Chapter 1 - A Bridge Too Far

-October 2008

Ruins.

Ruins and smoking hulks were all that remained of most of the city.

That was all Olivia Dunham could see for miles. In every direction it was the same, columns of thick black smoke, curling upward lazily and choking out the blue sky. The columns coagulated overhead, taking the form of dark thunderclouds that twisted and roiled above the desolated landscape. The smell of soot was strong in the air, its acrid odor burned at her nose as particles of ash drifted down around her, coating everything in a thin layer of gray snowflakes that mocked her in their resemblance to the real thing.

Olivia brushed the ash off one arm of her jacket, and then brought the sleeve up to her mouth. She wished she had thought to bring a bandanna, or something, anything, she could have used to filter the air. Cambridge was an old town, full of old structures built before the advent of current building standards. The thought of breathing in asbestos, or some other toxic material was not at all pleasant. Walter had warned her. She should have listened.

She shifted on her perch, and lifted the binoculars to her eyes again, looking around the huge iron bell toward the south, toward the Charles, and at Allston, beyond its banks. Her apartment in Brighton lay further to the southwest. The skeletons of shattered buildings filled her vision, crumbled brick walls and piles of rubble in the streets, cars left abandoned in long lines. The street directly below the bell tower was clear, but it was the exception, not the rule. The haze in the air was too thick to make out much of anything of her neighborhood, but there was no reason to think it had been spared from the same fate Cambridge had suffered. Before the power had failed for good, television reports had said the outbreak was spreading citywide, and she had heard as much from her superiors at the Federal Building, before cell service had gone silent also.

Not that they had been in contact lately, or would ever be again, judging from the destruction before her. The fires had been raging unchecked for days, fueled by an unlucky wind from the east that had blown unabated, consuming large portions of the city. The army had done their best, as much good as it had done them in the end.

Thinking idly, she wondered if Broyles had died well. He had been right in the middle of it all when everything had gone wrong. The reports had said the downtown area was the worst. So many people crammed into a small area.

Across the river, a figure shambled into view, moving with a lurching gait that was instantly recognizable. Sucking in a sharp breath, she centered the creature in the binoculars, and watched as it moved slowly across a street. She judged the distance to be about a mile away, maybe a little less.

It was one of them.

The figure—a man she thought it must be from its clothes—stumbled into the side of a red hatchback, stopped diagonally against a slanted telephone pole. The front of the car was crumpled, wrapped around the pole's wooden base. The driver's window was down or broken from the crash. A body hung out the open window, draped over the door like a wet rag where he or she had attempted to climb out, or someone had tried and been unable to pull them out. It didn't matter, either way they had failed. If they weren't dead already, they soon would be. The figure pushed up against the car for a moment, then moved along its length until it came across the body obstructing its path. It seemed to sniff the air for an instant before bending down toward the body, and clutching at it with claw-like fingers.

Olivia let the binoculars drop as the body in the car began to struggle weakly. So they weren't dead…yet. Still, there was nothing she could do, for any of them.

Peter had proven that, and quite convincingly.

How can this be happening? she thought, not for the first time since it all started, nor the hundredth. She closed her eyes, wishing she could purge the image she had seen just before dropping the binoculars from her memory.

"Anything?"

Charlie Francis's whisper carried up the shaft to her ears over the blowing wind. She opened her eyes and glanced down at her friend and former partner, crouched up against the ladder which gave access to the Church of St. Paul's bell tower.

Before she could reply, a gunshot cracked in the distance, breaking the eerie silence that had become the new norm for Boston since the event, as she had come to refer to it as. Below her, Charlie ducked down, drawing his pistol from its holster under his arm. He kept his flashlight focused in the stairwell.

Olivia lifted the binoculars to her eyes again, and stared back toward the single figure she had been watching before.

There was man moving toward the red hatchback. A live human, dressed in tan camouflage, complete with full body armor and helmet, and carrying what looked like an M4 Carbine, the stock pressed up against his shoulder as he cautiously approached the unmoving figure lying next to the vehicle.

