The streets looked like they had been abandoned in a hurry.
Cars sat crooked in the middle of the road, some with their doors still open. A few motorcycles had been knocked over, their metal frames scraping against the pavement whenever the wind pushed them slightly.
Smoke drifted lazily through the air from somewhere far away, turning the late afternoon sky into a dull gray haze.
Not far from one of the narrow streets near Taft Avenue, a small neighborhood bar stood with its front windows shattered and chairs overturned.
Inside the bar, the groans of the infected echoed between the walls.
Eight of them now.
Only eight!!!!
But that was still eight too many.
Behind the counter and past a narrow hallway sat the storeroom, the only place left in the building where the living still breathed.
Inside the cramped room were seven people.
Two of them were brothers.
The older one, Rafael Cruz, stood near the door with a broken pool cue in his hand. At twenty-three, Rafael had the kind of build that came from years of physical work and street basketball with friends. His shoulders were broad, his arms toned, and a faint scar ran along the edge of his right cheek from a childhood accident. His dark hair was messy now, sweat clinging to his forehead as he kept one eye on the door.
Beside him sat his younger brother, Diego Cruz.
At twenty, Diego looked leaner than Rafael, but there was a sharpness in his eyes that showed he wasn't weak. His black hair hung slightly over his forehead, and a small cut above his eyebrow had dried into a thin streak of blood earlier in the chaos.
Right now he was gripping a metal pipe he had found earlier, his fingers tight around it.
Not because he was brave, with hell with that.
He was terrified.
The rest of the group filled the remaining space in the storeroom.
Two men sat against the far wall, whispering to each other nervously. One of them held a baseball bat while the other clutched a kitchen knife so tightly his knuckles had turned white.
Next to them were two women who looked like they had barely stopped crying since the outbreak began.
And near a shelf stacked with liquor boxes were the two bar attendants who had worked here earlier that morning before the world turned upside down.
Everyone in the room listened to the sounds coming from the other side of the wall.
They heard slow footsteps.
Dragging feet, with occasional low groans.
One of the infected bumped into a table outside, causing a loud scrape.
Diego flinched immediately.
"Man…" he whispered under his breath, rubbing his face. "I swear those things are everywhere."
Rafael kept his eyes on the door.
"Quiet."
Diego nodded and leaned back against the crate behind him.
The smell of alcohol and dust filled the small room.
It had only been a few hours since everything started.
Only a few hours since Rafael and Diego had been walking back toward their neighborhood.
Their plan had been simple.
Go home and make sure Mela and Mami were safe.
But somewhere along the way the screaming started.
Then the running and the attacks from others.
They had barely managed to dive into this bar when the first infected appeared on the street.
And once they were inside…
The bar filled quickly with people rushing in.
Now the main room was crawling with the infected.
Or it had been.
Until the explosion happened.
Even now Rafael could still feel the faint ringing in his ears from the blast earlier.
Somewhere outside down the street, something had exploded with enough force to shake the entire building.
When the smoke cleared, several of the infected outside had been torn apart by the blast.
The ones inside the bar had stumbled around in confusion afterward.
Now only eight remained.
Eight slow-moving figures wandering through the broken tables and chairs.
Diego peeked through the small crack in the storeroom door.
He quickly pulled back again.
"They're still there."
"Of course they are," Rafael said quietly.
One of the men sitting against the wall spoke up.
"So what do we do now?"
His voice trembled slightly.
Rafael looked at the group.
"We wait."
"How long?" one of the women asked.
"Until we have a chance."
The man with the baseball bat frowned.
"We can't stay in this room forever."
"No," Rafael agreed. "But running out there blindly will get us killed."
Diego leaned forward slightly.
"What if we sneak past them?"
Everyone looked at him.
Diego shrugged nervously.
"There's only eight left. If they're spread out…"
The second bar attendant shook his head.
"They're not that slow when they see you."
Silence fell over the room again.
Then suddenly—