Ring… Ring…
Nothing.
Ring… Ring…
Still nothing.
"Why hasn't he answered the phone yet?"
Emily Miller's hands trembled slightly as she held her cell phone, staring at the screen as if sheer willpower could make the call connect. Her thumb hovered over the redial button, pressing it again and again with increasingly desperate urgency.
The phone continued its useless ritual—ringing twice before cutting to the automated message.
"Your call cannot be completed as dialed."
Ethan… where are you?
Around her, the terminal had descended into pure, unfiltered chaos.
Screaming passengers ran in every direction, their voices blending into a cacophony of terror that echoed off the high ceilings of O'Hare International Airport. Children cried for their parents. Adults shoved each other aside in blind panic. Luggage lay abandoned everywhere, creating obstacle courses that people tripped over in their haste to escape.
Alarms blared throughout the building—fire alarms, security alarms, emergency alerts—all wailing their warnings into air already thick with fear and the smell of blood.
And in the distance, cutting through everything else like punctuation marks of death, came the sound of gunshots.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Airport security, presumably, trying to contain the outbreak.
It wasn't working.
Emily had watched it happen—watched the initial outbreak spread like wildfire through the arrivals hall. Most people didn't die from the zombies directly. No, they were trampled to death in the panic. Crushed underfoot by hundreds of terrified travelers trying to escape through exits that quickly became bottlenecks of death.
The infected had simply needed to bite one or two people to trigger a stampede that killed dozens more.
Efficient. Terrifying. Devastating.
Fortunately, Emily had reacted fast.
Years of studying human psychology had taught her to recognize crowd dynamics, to see when panic was about to turn into a deadly stampede. The moment she'd seen the first signs—the screaming, the initial surge of movement—she had made her decision.
Up. Get to higher ground. Away from the crowd.
She'd rushed up to the third floor before the main horde of zombies—and more importantly, before the main horde of panicking humans—had reached it.
There were fewer people here.
And crucially, fewer zombies.
The third floor was primarily restaurants and airline lounges—spaces that had been relatively empty on a Saturday morning. Most of the foot traffic had been concentrated on the arrivals level and the departure gates on the second floor.
That meant this floor was more defensible. More survivable.
At least for now, Emily thought grimly, her analytical mind already working through possibilities and probabilities.
She stood near the railing overlooking the chaos below, her red dress standing out starkly against the neutral tones of the airport interior. Her long brown hair was slightly disheveled now, no longer the perfect picture of composure she'd maintained earlier.
But her eyes—those sharp, intelligent eyes—were still alert, still scanning, still analyzing every detail of her surroundings.
"Quick! Block the stairs! There are more of them coming up!"
Emily's voice rang out clearly, cutting through the ambient noise. She pointed toward the escalator entrance where she could see movement—shambling figures starting to make their way up from the floor below.
Several people near her turned at the sound of her voice, their faces showing varying degrees of shock and confusion.
One man—tall, broad-shouldered, wearing an airport security uniform that marked him as someone with authority—looked where she was pointing. His eyes widened fractionally as he processed what he was seeing.
Then his military training kicked in.
"Move! Now!" the man barked, his voice carrying the unmistakable tone of command that made people obey without thinking.
He was already in motion, his movements efficient and purposeful as he strode toward the escalator entrance.
The man—his name tag read Jack Reynolds—nodded sharply at Emily in acknowledgment before turning his attention to the frightened airport staff scattered around the third floor.
"You! You! And you!" Jack pointed at three security officers who looked shell-shocked but still functional. "Get over here! We need to block this entrance before those things make it up here!"
The security officers hesitated for only a moment before responding to the authority in Jack's voice. They hurried over, their faces pale but determined.
"What do we use?" one of them asked, looking around frantically.
"Anything heavy!" Jack was already pushing a vending machine, his muscles straining as the heavy metal box scraped across the floor. "Vending machines, chairs, luggage carts—I don't care if you have to rip out the toilets! Block this entrance!"
The other survivors—those who hadn't completely frozen in panic—began to help.
Together, they pushed heavy vending machines toward the escalator entrance. The machines were massive, filled with drinks and snacks, weighing several hundred pounds each. But adrenaline and fear gave people strength they didn't know they had.
Chairs from the nearby restaurants were dragged over—the metal ones that were bolted to the floor had to be left, but the wooden ones and plastic ones came free easily enough.
Even a luggage cart—one of those massive industrial ones that airline staff used to transport bags—was commandeered and pushed into position.
Within minutes, they'd created a makeshift barricade across the top of the escalator entrance.
It wasn't pretty. It wasn't sophisticated. But it was solid.
The first zombie to reach the third floor—a man in a pilot's uniform, his face gray and his neck torn open—stumbled into the barricade and couldn't figure out how to get past it. He pushed at the vending machine uselessly, his dead brain unable to solve the simple problem of climbing over or going around.
