CHAPTER 43: LEAVING NEW YORK!

As I pulled the motorbike away from the chaos of the parking lot, the wind whipped through my hair, carrying with it the acrid smell of smoke and something far worse.

But I couldn’t leave without one last look back.

What I saw made me slam on the brakes so hard the bike nearly skidded out from under me. There, emerging from the same gate we’d used, was Tobias leading what looked like the entire remaining students of Lexington Charter School. Fifteen-plus people moved together in a desperate cluster, their makeshift weapons glinting—crowbars, kitchen knives, broken chair legs, anything they could get their hands on.

They were making a catastrophic mistake.

The sheer size of their group was like a dinner bell to the Infected. Every footstep, every whispered instruction, every involuntary gasp of fear combined into a symphony of noise that drew the creatures like sharks to blood. Already, I could see shadows moving between the parked cars, converging on their position with that terrifying single-minded purpose.

But despite the terror etched on their faces—Tobias and the others seemed determined.

"Hey!" I called out.

Tobias spun toward me, his eyes widening as he spotted my lone figure on the motorcycle.

Without hesitation, I pulled the Director’s key fob from my pocket and hurled it through the air. The small device tumbled end over end, catching the light from a flickering streetlamp before landing perfectly in Tobias’s outstretched palm.

No words were exchanged. None were needed. I gave him a sharp nod—part farewell, part good luck—and gunned the engine.

The motorcycle lurched forward with more force than I’d expected, nearly throwing me backward as I left the parking lot behind. The last thing I saw in my rearview mirror was Tobias raising the key fob to rally his group, their faces a mixture of hope and terror as they prepared for what might be their final sprint.

Lexington Charter School shrank behind me, its imposing brick facade now just another monument to a world that no longer existed. It was hard to believe I’d spent less than twenty-four hours in that place.

Ahead of me, the road split into two directions. I could just make out the taillights of Sydney’s and Miss Ivy’s cars disappearing down the eastern route, but even from here I could see the problem. The cars had attracted a significant following of Infected, and the creatures were spreading across that entire section of road like spilled ink. On a motorcycle, trying to navigate through that crowd would be suicide—one wrong move, one moment of lost balance, and I’d become just another meal for the endless hunger that had consumed the city.

I’d have to find another way.

Taking the western fork, I began a wide circuit around the area, hoping to loop back and rejoin the others once I’d put some distance between myself and the immediate danger. The motorcycle responded better than I’d expected, though I could feel my inexperience with every turn. This was only my second time on a bike, and the learning curve in an apocalypse was brutal and unforgiving.

As I rode deeper into what had once been the greatest city in the world, the full scope of our catastrophe became undeniably clear.

New York City stretched out before me like a vision of hell.

Street lights flickered intermittently or had gone dark entirely, leaving vast swaths of the metropolis shrouded in an unnatural twilight. Cars sat abandoned in the middle of intersections, their doors hanging open like screaming mouths, some still running with no one left to drive them. The iconic yellow taxi cabs that had once been the city’s arteries now served as obstacles and hiding places for creatures that had once been their drivers and passengers.

Windows in the towering skyscrapers were shattered, dark, or flickering with the orange glow of fires that no one would come to extinguish. From some of those broken windows, I could see shapes moving—silhouettes of the Infected who had been trapped in offices and apartments when the outbreak began, still wandering their familiar spaces in a grotesque parody of their former routines.

The sounds were perhaps the worst part. The city that never slept now moaned and groaned with a completely different kind of insomnia.

Behind me, growing fainter but still audible, came the sounds from Lexington Charter School. Shouts, crashes, the unmistakable sound of improvised weapons meeting flesh. I forced myself not to look back again, not to count the screams of students.

I knew the mathematics of survival, and fifteen people moving together in a world like this... the odds weren’t good.

I navigated around an overturned city bus, its windows spider-webbed with cracks and its interior dark with stains I didn’t want to examine. Through the wreckage, I caught glimpses of Times Square in the distance—or what remained of it. The massive electronic billboards still flickered sporadically, advertising products that no one would ever buy again to people who might not exist anymore.

This had been my home for most of my life. These streets had witnessed my childhood, my teenage years. I’d walked these sidewalks thousands of times, never imagining that one day I’d be racing through them on a stolen motorcycle, dodging the reanimated corpses of people I might have crossed..

This wasn’t just the end of my world—it was the end of the

world. If New York City, with all its resources and population, had fallen this completely, what hope did anywhere else have? Los Angeles? Chicago? London? Tokyo? Were there still pockets of civilization holding out somewhere, or had the infection spread across the globe like wildfire?