A soldier. She figured the man must have been separated from his squad, or was the last one left alive.

Get out of there! Olivia tried to push the thought toward the soldier across the distance between them. Loud noises always drew others, something they had learned very quickly early on. Another pearl of wisdom from Peter Bishop, she thought, gritting her teeth. The irritating man had positively gloated when he'd been proven right, nevermind that civilization was on its knees.

"Liv!" Charlie hissed from the bottom of the ladder. "What do you see?"

"Military. Just one," Olivia called down him without looking away.

The man had been lucky so far. Walter thought they might have difficulty pinpointing the location of a single, isolated sound. Something about how the infected brain parsed information. It had been pure gibberish to her, even after Peter had tried to translate.

The soldier toed with his boot at the body on the ground, as if reassuring himself that it would not rise again. It was a pointless gesture, in her opinion. He would know already if the thing was still…alive, or whatever its status was. The technical term Walter had used wasn't readily accessible. She refused to consider using the name Peter had taken to calling them.

Apparently satisfied with his kill, the soldier turned toward the body in the hatchback. He lifted the head, then jerked his hand back. He stepped back quickly away from the car as the arms reached out toward him, clawing at the space between them futilely.

No! Olivia shouted in her head as the soldier raised his weapon again. Did the fool not have a knife?

The man fired a single a shot. There was a flash from the muzzle, and then the sound of it reached her ears a moment later.

Sensing movement, she glanced down at John. He was crouched against a manicured hedgerow that lined the sidewalk in front of an unrecognizable burned out structure, diagonally across the street from the church, watching their tail. He was sporting an M4 of his own, recovered from a camouflaged corpse lying forgotten on the sidewalk they had come across south of the Harvard campus. That had been two days ago. She didn't think he had let the weapon out of his sight since then, especially when in the presence of one Peter Bishop. The two men did not get along well. Or rather, John didn't get along with Peter. He had claimed it wasn't jealousy when she'd confronted him about it, and she had assured him—and reminded herself—that there was nothing to be jealous about. She thought Peter might be indifferent to the situation, though certainly not unaware of John's enmity.

Peter was a difficult man to read at best, though she was starting to pick up on some of his tells. He had strange sort of honor though, and she sensed there was a good man somewhere beneath his layers of sarcasm and dry humor.

As the gunshot from across the river faded away, John hoisted the rifle up to his shoulder, and then looked up at her. She could read the question on his face at a glance, just from the tilt of his head.

She shook her head in response. No, there were no threats close to them that she could detect.

John nodded, and let the barrel of his rifle dip toward the sidewalk. He tossed her a little salute with two fingers from his free hand.

Olivia grinned fondly, and then lifted the binoculars again. Her smile faded as she returned her gaze to the soldier, using the crashed red hatchback as a view finder. Where he'd been standing was now pile of writhing bodies, which grew larger with every moment as more and more of the…infected, which was the word she preferred to call them by, joined the fray. She could almost make out a red mist in the air above the scrum, but surely that was her imagination at work.

Dropping the binoculars to her lap, she mopped a hand across her brow and sighed, feeling a momentary queasiness in her gut. It was all so useless.

Guns were a last resort. How the fellow had survived as long as he had without knowing that, was a mystery in itself. Unfortunately for him, he had learned that particular lesson too late.

Realizing that she was stalling the inevitable, she placed the binoculars back in her backpack and cinched it tight, and then slipped her arms through the straps, hefting the heavy pack onto her shoulders. She descended the ladder quickly, back to an anxious Charlie who was staring intently down the narrow stairwell to the church proper, illuminated by his flashlight.

He looked up as she dropped to the landing, skipping the last few ladder rungs. "What happened?" he asked. "I heard another shot."

Olivia moved past him, pulling out her own flashlight and taking the first steps downward. "It was a soldier. National Guard, I think," she said over her shoulder. "He killed two of them, those…things."

