Chapter Text
The night had been relentless.
At 6:07 a.m., another call lit up her screen. Pauline pressed the headset tight against her ear, fingers flying across the keyboard. Overdose, she guessed. Maybe a seizure. But the woman’s voice told her otherwise, thin and raw, carrying a panic you couldn’t fake. It crawled under her skin and stayed there.
It had been like that all night in the dispatch center. Mondays were usually slow, the kind of shifts where you fought to stay awake. Not this one. Something in the air was off, heavier than usual, like the whole city was holding its breath. Pauline didn’t want to think too hard about it. She just sighed, rubbed the ache from her temple, and slipped off her headset.
Dawn crept across Montreal’s skyline, a pale wash of light blurred by the August haze. Pauline carried her empty mug downstairs, the smell of burnt coffee clinging to the air.
Through the glass wall of the lobby, she spotted a line of police officers striding toward the Command and Information Processing Center. Trailing behind them were soldiers, their boots hitting the pavement in sharp, synchronized rhythm. Too many for a Monday morning.
She gave them a polite nod, but none of them looked her way. Their attention was fixed elsewhere, on things she couldn’t see.
She pulled out her phone, thumb hesitating for a beat before she typed:
I can’t wait to get out of the city. Tonight’s been crazy. Still picking me up at 7 a.m.?
The reply came almost instantly:
Good morning, beautiful. Yeah! I’ll be there.
Back in the dispatch center, the pace hadn’t slowed. Calls stacked up on the monitors, one bleeding into the next. Supervisors hurried past with files clutched to their chests, radios pressed tight to their ears. One of them barked into a phone, scribbling notes with a frown so deep it looked carved into stone.
Pauline leaned toward her colleague, lowering her voice. “Is it just me, or does something feel… off tonight?”
Her coworker let out a sharp breath, eyes flicking between screens. “No kidding. Hospitals are overflowing. There’s a rumor it’s some kind of new virus.” She shrugged, forcing a laugh. “Like Covid all over again.”
Pauline arched a brow. “You’re serious? God, I can’t handle another pandemic.”
Her coworker chuckled, though it sounded thin. “Relax. You know how people love to assume the worst. We’ll be fine.”
Seven o’clock came quicker than she expected. Pauline gathered her things, shut the dispatch door behind her, and rode the elevator down with a knot of fatigue pulling at her shoulders. A text buzzed her phone as the doors slid open.
I’m outside.
William was easy to spot. Leaning against the car, hands tucked in his pockets, his smile already softening the edges of her night. Tall. Familiar. The kind of presence that steadied her without him saying a word.
She crossed the lot, and he met her halfway, wrapping her in an embrace that lingered just long enough to make her exhale for the first time in hours. She kissed him, the smell of his cologne mixing faintly with gasoline from the pumps nearby.
“Did you enjoy your night off?” she asked, voice muffled against his chest.
He chuckled, low and warm. “Hell yeah. Glad I wasn’t stuck in there. Heard last night was wild.”
They slid into the car together, the worn seats creaking under their weight. Their story had been simple enough: a police trainee and a rookie dispatcher, years folding neatly into one another : meeting families, moving in together, adopting a cat. His proposal last winter had been the last bright memory before the world started to feel strange.
Today, they were leaving it all behind, if only for a little while. They were heading to her family’s cottage in eastern Quebec. Rustic. Quiet. A piece of normal in a world that was starting to tilt.
Forty-five minutes later, they were still crawling through the city.
“Traffic’s insane,” William muttered, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He wasn’t exaggerating. Every lane was jammed, cars pressing bumper to bumper as if the entire city had decided to flee at once. Police cruisers darted through the gaps with sirens blaring. An ambulance wailed somewhere behind them, the sound fraying Pauline’s nerves.
The air inside the car felt close, too heavy, like even the city itself was holding its breath.
Pauline fought to keep her eyes open, but exhaustion dragged at her.
“Rest a bit,” William said, softer this time. “We’re at least two hours out.”
She gave a tired nod, leaning her head against the seat. The world blurred at the edges as her eyes closed.
She might have drifted for only a moment, but the sudden roar of engines jolted her awake. Through the windshield, a convoy of military trucks tore past in the opposite lane, their wheels spraying grit against the pavement. The soldiers on board stared straight ahead, grim-faced, rifles slung across their chests. The sight sent a prickle down her spine.
***
Pauline stirred at the sound of her name, a warm hand on her knee. She blinked against the late-morning sun spilling through the windshield.
“We’re at the station,” William said quietly, easing the car to a stop. “Figured I’d top off before we hit the woods.”
Pauline stirred, pushing herself upright and rolling the stiffness from her neck. The air outside was thick with the tang of gasoline and hot asphalt, heat already rising from the pavement in shimmering waves.