Even if there were safe havens somewhere, how would we reach them? Every airport would be overrun, every train station a death trap. The highways would be clogged with abandoned vehicles and wandering hordes. The infrastructure that had once connected the world had become a network of distribution for a plague that turned humanity against itself.

But even more pressing than the global implications was a problem much closer to home.

The Dullahan virus.

The infection that Rachel, Elena, and I carried made us different from the others in ways we were still discovering. We were walking targets, danger personified to anyone who stayed near us.

But how could we abandon the others? How could I ask Rachel to leave Rebecca behind, or Elena to part from her sister?

Yet every moment we stayed with them, we put them at greater risk. Every Infected that found us because of what we’d become was a potential death sentence for people we cared about.

Was there even a way out of this nightmare?

The rational part of my mind—the part that had somehow kept me alive through impossible odds—insisted there had to be. Somewhere in this vast, interconnected world, there had to be pockets of safety, groups of survivors who’d found a way to push back against the tide of death that had swept across civilization. But the pessimistic voice that grew stronger with each passing hour whispered darker truths: maybe this was it.

In any normal crisis, there would be information—news reports, government announcements, social media updates from around the globe. But now? The infrastructure that had once connected eight billion people had crumbled along with everything else. We were flying blind through an apocalypse, making life-or-death decisions based on fragments of knowledge and desperate hope.

Who were our enemies beyond the obvious shambling hordes? Were there other survivors who’d turned predatory, taking advantage of civilization’s collapse to prey on the weak? Government remnants trying to contain the situation through brutal martial law? And more unsettling still—were there allies we didn’t know about? Military units still maintaining order somewhere? Scientists working on a cure? International coalitions coordinating rescue efforts?

The not knowing was almost worse than the constant threat of death. At least when facing an Infected, you understood the rules: run, hide, or fight.

And then there was the stark reality of our situation: we were refugees now, perpetually running with no clear destination. The idea of fleeing every single day, never knowing if the next town or city would offer sanctuary or just another flavor of hell, felt unsustainable. How long could we keep this up? How long before exhaustion, despair, or simple bad luck caught up with us?

While these dark thoughts churned through my mind, the familiar sound of car engines reached my ears over the motorcycle’s steady rumble. I twisted the throttle and accelerated, weaving between abandoned vehicles and debris until I spotted the blessed sight of our convoy ahead: Sydney’s compact car leading the way, followed by Miss Ivy’s car, both cars moving steadily along what appeared to be a main highway leading away from the city’s dying heart.

I felt relieved.

They’d made it out. They were alive. For now, that was enough.

"Hey!" Christopher’s voice cut through the wind as his face appeared at Sydney’s passenger window, his expression breaking into a smile. "Where the hell did you find a motorbike?!"

"In the parking lot," I called back.

"Don’t you want to get in the car?" Alisha’s concerned face joined Christopher’s at the window. "It’s safer to be inside than riding exposed like that."

She had a point. On the bike, I was vulnerable to anything—stray Infected, road debris, other survivors with questionable intentions, or simply losing control and becoming roadkill. But there were advantages too that I didn’t want to give up just yet.

"I’ll stick with the bike for now," I decided. "It’s got fuel, and the mobility might come in handy. Plus, if we get separated or need a scout, this thing can go places the cars can’t."

What I didn’t say was that the motorcycle also gave me options—the ability to draw threats away from the group if necessary, or to make a quick escape if my Dullahan-infected status put the others in danger.

"Okay, but be careful," Alisha said.

I nodded.

"By the way," I called out as we continued our steady progress away from the urban nightmare behind us, "where exactly are we going?"

It was a fair question. We were fleeing New York City—probably the smartest decision we’d made in days—but fleeing toward what? Just driving aimlessly until we ran out of gas didn’t seem like much of a survival strategy.

"We’re still figuring it out," Alisha replied, glancing back toward Miss Ivy’s car. "But somewhere with a lot fewer people than New York. That much we know for sure."

"Yeah, definitely," I chuckled, though there wasn’t much humor in it. "I think we can safely say that New York ranks pretty high on the list of worst possible places to be when a zombie apocalypse breaks out."

"So what’s the plan?" I pressed. "Miss Ivy must have some ideas—she seems to know these roads pretty well."

"She mentioned a town," Alisha said. "Somewhere about two or three hours from here. Small place, not too many people originally, which means..."

"Fewer potential Infected," I finished. "Smart thinking."

Two to three hours.

But a small town did make sense. The mathematics of survival were brutal but clear: fewer original inhabitants meant fewer potential threats now.

Well, we will see once we get there.