It had been three weeks since Zane vanished into the ruins.
He still sent messages sometimes — scribbled notes left at the north wall, or small radio bursts caught by Grace's scavenged receiver — but lately, even those had stopped. The silence pressed down heavier than the smog over the city.
At first, the camp had been a miracle. Warm fires. Laughter. Food that didn't taste like ash. We even had routines: guard rotations, scavenging shifts, rebuilding projects. But peace in this world always carried an expiration date.
Now the air felt different.
Thicker.
Charged with dread.
Every night, they came.
Not a horde, not at first — just a few dozen infected drifting out of the fog like ghosts drawn to the faint scent of life. The guards would spot them early and light the floodlamps. Gunfire echoed, sharp and constant, until the last one dropped.
The first few nights, it was almost easy. A routine.
But then there were more.
And more.
By the tenth night, we were averaging fifty kills before dawn.
People stopped sleeping. The children hid in the supply tents. The older survivors argued about whether the smell of blood was what drew them, or if something else — something smarter — was guiding them.
Grace ordered double patrols. Leo manned the south tower with a rifle. Maya worked endlessly in her corner of the camp, turning scraps of chemicals into small glass grenades that hissed and smoked when thrown. Jordan sharpened his katana until the blade caught moonlight like fire.
Me? I tried to believe Zane would come back.
The eleventh night was worse.
The infected didn't scream anymore. They approached silently, their eyes dull, their movements almost… synchronized.
"They're learning," Maya whispered beside me as we watched from the barricade.
Her words made my skin crawl.
By morning, we'd counted ninety-seven bodies outside the walls. No casualties inside, but the smell of rot clung to everything. The camp felt smaller, suffocating, even with the open sky above us.
People started seeing things.
A shadow moving between tents.
Footsteps where there should be none.
A voice whispering their names from the dark.
Grace blamed exhaustion.
But I knew fear when I saw it — the kind that didn't just sit in your gut; it nested there.
Then came the fourteenth night.
We were repairing the east wall when Leo froze mid-sentence, eyes fixed on the far end of the park. "You see that?" he muttered.
Through the fog, four silhouettes stood atop the ruins of a bus — tall, cloaked, unmoving. Their faces were covered with silver masks, reflecting the faint glow of the campfires. They didn't move. They didn't speak.
They just watched.
A cold wind ran through the park, fluttering the tents, setting every nerve in my body on edge.
"They're not infected," Jordan said quietly.
Maya gripped my arm. "Then what are they?"
No one answered.
The figures vanished into the fog moments later, but something about the way they moved — effortless, deliberate — told me they weren't gone. Just waiting.
That night, none of us slept.
By the next evening, it started.
The dead didn't come in waves anymore. They came all at once — hundreds of them pouring out of the streets like a living tide. The ground trembled under their steps. Gunfire exploded from every wall.
Leo shouted orders, trying to sound brave, but his voice was shaking. Jordan leapt into the fray, slicing down anything that came near the gate. Maya hurled her makeshift bombs; every explosion tore gaps in the horde, fire lighting the night like brief sunrises.
The air was thick with smoke and screams.
Between the bursts of gunfire, I thought I saw them again — the four silver masks — standing beyond the chaos, calm, one of them writing on a sheet of paper as if documenting the end of the world.
The camp was never meant to last.
Not in this world.
Not in this silence that screamed louder than gunfire.
For weeks, Derek, Maya, Leo, and Jordan had called this fenced park "home." A few dozen survivors had managed to turn rusted fences and burned-out cars into a fortress — small, imperfect, but still standing. Every night, the city beyond those walls whispered like something alive, something hungry.
Zane hadn't been back in days.
He used to send signals — scribbled notes tied to arrows, or faint radio bursts Derek barely caught through static. But now… nothing.
The quiet stretched too long.
