Chapter 1

Daisy's POV

At 6:12, I was on my eighth pass through the same three lines of product copy when an email hit my personal inbox. The sender and subject fields were blank. There were only two lines in the body.

"Three minutes. Then everyone around you will turn into zombies. Stay off the elevators."

I didn't buy it.

There were enough AR gimmicks and influencer pranks going around the Bay as it was. Some startup in this city was always willing to scare people for a little traffic.

My hands were already on the keyboard. I typed Jess? Maya? It's not April Fools', stared at it for two seconds, then deleted it. With nothing in the sender field, there was no one to answer me.

The fluorescents above my desk flickered three times. Every printer on the floor jammed at once.

"What's PG&E up to now?" Lena looked up from her screen. "How many times has this happened this year?"

I said nothing. It had been dark outside for a while. Under the streetlights, the palm and sycamore branches swayed like a hand reaching out of the fog to drag people into the black water of the Bay.

Lena turned her head beside me. Her eyes caught my attention first. They were cloudy gray, like frosted glass. Then I noticed the waxy blue-white skin at her throat and the black creeping around her nails.

"What's wrong?" She leaned in, using the same mother-hen tone she'd had with me since my first week. "What are you staring at? If the boss catches you, you'll be here till ten."

She hadn't finished speaking when the stench of rotten flesh hit me. My stomach lurched. I shot out of my chair.

Everyone on the floor was staring. I stuffed my laptop and charger into my bag. It took two pulls to get the zipper closed.

"I'm not feeling well, Lena. I'm going home. Tell the boss I'm taking a sick day."

She stared at me as if I'd spoken another language.

"What do you mean, you're not feeling well? A stray bit me in the Mission yesterday. I got my rabies shots, and I'm still here, aren't I? Keep this up and the boss is going to fire you."

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught an unnatural jerk at the corner of her mouth. By then I'd reached the glass door. I called back over my shoulder.

"Fine. Fire me. I quit."

The office went silent. A sliver of light showed under the boss's door.

I shoved through the fire door and took the stairs three at a time. With the power acting up, I wasn't getting into an elevator. If it stopped between floors, I'd be meat in a can.

The emergency lights kept cutting out. Concrete steps vanished under my feet, and the echo in the empty stairwell sounded like somebody running behind me.

On the last half flight, I checked my phone. Two minutes had passed since the email.

I made it through the front doors at the three-minute mark. A scream from the third floor carried through the building. Above me, glass shattered and furniture toppled.

People waiting for their Ubers in the plaza looked up at the windows.

"Holy shit. Is someone jumping?"

"Which one is it?"

My hands shook so badly I could barely hold my phone. I kept my eyes down, swiped my badge at the turnstile, and got out of the park.

The email had vanished from my inbox without a trace, as if it had never been there. My signal bars dropped as the little wheel on the screen spun and spun. I tried both SMS and iMessage. Every text got stuck on sending.

I crouched at the curb, typed a few lines, and erased them all. The wind was coming off the water. Fog had already started rolling in past the Gate, and people on the street just went about their business.

I skipped Muni and unlocked a Bay Wheels bike. Twenty minutes later, I was outside Bayview Apartments.

At the Trader Joe's on the ground floor, I grabbed a cart and filled it with milk, bread, instant pasta, chocolate, and peanut butter.

I wheeled the loaded cart to the register. I shopped there three times a week, so Gloria knew me.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Gloria came over from the shelves. "No overtime today? You look awful."

"Bad day. I'm going home to eat my feelings."

I added, "Are you still doing deliveries? I need ten cases of bottled water on the eighth floor. You can leave them in the elevator. I got laid off today, and I've got to start looking for work tomorrow. I won't have time to keep coming down for water."

Gloria clucked her tongue. She said she'd send everything up on a cart and told me not to upset my stomach eating like that.

I held on to the cart until my knuckles went white.

I'd been adopted. After the people who raised me died, the city took the house. I'd lived in the Bay for less than a year.

I closed my mouth without saying the word zombie. I had no proof. The email was gone, and it hadn't even occurred to me to take a screenshot.

Gloria rang me up, bagged my groceries, and walked me to the elevator. Before the doors slid shut, I heard the guard ask her, "Another delivery? What's she buying all that for?"

"She got laid off. Doesn't want to keep coming downstairs for water," Gloria said. "Young people really stock up, don't they?"

At the eighth floor, I unloaded everything from the elevator and hit the button to send it back down. Then I carried it inside, one load at a time.

Only after I'd shut the door, turned the deadbolt, and put the chain on did my heart slow. I was back in the one place that still felt familiar.

The only light in the living room came from a floor lamp aimed right at the couch. It shone straight into my eyes.

I dropped onto the couch. Before I dealt with the pile by the door, I shut my eyes to take a minute to breathe.

As soon as I closed them, I knew something was wrong. Behind my eyelids, a cube with more faces than I could count kept turning, breaking apart, and locking itself back together.

I rolled off the couch, dry-heaving on the rug.