So everyone was drinking tea. That's how it started. The lights were warm, the kitchen smelled like cinnamon and mother's milk, and the apartment (floor seventeen of a twenty-five-story building in the only neighborhood in Seattle where the rats had unionized) felt perfectly safe. There was a baby. There was a father. There was a mother. There were still walls and power and hot water. And then the TV screamed.
EEEEEEEEE—
Everyone stopped. Everyone blinked. No one dropped their tea. No one ever drops their tea in the first minute. That's a lie movies tell you.
"What's that?" Emilia said, like people do when they're still pretending that sirens mean nothing. She adjusted the baby on her chest, soft and red and leaking life like a soft fruit. Larry shrugged because that's what men do when they don't want to say I don't know, because not knowing is dangerous. And he walked into the living room to see the truth on a screen.
The screen said:
Contagious Disease Warning.
Seattle compromised. Bite-transmitted aggression. Cannibalistic behavior. Shelter-in-place ordered. Threat level escalating.
He watched it. He read it. He didn't feel it.
(They never feel it the first time. The first time it's a trailer for the movie they don't want to see.)
"There's, uh…" Larry said, and then kissed his wife on the forehead. It was a useless kiss, not a protective one, but he didn't know that yet. "There's something weird on TV."
"Is it a Halloween prank?" she asked. The TV screen didn't flinch.
She tried to change the channel. Channel 4 was warning them not to panic. Channel 8 was warning them to panic responsibly. The Weather Channel said it was 56°F and partly infected.
"I don't think this is a prank," she said. Her voice broke in half between frustration and fear, which is what voices do right before the lights go out on the world.
Larry asked, "Did we lock the doors?" like a man realizing the front door of Eden might swing both ways.
She didn't know. Nobody ever knows.
But the door was locked.
Of course it was locked.
Until it wasn't.
They turned off the lights except the TV, which burned the room blue like an aquarium. A baby cried once and then stopped. Larry stared out the window. The world was empty, except it wasn't. There was a shadow moving across the street like an idea trying to become real.
The TV spoke again.
Update: The threat is NOT contained. Barricades breached. Virus has spread beyond Seattle. Estimated time to total King County exposure: ten minutes. Barricade all entrances. Do not attempt evacuation.
Ten minutes. That's how long it takes to boil tea. That's how long it takes to decide who gets to live and who gets to starve. That's how long it takes to say: But not me. Not my street. Not my child.
Gunfire. Real gunfire. Not Hollywood.
Larry looked out the window and saw what happens when metaphors stop being metaphors. A man bit a woman's face off. That's not exaggeration. That's not art. That's a mouth meeting skin and refusing to be symbolic.
Larry tried to call 911. Nobody answered. (Of course no one answered. Phones don't work after morality breaks.)
The hallway screamed. Then came knocking.
"Help!" A child's voice.
"Please!"
He opened the door. Because of course he did. You always let in the child. Especially when the child is the question, not the answer.
The boy was eight or maybe seven-and-a-half, the way dead kids usually are. He was clean. He was silent. He drank water like he hadn't remembered how to drink it. Emilia held Lisa tighter, but she didn't say anything. Larry pushed a wardrobe against the door because that's what you do in apocalypses when you're still pretending the walls mean something.
Then the TV screamed again.
Do not panic. Panic makes you louder. Louder makes you easier to find. Do not run. Do not fight. Hide. If they find you, you are already dead.
No one breathed. The baby did. The boy did. But everyone else held still like fear could be exhaled too loudly.
Larry looked at the boy. The boy looked like a child. But everyone looks like a child until they don't.
"Hey, are you okay, kid?"
The boy fainted.
Larry placed him on the couch and unzipped his jacket.
And then he saw it.
The bite.
Not poetic. Not a metaphor. Just rotting meat on a small arm, with blood turning black around the edges.
Larry bent close.
The boy's breath was a whisper. Then it wasn't.
Then it bit him.
Not once. Again. Again. Again.
The scream that came out of Larry wasn't like in the movies. It was smaller. Guttural. Like regret learning to speak. He tried to push the boy-thing off, but it was stronger. Faster. Hungrier. Emilia screamed from the bedroom.
Larry used his last strength to say the last sentence that ever matters in stories like these.
"Don't let me in."
Then came the biting.
Then came the silence.
Then came the baby crying behind a locked door.
Later, people would ask how it got in. Where it started. Why no one warned them. What the government was doing. Why the infected were so strong. But by then, there wouldn't be anyone left to answer.
Because the cannibal apocalypse doesn't come with fangs. It comes with a soft knock. It comes with a screen saying Stay inside. Do not panic. The National Guard will save you. And then it doesn't.
Because the National Guard isn't coming.
Because Larry isn't Larry anymore.
Because the child was already dead before they opened the door.
Because the world ends:
Not with fire.
With the sound of a child in a hole.
With someone who opens the door anyway.
A drop of blood in a bowl of tea.