"And?" Charlie queried, following after her.

"And he stuck around." Her voice sounded false and emotionless to her ears. A man, no two people, had just been killed right before her eyes, and all she felt was a deepening sense of resignation. She was becoming desensitized to all the tragedies they were encountering daily, and sometimes hourly…minutely.

"Shit…"

Olivia nodded in the darkness. There was nothing more to say.

#

When they emerged on the street outside the church, they split up, with Charlie leaving to retrieve John from his hiding place where he'd been watching their flank around the corner. Olivia shielded her eyes from the daylight as she waited for their return, and gazed down the empty street that led to the Weeks Bridge, and ultimately, her apartment in Brighton.

They had to be there still. Before contact with them was lost, she had left strict instructions with Greg to let no one inside the apartment, and had even gone so far as to give him the location of her spare pistols and ammo. Rachel said he was familiar with guns, and she hoped to god her sister was right. She hadn't told him to aim for the head though, hadn't known it was the only way to stop them short of fire, at the time. He had to have figured it out. He had to.

Greg would protect them until she could get there. It had become her mantra over the last few weeks, what woke her up each morning.

"Olivia!" Charlie's harsh cry was low but urgent, imperative. He never called her by her full name unless it was important.

John. Oh god, no…no…no…

Olivia turned and sprinted toward his voice. She grabbed the at church's brick exterior as she rounded the corner, trying to keep her balance on the gravelly sidewalk against her inertia. Her backpack had grown heavy from the supplies that they had scavenged, and its additional weight threw her balance out of whack as she skidded to a stop at the scene before her.

Charlie was standing at the other end of the block, near the spot she had seen John from up in the bell tower. Dismay was written across his features, and at his feet lay the assault rifle John had been so proud of. The nicely manicured evergreen bushes he had been crouched in front of were disturbed as if something had pushed through them, forcing the branches outward.

Numbness seeped into her limbs, and Olivia forced herself to take a step closer, then another step, followed by another as she encountered a wall of dread that overloaded her senses. Pushing through it was like striding through deep water. The world seemed to come to a stop as she noticed a large stain on the ground next to the rifle. The stain was wet, and crimson in color. She didn't need her training to know it for what it was.

She felt a pain in her chest that forced her mouth open, and realized it was her heart breaking. Her breath was loud in her ears, obscuring all other sounds, reducing them to background noise.

There were scuff marks leading away from the stain, streaks of dark red that disappeared around the corner, the view blocked by the row of tall bushes.

Olivia lifted her eyes to Charlie, who shook his head slowly. His lips were thin and curled into a deep frown of regret.

She continued moving closer, and reached the spot where the bushes were disturbed. In a narrow gap between two of them, a body was sprawled on its back in the grass on the other side of the hedgerow. It was one of them, an old woman from the flowery patterns on her dirt and blood encrusted dress. A black knife hilt protruded from its mangled cheek. From the angle of entry, her agent persona informed her dispassionately that the blow had been struck from below, with an upward thrust.

It was John's knife.

Charlie tried to stop her as she moved past him, putting one arm up in front of her, blocking her path. "Liv…" he said, holding her back. "Don't…you don't need to see-"

"Get out of my way, Charlie." she said through clenched teeth, pushing up against him.

After a moment he sighed, and dropped his arm. His chin dropped on his chest as she moved past, following the scuff marks around the corner. A pair of familiar boots came into view, and she stopped, wanting nothing more than to turn back, to start the day over, to wake up from the twisted nightmare her life…all their lives had become. A small part of her wished she taken Peter up on his offer to come with her, instead of John, as horrible as it sounded.

Olivia took another step, and there he was. Her John.

He was facedown on the sidewalk, his arms outstretched before him, clawing at the sidewalk where he had attempted to pull himself before his strength had given out. His head was turned to the side, eyes closed, the familiar lines of his face which she knew so well, outlined in red with his blood.

Her vision blurred with the sting of salt in her eyes.

