Cold. The town hall was freezing. The heating grid had failed overnight, drained by the same parasitic surge that devoured the town’s electricity.

  Mayor Higgins slumped behind his massive desk, wrapped in a wool coat. He was shaking. Teeth chattering.

  Sheriff Burke stood by the window. He watched the fog roll down Main Street. It wasn’t the white, fluffy mist of a coastal morning. It was gray, heavy, and roiled with a sluggish, deliberate intelligence.

  “Let me get this straight,” Burke said, not turning around. “You want me to declare a state of emergency because of… worms?”

  “Not worms,” Frankie said. She sat on the edge of a leather chair, smelling of ozone and swamp mud. “Biomass. A hive mind.”

  “And you,” Burke pointed a finger at Ted without looking at him. “You assaulted a federal employee with a spoon?”

  “I grounded a hostile combatant,” Ted corrected, clutching the tarnished silver spoon like a holy relic. “With a conductive serving utensil. There’s a difference.”

  Burke turned. He lowered his sunglasses. Red eyes. Heavy bags. He was trying to apply the logic of parking tickets to the apocalypse.

  “This is insane,” Burke said. “The Feds say it’s a chemical leak from the dredging operation. They have a team coming.”

  “The Feds put it there,” Frankie said.

  She nodded to the cracked tablet sitting on the Mayor’s desk.

  “Play it again.”

  Dee Dee tapped the screen.

  Captain Daria Heather appeared. The video documented the descent from professional officer to hollowed-out husk. The blue eyes. The voice of the colony.

  “The work… must… continue.”

  The video ended.

  Mayor Higgins stared at the blank screen. His face was the color of old ash. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold.

  “The work must continue?” the mayor whispered. “She means conquer my town?”

  “Our town,” Frankie corrected. “But not only our town. Our whole world.”

  Her legs ached. Her throat was raw. But her voice was steady.

  “Look outside, Mr. Mayor. The people in the hospital aren’t sick with the flu. They’re incubating. The fog isn’t weather. It’s their air. If you wait for the Feds, there won’t be anyone left to save.”

  A siren wailed in the distance. Then another. Then the sharp pop-pop-pop of gunfire.

  Burke flinched. He looked out the window again.

  “That came from the bank,” he muttered.

  “They must be searching for silver,” Dee Dee said. “It is their weakness, and they’re trying to bury them.”

  Burke looked at Ted. He looked at the blackened tip of the silver spoon.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Zippo lighter. Silver. He turned it over in his hand, watching the dull glint of the metal.

  “Martial law then,” the Mayor said. His voice trembled. He poured a glass of water, his hand shaking so hard it spilled. “Protocol Zero. Shut it down. Close the roads. Barricade the neighborhoods.”

  Burke looked at him. “Robert? That’s… that’s a death sentence for the local economy.”

  “There won’t be an economy if everyone is dead, Jim!” Higgins snapped. “Do it. Tell your deputies to aim for the head. Or the legs. Just stop them.”

  He looked at Frankie.

  “And the silver?”

  “Collect it,” Frankie said. “Everything you can find. Jewelry, silverware, coins. We need shrapnel. We need barriers. It disrupts their signal.”

  Burke stopped arguing. He checked his holster.

  “I’ll open the armory,” Burke said. “We have shotguns. We can load them with dimes if we have to.”

  “Do it,” Higgins said.

  Burke grabbed his radio.

  “All units, this is Sheriff Burke. Code Black. I repeat, Code Black. Suspend the quarantine protocols. We have a hostile invasion. Engage at will.”

  He looked at Frankie.

  “You kids,” he said. “Get home. Lock your doors.”

  “We can’t,” Frankie said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because locking the doors doesn’t work,” Frankie said. “We have to turn off the source.”

  “The ship?”

  “The Captain,” Frankie said. “She’s the transmitter. She’s the voice in their heads. We kill her, the hive goes silent.”

  “I’ll send a team to the harbor,” Burke said.

  “She’s not at the harbor,” Frankie said. She rubbed her temple, wincing. “She’s mobile. And she’s building an army.”

  “So you plan to hunt her on your own?”

  Frankie looked at her friends and back at the mayor. “Yes, if we have to. But we will make sure our love ones will get out of here before the worms touch them.”

  “Then you better hurry,” Higgins said. “Good luck and be careful.”

