I pull us down a side street, and we lean against the building, panting.
“What are you doing out here?” Lucian asks.
“They are sick.”
I say the words like I am pronouncing their deaths. And I am. The survival rate for alphas and omegas has been almost zero. One in ten. With two sick, the odds of them both surviving are almost nonexistent.
“I’m sorry,” he sobs and starts to cry. He pulls his hand from his face, and I realise it’s a pretty bad cut.
“We need to get you to a hospital or doctor.”
Lucian shakes his head and clamps his hand back on the wound. “No, we have to get out of here before it gets too much worse and we can’t get home.”
I turn but keep him with me as we thread our way back onto the streets. People aren’t moving, and it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but still, I push through, forcing a path when there isn’t one.
We get to the edge of the crowd, and I stop, too, transfixed with horror, causing every hair on my body to stand on end. There is a man in the middle of the road. He’s clearly sick, but he’s convulsing on the ground.
It’s just…his body is wrong, the proportions and the appearance. I realise that he’s missing fingers, like he’s broken them off or…or bitten them off. I think maybe his arms and legs are dislocated, too.
He screams, foam frothing out of his mouth. His legs arch and crack, and he lunges up, looking inhuman. Looking like a monster. I see bone, but he still walks on it.
I stumble back, but I can only go a step. I wheeze as air goes in and out of my lungs too fast.
He pulls at the skin on his face and tears it off, revealing dark red muscle and white tendon.
“Lucian,” I whisper.
“Run,” he hisses.
Together, we break from the frozen crowd and rush across the empty road and into the underground carpark. The darkness makes everything feel worse, but better in here than out there on that street, watching that alpha tear himself apart.
“What the fuck did we just see?” I spit out.
Lucian pushes us through a door and then slams into me as he retreats quickly.
I grab him and swing us around, behind the door as something that once was human slams out and into the world. It doesn’t seem to see us and runs towards the screaming crowd.
“What is that?” Lucian hisses.
“I have no idea,” I whisper.
“It’s what happens to alphas,” an old woman groans. Her scent is omega, but faint. She’s got scratches all over her arms and looks like she might pass out at any minute.
“Alphas? What?” Lucian shouts.
“The virus changes us. Our insides. It makes us insane. It truly is a punishment of the gods.”
I stare at her. Is she insane or sick with the virus? Her hair's a mess, she’s injured, and she looks homeless; perhaps she’s having a mental health episode. “The gods wouldn’t do this,” I say to her gently.
“They’ve forsaken us!” she cries, really sobbing with huge, heartrending convulsions that leave snot dripping out of her nose in long strands. “What did we do? What did we do? They are evacuating betas out of the city. Taking them to a safe place. They are going to leave us to die here. The Ravage. The Ravage has come!”
I shake my head, wanting to protest, but what can I say? I don’t think she’d hear me.
“We have to leave her.”
I know we do, but I don’t have to like it. Still, I linger, listening to her scream.
Lucian swears and grabs my shoulder, pulling me into the shopping center. We run through it, our footsteps echoing. It’s basically empty, ripped apart by desperate people trying to get enough supplies. The hollow abandonment feels ancient already. I want to get out of here while I still have my sanity.
