David's hands shook on the steering wheel. His heart hammered against his ribs like it was trying to break free and run away without him.

  That thing was still out there. Where there was one monster, there would be more.

  He forced himself to drive at a steady pace, weaving around abandoned cars which were more frequent here on the main road. His eyes darted to every shadow and alley and he felt a fresh spurt of terror seeing each slumped driver terrified they would start moving.

  The engine noise felt deafeningly loud in the apocalyptic silence. Like broadcasting his location to every nightmare that used to be somebody's pet, or even worse something formerly an actual person.

  The phone in his lap continued its endless ringing. State police. Someone had to answer eventually. Someone had to be manning emergency services somewhere in this dead world.

  "Come on, come on..." David muttered through gritted teeth.

  His speedometer crept higher as panic fought with self-preservation. Driving too fast meant losing control. Driving too slow meant giving that creature time to catch up. Or find friends.

  Ring. Ring. Ring.

  The sound mocked him with each repetition. How many rings had it been now? Twenty? Thirty? When did you give up hope that anyone was left to answer?

  David's reflection in the rearview mirror looked pale and wild-eyed. His shirt clung to his back with cold sweat.

  He looked like a survivor. He felt like prey.

  The ringing stopped.

  Not answered. Just... stopped. The screen showed "Call Failed" in cruel digital certainty.

  "No, no, NO!" David stabbed the redial button frantically and nearly losing control of the car at the same time. "Signal Searching" appeared where the bars used to be.

  He'd driven out of coverage. Back into the dead zone that seemed to blanket most of the city.

  The phone clattered into the passenger seat as David gripped the wheel with both hands. His breathing came in short, sharp gasps that fogged the windshield. The car drifted toward the shoulder as his vision tunneled.

  Pull over. He needed to pull over before he crashed and became monster food.

  David forced himself to stop the car next to a row of dense multifamily houses. Normal houses with fences or railings separating their little bit of land from the sidewalk. Places where normal people used to live normal lives before the world went insane.

  He sat there shaking, engine idling, trying to get his breathing under control.

  Think. He needed to think his way through this like he always did. Panic was just another problem to analyze and solve.

  Facts: Monsters were real. Emergency services weren't responding. He was alone in a city full of things that wanted to eat him.

  More facts: He had transportation, supplies, and one possible lead. The Herald. The alien entity that had promised help to anyone who could reach its beacon.

  David lifted his head and searched the skyline. There. The pillar of light stabbed down into the city like a divine spotlight, maybe a mile or two away now. Close enough to reach. Close enough to matter.

  For the first time since the creature attack, he had a destination that wasn't just "away from here."

  The shaking in his hands began to subside. His analytical mind clicked into gear, pushing aside the animal terror that had nearly overwhelmed him.

  He could do this. He could reach that light. He just had to be smart about it.

  David put the car back in drive and pulled onto the road, heading toward whatever answers waited at that impossible pillar of light.

  It wasn’t long before David hit his first major obstacle.

  The bus sat twisted across the intersection like a beached whale. His bus. The same faded yellow and white vehicle he'd ridden to work every morning for the past two years. Now piled up against a storefront, a broken fire hydrant spraying glittering water into the air and feeding a small lake that encompassed the bus and didn’t seem to be draining.

  The hydrant erupted like an urban geyser, sending thousands of gallons of water cascading over the crumpled front end. Water shot into the air and fell like artificial rain, fat drops hammering into the striken bus and splashing into the shallow lake.

  David sat frozen behind the wheel, staring at blockage. The rear of the bus still displayed it’s details. Route 47. Financial District.

  His commute. His normal, boring, everyday commute.

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  Through the spray and steam, he could see shapes inside the bus.

  It was hard with all the water to make out details. Were they moving?

  David's analytical mind kicked in despite his horror. Even as early as he got up the bus filled up. He would expect it to be half-full at least on a normal day. He might even recognize a regular, the cute girl who worked at Starbucks or the older guy who always tried to read a physical newspaper when everyone else was on their phones.

  All of them would still be in there.

  The water continued its relentless assault on the vehicle, obscuring the inside as it ran down the windows.

  David gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. He couldn't just sit here. Those people needed help. A traitorous part of his mind also whispered if one of them is OK maybe they help you…

  He rolled forward until the car was closer, almost in the spray trying to see more clearly. Peering forward he could make out shadows against several windows. People, though far fewer than he expected. He stopped reminding himself that anyone who didn’t mute their phone all night hadn’t been having a typical morning even before being struck down by mana.

  Now he was looking closely he could see greenish stains on several windows, the goo he associated with transformation. With water running down the outside of the bus subtle movement was impossible to see but nobody was moving inside.