  *****

  The drive back to Dee Dee’s house was a silent film of horrors.

  Ted drove the van. He kept the speed precise, avoiding the potholes and the things crawling in the gutters.

  Frankie watched the passenger window.

  Windows broken. Cars abandoned. Smoke.

  The fog was inside the car now. It smelled of ozone and rot.

  Figures stumbled through the mist. Some were human, running, carrying bags. Others were… wrong.

  A man in a business suit was on his hands and knees in the middle of the road. His jaw was unhinged. He was chewing on the asphalt.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Mrs. Gable, the librarian, stood on the corner. She wore her cardigan. She bashed her head against a stop sign. Clang. Clang. Clang.

  Her forehead was a ruin. She didn’t stop.

  “Don’t look,” Damon whispered from the back seat.

  “I have to,” Frankie said.

  She needed to hate them. She needed to fuel the predator inside her, because the fear threatened paralysis.

  They pulled into Dee Dee’s driveway.

  The house was dark. The neighborhood was quiet—that heavy, pressurized silence that comes before a tornado.

  They piled out of the van and ran inside.

  Dee Dee locked the door. She bolted it. Then she dragged a heavy oak chair under the handle.

  “Basement,” she said.

  They retreated underground.

  The basement was a bunker of familiar smells—solder, old paper, and fear.

  “Okay,” Frankie said, pacing the concrete floor. “We got time. The Sheriff is moving out. But bullets won’t stop them forever. We need Daria.”

  “How do we find her?” Ted asked, collapsing onto a beanbag chair. He looked brittle. “She could be anywhere. She could be in the sewers. She could be at the mall.”

  “She’s a signal,” Dee Dee said. She sat at her computer. Typing fast. Clack-clack-clack. “Signals can be tracked.”

  She pulled up the thermal map of Norchester.

  The grid was a mess of red and blue static.

  “The thrum isn’t uniform,” Dee Dee explained, her voice tight. “It ripples. Like a stone dropped in a pond. If I can isolate the highest frequency spike, I can find the epicenter.”

  Frankie leaned against the workbench. She closed her eyes, letting the headache guide her.

  Thrum… Thrum…

  The sensation sat like a physical weight on her frontal lobe. It wasn’t just a sound. It was a compass.

  It pulled north. Then east.

  Ring-ring.

  A phone chirped.

  It wasn’t a normal ring. It was a cheerful, bubblegum pop song. Call Me Maybe.

  It sounded obscene in the gloom.

  Dee Dee froze. She pulled her phone from her pocket.

  She stared at the screen. Her lip trembled.

  “It’s Sam,” she whispered.

  The room went silent.

  “Answer it,” Frankie said.

  Dee Dee swiped the screen. She put it on speaker.

  “Sam?”

  “Dee?” The voice was shrill, panicked. The sound of a car engine revved in the background. “Oh god, Dee, are you okay? I’ve been texting you for an hour!”

  “I’m… I’m safe,” Dee Dee said. “Where are you?”

  “We’re leaving,” Sam sobbed. “My dad packed the SUV. We’re on the street. We’re heading to the bridge.”

  Dee Dee gripped the edge of the desk. Her knuckles turned white.

  “Sam, no,” she said. “Don’t go to the bridge.”

  “We have to! The news said it’s a bio-hazard. They’re evacuating!”

  “The bridge is a choke point,” Dee Dee said. “Sammy, listen to me. The army has it blocked. And the things… they’re waiting there.”

  “What things? Dee, you’re scaring me.”

  “Go north,” Dee Dee pleaded. Tears tracked from under her glasses. “Take the old logging road to the marina. Get a boat. Get on the water. Or anywhere else besides the bridge.”

  “Dee, come with us,” Sam begged. “We can swing by. We have room. Please. I can’t leave without you.”

  Dee Dee looked at Frankie. She looked at the alien code scrolling on her monitor. She looked at the grimoire open on the desk.

  She looked at her friends.

  “I can’t,” Dee Dee whispered.

  “Why? Don’t be stupid, Dee! It’s dangerous!”

  “I know,” Dee Dee choked out. “That’s why I have to stay. I have to stop the signal, Sammy. If I don’t, there won’t be anywhere to run.”

  “Dee…”

  “I love you,” Dee Dee said. “Go to the water. Promise me, baby.”

  “I… I promise.”

  “Go.”

