[SFT]: Unsolutioned

Chapter 2

New York City, Meatpacking District

Just around sunset

Jackson angled to the left and jumped over a pile of rubble. Slick sweat running down his temples, he shouted behind him. "Ira, cut west, cut west!" They had to get home.

"Okay!" The pot-bellied figure that ran a few feet behind him huffed and puffed along. He heaved between labored breaths. "Don't lose me, Jackson!"

Twenty feet behind the pair, a dark shape thumped along, cutting through the bits of broken furniture and concrete along the darkening street. Ahead of them, a three-storey building with two standing walls loomed into view on their left. The two men no longer had any breath left to talk to each other. They knew very well what they had to do.

Sliding onto a side street lined with fallen bricks, Jackson took a moment to help his hapless friend over a splintered desk, and the two of them continued to sprint at full speed towards the abandoned building. The creature behind them was gaining ground, crashing straight through the desk they had just hurdled.

Jackson got to the building first and fell to his knees on the street next to one of the walls that still stood. He pounded his fist on a heavy metal door on the ground, frantically jamming a button. He screamed, "It's Jackson! Let us in! Let us in!" Glancing behind him, he saw Ira falter and stumble. "Shit! Ira!" Ira regained his footing, stumbling forward as the creature behind him closed in.

To his left, Jackson saw a shape move two blocks away across a vast, moon-lit expanse of empty concrete. It began to move slowly towards him, then started to run. The screech of metal clanged and the door rose painfully slowly, spilling a shaft of light onto the sidewalk. Jackson grasped the lid with two hands, and with muscles straining, pulled it up the rest of the way. "Ira!" His friend had fallen with only ten feet left to go.

"Jackson! Get in!" A slim shape toting a pistol half-emerged from the hole, shouting at Jackson to come into the shelter. The sweat-drenched refugee took a step into the hole and grabbed the gun from the person's hand. Jackson heaved it behind him and pointed towards the creature that swooped in behind Ira's fallen figure. He fired two shots in quick succession, hitting the beast and slowing its approach – but only by a few seconds. Ira had just enough time to scramble forward a few feet, reaching out towards Jackson and the open bunker cover.

Jackson turned to the side and fired three shots at the second creature that had very quickly joined the fray, halting it ten feet away from where they were. The crack of the gun echoed in the street. "Get in!" Jackson roared, reaching towards his friend, who was slipping on the gravel. Ira couldn't find purchase and the creature behind him was recovering – recovering! From the shot.

The big man standing at the mouth of the entrance felt hands grab at his belt loop, at his waist and his shoulder, dragging him down into the safety of the bunker. Jackson cried out as he tumbled down into the hole. The metal lid dropped with a clang, and Jackson swung his fists in helpless rage against the people who had saved him but murdered his best friend, knocking out cold the slim figure who had brought the pistol.

Beyond the thick metal above their heads, Ira's screams rang into the night sky. There was a loud, sickening crunch, muted through the protection of the metal cover, and then silence.

"You bastard, you didn't wait for him, I woulda gotten him!" Jackson shouted across a low table. A group of men sat in the corner of a high mezzanine overlooking the rest of the shelter, near the steep metal stairs leading to the small bunker entrance above. Jackson had shed his sweat-soaked shirt, but his dark skin still glistened with sweat under the spot of light under which he sat. The warehouse-sized bunker buzzed with all assortments of noises of humanity.