The phone had been ringing for twenty minutes before either of you really registered it.

You'd been half-asleep on the couch, Joel's arm slung over your shoulders, the TV throwing blue light across the living room while some anchor talked over footage that didn't make sense yet — a hospital somewhere, people running, a banner scrolling underneath about a quarantine situation developing. The kind of story that existed at the edges of your attention, background noise to a Friday night.

"You gonna get that?" you mumbled, eyes still closed.

"It's your sister. Probably wants to talk about the thing with Tommy again."

"It's been ringing for twenty minutes, Joel."

"Exactly. Once she starts she don't stop."

You elbowed him. He grunted, finally hauling himself off the couch toward the kitchen, and you heard him pick it up mid-ring, his voice low and easy. "Yeah, hey—"

A pause.

Longer than it should have been.

"Slow down," he said, different now. Tighter. "Tommy, slow down, I can't—"

You sat up.

From upstairs, Sarah's door opened, the floor creaking under her feet as she came down to see what the noise was, sleep still in her voice. "Dad? What's—"

Joel held up a hand, phone still pressed to his ear, listening, his face doing something you didn't have a word for yet. Outside, distantly, a car alarm went off. Then another. Then — underneath them, threading through the ordinary suburban dark — something that sounded almost like screaming, except it couldn't be, because nothing happened here, because this was just a Friday night in a town where nothing ever happened.

"Okay," Joel said into the phone. "Okay, we're leaving now."

He hung up. Looked at you. For one half-second the easy, unhurried man you'd fallen asleep against was gone, replaced by someone moving fast, already grabbing keys off the hook by the door.

"Joel—"

"Get Sarah's shoes," he said. "We're taking the truck."

"What did Tommy say?"

"I'll explain in the truck. Right now I need you to move."

You'd known Joel long enough — three years now, long enough to have learned the particular cadence of his worry, the difference between something's wrong and something is very wrong — and this was the second one, stripped down to instinct, no time for explanation.

Sarah was at the bottom of the stairs now, fully awake, fear creeping into her voice the way it does for teenagers who can read a room better than they let on. "What's going on?"

"Probably nothing," Joel said, in the voice of a man who didn't believe that anymore. "Shoes. Now."

You moved.

Outside, the sky over the next neighborhood had gone the wrong color, orange, low, flickering in a way that streetlights didn't flicker. The car alarms kept going. Somewhere closer now, glass broke.

"Joel," you said, quieter, just for him, as Sarah ran back upstairs for her shoes. "What did Tommy tell you?"

He looked at you. Really looked, the way he did sometimes, like he was trying to memorize something before it all changed.

"He said it's spreading," Joel said. "Whatever's happening at the hospital. He said that it's not stopping at the hospital."

"Spreading how?"

"I don't know. People-" He stopped. Shook his head once, sharp, like he was putting the thought away to deal with it later. "We need to get out of the neighborhood. Now, before the roads-"

A scream, much closer this time. Human. Cut off a bit too fast.

Joel’s hand found yours, gripped hard, and for just a second, one second, before the night demanded everything else of him, he held on like the world hadn’t just ending yet, like there was still time to just stand in the kitchen with you and pretend this was an ordinary Friday.

Then, Sarah was back, shoes on, eyes wide and asking questions neither of you had answers for, and Joel let go of your hand to grab the truck keys, his voice dropping into a steady, controlled register he used when things were about to get bad and he needed everyone moving.

“Truck,” he said. “Both of you. Now.”