The lot looked wrong. Half-abandoned. A few cars sat at crooked angles, as if their drivers had left in a hurry. One still had the driver’s door hanging open, keys dangling from the ignition.
At the far pump, a man stood swaying on his feet, his head lolling side to side like a marionette with a cut string. Across the lot, through the grimy glass of the convenience store, a woman’s voice rose sharp and angry at the cashier. Pauline couldn’t make out the words, but the tone set her teeth on edge.
William opened his door, keeping his voice calm. “I’ll grab us something to eat.”
She nodded, though unease tightened in her chest. Her eyes tracked him across the lot, the heat shimmering around him. When he passed the swaying man, she saw his shoulders tense, the faintest tightening at the corner of his jaw, but he didn’t slow down.
The woman’s voice inside climbed to a sharp, frantic pitch. Pauline leaned forward, squinting through the glass just as a palm slammed against the counter with a crack that carried across the lot.
At the far pump, the swaying man froze. Then his head snapped toward the sound. Too fast, too sharp, his neck twisting at an angle that made her stomach lurch.
He bolted. One moment unsteady, the next charging, arms jerking in a broken rhythm as he tore across the pavement.
Inside the store, the woman vaulted onto the counter. Her body slammed into the cashier, both of them crashing out of sight. Screams ripped through the glass.
The door burst open. William shot out at full sprint, his eyes wide, feet hammering the asphalt. Behind him, the man pivoted and lunged, pounding after him with inhuman speed.
“Pauline!” His voice cracked raw. “Start the car. NOW!”
She fumbled with the keys, trembling fingers slipping once, twice.
Then the woman appeared, stumbling into daylight. Blood slicked her face and hands, dripping down her chin. Her eyes were wild and red, not human.
Pauline’s heartbeat roared in her ears. She got the engine to catch just as William wrenched open the door and dove inside. His hand slammed down on the locks.
The infected hit the car a split second later. The impact shook the frame, bodies hurling against the doors with feral shrieks. The woman smashed her forehead into the passenger window again and again, each crack spiderwebbing the glass further, blood spraying across it.
Pauline hit the gas. Tires screamed. The figures slid off the car, vanishing in the rearview as the road opened up in front of them.
They veered back onto the highway, but the road ahead was no escape. It was worse.
Traffic clogged every lane in both directions, cars jammed nose to bumper. Some had spun sideways across the asphalt; others sat abandoned with their doors yawning open. A haze hung over the scene, faint but acrid, the tang of smoke drifting from somewhere farther down the line.
Between the stranded vehicles, figures moved. Their steps were uneven, bodies lurching as if pulled by strings. Some dragged their feet, heads rolling loose on their shoulders. Others slammed fists into car windows, the sound of rattling glass carrying above the stillness.
Up ahead, Pauline’s breath caught. A man wrenched open the door of a minivan, yanking the screaming driver out by his shirt. The man’s movements were frantic, jerky, as if rage had hollowed him out. Behind the glass of the rear window, a child’s face stared out, palms pressed flat to the pane. Wide, unblinking eyes locked on Pauline as she crept the car forward.
Her foot hovered over the brake, panic surging up her throat.
William’s hand shot out, clamping onto her arm. His voice was low but hard as iron.
“Don’t stop. Keep driving.”
They crawled the car past wrecks and abandoned vehicles, weaving carefully between the twisted lines of traffic. Pauline forced herself not to look too long at the bodies sprawled across the asphalt, or at the way some of them still twitched.
Eventually, William guided her off the main road and onto a smaller one, then another, each turn carrying them deeper into the countryside. The further they drove, the quieter it became, until the only sound was the steady rattle of gravel beneath the tires.
At last, the forest closed in around them. The road narrowed to a rough trail, the canopy so thick it swallowed most of the sunlight. Pauline gripped the wheel tight, her eyes flicking constantly between the shadows. Every bend felt like it might reveal another horror.
When the cottage finally appeared through the trees, she exhaled for what felt like the first time in hours.
William’s hand touched her arm. “Wait here,” he murmured. He slipped out of the car, moving slow and careful. She watched him circle to the trunk, retrieve a shovel, and cross to the porch.
Pauline sat frozen in the driver’s seat, sweat dampening her hairline, her chest rising and falling in shallow bursts.
William vanished inside. For a long moment, nothing.
Then he reappeared in the doorway, lifting a hand. A thumbs-up.
Her lungs emptied in a rush. She shut off the engine and climbed out, her legs shaky beneath her. The woods pressed in close, the air cool and damp, smelling of pine and soil. She glanced back once at the gravel road, at the silent world beyond it before eventually following him inside.
The door closed, and with it, the life she had known.