I stand in the pouring rain, mouth open, for what feels like hours, swallowing when I have enough. I try to scrub the sweat out of my hair and the grime off my skin, but it isn’t as easy without soap. I’m freezing, but at least I’ve had something to drink.

  When I’ve had my fill, I retreat back into the bank, with my flashlight and box cutter, and fanning my shirt away from my skin to dry off. It sticks to my skin anyway, cold and itchy. My teeth chatter.

  That isn’t good. I’ll need to dry off soon or find someplace warm to spend the night. I also need food, and something for these sores.

  I feel better after having something to drink. I wish I had something to carry it in. A water purifier isn’t hard to make, with the right tools, but not exactly mobile.

  I watch the rain for a few minutes, trying to form a mental map of the swamp. I can’t wade through it barefoot, and I certainly can’t traverse it in the rain. I guess the only way forward is back.

  I limp back into the bank and move into the lobby. The floor is cold and clammy against my toes, the carpet is peeling and patchy in places. A feral cat darts out of a hall, making me jump, and hisses at me before running off again.

  As I come out of the service halls and into the lobby, I pass by a stand of brochures, stiff and brittle. I recognize a few of the places, still visible under the watermarks and stains, but some of them I’ve never heard of. We have a zoo, but no zipline course, and our historical district is notoriously under-utilized, but this has all manner of tours from carriages to Segways.

  The zoo catches my attention. There’s a photorealistic striped animal that looks like a wolflike cat or a catlike wolf, an elephant in a thick coat of fur, and an ostrich-like bird dwarfing its human handler. “Come see animals that time forgot, live!” is written in garish, faded-yellow letters.

  Another is a basic guide to the spread of disease, with tips for washing hands, what to look for in hand sanitizer and face masks, and warnings about unprotected sex. It says, “Always look into their eyes,” with a picture of human eyes with biohazards around the pupils.

  That’s some 1980s PSA stuff right there.

  I keep moving through the lobby and back through the front door, where I saw the…things. I hold my head up to catch a few mouthfuls of more water, and then scan the area and try to ignore the hunger pangs.

  The building directly across the street is a skyscraper. The windows are mostly open and empty, dark eye sockets watching over the ruins. It links to some of the nearby buildings, either through more walkways, where one of the buildings in the swamp has half-toppled, and what looks like some sort of rope bridge.

  There’s more of those tracks in some of the muddy places, the two-toed feet with vicious clawmarks. This here is where something bipedal and stood, knee prints behind where the smaller prints are, and sweeping marks, like someone dragged a water hose through. All of it’s getting less distinct as it rains.

  To my left is the swamp, full of toppled streetlights and the backs of ruined cars like giant lilypads. The insects have mostly cleared out because of the rain, but there’s still the occasional jump of something, a frog, or a fish, or something that looks for all the world like a small, pink dolphin.

  The rain doubles, driving me back in side. The cuts on my leg protest at being wet. I think my headache is coming back. No, no, it never left. My feet are filthy. My kingdom for a hot shower. I think I might still be feverish.

  The lobby has a closed ceiling. There might be other floors up there. I wonder if I go up, could I reach one of the walkways? Maybe I could reach another building this way, cross the swamp maybe…

  I look through the teller windows. They’re old-fashioned, wood-trimmed, and were probably once quiet beautiful. I scan around for an “employee only” door, and when I see it I start looking for weak points in the teller booths.

  The bottom appears to be pretty solid, all things considered, probably an actual wall. The wooden part has held up nicely as well, and on some closer inspection, bits of wood paneling come off and reveal rusty metal bars.

  Well, I don’t think that’s going to work.

  I go back down the hall I hid in last night and check the doors for a stairwell, finally finding one just on the other side of where I hid. It looks like someone barricaded it off, piled it high with furniture and then strung a rotting bedsheet over it, covered in black marks like paint.

  I think I can get past this. Some of the barricade is collapsing, just enough for me to crawl over it. I do so, picking my handholds carefully, but my head is pounding so bad I can’t focus, to say nothing of trying to do this with a box cutter and a flashlight. An upside-down chair slides out from under me, spilling onto the ground and then landing on top of me. I think I’ll lay here for a bit.

  After I gain enough composure to do so, I push the chair off me and examine the stairwell. Most of it looks pretty undamaged, but there’s soft spots and evidence of water damage. I’m going to have to plan my footing carefully or fall again, I think.

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  I take the stairs one step at a time, acutely aware that I don’t know where the walkways are, or how tall the building is. I duck under a large hornet’s nest, not wanting to see if it’s active or not, and past a bird nesting in a glassless window.

  About three flights up or so, I notice a poster still hanging on the wall, faded and warped from time and weather. It’s very official-looking, almost like one of those vintage recruitment posters, and mostly words except for that drawing of human eyes with biohazards around the pupils again.

  All genetically modified individuals must report to the nearest medical facility for identification and registration by no later than September 1st. No exceptions. Failure to do so is a federal crime under the Darwin Act, punishable by up to life in prison.

  I study the poster for some time, wondering if I’m misreading it because of the damage, or if it’s viral marketing for a band or a movie, or something. I can’t think of anything, but it wouldn’t be the first movie that slipped in and out of box offices without my notice.

  I imagine the walkways will be a little more than one story off the ground, so I keep going past the first door, which is hanging off its hinges and opens up into what looks like an office or computer hub for the bank below. I notice lights are falling from the ceiling in there, and some very lonely-looking desks.

