The “safe house” was an urban conglomeration: two full floors of a gutted skyscraper linked by a skyway to a parking garage and a hospital.  The safe house was accessible only by two stairwells, one in the skyscraper and another in the parking garage.  All the other entrances were blocked by rubble.  Within its tight system lived fifteen survivors and twenty-five who were not quite healthy enough to be called "survivors" but not far enough gone to be pronounced dead.

These twenty-five "patients" had been appropriated by Blake, against the other survivors' wishes, in the hospital.  There, he had organized one long hall into a sort of "ward" where he put the hospital's remaining supplies and medications to use.  His humanitarian efforts were mostly thankless: his fellow survivors thought he was alternately crazy, misguided, and dangerous.  But five of them - Sam, Beth, Alex, Christopher and Ethan - had originally been brought there, and had recovered from their injuries or illnesses in short time.  Blake carried on in spite of their objections.

Blake and Sean were the only ones who ever visited the ward.  The other survivors were either too callous or too frightened of the ward's inhabitants.  Sean was ten years old.  Blake had taken him in and had taught the boy medicine and as much theology as would help him live in the ruined world.

Sean's world was a warren of grimy concrete and cold stone, every luxury they had improvised or scavenged together.  Outside was a forest of leaning steel derelicts (once a city), and darkened streets where strange things moved.  But here he had a purpose, and even if the philanthropy of Blake's efforts was lost on him, he still took his studies - such as they were - seriously.

Today the two of them wheeled a cart laden with food and daily medication rations through the hall.  Blake made the rounds every day, but he was training Sean to do it as well.  At each door Blake showed Sean how to check and update the ward's patient list, and introduced him to the patients.  Sean was a fast learner, and had no end of questions, most of which were not related to the job at hand.

Shortly after they began making the rounds, Sean asked, "Have you ever seen a wight?"

This gave Blake pause.  "Yes."

"What do they look like?"

"Like us, except all glowing."

Sean tried to imagine this, and suggested, "Like Melissa?"

"Kind of, except they're not sick like she is."

A sandpapery voice hurled words at them from the next door on the ward.  "Ha!  But they'll make ya sick.  Just talkin' about 'em makes ya sick.  You best keep yet mouth shut if ya know what's good fer ya."  There was a window on the door, about twelve-by-six inches and barred with iron.  An old man's parchment face was pressed right up against it.

Sean drew back from the door, but Blake stepped up.  He slipped the food tray through a little slot at floor-level and accepted the old one which Jonas kicked out to him.  "Good morning, Jonas.  Sleep well?"

"Ha!" Jonas spat off to the side somewhere in his room.  "The wights come and get ya in yer sleep.  Mark that, lad."  He reached his long, knobby fingers through the window bars.  "They come through the walls fer ya with their hands like ice and their claws for yer skin and - "

"Thanks you, Jonas, we get the idea."

"Ha!"  He spat again.  "Can't none of us hide in this place.  Wights come right through the walls.  I seen 'em at night."

Blake took Sean's arm and led him away from the prattling old man.  They still heard him for quite some time.

"How come he's here?" Sean asked.  "He doesn't look hurt or sick."

"Well..." - Blake thought about how best to phrase it - "some people have hurts on the inside."

Sean's face brightened.  "Like when I fell and broke my ankle?"

"Kind of, only he doesn't have any broken bones.  People can get broken brains too, if that makes sense."

Sean screwed his face up, trying to imagine somebody's brain being broken like a bone.  "So, like..."

"Just don't talk to him anymore unless I'm there, okay?"

Sean nodded.  They continued walking the hall, Sean pushing the cart while Blake delivered the food to each room.  Blake took a minute to converse with each patient, and sometimes Sean caught snippets of Bible verses being recited back and forth.  Other times, there was only silence from inside the room, and Blake put on a face mask before entering.  Sean hadn't noticed the mask hanging from Blake's belt at first, but now he couldn't take his eyes off it.  Once, after Blake had secured it over his mouth and entered a room, Sean craned his neck to look inside.  Before the door swung shut, Sean caught a glimpse of something that looked like a big plastic bubble in the middle of the room, surrounding the bed.

