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I touch the frame, smiling a little at the sight. How old are these two boys now? In their thirties? Forties? Do they have families of their own?

The photos come to an abrupt halt with the end of the hallway, and I step into the living room.

I swallow down a yelp.

There’s a man lying on a navy sectional, clad in only a pair of boxers, and something’s very wrong with him. Everywhere that his clothes don’t cover, hundreds of small lumps press up from beneath the skin. To my horror some of those lumps have split open, revealing blood and pus and other slick things that have me tasting bile at the back of my throat.

I’ve seen a lot of disturbing things during my few years as a firefighter, but nothing like this.

There’s a cloying smell in the air, one I hadn’t noticed earlier. It’s the scent of infection—rot.

He's caught the Fever.

A shameful part of me wants to get as far away from this man as I can. He’s undoubtedly contagious.

You’re a first responder, Burns. This is what it means in the end. Sacrifice, and if need be, death.

My eyes move back to the man’s face. His hair is a dull brown that’s losing its battle to gray, and his face has that worn, stretched appearance that skin starts to get in a person’s forties. And his bloodshot eyes, they stare at me listlessly as his chest rises and falls just the barest amount.

Dear God, he’s still alive.

Chapter 10

Pestilence wanted meto see this. I know it as surely as I know my own name. Physically hurting me was only part of my punishment for trying to end him. This is the other part—to watch death at its most abhorrent.

No, not to just watch it. And not just to be powerless to stop it, but to accompany Pestilence like a co-conspirator, to make me play some role in spreading the disease.

I stare at the man, rooted to the spot, trying to remember all the stories I heard about this plague.

The news had mentioned the lumps. How they could swell and cover every inch of the body. And how, towards the final stages of the disease, they’d burst open like overripe fruit as the person’s body decayed from the inside out.

Necrosisthey call it—the body rotting while the organism still lives.

The hairs on my arms rise. I should be suffering from this. No—I should be dead from it. Instead, I’m alive and healthy enough to watch this man succumb to it.

I take him in again, open sores and all. This sort of death has no business in the modern world. It’s the kind of thing that belongs in old horror movies and tales from Medieval Europe. Not here, where in recent memory, cars ran and planes flew, phones called and the Internet existed.

But the modern world is gone. Killed in the months that followed the horsemen’s arrival. And now everyone’s scrambling to get on with life in an age when we have lost almost everything.

Even though I want to run, I take a tentative step forward. I’m a firefighter, damnit. I’m used to seeing scary shit every day. Seeing it andfixingit.

I stride forward, noticing how the man’s listless eyes try to track me.

Alive and aware.

I crouch in front of him, smelling ammonia and human excrement. Pestilence might be helping me to the bathroom, but he hasn’t been so benevolent with our host—or whoever this man is.

Again I hesitate. A part of me worries that by trying to help, I’ll only hurt the man more. Not to mention that there’s a good chance I’ll catch the disease in the process, and this is not a good way to go. But then, I’ve been alongside Pestilence for longer than this man has. I’ve been restrained and shot and dragged through the snow and I’m still alive—alive and untouched by the Fever.

Somehow, it’s skipped over me.

But even if it hasn’t, even if I’ve simply managed to avoid it up until now, what’s the worst that’ll happen? I’ll be in pain? I dare the fates to give me worse than what I’ve already endured. And if I die? Well, then at least I won’t have to stomach more of the horseman’s presence.

I’m all for silver linings.

I crouch in front of the man, taking his hand. It’s hot to the touch.

He works his dry throat and makes a weak attempt at shaking his head.