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It whispered.
Briar tried to place the sound, and she decided, now that she’d heard it again and could be certain she hadn’t imagined it, that it came from somewhere to her left, down toward the wall. It was coming from the street stalls where nothing had been bought or sold in almost sixteen years.
The whisper rose to a hum, and then stopped.
Briar stopped too—or she would have, if she hadn’t already. She wanted to freeze herself further, to make herself inaudible and invisible, but there was nowhere to hide—not in her immediate range of vision. The deep old stalls were behind her. All the doors were barred with boards nailed tight around them, and all the windows had likewise been covered. The corner of a stone building pressed against her shoulder when she leaned away from the market.
The noise stopped.
This new kind of quiet was even more frightening than the old kind, which was simply empty. Now it was worse, because the foggy, cluttered landscape was not merely silent. Now it was holding its breath, and listening.
Briar removed her left hand from the rifle and reached backward until she touched the corner. Finding it, and feeling it, she guided herself to the far side of the building. It was no real protection, but it put her out of the market’s line of sight.
The mask was squeezing tight around her face. The condensation on one side was driving her to distraction, and the smell of rubber and toast clogged her throat.
She needed to sneeze, but she chewed on her tongue until the feeling passed.
Around the corner, the whispered wheeze rustled through the calm.
It halted, then began again, louder. And then it was joined by a second hacking gasp, and a third, and then there were too many to count.
Briar wanted to crush her eyes closed and hide from the noises, but she couldn’t even take a moment to peer around the side of the building to see what was making the cacophony, because it was escalating. There was nothing she could do but run.
The middle of the road was mostly clear, so she took it, weaving between the overturned carts and leaping past slabs of earthquake-loosened walls that had collapsed into the road.
Silence was no longer an option.
Briar’s feet smacked against the bricks and her rifle slapped up and down on her hip as she charged downhill, even though she’d meant to go the other direction. She couldn’t run uphill; she didn’t have enough air to struggle any harder. So down, then. Down the hill but not—she thought in a flickering moment of hope—strictly the wrong direction. She was running alongside the wall, and alongside the water behind it. Commercial would go down, yes—but it flanked the hill all the same and she could follow it as far as she needed.
She risked a glance, and then a second glance, and then she stopped trying, because she’d been terribly, terribly wrong—and they were coming in fast.
Those two quick looks had told her everything she needed to know: Run, and for heaven’s sake, don’t stop.
They were not quite on her heels. They were rounding the corner in a loping, ludicrous hobble that was shockingly fast despite the awkward gait. More naked than clothed, and more gray than the proper color of living flesh, the rotters pressed a rollicking lurch that tumbled in a wave. They rolled forward, over everything, past everything, around everything that might have otherwise slowed them down.
Without fear and without pain, they beat their ragged bodies against the litter in the street and bounced away from it, not deterred and not redirected. They smashed through water-weakened wood and stomped through the corpses of animals, and if any other rotters tripped or fell they crawled a vicious assault over the bodies of their own.
Briar remembered all too well those first sad, shambling people who’d been poisoned by the Blight. Most of the victims had died outright, but a few had lingered—and they’d groaned, and gasped, and consumed. They had no other thoughts beyond consuming, and they wished for nothing but fresh, bloody flesh. Animals would suffice. People were preferred, insomuch as the rotters had any preference for anything.
And right then, they had no preference for anything but Briar.
The first time she’d taken a backward look, she’d seen four. The second time, a half moment later, she’d seen eight. God only knew how many were on her tail by the time she’d reached the next road down.
She stumbled over a curb and hit the walkway running.
In passing, she saw a line of tall letters engraved into the surface of the sidewalk, but she was moving too quickly to read it so she didn’t know which cross street she’d passed. It didn’t matter. The cross street was heading up the hill, and she never would have made it.
Her air was already too low, from even such a short and incline-assisted flight. Her throat was burning from the stress of it, and she had no idea how long she could continue. Her slim lead shrank as she dodged and ducked through the fog.
A narrow iron pole zipped past her vision, followed closely by a second one.
It was a ladder for a fire escape, or so she realized only when it was entirely too late to grab it and begin climbing.
She couldn’t decide if the missed opportunity was just as well or not. It might only exhaust her further, trying to rise so drastically above the fray; but then again, it might have saved her. Could the rotters follow her up?
The gargling gasps of their furious hunger hit closer to Briar’s ears, and she knew they were gaining ground. It wasn’t only that they were quick. It was that she was slowing, and there was nothing she could do to move herself harder. Try as she might, she couldn’t pant or puff, and there was only so much escaping she could do.
The mist never parted, but it thinned in spots and thickened in others. For one revealing second the side of another building came into view and another iron ladder blinked into range.
