Something tugged at his right calf. It was soft at first, almost like a ripple beneath the skin. His groggy mind slowly registered the sensation, bringing his conscious awareness back online. As his thoughts gained resolution, he could feel something small and furry pawing at his leg.

  The sensation sharpened, a tiny point of fire pressing into him, and pain blossomed from his calf up the back of his leg. His eyes snapped open and he jerked upright. A small shape skittered back into the rubble, claws clicking against the broken tiles. His hand felt at his calf and encountered a warm wetness. The stinging intensified.

  Turning his leg, he saw his pant leg had been ripped open. A rivulet of blood flowed down toward the ground from half-inch open patch of missing flesh. A few droplets of blood hit the floor, diffusing into the dust and grime of the decaying room.

  Instinctively, he removed the knife from his pocket and cut off the ruined portion of his pant leg. He ripped it into strips and tied them around the wound to quell the bleeding. The fiery pain dulled into a deep aching as he tightened the makeshift bandage.

  Steadying himself on the nearby pod, he gingerly got to his feet. He attempted to shift some of his weight onto his right leg. The pain intensified, and his balance gave out. Catching himself on the pod, he slowly let himself down.

  His body still ached, and the momentary adrenaline from the bite began to wear off. He settled back against the pod, slumping his shoulders and leaning his head back to rest against the cold metal surface. Glancing to the side, into the darkness where the biter had scurried off, he caught a glimpse of a small rat hiding among some fallen ceiling tiles. He grimaced, noticing a faint red tinge on the fur around its mouth.

  He eyed the beast, tense, waiting for it to strike again. A visceral, primal fear gave him the urge to stand and either kill the thing or run. His body refused either, the exertion of sudden motion having deepened its exhaustion.

  It eyed him, too, clearly disappointed that its meal had the gall to get up and walk away. Eventually, it slunk off into the debris. For a moment, Elias remained frozen. His leg still ached, but it had stopped throbbing.

  Taking a deep breath, Elias allowed himself to relax. He chuckled involuntarily, and was surprised by the sudden sensation. It was not unpleasant, and the sudden outburst had brought some catharsis. The visceral fear he had felt began to abate. He chuckled again, realizing that a rat of all things had driven him to such irrationality.

  That gave him pause.

  Rat, he thought, mulling the word over in his brain. Rat. The picture in his mind was clear, a small furry creature hiding in the dark. It felt so familiar, but he could not place where the word came from. Why is it a rat? What is a rat?

  A hint of the mental haze that had spiraled into unconsciousness brewed at the edges of his mind. He put every once of his willpower into dispelling it. He would not allow it to happen again. He was running out of pant legs, should he be bitten again.

  For the first time since he woke, he tried to take in his bearings. There was an oppressive air in the room. Long undisturbed dust had been agitated in the events of the last few days, and there were strange tracks through the grime around the pod. They seemed to start on the far wall, near where the ceiling was open to the sky, trailing through the detritus and concentrating around the strange device. The marking almost looked like tiny footprints.

  Elias shuddered to think how many rats would be required to leave such an impression. He hoped, for his sake, he would never have to know.

  His eyes rested on one of the skeletons, about three meters from the pod. It was hunched over a collapsed table. It unsettled him, though he could not understand why. Clearly the person was long dead, and based on the state of the room he doubted the rats had killed him or her. After a pause, he shifted his eyes up toward the ceiling and noticed a bright, blue sky through the large hole. A cloud drifted past up above. In the distance he could hear a faint crashing sound.

  Beach, he thought, and a sensation of cool water and warm sand washed over him. As the sensation faded, he felt the oppressive ruin walls close in on him again. He determined he no longer wanted to be here in this room. He hated the rats, hated the bones, hated the grime. He wanted to feel the sun on his face and the fresh breeze in his hair.

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  Hair. The word stuck in his mind. Absently, he reached up to feel his head. No hair, he thought. He let his hand rest on his bare scalp, enjoying the sensation of skin on skin. Then, he shook himself from his stupor. He wanted to get out.

  He noticed the notebook lying on the ground within arm’s reach. He had dropped it when he collapsed. He grabbed it, and read the message once more.