  David felt his gorge rise, those few who were there were probably beyond help. He had to remind himself that they had been there for two days. Without information or medical training what could he do? He looked at the front of the bus buried in the front of a dress shop. No way that door was coming open. Then he looked at the back door, that looked fine. He just had to get wet.

  David cursed to himself “Dammit David! There are monsters out there, why are you thinking about looking for survivors in this bus when you ignored all the cars up to now?”

  Of course, he knew the answer. The analytical part of his brain supplying it silently; that’s your bus. He could wrap it in bullshit, cost to benefit, SWOT or some other framework but really it was the emotional connection.

  Swearing to himself he got out of the car, leaving the engine running, and immediately swore “What the hell!”

  The water was ankle deep and cold.

  David's heart jumped. Why didn’t I expect that? Of course the water is cold.

  Slogging through the water he was rapidly soaked by the spray from the hydrant as he approached the door.

  He pressed his face against the door's window, trying to see inside before opening it. No movement, the inside of the bus seemed intact. He could see half a dozen people; four engulfed in the discolored greenish slime that signaled transformation. Two utterly still and with that pallor you associated with corpses on cop shows.

  He tried to open the door, but the doors didn’t give. Looking round he saw a panel to the left of the door labelled ‘emergency release’, popping it revealed a handle and a swift tug caused a thunk as the doors cracked open.

  Now when he pressed the doors swung back into the bus and he was hit by the smell, a horrible mixture of different kinds of decay. There was a putrid rotting smell, reminding him of the time a mouse caught by his college roommates cat crawled under the fridge to die. Worse, there was that almost vegetal, silage like smell he encountered at the CVS. Only much stronger.

  Gagging David pulled himself up onto the bus, hearing the pounding of water on the roof and an odd familiar murmuring. He was met with devastation. Six passengers, one driver at the front.

  The worst smell came from the driver. There was a large reddish brown stain on the front windscreen and they were crumpled over in the driving compartment. The passengers were all thrown forward hanging over the seats in front of them and now he was inside he could see three were at the ‘wet and bulging’ stage of transformation while one was encased in a hardened greenish chrysalis. The last two where too still and pale, dead.

  Worse the murmuring noise was louder, clearer, he could almost hear words.

  He stopped, heart rate spiking. The last time that happened it had meant zombies. He needed help, needed to help if he could. This was beyond him.

  Fighting back tears at the horror in such a familiar place David turned and fled, splashing back to the car.

  David's hands trembled as he climbed back into the car, water squelching in his shoes with every movement.

  He'd failed. At least it felt that way. Like he had left seven familiar strangers to die, even though their fates were decided long before he arrived and pushed open a damn door.

  The engine turned over with mechanical indifference to his moral failure. David reversed away from the flooded intersection, tires spinning slightly on the slick asphalt. In his mirror, the bus grew smaller but never disappeared entirely from his conscience.

  "I'll come back," he said to his reflection. "I'll find help and come back."

  The words tasted like lies.

  David turned off the main road, following smaller streets that curved away from the disaster behind him. His wet clothes clung to his skin, and the car's heater couldn't seem to penetrate the chill that had settled into his bones. He didn’t dare open the windows to let warm summer air in.

  The pillar of light loomed larger now, close enough that it should hurt his eyes given how visible it was during the day. Whatever technology created that beacon, it didn’t which made no sense. The light didn't behave right. Too constant in brightness as he drew nearer.

  His new route took him through a residential area that looked disturbingly normal. Houses with small neat patches of grass or shrubs outside. Cars parked in driveways. Easier going with no crashed cars out on the road.

  The mundane details felt surreal after the horror of the bus. How could garbage collection schedules and mortgage payments matter when people were dissolving into green slime?

  Still he worked towards the pillar of light cursing the occasional cul-de-sac forcing him to reroute.

  The base of the pillar was in a park. It appeared around a bend in the road, small, maybe three city blocks total, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence that had probably looked elegant when the neighborhood was first developed.

  Trees lined the interior, blocking most of his view, but he could see enough to know he'd found his destination. The pillar of light didn't actually touch the ground. Instead, it emerged from a dome of the same impossible luminescence, maybe forty meters across, that sat in the park's center like a giant soap bubble.

  David circled the perimeter slowly, looking for vehicle access. Nothing. The park had been designed for pedestrians, with narrow gates and bollards positioned to keep cars out.

  He'd have to go in on foot. Again.

  David parked next to a line of metal bollards, positioning the car for a quick escape. The dome pulsed gently through the trees, casting shifting shadows that played tricks on his peripheral vision.

  He could hear something now that the engine was off. A low humming that seemed to come from everywhere at once, like standing inside a massive tuning fork. Not unpleasant, but definitely not natural.

  David shouldered his backpack and checked that the car keys were secure in his pocket. Whatever lay inside that dome of light, he had no choice but to find out.

  He walked through the park gates toward answers he wasn't sure he wanted to hear.