Twenty years. Two decades since the first coughs turned into screams, since the first city burned and the world forgot what safety meant. For twenty years, the quarantine zone had stood as both cage and sanctuary. Walls layered with barbed wire and steel, guards who grew old in the same towers, families who learned to ration fear the same way they rationed food.
And now, in less than a single day, it was falling.
It started with sound.
Michael was at the training yard when the first cracks of rifle fire rolled across the compound like distant thunder. He'd heard plenty of gunfire in his life, but this was different frantic, overlapping, more panic than order. The recruits froze mid-drill, bats and nailboards half-raised, their eyes darting to the walls.
Then came the screaming.
Not the usual cries from outside the fences the slow, constant dirge of the world's suffering but sharp, close, inside-the-perimeter screams the zone had been breached the Breach.
Michael ran for the south wall, Sarah and Lena on his heels, Kyle and Alice already cutting through the chaos with weapons in hand.
The gate had buckled. A truck meant to carry rations back had smashed through in a desperate escape attempt, leaving a twisted gap in the defenses. And through that hole poured the infected Runners first, dozens of them, their faces still horrifyingly human beneath streaks of fungus and blood.
Soldiers fired in lines, but discipline was gone. Magazines clicked empty too fast. Panic broke formations. One soldier dropped his rifle and bolted, only to be tackled before he'd taken five steps.
"Hold the line!" Michael roared, voice cutting through the din. He slammed his Fire Axe into a Runner's skull, wrenching it free just in time to shove Sarah behind him. "Don't scatter form up! Nailboards, now!"
Recruits shoved boards into place, spikes catching feet, tripping some of the infected, buying seconds of survival. But for every one that fell, two more poured in.
Kyle lit a Molotov, the flames reflecting in his eyes, and hurled it into the breach. The explosion of fire bought them a heartbeat, screams mixing with the sound of burning flesh It wasn't enough Collapse.
Inside the zone, chaos spread faster than the infection. Families stampeded for the inner gates. A child was crushed against a barricade as hundreds surged forward. Soldiers tried to hold order, but when one officer fired into the crowd to stop them, everything broke.
Michael pulled Sarah and Lena through the crush, teeth gritted as the mob pressed in. People weren't dying only from the infected now they were trampling each other, suffocating under sheer panic.
Overhead, alarms wailed. Somewhere distant, a fuel depot ignited. The sky above the zone turned black with smoke, red with fire.
"Twenty years," Alice whispered beside him, her voice lost in the roar of collapse. "We lasted twenty years for… this."
Michael didn't answer. His eyes never stopped scanning, calculating, planning. They had weapons. They had training. But this wasn't a battle. This was an avalanche.
Training Tested
By the northern barricade, a group of Stalkers slipped through the chaos. They moved differently crawling, darting, croaking, eyes half-covered in fungal plates. They didn't charge. They waited, then pounced.
"Prod team!" Michael barked.
A pair of recruits, trembling but ready, jabbed with their electric prods. The arcs of blue light cracked, dropping two Stalkers into spasms. Others rushed in with Fire Axes, splitting heads before they could rise again.
It worked. The drills had paid off. But the recruits were green, too slow, too scared. One slipped on blood, and a Stalker was on him instantly. His scream cut short when its jaws closed.
Michael didn't flinch. He put his axe through both skulls in one swing. "Move! Keep moving!"
No More Walls
Hours blurred. Every street inside the zone was fire, smoke, or blood. The chain of command had collapsed officers dead, comms cut, civilians rioting.
And the infected kept coming.
Bloaters lumbered in by dusk, their fungal plates glistening in the firelight. One tore down a sandbag wall like it was paper. Another hurled spore bombs into the crowd, the gas choking dozens before fire silenced it. Shamblers followed near the riverfront, their acidic clouds eating through flesh and steel alike.
Michael and Kyle fought side by side, every strike mechanical, efficient. The Brutalizer tore through skulls, the electric machete crackled as it split infected and left burning arcs in the air. But for every one they cut down, a dozen more replaced it.
Sarah and Lena fought too, their faces streaked with soot and fear, but their hands steady. Michael's training showed in every strike, every reload. They weren't children anymore.
Still, it wasn't enough.
By nightfall, the walls were breached in six places. By midnight, there were no walls left.
The End of the Zone
Michael pulled what survivors he could into the warehouse. Less than fifty remained from the hundreds who had lived there that morning. The rest were gone eaten, burned, or crushed under the tide.
The brazier they'd once trained around still glowed faintly in the corner. Weapons lay scattered on the floor, bloody, dented, half-broken.
Michael stood in the center, Fire Axe dripping red. Around him, Sarah and Lena leaned against the wall, exhaustion painted across their faces. Kyle sat sharpening the edge of a machete, his eyes hollow. Alice stared at the floor, silent tears cutting clean lines through the soot on her cheeks.
Outside, the zone still burned. Screams still echoed. But the walls that had caged and protected them for twenty years were gone.
Michael looked at his people what little remained of them. He thought of the drills, the weapons, the years of preparation. None of it had been enough to stop the collapse.
But it had been enough to keep them alive.
"For twenty years, this place kept us breathing," Michael said quietly, voice carrying in the heavy silence. "But it's gone. We can't rebuild it. We can't stay here. Tomorrow, we leave. We don't wait for rescue. We don't look back."
No one argued. No one had the strength.
Sarah met his eyes, her voice hoarse but steady. "Where do we go?"
Michael glanced at the burning skyline, the smoke curling into the endless night.
"Anywhere the walls haven't already fallen."
And with that, the quarantine zone the last cage of their old lives was gone. What lay ahead was something else entirely.
The open world.