They got out of the warehouse through the loading bay and the street hit them like a wall.
Not physically, just the scale of it. Standing inside the warehouse with the horde pressing against the walls had given the whole thing a contained quality, a problem with edges.
Out here on the street the edges were gone and the horde was everywhere, not the compressed mass that had been pushing through the loading bay but the scattered aftermath of it, Rotters drifting in every direction with the loose disconnected movement of things that had lost whatever had been pulling them and hadn't found a new reason yet.
The pulse showed Michael a picture that was better than ten minutes ago and worse than he would have liked.
The signatures were thinning but thinning across a wide area meant they were still everywhere and the two block route back to the building had enough movement in it that straight through was not an option.