Maya leaned against the barricade one night, staring at the dark horizon. Her hands smelled faintly of chemicals — her makeshift bombs, a twisted mix of cleaning acid and fuel scavenged from wrecked cars. "He's out there," she said softly. "Zane. Watching."
"Or dead," Leo muttered, cleaning his bat, though his hands shook more than he wanted to admit. "Half-zombie or not, he's flesh like us."
Jordan stood at the camp gate, katana resting on his shoulder. "Don't jinx it. You've seen what happens when hope dies here."
Derek didn't reply. He was tired — not just from sleepless nights, but from that gnawing guilt in his chest. Every time the wind howled through the ruins, he thought he heard Zane's voice calling from far away. Every time it wasn't.
Then came the first night of screams.
A guard's voice tore through the quiet — sharp, terrified, and brief.
The floodlights snapped on, pale light slicing through the dark. And there they were.
Hundreds of them.
Zombies, crawling out of the streets like the city itself was bleeding bodies.
The survivors opened fire. Gunshots cracked, echoing off skyscrapers. The smell of gunpowder and rot blended into something sickly sweet.
Maya's bombs exploded near the fence — fire painting the night orange, bodies flying. But for every one that fell, three more appeared.
Derek shouted, "Hold the north side! Don't let them—"
A chunk of wall collapsed under the weight of the dead.
Leo swung his bat until his arms burned.
Jordan cut through them, blade flashing under the moonlight.
Maya screamed orders, her voice hoarse, raw.
And through the chaos — four cloaked figures appeared beyond the horde.
They didn't move like zombies.
They stood perfectly still, silver masks reflecting firelight. One of them — tall, thin — held a clipboard. Writing. Calmly. Like this was an experiment.
Maya froze mid-throw. "What… the hell is that?"
"Focus!" Derek yelled, yanking her back as another explosion rattled the walls.
But Maya couldn't look away. The silver masks gleamed like mirrors, and for a split second, she thought she saw her own face reflected in one. Her eyes were hollow. Tired. Almost dead.
The battle raged for hours. By dawn, the field outside was a carpet of corpses. The smell was unbearable. No one spoke.
The survivors buried their dead — nineteen people.
And when the sun rose, the silver-masked figures were gone.
But the writing on the clipboard… that image burned in Derek's mind.
Someone is observing us.
Testing us.
That night, no one slept.
---
The Paranoia Begins
Days passed. Zombies came every night — more and more, like something was drawing them in. The survivors fortified what was left of the park. But food ran low. Ammunition too. Sleep became rare, sanity even rarer.
People started whispering.
"They're sending them."
"The ones in masks."
"They're watching."
Maya tried to keep herself busy with chemistry. The others didn't understand her anymore. She'd mix strange liquids, whispering chemical names under her breath like prayers. Her hands never stopped moving.
Leo patrolled the walls with a thousand-yard stare.
Jordan began talking to himself — to the katana, actually — saying it was the only thing that "understood the blood."
Derek wrote on scraps of paper — lists, maps, names — but each note ended the same way: Where are you, Zane?
Then came the whispering.
At first, Derek thought it was wind.
But when he listened closely, it was voices.
Human voices.
They came from outside the walls, low and broken — repeating phrases like chants.
"Forty-seven alive."
"Test incomplete."
"Subject nine unstable."
Derek almost screamed when he realized — those were their numbers. Their camp's numbers. The masks were counting them.
That night, he saw movement near the eastern fence.
A glint of silver.
And in that instant, the faintest flicker of flame.
Zane.
But before Derek could call out, Zane was gone.
---
The next morning, the survivors found new writing on one of the barricades — carved deep into the metal.
"We are observing progress."
Nobody admitted doing it.
Nobody slept that night either.
Maya's hands trembled as she armed more bombs. "They're studying us," she said. "They're not trying to kill us. They're trying to see what happens when we think we'll die."
Derek looked at her — eyes bloodshot, exhausted. "Then we'll show them what happens when we don't."