Where she had been reluctant to move forward before, she was suddenly at his side without seeming to pass through the intervening space, so fast had she rushed forward and thrown herself down at his side. Her knees banged hard on the rough concrete, sending spiky jolts of pain up through her thighs that she would only feel afterward, on the long sprint back to the lab. She pulled him over onto his back, and her hand flew to her mouth, pinching at her nose as the full extent his injury was revealed.

There was gash on the side of his neck, from which blood still flowed freely. The edges were jagged and torn, and distinctly mouth-shaped, as if someone had taken a bite out of him. A choking sob escaped her lips as it came to her that that was exactly what had happened.

"Oh god, John…" Olivia whispered behind her hand. Her throat constricted painfully, making it difficult to draw breath. Tears fell from her her cheeks onto his jacket, mingling with blood already staining it red, leaving clear circles which repelled the blood for an instant before giving way to its greater volume.

She reached out with an unsteady hand and touched his cheek, running her thumb over the ridge under his eye. His skin was warm to the touch. He was always warm, no matter how chilly it got in her apartment. Once upon a time she had called him her personal furnace. He had laughed at that. They had both laughed.

His eyes opened as she pulled her hand away.

"John!" she said, leaning close to his face. "John?"

John blinked, his blue eyes focusing and unfocusing on the sky above, before finally locating her. He tried to smile as their eyes met, his face twisting into a rictus, showing off rows of red teeth. "Liv…" His voice was bubbly and wet-sounding, barely audible. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth, leaving a red streak behind as it dripped to the sidewalk off his cheek.

"What is it, baby?" She leaned close as he tried to speak again, putting her hands on either of his cheeks. "I'm here."

"They said…couldn't tell..." John gurgled for a moment, a reddish bubble forming across his open lips. The bubble popped as he found his voice. "They said…the pattern…not…this side…ughh…" He let out a low gasp, and the muscles of his chest tightened under her forearms, as if he were about to seize. His eyes opened all the way, showing the whites all around. "Liv…" he gasped again, staring at her intently. "I…I…sorr-" He exhaled a long, gurgling breath, and then went still. His eyes glazed over, their focus fixed and unmoving.

"John…" Olivia choked, staring down at his still form.

Don't go…

She gave his head a little shake. "John!" The blood had stopped flowing from the wound in his neck, its work finally done. He was dead.

He was dead. John was dead.

Olivia brushed his hair back, feeling dazed as the words kept repeating in her head. She couldn't seem to process the finality of their meaning. John couldn't be dead. He just…couldn't be. Her gaze lingered on his face, re-memorizing his features. His forehead was hot under her palms, hotter than normal, as if he were suffering from a fever. She could almost feel him growing hotter by the second. A fever! Her hope flared to life again, clinging to that possibility.

He isn't dead, he's just sick! She had to get him back to the lab, back to Walter.

Gravel crunched behind her as her partner approached. "Charlie, help me with him. We need to get him to Walter!" she said, looking back at him. "He's sick."

Charlie's face was grim as he moved closer. The grimace deepened as he bent down and took a closer look John's face. "Liv…we can't help him." His voice was gentle, but firm.

"What do you mean, we can't help him?" Olivia said angrily. "It's John. He's your friend!"

"Was he bitten?"

"Bitten?" Olivia repeated the word stupidly. It sounded strange on her tongue, like she was speaking another language. "Yeah…but he's…he's…" Her thoughts ground to a halt as what Charlie was getting at finally penetrated, piercing the deluded, grief-stricken fog she'd been under. "Oh god…" she murmured, and turned back to John.

His face was still slack, but his eyes drew her gaze like a magnet. The whites were almost entirely bloodshot, as if every blood vessel had burst in them at once. Where they had been an intense blue before, an ugly yellow-gold stared back at her.

"Charlie…" she uttered softly, leaning closer John' face, despite a dry voice telling that it might be a bad idea. "His eyes, I…I think he's turning…" Olivia stopped as awareness suddenly bloomed in the golden orbs.