Sean tried to understand what such a thing could possibly be for, but failed.  But the idea of such a barrier reminded him of something Jonas had said earlier.  When Blake reemerged, Sean asked, "What did he mean, they come through the walls?  Can wights do that?"

Blake paused for a moment as he replaced the face mask on his belt.  "Not here they can't."

The last room on the hall was Melissa's.  It had once been a large, refrigerated storage locker, but the refrigeration system had failed years ago and Blake had converted it into a livable space.  It was a bit harsher than the other rooms: there was no window, and behind the furniture there was still the telltale gleam of stainless steel.

There were a great deal of supplies which the locker could have held, and its hermetically sealed door would have kept them fresh and safe for a very long time, but Blake had insisted that it be used to house patients.  Particularly, those patients whose conditions necessitated more intense isolation than the rest of the hall provided.  Fortunately, there had only ever been one such case at a time.

This time it was "Melissa".  That was the name that Sean himself had given her, since the young woman was never coherent enough to provide any useful information on the topic.

Blake wore the mask, though he knew that the Miasma didn't spread that way.  It could only be contracted through touch, and then only infrequently.  Blake could handle the other diseases with the hospital's equipment, but the unpredictable nature of the Miasma made every visit a gamble.

A double-layered plastic barrier blocked off most of the room.  Blake advanced into the little alcove just inside the doorway, food tray in hand.  He began to place the items, one by one, in the small intermediary tube between the plastic walls.  Melissa could open her end of the chamber once Blake had closed his; they never used a tray, utensils, or any other items which would have to come back to them.  This was the extent of her quarantine.

The Miasma was strong today.  Blake could discern Melissa's form, lying flat on her back on the bed, but the rest of the room was filled with a diffuse, soapy glow.  Swaths of Melissa's skin fluoresced, giving off a light that seemed to crawl slowly out to the walls and linger like smoke in the room's corners.

"Good morning," Blake said, hopefully loud enough to wake her.

      About a minute passed, during which the light receded a bit, and then she stirred and sat on the edge of the bed.  "The fighting is gone.  They've gone to the bottom of the ground."

It was so rare for her to be this coherent that he paused before closing his end of the tube.  "Do you mean underground?" Blake asked.

She shook her head and walked over to the other side of the plastic wall.  From here Blake could see her more clearly, though he couldn’t look too long at the Miasma patches on her skin.  She was young - perhaps only a few years younger than Blake's thirty - and he had always thought that she would have been pretty if it were not for her condition.  She wasn't physically deformed, but the Miasma lent her a particularly subtle deformation, one which was not obvious but needled the back of one's mind nevertheless.  It was a deformation of spirit.

"Not underground.  They went around."

"The ships in space?  They went around the planet?"

Melissa shook her head no, and opened the tube to retrieve the food.  "Not planet, around."  She picked up the apple and took a few bites until it was half gone, then held it up to the plastic wall.  "Around," she said again, as if this and the apple were supremely important.

"I don't get it.  How are you feeling?"

"Enjoy it while you can."  She set the apple aside and poked at the rest of the portions she had been given.  "This is the last, you know."

"The last what?  The last food?  Don't worry, I'll bring you more tomorrow."

"Tell the others that it's the last.  They come through the walls."

The mask over Blake's nose and mouth suddenly seemed claustrophobic.  He was aware of how fast his heart was beating.

Sean's voice came through the door, distant and uncertain and making Blake jump.  "Blake?  There's someone out here."

Blake cast one last look at Melissa, who was lying back down on the bed, leaving the rest of her food untouched.  He pushed the locker's heavy door open and then closed again, a laborious process.  "What is it?" he asked when he had removed his mask.  The hall was empty.

Sean pointed.  The stairwell at the end of the ward was lost in darkness.

A luminous figure darted out of Jonas' room and flickered away in the direction of the stairs.