The hollow echo of the deadbolt was the most beautiful sound Drake had ever heard.
The door swung inward, revealing a sliver of the life he had traveled through hell to find. Zahra stood there, her eyes rimmed with red and puffy from crying, but her face broke into a desperate, brilliant smile the moment she saw him. Her teeth flashed white.
Drake didn't wait for an invitation. He stepped inside, pulling her into a fierce, wordless embrace. She smelled like lavender laundry detergent and stale air—the smells of a home trying to pretend the world wasn't ending.
"You made me worry," she whispered into his shoulder, her voice hitching with a sob she was trying to swallow. "I was starting to think... I thought you wouldn't come. That the phones being down meant everything was over."
"I left the second we hung up," Drake said, pulling back to look at her. His hands were still steady, though his heart was hammering.
"They've quarantined the city. I had to ditch the truck at the perimeter and hike in on foot. I've been playing hide-and-seek with things I can't even describe for the last four hours."
Zahra's smile faltered. "Quarantined? I knew things were bad—I saw the smoke on the horizon—but I didn't think they'd lock us in. And what do you mean you were playing hide-and-seek with things you can't even describe?"
"It's a total blackout. They're trying to contain the spread," Drake said, his eyes scanning the living room. "And there are zombie-like things outside, and to get infected you have to inhale the spores in the air. So put this on." Drake said as he handed her the extra mask.
"I've been wondering why you had a mask on," she replied as she grabbed and put on the mask.
"Well, now you know. So tell me exactly what happened after we spoke. What did you see? I noticed tape on the windows; you had to have done that for a reason."
Zahra shivered, wrapping her arms around herself as she sat down. "It started with Marcus. He was out near the Plaza when he called. He sounded... terrified. He said he saw someone just collapse in the middle of the sidewalk, and then other people started acting 'wrong.' Twitching. Jerking. He told me to lock the doors and that he was coming straight back."
She swallowed hard, looking at the floor.
"Then I heard it. A crash. The sound of his phone tumbling. I stayed on the line for two hours, Drake. I listened to the background noise. It was quiet at first, then I heard him get out of the car, but he never spoke again. I heard... clicking. And wet, slapping sounds. I called the police, but the lines were busy. Every single one. That's when I realized no one was coming. I looked out the window and heard screaming in the distance—not like a horror movie, but faint, like it was miles away. I thought... I thought it was a zombie apocalypse."
Drake nodded slowly. "It's not exactly zombies. Not the kind that eat you. It's a fungus—a parasite. It's airborne. Spores."
"When do we leave?"I can't stay in this house anymore. The silence is screaming.
"We go now," Drake said, his tone shifting into something colder, more tactical. "The light is fading. If there's one thing I know about a crisis, it's that things get exponentially worse after dark. People get braver, and the things that aren't people... they probably get more active."
"I'm ready. I've been packed since yesterday." She pointed to a sturdy duffel bag in the corner.
Drake paused, looking at the bag, then back at his sister. "I'm surprised. You didn't mention Marcus. I was already practicing the speech to tell you we couldn't go looking for him."
Zahra looked at the door, her expression unreadable. She had always been the pragmatic one of the family, the one who viewed the world through a lens of cold logic rather than sentiment.
"We've been together a year. I care about him, but I'm not a martyr. If he were alive and at the door, I'd help him. But I'm not asking you to die in a maze of monsters for a 'maybe.' I wouldn't risk your life for anyone."
It was a chillingly honest answer, but Drake felt a surge of relief. He didn't have the heart to tell her that Marcus was almost certainly dead by now.
"Alright. Let's move. We'll take your car as far as we can. We have enough time to make it out of the city before nightfall."
"Is it safe to drive?" she asked, grabbing her bag.
"The freeway is blocked, but the streets are mostly clear. Most people either died in their homes or stayed put. The cars you see on the road are the ones who got caught while they were moving. We'll drive until the road ends, then we hike."
They moved to the garage. Zahra handed him the keys to her late-model sedan.
Drake climbed into the driver's seat, his hands gripping the wheel. He turned the key.
The engine groaned. A hollow, metallic whir echoed in the garage, but the ignition failed to catch. Drake frowned, his brow furrowing. "I thought you said you just got this serviced?"