  Dee Dee ended the call.

  She stood there for a second, holding the phone like it was a lifeline she had just cut. Then she threw it onto the couch.

  She took off her glasses. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her oversized parka.

  When she put the glasses back on, her eyes were hard.

  “Okay,” Dee Dee said. “Let’s find this bitch.”

  She turned back to the computer.

  “I’m isolating the carrier wave,” she said. Her voice was steady now. Cold. “Filtering out the background noise from the drones.”

  On the main screen, the map of Norchester zoomed in.

  Red waves rippled across the grid.

  “It’s moving,” Dee Dee said. “Fast. It was at the harbor an hour ago. Then the downtown district.”

  “Where is it now?” Damon asked, stepping closer.

  Dee Dee typed a command.

  A signal flare on the map.

  It stopped.

  It hovered over a residential street in the suburbs.

  Seashell Avenue.

  Blood drained from Frankie’s face. Her heart stopped, then hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

  “That’s my street,” she whispered.

  She leaned in, staring at the pixelated map.

  The red dot wasn’t just on the street. It was directly over a specific lot.

  A small bungalow with a gravel driveway.

  The Rivera Home.

  “Why is she there?” Ted asked. “Is she looting?”

  Frankie stepped back. She hit the workbench, tools rattling.

  “No,” she said.

  She remembered the fight with Sarah Miller. The way her eyes had flashed red. The way she had roared, tapping into the dark energy of her vampire blood.

  “I alerted her,” Frankie whispered.

  “What?” Damon asked.

  “Last night,” Frankie said. “When I killed Sarah. I used my strength. I used the… the other side.”

  She looked at Damon.

  “Daria sensed me.”

  Frankie grabbed her hair, pulling at the roots.

  “She’s not just transmitting,” Frankie said. “She’s hunting me. She discovered I’m the only thing that can stop her.”

  “So she went to your house?” Ted asked.

  “Yes,” Frankie said. Her voice cracked. “To ambush me.”

  “Your mom,” Damon realized. “Is Leilani home?”

  “She was at the town meeting last night,” Frankie said. “But the meeting ended hours ago. If she went back…”

  Frankie didn’t finish the sentence.

  The thrum in her head spiked. It wasn’t just pain this time. It was a summons.

  Come.

  The voice was clear. Intimate. Inside her skull.

  Mother is waiting.

  “No,” Frankie gasped.

  She spun around.

  “We need a plan,” Damon said, grabbing her arm. “Frankie, stop. We can’t just run in there. If Daria is there, she has an army.”

  “My mom is there!” Frankie screamed. She ripped her arm away.

  “We know!” Damon shouted back. “But if you run in alone, you die! We need the silver. We need the van. We need to gear up!”

  “There’s no time to gear up!”

  Frankie looked at the table.

  Ted’s keys.

  They were sitting next to the silver spoon.

  Frankie lunged.

  She grabbed the keys.

  “Frankie, don’t!” Dee Dee yelled.

  Frankie bolted for the stairs.

  “Frankie!” Damon lunged for her, but she was faster.

  She took the stairs two at a time. She burst through the kitchen door.

  Steps scrambled behind her.

  “Frankie, stop!” Damon roared. “We do this together!”

  “Not this time,” Frankie whispered.

  She hit the front door. She threw the heavy oak chair aside with a single hand.

  She burst out into the driveway.

  The fog blinded.

  She scrambled into the driver’s seat of the van. She jammed the key into the ignition.

  Damon burst out of the house. He ran toward the van, his face twisted in desperation.

  “Frankie! Open the door!”

  He reached for the handle.

  Frankie locked it.

  Click.

  Damon slammed his hand against the glass.

  “Don’t do this!” he screamed. “Frankie! Don’t you dare leave us!”

  Frankie looked at him through the glass.

  He looked terrified. Not for himself. For her.

  She didn’t mouth anything. She didn’t look back.

  She slammed the gas.

  The van peeled out, gravel spraying Damon’s legs. He chased her for a few steps, screaming her name, but the van was too fast.

  Frankie swerved onto the road.

  She gripped the wheel until her knuckles cracked. Tears smeared the road ahead, hot and angry.

  She was alone.

  Just her, the van, and the thrum.

  “I’m coming,” she whispered to the empty air. “I’m coming for you.”

  She floored it toward Seashell Avenue.