  The steps are cold against my toes. I’m bored out of my skull and start counting the seconds between the thunder just to pass the time. Before I know it, I’m out of breath and need to sit down for a bit, dimly reminding myself that this is why hikers carry protein bars.

  I think I’m going to start licking the walls if this doesn’t stop.

  After I settle down, I start climbing again, but I’m going to have to start looking for something more substantial to find food. Maybe I could find, like, a shopping basket and just go back to that pond and start pulling fish out of it by the bucketful. That’ll work.

  I don’t know how tall this building is. Come to think of it, I can’t remember what floor I’m on. Is this high enough? Maybe I should start looking for the walkways here. If there’s not one on this level, I’ll just go up another until I find it. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll find a burger joint up and running.

  I try to remember…remember weather patterns. I can’t think of any storms or hurricanes that might have made landfall, an earthquake would have woken me. I…can’t think of a single logical reason the world would have gone the way that it seems to.

  I huff and puff my way up the stairs, dimly trying to figure out why my medium-sized town suddenly has interlocking skyscrapers, feeling dizzy and nauseas. It’s like…if my hometown were a seed, and someone watered it. I don’t remember seeing the buildings in the cities linking quite so…often.

  I’m tired of climbing steps, so at the next landing I slip inside the nearest building, wondering what I might find inside. I’ve seen tall buildings in larger cities, with bank and business logos along the side, but I’ve never known what goes on inside them. Do they really need all that office space? How many computers does it take to run a single location?

  Apparently, quite a lot, I realize, opening the door to the floor. It’s another sea of cubicles and computers.

  “Do these people do anything else?” I grumble out loud. A bird takes flight somewhere in response.

  I start looking around for a walkway, or another staircase, even a window I might be able to see the walkway from. Rotten paper squishes softly under my feet, mixed in with blown leaves and feathers.

  There’s a very strange…juxtaposition of ruin and…not-ruin? The desks and cubicles are more-or-less in place, even if they’re collapsing or covered in growing plants. Some of them have decorations or trinkets, little magnets or whiteboards with some long-forgotten reminder barely dotted out in faded ink.

  Nobody packed up their things, useful supplies weren’t relocated somewhere where they could be put to use. If there’s signs of looting up here, I can’t tell it from the rot. It all gives the impression that the lights were shut off at the end of the work day and never turned back on again.

  It sends a chill up my spine. It means there was no forewarning.

  As I pace around the outer edge of the cubicles, I see the gutted door to a walkway heading into the darkened halls of another building. The floor is more or less intact, but covered in glass from the windows that used to be there. Since it’s what I was looking for and I have no reason to mill about the broken computers, I keep going.

  Someone piled mattresses up next to the threshold to the walkway, long since rotted away, revealing rusted springs. Some worn blankets are thrown in a heap on one side, opposite a camp lantern surrounded by its own glass, and a couple of rusted tin cans. It looks like someone nested here, once.

  There’s nothing for me here, nothing usable. I keep going into the walkway, watching outside of glassless windows how high the buildings rise above the swamp, how two in the distance are leaning against one another. On to my left seems to have something like a giant television set hanging haphazardly off of it.

  I stand next to a gaping hole where the floor has started to give away, marveling at the silence. A city this large, I’d expect to hear cars and trucks and cell phones going off, the drone of human voices murmuring into electronic devices, music blaring from car windows. This is…a silence like I’ve never heard before, something cold and dead, like I’m…I’m standing in the rotting bones of a city.

  I’m not even sure it’s the same one I went to sleep in the night before. Or…half a week ago, or however long it’s been. The buildings are so…tall. I can’t find any familiar landmarks, not that I really know where I’m at in relation to…anything.

  Bile rushes up out of my stomach, driving me to my knees, carefully, holding it in my mouth if I have to, so I don’t fall instead. I spit it out, purging it from me, but there isn’t much to lose.

  I need food.

  Shaky, I climb to my feet and keep going into the next building. My insides are numb, but kind of empty. I should go fishing again.

  Into the next building. The rooms in this one are neatly aligned and numbered, either a hotel or apartment, not an office building. A large, Maine Coon-like cat stands and hisses at me from its lounging spot before running away.

  The nearest door, across the hall, is hanging off its hinges, revealing patchy carpeting and a collapsing bed. Robotically, I step inside, finding a small kitchenette to my right and a patio that probably once had a sliding glass door at the back of the small room. Something like a television set, although one no thicker than my finger and slightly curved, has fallen off of frayed wiring in the wall and collapsed in a pile of glass and plastic.

  I find myself testing the refrigerator, which is empty except for a single decrepit box of baking soda. My stomach growls as if in argument. I murmur back that it’s not exactly like I can order a pizza, gently thumbing the switch on the flashlight and somewhat wondering if I should conserve the battery for nightfall.

  I huff a sigh and turn around to leave the room. There’s nothing for me here, no food, no working electricity, and even if I’m tired and sick to my stomach, it’s too early to sleep. I need to keep moving and find something useful.

  The hall outside the room is pretty dark. I guess all the windows are in the rooms, leaving the hall empty and still. The shadows weigh on my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I wonder if I’m feverish. I feel cloistered.

  Something lands softly on my shoulder. I try to brush it off, jumping at first but deciding it’s probably some rot or ruin peeling off my shoulder. I push it away, but find it soft and leathery, split into slender, nimble sticks.

  It’s a hand.