"I did! It was fine two days ago," Zahra insisted, her voice rising with panic.
Drake tried again. This time, the engine roared to life, though it sounded rougher than it should have. He didn't waste time questioning it. He hit the garage door opener, and as the heavy door groaned upward, the reality of the New World flooded in.
The street was bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun. Three houses down, an infected individual stood on a lawn, its body arched backward in a grotesque, permanent yoga pose, venting a pale cloud of spores into the air.
"Don't look," Drake commanded. He put the car in gear and floored it.
As they reached the end of the block, the noise of the engine acted like a dinner bell.
Doors that had been slightly ajar creaked open. Figures emerged from the shadows of porches—not running, but stumbling with a jerky, erratic gait.
They were uncoordinated, moving like marionettes with tangled strings.
"Drake, look out!" Zahra screamed.
A man—or what used to be a man—staggered into the middle of the road. His jaw was locked open, and thick, ropey strands of fungal growth trailed from his ears.
Drake didn't tap the brakes. He braced for the impact.
Thud.
The car jolted. The sound of bone against the bumper was sickeningly wet. Drake felt the tires roll over something soft and yielding. He checked the rearview mirror; the body was a mangled heap in the road, but even then, he saw a limb twitch, trying to find purchase on the asphalt.
He had expected the car to protect them, but he had underestimated the physics of a human body. The sedan's front end was crumpled, and a strange, rhythmic scraping began to emanate from the front left wheel.
"The car's dragging something," Zahra cried, gripping the dashboard.
"I know!" Drake hissed.He tried to swerve around a stalled bus, but the steering was heavy and unresponsive. He overcompensated. The screech of metal on metal tore through the quiet neighborhood as they sideswiped a parked SUV. The impact was enough to deploy the side airbags with a deafening pop. Smoke began to curl from under the hood.
Drake slammed the car into reverse, but the scraping sound had turned into a violent grinding. The wheel was jammed.
He looked out the window and saw more of them—a dozen or more—emerging from the alleyways. They were reacting to the noise, their heads snapping toward the car in unison.
"We have to leave it!" Drake yelled over the hiss of the radiator. "Zahra, leave your bag!" They scrambled out of the smoking wreck.
The infected were only a block away, their stumbling gait deceptively fast as they converged on the source of the noise.
They didn't growl or roar; they made a low, clicking sound, like a thousand dry leaves skittering across pavement.
"Run!"
They They sprinted. Drake led the way, his boots pounding the pavement. Zahra was right behind him, her breathing ragged and heavy through the filter of her mask. They dived into a narrow alleyway, weaving between overflowing dumpsters and discarded furniture.
Drake risked a glance back. The infected were still coming, but their lack of coordination was their downfall.
One tripped over a curb and went down hard, its head hitting the brick with a crack, but it immediately began to crawl, its movements mindless and relentless.
After two blocks, Zahra's pace slowed. She was doubling over, her lungs burning. The respirator made it harder to draw in the deep gulps of air she needed.
"I... I can't," she wheezed.
Drake looked around. They were behind a row of commercial storefronts. To their left was a small boutique, its front window shattered and its interior stripped bare by looters.
"In here," Drake whispered.
He ushered her through the broken glass, careful not to let her trip. They retreated to the back of the darkened store, huddling behind a fallen clothing rack. Drake held his breath, his hand resting on the grip of his pistol.
Outside, the clicking sounds grew louder, then faded as the pack drifted past the storefront, following the lingering echoes of the car crash further down the street.
Drake let out a long, shaky breath. "We wait here for a few minutes. Let them clear out. Then we find a new way out. I didn't expect the car to draw so much attention. There were looters making sounds, and the zombies didn't react to that."
"Maybe because looters sound like them and a car sounds like a car. They can probably tell the difference and react. Just imagine a zombie heading towards every sound they hear, even if it's just another zombie fumbling around," Zahra replied, while her chest was still heaving.
"You could be right."
Neither of them noticed the movement in the darkened mezzanine above them. They were so focused on the monsters in the street that they didn't see the three men standing on the balcony, looking down at them with cold, hungry eyes. One of the men held a jagged length of rebar; another had a hunting knife.
In the New World, the fungus was the plague, but the survivors were the fever.
And as the sun finally dipped below the horizon, the fever was about to break.