More infected began to pile up behind him, creating a growing mass of undead bodies pressing against the barrier.
But it held.
For now, at least, it held.
"Good work," Jack said, breathing hard from the exertion. He surveyed their improvised fortification with a critical eye, already looking for weak points.
Thankfully, in places like O'Hare International Airport, the escalators were the main access to upper floors. The architects had designed it that way intentionally—to control foot traffic, to direct the flow of passengers through security checkpoints and retail areas.
There was still a fire exit on the far side of the floor—a concrete stairwell required by building codes—but Jack had already sent two of his men to block it with benches and luggage carts.
"Check the other access points!" Jack ordered. "Any stairs, any elevators still running—I want them sealed or monitored!"
His team scattered to follow orders, their movements showing the muscle memory of people who'd been trained to respond to crisis situations.
Jack finally allowed himself a moment to breathe, turning to look back at Emily.
His eyes—sharp and assessing—studied her for a long moment. He was clearly trying to figure her out. Young woman in a red dress, standing there calmly while everyone else panicked. Smart enough to recognize the danger and warn others. Composed enough to speak clearly in a crisis.
Who was she?
"Thanks for the heads up," Jack said finally, his voice gruff but genuine. "Would've been bad if we didn't seal that entrance in time."
Emily nodded, her expression remaining cool and collected despite the circumstances. "It seemed like the logical precaution."
Jack Reynolds was clearly ex-military—Emily could read it in every line of his body language, in the way he stood, in the way he gave orders and expected them to be obeyed. Probably Marines, given his age and bearing. Now working airport security after retirement, using his skills in a civilian context.
When the outbreak had begun, he'd reacted immediately.
While others had panicked or frozen or run, Jack had moved with purpose. He'd rounded up whatever security officers he could find—the ones who hadn't fled, hadn't been bitten, hadn't succumbed to shock—and had systematically begun eliminating the zombies on the third floor.
Room by room, bathroom by bathroom, storage closet by storage closet, they'd cleared the area.
And crucially, he'd isolated the bitten.
Anyone who'd been attacked but was still alive had been separated from the main group immediately. Jack had seen enough combat to know that infection spread fast, that compassion could get everyone killed.
It had been brutal. Necessary. And effective.
Now, just as he was catching his breath, allowing himself a moment to think beyond the immediate crisis, one of his men called out.
"Captain! You'd better come see this!"
The title was informal—Jack wasn't actually a captain anymore, hadn't been for years—but old habits died hard among military men.
Jack's jaw tightened. The tone in his subordinate's voice told him this wasn't good news.
Emily followed as Jack hurried over, her curiosity overriding her instinct to maintain distance. Her heels clicked rapidly against the airport floor, the sound somehow still audible despite the ambient chaos.
They found the scene in the corner of one of the airline lounges.
A United Airlines executive lounge, specifically—one of those premium spaces with comfortable leather chairs, complimentary food and drinks, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the runway.
Now it looked like a field hospital. Or a morgue in waiting.
In the corner sat five or six people—all injured, all clearly bitten. Their clothes were torn and bloodstained. Their skin had taken on a grayish pallor that looked wrong in the harsh fluorescent lighting.
And they were deteriorating rapidly.
All of them were pale, their skin slick with cold sweat despite the warmth of the terminal. They trembled violently, their bodies wracked with shivers that came from somewhere deep inside, some fundamental wrongness in their biology.
It had been barely twenty minutes since they'd been bitten.
Twenty minutes.
Yet already their eyes were changing—the whites taking on a reddish tinge, the pupils dilating until almost no iris remained visible.
Their veins bulged black beneath their skin, creating dark spiderweb patterns that spread outward from their bite wounds.
And their mouths… their mouths frothed with a foul-smelling substance that was part saliva, part something else. Something that smelled like rot and copper and wrong.
The other survivors—more than twenty people who'd made it to the third floor—stood several feet away, pressed against the far wall of the lounge. They whispered anxiously among themselves, their voices low and frightened.
Even those who knew the bitten victims personally—family members, traveling companions—didn't dare approach.
Fear had created an invisible barrier as solid as the physical one blocking the escalators.
Jack's expression darkened as he took in the scene.
He had suspected infection would spread fast—had prepared himself mentally for the possibility—but seeing it firsthand hit differently.
The way their bodies twitched. The sounds they made—not quite human anymore, not quite animal, something in between and worse than either.
Their breathing was ragged and wet, their chests heaving with the effort of drawing air into lungs that were failing.
They were almost gone already.
Twenty minutes, Jack thought grimly. From bite to transformation in twenty minutes. That's faster than any disease I've ever seen.
"What's happening to them?"