Moments after the radio went dead, no one spoke.
Not a chair scraped. Not a keyboard clicked. Even the monitors seemed to dim their glow, scrolling data no one was ready to look at yet.
The silence wasn't peaceful.
It was the kind that settled after something irreversible had been said.
A silence heavy enough to press against lungs. Heavy enough that every person in the lab felt suddenly aware of their own breathing, their own heartbeat, their own mortality ticking like a metronome beneath fluorescent light.
Ellis stood near the glass wall, hands braced against the counter, staring at nothing. Outside, the base burned in pockets—small fires licking at structures that had once been ordered, controlled. Shadows moved where soldiers had once drilled. The perimeter lights were gone, swallowed by smoke and distance.
Hunter Army Airfield was no longer a fortress.
It was a graveyard with walls.
A transport truck sat abandoned near the motor pool, one door hanging open, headlights still burning weakly through drifting ash. Something crawled across the hood—slow, deliberate, wrong. Ellis forced himself not to look too long.
Behind him, Mike stood still for once.
No humming.No jokes.No sarcasm to soften the blow.
Finally, he exhaled.
"You know you have to go," Mike said quietly.
Ellis didn't turn around.
"The fate of the world," Mike continued, voice rougher than usual, "is sitting in your brain right now. And you know it."
Ellis closed his eyes.
He did know.
That truth had followed him his entire career—through deployments, through classified projects, through late nights when Sharon had fallen asleep alone while he stared at data that never stopped bleeding into the real world.
He remembered hospital corridors. Sharon's voice sharp with exhaustion. The way she had looked at him the last time he left for deployment—like she already knew he'd choose the mission over sleep, over dinners, over being present.
"I bought them time," Ellis said at last.
Mike nodded. "You did."
Ellis's jaw tightened. "Maybe enough."
He loved his family. Fiercely. Without condition. But loving them had never been simple.
Being a husband.Being a father.Being a doctor.Being a soldier.
Those roles had been at war inside him for years.
Sharon had called him out on it more times than he could count—him always choosing the bigger picture, the long game, the work that mattered to everyone instead of the people standing right in front of him.
"You don't get to save the world if you lose us," she'd said once.
And he hadn't known how to answer.
Because she was right.
And he was still who he was.
"This is bigger than me," Ellis said now. "Bigger than them."
Mike leaned against the counter beside him. "Doesn't make it hurt less."
Ellis shook his head. "No."
The lab hummed back to life slowly—keys tapping, samples being logged, technicians moving again because stopping wasn't an option anymore.
A tech wiped tears from her face with the back of a gloved hand and forced herself back to the microscope. Someone else whispered coordinates into a recorder, voice trembling but steady enough to keep going. Outside, another impact rattled the glass, and dust drifted down from the ceiling tiles like gray snow.
Mike glanced at a nearby monitor, then hesitated.
"There is… one thing," he said.
Ellis turned.
Mike's mouth twitched. "Remember the Jeep?"
Ellis frowned. "What about it?"
"The one you got Justin," Mike said. "The ridiculous 2026 Wrangler. Extended edition. You practically cried handing him the keys."
Ellis's chest tightened. "What about it, Mike?"
Mike lifted a brow. "You don't buy military-grade toys without bells and whistles."
Ellis froze.
"Mike," he said slowly, "what are you saying?"
Mike turned toward a terminal and started typing. "That thing has a built-in GPS tracker. Anti-theft. Remote diagnostics. The works."
Ellis was already moving.
"Pull it up," he snapped.
Mike stepped aside.
The screen populated.
Coordinates blinked to life.
Ellis leaned in.
Home.
Justin had made it home.
Relief hit so hard it almost buckled his knees. His breath left him in a broken exhale he hadn't realized he'd been holding for hours—maybe days.
"Okay," Ellis breathed. "Okay."
Then his eyes dropped to the timestamp.
The Jeep left again.
After.
After the power failed.After the alerts would have gone out.After the world started coming apart.
"Why would he leave?" Ellis muttered.
He pulled up additional data.
Tally's car—last location: home.Sharon's—hospital.
A sharp pain flared behind his ribs at that. The hospital. Sharon inside it. Patients screaming. Doors barricaded. He imagined her hands steady even when everything else fell apart.
Justin's path traced across the city in jagged lines. Detours. Stops. Long pauses that made Ellis's stomach twist.
Then—
A red dot blinked.
A store.
Ellis stared at it.
"Why the fuck did he stop there?" he snapped.
Mike leaned in. "Ellis—"
"Pull surveillance," Ellis barked. "Anything. Traffic cams. Street feeds. I don't care."
A tech scrambled.
"Corner camera," she said. "Feed's degraded but—here."
The image flickered.
Grainy. Shaky.
But unmistakable.
Ellis leaned closer.
"That's him," he said instantly.
Two figures stood near the Jeep.
Justin.
Alive.
Ellis felt his heart kick hard against his ribs.
Then the camera caught movement.
From the edge of the frame.
From everywhere.
Dozens.
Shambling at first.
Then faster.
A wave.
Ellis counted without meaning to.
Too many.
"Mike…" he whispered.
The screen filled with motion.
A horde.
Fifty. Maybe more.
Closing in.
Bodies spilling into the street like floodwater, arms reaching, mouths opening and closing. One figure broke into a sprint—faster than the others—turning its head toward the Jeep like it could smell him through the lens.
Ellis stepped back like he'd been punched.
"No," he breathed. "No, no, no—"
Mike grabbed his arm. "Ellis—"
"That's my son," Ellis said hoarsely. "That's my boy."
The feed cut out.
Static replaced the image.
A thin whine filled the lab speakers where the audio feed had died. Someone cursed softly behind them. Another tech turned away, unable to watch Ellis watch nothing.
Ellis stood frozen, chest heaving, mind racing through distances, time, impossible math.
Somewhere beyond the burning base, beyond the sealed doors and the data and the choices that would damn him either way—
Justin Leesburg was standing in the path of the dead.
Ellis clenched his fists.
His nails bit through latex. Blood beaded beneath the glove but he didn't notice.
"Get me everything," he said, voice shaking with fury and terror. "Every camera. Every signal. Every scrap of data."
Mike nodded, already moving.
Ellis stared at the blank screen.
For the first time since this began, the science didn't matter.
The cure didn't matter.
The world didn't matter.
Only this—
"I'm coming," Ellis whispered.