By now, the quarantine zone had shaped them. Years in confinement left most people either brittle or numb, but Michael refused to let Sarah, Lena, or Alice become either. Survival wasn't just about breathing it was about being prepared for the day when the walls gave way.
So when rations grew thinner and tempers in the camp started flaring, Michael decided to take the three of them outside. Officially, it was for scavenging. Unofficially, it was training because he knew what was coming.
They slipped through a breach in the outer wall just before dawn, gas masks slung around their necks. The city beyond was a tomb, concrete bones strangled by vines and fungus. Cars sat rusting in the streets, their windows smashed, their trunks long since picked clean. Every shadow felt like it could hide death.
Michael led them into an abandoned parking garage, his voice low and calm.
"First lesson," he said, dropping his pack. He pulled out a length of pipe wrapped in cloth, the crude weapon he'd shown them how to build months earlier. "Weapons are extensions of your body. You hesitate, you die. You panic, you waste energy. So you stay controlled. Always."
He made Sarah and Lena practice basic stances first feet apart, knees bent, grip tight but loose enough to swing without strain. Alice already knew her way around a firearm, but she joined in, drilling alongside them.
Then came the harder part. Michael tossed them empty pistols from his pack.
"Reloading isn't just mechanics," he said. "It's rhythm. Muscle memory. You can't think about it when something's screaming in your face."
He showed them how to eject magazines, slap them back in, pull the slide. Over and over, until their fingers moved smoother with each try.
Hours slipped by. Sweat beaded their foreheads despite the cool air. When Sarah finally managed to reload in under three seconds without fumbling, Michael nodded. "Good. You'll live a little longer."
They moved deeper into the city, scavenging as they trained wires, old tools, scrap metal. Michael had plans for all of it.
But as they descended into the subway tunnels, looking for copper and steel, something changed.
The air grew thick, damp. Fungal growth crawled up the tiled walls, swollen and pulsating. Spores drifted faintly in the light of their flashlights. They all pulled their masks tight.
Then they heard it.
Click.
Sharp, deliberate.
They froze.
Click. Click.
Closer now. Echoing in the dark.
Sarah whispered, "What is that?"
Michael's jaw tightened. He raised a finger to his lips. "Don't speak. Don't move."
The sound drew nearer until it emerged from the shadows a nightmare made flesh. A figure with its head split open, consumed by a grotesque bloom of fungus, its face nothing but a mass of ridges and teeth. Blind, twitching, its every step guided by the echoing clicks from its throat.
Lena gasped before she could stop herself.
The creature's head snapped toward the sound.
It screeched high-pitched, feral, loud enough to rattle the walls and lunged.
Michael shoved the girls back. "MOVE!"
He charged headlong into the Clicker, knife flashing. The thing was stronger than he expected, thrashing with inhuman fury. Its claws tore across his sleeve, nearly opening his arm.
Alice drew her pistol and fired. The shot cracked through the tunnel, the bullet punching into its shoulder. The Clicker shrieked, staggered, then spun toward her.
Michael didn't give it the chance. With a brutal growl, he drove his knife straight into the fungal bloom at the center of its skull. The blade sank deep. The Clicker convulsed violently, its screeches dying in a wet gurgle before it collapsed in a twitching heap.
Silence returned, broken only by their ragged breathing.
Sarah's hands shook as she lowered her weapon. "What the hell was that?"
Michael wiped his knife clean, his expression dark. "Something new. Something worse. They've had years to change, to grow into… whatever the hell that was."
He looked at each of them in turn. "This is why we train. Because the world out there isn't done with us yet."
No one argued. Not this time.