  “Your name is Elias Strain. If all went well, I was able to imprint all but your memories. Not enough energy to produce any more of the crawlers. Sorry for the rude awakening. Meet me at: 500 Terry A Francois Blvd, San Francisco, CA 94158. Turn page for map.”

  Elias Strain. Me. Elias Strain. The words made sense to him. He fought the fog that came with it, determined not to let the dissonance claim him again. Meet them there. Anything sounded better than this place. Looking around one last time, at the depressing bones and the monolithic device beside him, he determined he never wanted to return.

  He slipped the notebook into the pocket opposite the pocket with the knife and tried once more to stand. This time, he grit his teeth against the pain in his right calf. Surprisingly, he managed to remain on his feet.

  He walked toward the pile of rubble below the collapsed roof. His first steps were shaky, but soon he found the rhythm of walking again. The rubble formed a sort of ramp, and with some effort he was able to claw his way to the top. His body complained against the exertion, but he would not let it stop.

  As he heaved himself out of the hole, he found himself on the roof of a large building. He limped over to the edge and peered over. It seemed like he was nearly three stories up. Feeling a sudden queasiness from the distance to the ground, he stumbled back from the edge.

  He was in the middle of a vast, ruined city. Crumbling buildings rose from a forest of vegetation. He could make out the faint remnants of asphalt roads between the trees and shrubs. Deer grazed in a nearby open space, what he assumed to be the remnants of a park, and a fox darted through the trees at the wood’s edge. In the distance, he saw a vast body of water glittering in the sun. Across this expanse he could see two more long stretches of land fencing in the bay. Connecting the two was a towering bridge.

  He felt at his pocket for the notebook and opened it to the map page. He identified the large bridge. It had been labeled “Golden Gate, West.” Aligning the map with the location of the bridge, he saw that his destination was marked south of it, on the land across the water. Following the distant coastline south, he saw a long road connecting that distant land mass to his side of the bay. It was much shorter than the bridge, but it was wide and long. Time had crumbled some sections into the water’s abyss, but it appeared sturdy enough to get someone across.

  He looked back at his map. The marked path led across that very road. It left his current location and traveled west until it hit the beach, at which point it veered left and followed the shore until reaching that elevated roadway.

  He pocketed the notebook and limped back toward the hole in ceiling. He carefully lowered himself back in and slid down the rubble.

  I need to find something to steady myself if I am going to walk that far on this leg, he thought. He did not question why that felt so important, or how he knew what to do. He was determined to leave, and that was enough. He could trust that somehow, at the end of the path, there would be answers.

  He searched the room for anything looking sturdy enough to use as a walking stick. Near the collapsed portion of the ceiling was a tumble of tree branches that might have blown in at some point in the past. He found one that was sturdy enough and tall enough to bear part of his weight, and he used the knife to smooth some of the more splintery areas.

  When he was satisfied with his work, he approached the laboratory doors and stepped out into a long, dark hallway. There were several doors at even intervals down the hallway. Each had a grimy window that allowed filtered light from outside to bathe the corridor in twilight. He picked his way through the detritus, occasionally flicking his stick forward in anger at a wayward rat.

  At the end of the hallway, a symbol likely representing stairs had fallen off a door and lay partially covered in dirt. He would have missed it had his walking stick not brushed it, causing a plastic scraping sound. Pushing the door open, he found a flight of stairs.

  The stairs turned out to be more of a challenge than he had considered. His right calf flared in pain each time he needed to step with it. He resolved to take one step at a time, first stepping with his left, then bringing his right leg to the same step, then bracing himself on the rail as he momentarily shifted his weight right for the next step.

  It took an agonizingly long time for him to make it to the bottom floor. He had to stop to catch his breath here and there, realizing his body was still so weak. This was apparently more than just simple exhaustion. It was like his muscles had never been asked to do so much work before. Something about that gnawed at the back of his brain, but he refused to acknowledge it.

  At the ground floor, the stairway door pushed open into a large reception area. The doors that had once acted as an entrance were broken down, light spilled into the room from their vacancy. He crossed this room and finally took his first step into the world beyond.