Dead Sense

(Originally published as The Fast and the Dead)

He’d never have thought it could be so hard to outrun something so slow. They couldn’t even maintain a regular walking pace, for crying out loud! But he had to keep moving fast. In the past half hour he hadn’t been able to slow below a rapid walk, and his legs and chest were beginning to protest. That old movie’s gag about cardio being rule #1 didn’t feel so much like a joke right now.

He risked a look around. He was making his way through a drab city block. Grime covered every surface that hadn’t been washed clean by rain; stains that could be rust or worse discolored concrete walls and walks. Barred windows faced outward defiantly, many with broken glass letting hot air gust in. In most cases the glass was broken from outside. In some, it had broken outward from within.

The only vehicles on the streets were rusted out hulks. He saw nothing moving, which filled him with great relief and awful dread; there were no immediate threats. He would stand out like a beacon as soon as he moved.

He considered his options carefully. Hiding, trying to wait it out was futile. They were slow but they’d arrive in the area soon enough, and then whatever it was that drew them to him would give him away. He didn’t know what it was. A smell? Heat? The sound of his breathing, of his heart beating? Whatever it was, hiding was unreliable. He knew that. If you were very lucky, you might get away with it for a little while, but sooner or later you’d slip up in some way you’d probably never know about, and then you were done for.

That left moving on. He felt horribly vulnerable in the streets. They were broad, and he’d have no problems at all getting away from a few, but if they massed up in any numbers he was as good as dead.

He looked at the buildings around him. They were too tall, too uneven. No way to travel across the roofs, at least not in this part of the city. That was a shame; in some places it could be done, he knew, and they’d be unable to follow for any length of time.

Even better would be to find a vehicle. Even a bicycle would be better than being on foot, at least while he was in the city. He wasn’t going to hold his breath though, and he put the possibility out of his mind.

He took a deep breath. The air was tinged with filth and corruption, some from the recent troubles, some not yet worn away by time after the days before. The smell of the lake lay under it all, faint this far inland—the lake. Water. They couldn’t swim. Water wouldn’t actually stop them, they could wander as long as they liked across the bottom, but if they couldn’t reach up to the surface, they couldn’t get to you. If he could only get to a boat …

He scanned the streets, doorways, windows and alleys around himself. Still no sign, but it wouldn’t last. He couldn’t sit still for much longer, not here. Not in the middle of this death trap.

Skin crawling with the feeling of exposure, he trotted down the street. He wanted to run, but his energy was flagging already and he couldn’t afford to burn it all right away. It’d be gone too soon as it was.

Brick and glass facades faced him from either side of the street. Trees still grew in many places, while others had long since been broken down. Old power lines lay lifeless on the streets and walks in places, but he paid them no mind; it’d been years since they carried any charge. Colorful urban graffiti was still visible on many of the old brick walls under newer layers of dirt, soot and in places, blood.

A loud growl came out of nowhere. Whirling around, heart pounding his blood like a drum, he whirled around—but the street was empty. He realized with a pang that he was hungry; very hungry. It had been hours since he’d had anything to eat or drink, and he’d been moving fast for a long time in the heat.