They rotated around in their sockets for a moment, before finally latching on to her face. It wasn't John staring back at her. The gaze was…empty, devoid of anything but pure instinct, animal-like and unblinking. The eyes of a predator. A raspy breath issued forth from between blood-stained teeth.

"Liv, get away from him!" Charlie said sharply.

Olivia started pull away from it, but was yanked back as the thing that had been her lover only moments ago, grabbed her with an iron grip. Fingertips dug into her shoulder blades painfully as she was pulled down toward the thing's bared teeth. They snapped audibly as she stopped her downward progress just short of being bitten herself, turning her face away and pressing back on its shoulders with both hands.

"Charlie!" Olivia gasped, straining against the pressure that was forcing her inexorably downward again, despite her best effort to resist. The thing seemed to have John's strength.

"Hold on!"

She sensed her partner kneeling down next to to her, and then his knife flashed, sliding smoothly into John's…no the thing's temple. The pressure on her back relaxed at once, and Olivia rolled away from the corpse, breathing hard. She stared up at the clouds above, and then covered her face with her hands, trying hard to hold in a fresh bout of tears.

"Did it bite you?" Charlie asked, standing over her. His voice was loud in the silence, and there was a panicky edge to it. When she didn't answer right away, he bent down and ripped her hands away from her face. "Did it bite you!"

His sudden shout startled her out of her stupor. "No!" Olivia shook her head emphatically, and then sat up. "I'm fine…" she panted, catching her breath. "It didn't…it didn't bite me."

Charlie dropped his head. He folded at the waist, resting his hands on his knees and sucking in a deep breath. "Fuck…that was way too close, kiddo." He straightened, then retrieved his knife from the body, wiping the blade clean before depositing it back in its sheath. "You scared the shit out of me, Liv."

"I'm sorry…" she said. "I…kinda lost it there for a moment. I wasn't thinking." She swiveled her head slowly. "It…it won't happen again."

It wouldn't happen again. She thought she had been prepared for something like what had happened. A bite was death, a bite was becoming one of them. She knew that. But she hadn't really known it, through and through, until seeing the transformation take place before her eyes. Until seeing the man she thought she loved die, and then come back, not as himself.

It wouldn't happen again.

"Don't worry about it," Charlie told her. "Here." He extended a hand and pulled her to her feet, and then looked down at John. "What do you want to do with him?"

"Leave it," Olivia said. "That isn't John." She knew it sounded callous, but that thing…she could no longer think of it as her John. It had tried to tear her face off. It wasn't John. A single tear forced its way through her defenses, and rolled down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away.

"Okay…" Charlie said regretfully, taking one last look at his former friend. "We should get out of here, then. We weren't exactly being quiet."

Indeed they hadn't, and Olivia could already see that they had drawn company. "I agree," she said, grabbing her pack off the sidewalk where it had fallen. She nodded over Charlie's shoulder, where several of the infected were moving toward them with their crooked gaits.

"Fucking zombies…" Charlie muttered, watching their approach. "Where to?"

"Not you too, Charlie." She shook her head, thinking of Peter. "Zombies?"

"Hey, if the shoe fits…" He grinned for an instant, then glanced back at the body on the sidewalk and sighed.

Olivia ignored him, and thought for a moment. It was much too late in the day cross the river. She'd begun having doubts that it would be possible to reach her apartment before nightfall, even if they left at sunrise. Getting trapped in the dark was too great a risk. I'm sorry Rach, Ella. You're gonna have to hold on a little longer. "Back to Harvard…the lab." She glanced back at in the direction of the Weeks Bridge. It would have to wait. "We'll try again tomorrow, maybe the day after."

They started forward, moving back the way they had come at a loping gait. Olivia snatched up John's rifle as they moved past. It felt good in her hands, its weight solid and comforting. Somehow more real, given everything that had happened, and how precarious life had become.

She understood now why he had been so loathe to let go of it. Gripping it tightly, she hurried after Charlie and didn't look back.