The staircase groaned under his weight. Not because he was heavy, but because the building was old and tired. Concrete cracked with the weight of years, not footsteps. Elias descended slowly, one hand on the railing, the other gripping the bat like it was a limb he'd been born with. The silence of the hallway hadn't followed him down. It had transformed into something denser—thicker. Every step brought him closer to the real world, the one outside the apartment door. The one not walled off by barricades, not protected by rusted nails and duct tape. Down here, survival didn't come from defense. It came from movement. Quiet, deliberate movement.
Fifth floor. Fourth. Third. No signs of life. No blood. No doors open. No whisper of breath through vents. Either the neighbors were smart enough to stay silent—or they were already gone. Elias didn't want to know which. He passed the second floor and paused halfway down the final stretch. A noise. Not loud. Not sharp. Just soft movement. Air shifting. Leather against skin. He tightened his grip on the bat and pressed his back against the wall, listening.
Then nothing.
No scream. No growl. No footsteps.
Just that terrible silence again, mocking him for being afraid of it.
He exhaled through his nose and kept walking.
The lobby greeted him like a grave.
The glass doors at the front were still intact, but smeared. Palm prints on the inside. Small, frantic ones. One looked like a child's. Blood on the frame, but dried—old. No bodies. No drag marks. No signs of struggle beyond that moment frozen in the glass. A moment where someone had tried to leave—and something else had been outside waiting.
He scanned the room. Reception desk still there. Fake plants knocked over. Mailbox unit dented. One chair on its side. A forgotten scarf hanging off the doorknob like someone had been pulled away too fast to remember they were wearing it.
Elias didn't speak.
Not even to himself.
There was a weight in the lobby that didn't deserve words.
He approached the reception desk and crouched. Pulled the drawers open one by one, methodical, quick, fingers never shaking. Found a small flashlight with dying batteries. A packet of expired aspirin. A cracked walkie-talkie that didn't respond when he pressed the button. Still, he put all three into his bag. Junk today might be the difference tomorrow.
[Quest Updated: Collect 3 Useful Items – Complete]
[Reward: 80 Coins + Inventory Slot Expanded + Book: "Basic Crafting Recipes"]
The book didn't appear in his hand. It spawned in the bag—neatly tucked, already fitting as if it had been there since the beginning. He zipped the bag closed again and looked at the doors.
Going out wasn't bravery.
It was suicide on a timer.
But staying in was just a different kind of death.
He scanned the hallway one last time. No sound. No movement. He slipped through the door quietly, careful not to let it slam. The street welcomed him like a cathedral emptied by war. Cars abandoned at odd angles. Bags scattered like leaves. A tricycle halfway on the sidewalk, bent wheel spinning once in the wind.
This was the part no one imagined when they talked about the end of the world. They pictured flames, monsters, chaos. Not the stillness. Not the way everything looked paused, like the world had stopped mid-sentence and never picked the words back up.
He moved.
Not down the center of the street. Too open. He stuck to the side, between parked vehicles and overgrown hedges, always watching. His eyes didn't stop moving. Neither did his hands. Every time he passed a bin, a broken window, a busted car, he checked. Grabbed what he could. A pair of gloves. A wrench. A roll of bandages half-used but clean. A lighter. Nothing glorious. Just scraps. But Elias had started to understand something vital now—scraps were survival.
And the dead weren't the only thing to fear.
The first time he saw movement, it was too far away to matter. A shadow stumbling across the far end of the block. Not fast. Not alert. Just dragging. Like its feet didn't remember what legs were for. It didn't see him. He froze behind a rusted-out SUV and held his breath. Watched the thing limp past a mailbox and vanish down another street.
He didn't chase it.
He didn't even stare.
He just waited.
Waited until silence returned.
Then kept moving.
He wasn't ready. Not yet.
The system hadn't given him weapons. It had given him options.
Options required patience.
He ducked into a gas station. The door was already half-open. No sign of forced entry, but the lights inside were flickering—the emergency kind, dull red and humming. Shelves were mostly picked clean. Whoever had hit this place did it early. But Elias didn't panic. He moved shelf to shelf, finding a single can of peaches, one flashlight, and a half-broken pocketknife duct-taped to a ruler. He blinked at it, then smiled faintly.
Desperation breeds creativity.
He tucked it into his bag.
[Item Collected: Improvised Shiv – Durability 12/20]
Behind the counter, he found something more interesting. A locked drawer. No key in sight. He looked around. Grabbed the wrench from his belt. Jammed it against the latch and twisted.
It cracked open.
Inside: three batteries, a box of matches, a folded note, and a ring of keys.
He hesitated before touching the note. Something about paper these days felt sacred. Like it held final words more than shopping lists. He unfolded it carefully.
"If you're reading this, take whatever you need. I waited for my brother. He never came. I think I already know why. I hope the next person gets further than we did."
He stared at the handwriting for a moment.
Young. Neat. Desperate.
He folded it back and slid it into his bag. Not because he needed it. But because the world was forgetting names, and someone had tried to leave one behind.
He exited the gas station and paused on the sidewalk. Wind had picked up again. Dry, cold, hollow. It whistled through alleyways and whispered against glass. It didn't carry hope. It carried warning.
He knew what was coming. Not today. Not yet. But eventually. Zombies wouldn't stay stupid forever.
The manual had said so.
The system didn't waste words.
"Outlive them," it had said.
Not outrun. Not outfight. Outlive.
Which meant the rules would keep changing.
He checked the sky. Still clear. No storm. No clouds. Still daylight. But that didn't mean anything anymore. The sun didn't scare the dead. It only made it easier to see who was next.
He returned to the apartment by a different route. Didn't want to leave a pattern. If someone was watching, he wanted to look like a mistake, not a plan.
Back in the building, he double-checked the traps.
Untouched.
He reinforced the barricade.
Ate half the can of peaches.
Drank water.
Then sat by the window and opened the new book.
"Basic Crafting Recipes"
It wasn't thick. Maybe twenty pages. But each one mattered. The first few were simple. Nail bat. Tripwire. Water filter from charcoal and sand. Then came the better ones—Molotov cocktail using hand sanitizer. Smoke bomb using sugar and potassium nitrate. He didn't have the ingredients yet, but now he knew what to look for. The world had become a scavenger hunt with death as the prize if you failed.
He closed the book and sat back, listening again.
The building creaked.
The wind hissed.
Far away, maybe seven blocks, a scream rose, sharp and short.
Then nothing.
Then gunshots. Two of them. Fast. Panicked.
Then silence again.
His hand curled slowly into a fist.
The city was waking up.
Not just with the dead—but with survivors.
And survivors were rarely kind.