The kitchen was a slaughterhouse of stainless steel and panic.
Chefs were running. Pots were boiling over on the stoves, sending clouds of steam into the air. In the center of the room, the Manager—a stout man in a white suit—was indeed hunched over the body of the Head Chef.
But he wasn't eating the man in a mindless frenzy. He was... dissecting him. With calm, terrifying precision. He was removing organs with a carving knife and arranging them on a clean metal tray.
He looked up as Thomas, Maggie, Lucas, and Jax burst in. His face was covered in blood, but his eyes were clear. They were the obsidian eyes of the abyss.
"Run," Thomas whispered.
The Manager smiled. It was a horrific, wet smile. He pointed the knife at them.
"Here..." he whispered. The sound was like dry leaves scraping. "Here..."
The doors to the dining hall exploded inward.
The Stage 1s poured in. They didn't run; they flowed. A tide of limbs and teeth. Liam was among them, or what was left of him. He was crawling on all fours, his face a ruin, snapping at the air.
"The back door!" Jax yelled, pointing to the service exit that led to the laundry facilities.
They ran. Maggie was sobbing, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Thomas was dragging her, his mag-lite raised like a weapon. Lucas was in the middle, the knife Jax had given him clutched in a reverse grip, just as Jax had shown him.
They burst through the service door and slammed it shut.
Thomas grabbed a heavy mop bucket and wedged it under the handle. Inside the kitchen, the screaming started. It wasn't the screaming of the dying. It was the screaming of the living, realizing that the world had ended.
Lucas leaned against the wall, his chest heaving. He looked at the knife in his hand. He looked at his father, who was checking the handle, his face grim.
"We have to get to the bus," Thomas said. "The shuttle at the front gate."
"We'll never make it," Jax said, wiping blood from his machete. "There's too many of them. And they're fast."
"We have to try," Thomas said. "We are not dying in a laundry room."
Lucas looked down the dark, fluorescent-lit hallway of the service wing. It led to the laundry, and then to the parking garage.
"We can make it," Lucas said. His voice didn't shake. "I know the way."
Thomas looked at his son. For the first time in months, he didn't see a rebellious teenager. He saw a survivor.
"Lead the way, Lucas," Thomas said.