Ander Calloway: Holt said the morgue. Stairs are at the end of this ward.

The stairwell door bangs open behind them. Yellow armor, white lights, six rifles.

Anya Brights: ◉ ▂▄▆█ Take the girl alive. Put the hunter down.

Ander Calloway: Get behind the bed. Now!

The Guardians open fire. The noise fills the ward. Behind the welded doors, the breathing stops.

Then the doors come off their hinges.

FIELD NOTE. SHAMBLING HULK. Twelve feet of infected muscle and old metal. Nobody knows who welded it into the Quarantine Ward. Everybody knows why.

The gunfire wakes up whatever was behind the welded doors.

The Guardians get off one volley.

It goes through them like they're made of paper.

It goes through the Guardians like they're made of paper. Then it turns around.

Bella Ridge: It's coming this way. Ander, it's coming this way!

Ander Calloway: Thumper's got one round left.

Bella Ridge: One? Who carries one?

Ander Calloway: The guy who spent the rest getting you out of a stash house.

Ander Calloway: Its mouth. It never closes. I need it coming straight at me, slow, down the middle.

Bella Ridge: Noise. It follows noise. They all follow noise.

Bella Ridge: Okay. I don't have Pip. But I've got a Captain who really loves to talk.

She turns the datapad all the way up. Anya's channel blares out of it, orders and screaming and static at full volume.

Then she slides it down the red line on the floor, straight to Ander's boots.

Bella Ridge: Hey, ugly! The Captain wants a word!

Ander Calloway: Good. Now get down.

Bella puts the Captain's voice on the floor at full volume.

It comes straight down the line, mouth open, just like he wanted.

One round. He doesn't miss.

The Hulk falls. The floor shakes once. Then nothing.

Bella Ridge: You did it. You actually did it.

Ander Calloway: You did the talking.

Bella Ridge: That's two for me.

Ander Calloway: That's not how it works.

Bella Ridge: It's exactly how it works. I'm writing it down.

Then Ander notices the quiet.

Every shambler in the ward has stopped. They stand where they are with their heads down, like somebody switched them off.

Silent Walkers come in from both ends of the ward. Ten. Twenty. More. They fill the aisles between the beds.

Bella Ridge: Ander. Ander, what are they doing?

Ander Calloway: Behind me. Now.

The Walkers stop in a ring around Bella. Then, all at once, they kneel.

Bella Ridge: Why are they doing that? Make them stop doing that.

Ander Calloway: I don't think I can.

One Walker doesn't kneel. He walks forward. He's wearing a faded yellow jacket, torn and wrapped in gauze.

Bella Ridge: No. No, no, no.

Every Walker in the ward kneels to her.

One of them doesn't kneel. He's wearing a yellow jacket.

He takes off the mask.

And for the first time anyone in New Vance City can remember, a Silent Walker speaks.

He lowers the bone mask. His skin is gray and his eyes are clouded. But they're looking right at her.

Bella Ridge: Holt?

Ander Calloway: Bella. Stay back.

The Silent Walkers don't speak. In a year, nobody in New Vance City has heard one of them say a single word.

Frank Holt (Walker): Bella.

Every Walker in the ward lifts its head at once.

Frank Holt (Walker): They've been waiting for you.

End of Part One.

The End — The Last Signal