I am currently crawling through a metal tube that smells like zinc and Dave’s panic sweat.

After Sergeant Miller ushered us into the Habitation Zone—which is just the stadium's underground locker room repurposed into a refugee camp—we were supposed to lie down on our green canvas cots and go to sleep.

Brenda was already mapping out an optimized sleep schedule for us. Dave, however, couldn’t stop staring at the MEDICAL - NO ENTRY door at the end of the hall. The tiny scratched hole in the black paint was still blinking.

Dot-Dot-Dot. Dash-Dash-Dash. Dot-Dot-Dot.

"Someone is alive in there," Dave had whispered, his eyes wide. "And they're locked in. We have to go."

"Miller said he'd shoot us, Dave," I reminded him. "He has a shotgun named The Ledger. I don't want to be audited by a twelve-gauge."

Brenda closed her notebook with a sharp snap. "Sergeant Miller is hiding data. An incomplete risk assessment threatens the survival of this entire unit. If there is a live asset in the quarantine sector, we must extract them for questioning. David, do you have a structural plan?"

Dave smiled. It was a terrifyingly confident smile for a guy who spent the last six hours in a fort made of adult diapers. He pulled a crumpled schematic out of his pocket. "The stadium's HVAC system. The intake vent in the laundry room leads directly over the medical ward partition."

And that is how I ended up on my hands and knees in a twenty-inch steel shaft.

The Crawl

The lineup was different this time. Dave took point because he had the blueprint. I was in the middle. Mister Whiskers was behind me (he insisted on coming; I think he just likes dark tunnels where he can ambush ankles). Brenda brought up the rear, sliding through the metal tube with the eerie silence of a corporate spy. Joe and Buster stayed behind to create an "all-clear" distraction in the locker room if Miller did a headcount.

"Dave," I whispered forward into the dark. "You're moving too loud. It sounds like a garbage disposal full of tin foil."

"I can't help it!" Dave hissed back. "My bicycle helmet keeps hitting the ceiling rivets! Also, I think I just crawled through a spiderweb. A historical, pre-apocalypse spiderweb. It’s on my face. It’s in my mouth."

"Focus on the objective, David," Brenda's disembodied voice echoed from behind my boots. "We are currently trespassing in a restricted ventilation vector. If we are caught, we will be assigned to potato duty. Maintain velocity."

The View from Above

Dave stopped suddenly. I slammed into his sneakers. Mister Whiskers gave my calf an angry nip to protest the sudden braking.

"We're over the room," Dave whispered.

Through the slotted metal grate beneath Dave's chest, a dim green light illuminated the dust motes. We peered down.

The medical ward was a nightmare of shattered glass and overturned IV poles. It was dead silent, save for a computer monitor flickering with a flatline error code.

But sitting in the corner, illuminated by the green glow of an emergency backup battery, was a lone figure. He was strapped to an examination table with heavy leather restraints. He was wearing a blood-stained doctor’s lab coat over a military uniform.

In his right hand, which was free just enough to move a few inches, he was holding a tactical flashlight. He was lazily pressing the button, clicking it against his palm.

He wasn't looking at the door. He was looking straight up at the ceiling. Straight at us.

His face was pale, his eyes heavily bloodshot, but his jaw wasn't moving in that awful, rhythmic Zom Zom chew. He was completely lucid.

He saw the dust falling through our vent grate. He stopped clicking the light.

He opened his mouth, his voice a cracked, dry rattle that barely carried up to the duct.

"I know you're up there," the doctor whispered. "Don't come down through the door. Miller rigged the handles with thermite. Use the ceiling panel behind the medicine cabinet... and hurry. The air filters in here are failing."