[ DAMIAN ]

  "I am not leaving it," Theo-3 said.

  The herd was still moving toward the side street. Twenty seconds maybe. The entrance was open. Everything in me that had kept me alive for seven years was saying the same thing it always said in moments like this.

  Move. Now. While you still can.

  I looked at the entrance.

  I looked at the dog.

  It was still standing at the end of the side street watching us. Ribs showing beneath matted fur. One rear leg was held slightly off the ground, not putting weight on it, trembling faintly with the effort of keeping itself upright anyway. Ears forward. Eyes on us with that particular animal clarity that doesn't know how to be anything except honest.

  It had been alone in this city.

  For however long it had been alone in this city.

  I looked at the entrance one more time.

  "Fine," I said. "Go. Fast."

  Theo-3 was already moving.

  I came up from behind the car and followed, keeping low, eyes on the nearest edge of the herd. The dog saw us coming, and its ears went back, not in aggression or fear. And it took one step backward on three legs, and I thought it was going to bolt, and then Theo-3 crouched down in front of it and did something I hadn't seen him do before.

  He went still. Completely still. Hands open at his sides. Amber eyes dimmed slightly, softened somehow, and he just waited. Patient and quiet and completely unthreatening in a way that seemed almost impossible for something his size.

  The dog looked at him.

  Theo-3 waited.

  The dog took one step forward. Sniffed at his outstretched hand. Then another step.

  "We need to go," I said.

  "I know, sir," Theo-3 said, not moving. "One moment."

  The herd had heard the bark and was drifting our way now. I could see the nearest ones turning, that synchronised head tilt, signals being processed.

  "Theo."

  "I have it, sir."

  He scooped the dog up in both arms carefully, with one arm under its chest and one supporting its hindquarters, keeping the injured leg free of pressure. The dog made a sound, not quite a whimper, something smaller than that, and then went still against Theo-3's chest like it had made a decision.

  The nearest infected was thirty metres away.

  "Run," I said.

  We ran.

  [ NARRATOR ]

  Thirty metres became twenty, then ten, in the time it took the herd to fully register the signal and redirect.

  They were fast when they had something to move toward. Faster than the slow drifting suggested. The nearest ones broke into a lurching run that covered ground with horrible efficiency, broken bodies moving in ways bodies weren't designed to move, the sound of them filling the open street behind Damian and Theo-3 like something being poured.

  Damian hit the entrance plaza first.

  The fire extinguisher was mounted on the wall beside the escalator housing exactly where he had seen it from behind the car. Red. Full. He grabbed it without breaking stride, turned, pulled the pin and swung it hard across the face of the nearest infected.

  The impact connected with a sound that echoed off the station walls and the infected went down sideways and Damian was already moving again, back toward the entrance, buying meters.

  More coming.

  Too many.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  His eyes found the fire hose reel mounted on the opposite wall. Glass fronted. He drove his elbow through the glass, grabbed the hose, turned the valve.

  Water hit the front of the herd like a wall.

  Not enough to stop them. Not nearly enough. But enough to slow the nearest ones, enough to break their footing on the smooth plaza tiles, enough to create four seconds of chaos in the leading edge of the herd where there had been momentum.

  Four seconds.

  "DAMIAN."

  Theo-3's voice from inside the station, still carrying the dog, with one hand already on the emergency shutter panel mounted beside the escalator. The shutter was coming down, slow at first, then faster, the heavy grille descending from the ceiling of the entrance housing.

  The herd found its footing again.

  Damian dropped the hose and ran.

  [ DAMIAN ]

  The shutter was at chest height when I reached it.

  One infected right behind me, close enough that I could hear it, that dragging irregular footfall that I was going to be hearing in my sleep for the rest of my life. I dropped to one knee and drove my elbow back hard into whatever part of it was closest and felt the impact register and didn't look at what I'd hit and went flat and rolled under the shutter with approximately two centimetres to spare.

  The shutter hit the ground.

  The sound of the herd on the other side was immediate and wrong, hands on metal, bodies pressing, that patient relentless pushing of things that didn't understand the concept of a door being closed against them.

  I lay on the floor of Outram Park MRT station on my back, staring at the ceiling.

  The ceiling was dark. Emergency lighting only, strips of pale yellow running along the floor level, casting everything in a dim underlit glow. The escalators had stopped moving. The ticket barriers were frozen mid-operation. The screens above the platforms were dark.

  But it was quiet.

  The herd outside was muffled by the shutter. The station absorbed the sound and returned silence.

  I started laughing.

  I don't know exactly when it started. Somewhere between lying on the floor and realising I was actually still alive after sliding under a closing shutter like something from a film I would have called unrealistic. It came up from somewhere, and it was genuine, and it was the first time in as long as I could remember that something had come up from that place that wasn't anger or grief or the particular cold nothing of soldier mode.

  It wasn't a good situation. We were in an unknown tunnel with a herd outside and four frequency devices and an injured dog.

  It was also genuinely the stupidest thing I had done since waking up from a coma, and I found I couldn't stop laughing about it.

  [ THEO-3 ]

  I was in the process of assessing the dog's injured leg when Damian began laughing.

  I looked up.

  He was lying on the station floor, looking at the ceiling, laughing. Not the almost-smile I had been noting and filing since Day 143. Actual laughing. The kind that takes up the whole face and doesn't ask permission first.

  I found I had no adequate response to this so I simply watched for a moment.

  "Sir," I said.

  "I know," he said, still laughing.

  "You slid under a closing shutter."

  "I know."

  "With approximately—"

  "I know, Theo."

  I considered this. "It was quite impressive actually," I said.

  He laughed harder.

  I looked back down at the dog. It was lying across my lap now, the injured rear leg extended, watching Damian with its ears forward and its head tilted at approximately the same angle I tilted mine when something required processing.

  I examined the leg carefully. No break that I could detect. A deep laceration on the outer thigh, partly dried, partly not. Probably a few days old based on the wound condition. It had been managing on three legs for at least that long.

  It had been managing on three legs alone in a city full of infected for at least that long.

  I found I had a feeling about this that I also could not fully categorise. I was having many of those lately.

  "It needs cleaning and dressing," I said. "I have supplies."

  Damian had stopped laughing. He sat up, ran a hand over his face, and looked across at us. The dog looked back at him. The moment stretched between them, a man who had been alone inside his own head for five months and an animal that had been alone in an empty city for approximately the same amount of time, recognizing something in each other across the dim emergency lighting of an underground station.

  Damian looked at the collar.

  Worn brown leather. A small metal tag. He leaned forward and turned it toward the light.

  The name was almost completely faded. Letters that had been stamped into the metal worn smooth by time and weather and whatever the dog had been through. Almost nothing left.

  Almost.

  "Echo," Damian said quietly.

  The dog's ears moved.

  Just slightly. The particular movement of an animal hearing something it recognised from a life that no longer existed, responding to it anyway out of something older than memory.

  Damian looked at it for a long moment.

  "Okay," he said. "Echo."

  [ THEO-3 ]

  Personal Log. Day 154. 07:43 hours.

  We are inside Outram Park MRT station. The emergency shutter is secured. The herd outside is audible but cannot breach.

  The dog's leg has been cleaned and dressed with supplies from the pack. The laceration was significant but manageable. I have improvised a light bandage. It will need monitoring.

  The dog's collar has a name tag. The name is almost entirely faded, but Damian read it as 'Echo'. The dog responded to this name. I have logged the dog's name as Echo.

  Echo is currently lying between us in the station concourse with her chin on Damian's knee. He has not moved his knee. I do not think he is going to move his knee.

  I want to note for the record that I am very glad we went back for her.

  I am also very glad Damian went back for her even though he did not want to. He has not acknowledged this. I have not mentioned it. I think this is correct.

  Ahead of us the tunnel entrance is dark. The East West Line going west. Tiong Bahru. Redhill. And beyond that, everything we cannot see yet.

  We have four frequency devices. One injured dog. One recovering soldier. And approximately fourteen kilometres of tunnel between us and Jurong.

  I find I am less afraid of what is ahead than I expected to be.

  Perhaps it is because we are three now instead of two.

  End log.

  End of Chapter 7