In Miami, Florida, the air was thick with the scent of salt and the heavy, humid weight of a looming storm. Inside the small, tidy house on the suburban outskirts, the tension was even thicker.
Daymon and Ryan sat at the kitchen table, their faces pale in the glow of the overhead light.
They had just finished recounting the theories they'd gathered from the dark corners of the web—the whispers of "zombie", the total blackout of Missouri, and the chilling silence of the government.
Across from them, Malisa sat perfectly still feeling sick.
To her sons, she looked like a statue of calm. Her hands were folded neatly on the table, and her expression was unreadable.
But beneath the surface, her heart was a frantic bird caught in a cage. Her motherly instinct shouted at her to scream, to pack the car, and get drake.
But she knew that fear was a contagion. If she broke, they would break.
"So, Mom," Ryan whispered, breaking the silence. "What do we do? Do we wait here, or do we go after him?"
Malisa took a slow, measured breath. "We wait," she said, her voice firm and devoid of the tremors shaking her inside.
"Your father is a smart man. He knows the terrain, and he knows how to keep his head. If we leave now, we risk missing a call or a message. More importantly, we risk driving into a situation we aren't prepared for."
"But what if he's trapped?" Daymon argued.
"What if the military won't let him out?"
"If he doesn't contact us in three or four days," Malisa said, locking eyes with both of them, "then we drive. We go to the perimeter and we demand answers. The government might be slow, but they aren't invisible. If they've detained him, we'll find him. Until then, we stay strong. We stay ready."
She was gambling on hope, praying that this would be enough to see him safely through.
...
Twelve hundred miles away, the "safety" Malisa was praying for was being pushed to its absolute breaking point.
Inside a ransacked convenience store in Kansas City, Drake crouched behind a tipped-over shelf of stale potato chips and rusted canned goods.
Beside him, Zahra was curled into a ball, her breathing shallow and ragged through her respirator. The store was a cavern of shadows, lit only by the dying orange light filtering through the shattered front windows.
Drake's eyes scanned their surroundings. He realized, with a sudden jolt of adrenaline, that he had made a tactical error.
He had chosen this place for cover, but it was a cage. The only way out was the front entrance or the shattered window next to it. There was a door behind the cluttered checkout counter, likely leading to a storage room or an office, but it was in a direct line of sight from the street.
If something came through that front door, they'd be pinned.
He pressed his ear toward the silence.
Click. Click-click.
The sounds of the infected—the "zombies"—were moving past. He could hear the dry, scraping sound of their footsteps on the pavement. They sounded rhythmic, almost mechanical. He waited, his muscles cramping from the tension. He let ten minutes pass. Then twenty.
"Alright," he whispered, his voice muffled by his mask. "We move now. Stay low. Stay quiet."
They crept toward the window, the glass crunching like autumn leaves under their boots. Drake peered over the ledge, his heart hammering. He froze.
The footsteps he heard now weren't the erratic, stumbling scrapings of the infected. These were heavy. Deliberate. The sound of rubber soles hitting the ground with purpose.
A group of five men drifted into view, stopping directly in front of the store. They weren't wearing masks. They weren't twitching. They were armed with bats, pipes, and one had a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.
Zahra let out a tiny, involuntary sigh of relief at the sight of uninfected humans.
She started to rise, but Drake's hand shot out, gripping her shoulder and shoving her back down into the shadows. His eyes were hard. He had seen the way these men were looking at the store—not with fear, but with the predatory hunger of a wolf pack.
"We know you're in there," one of the men called out. He sounded young, maybe early twenties, his voice carrying a jagged edge of excitement. The others chuckled, a low, ugly sound that made Drake's skin crawl.
"No sense hiding. we saw you run in here when you were dodging those 'things' on the street."
Drake realized the game was up. Staying hidden was pointless.
He signaled Zahra to stay behind him and stood up, stepping into the dim light of the storefront.
"We don't want any trouble," Drake said. His voice, deepened by the respirator, sounded like a warning from a machine. "We're just passing through. Keep your distance. You have no idea who might be carrying spores."
"Nice mask," one of the men sneered, stepping closer. "Looks expensive."
"Let's not waste time," the leader said, stepping forward. He was a lean, wiry man with a cruel twist to his mouth.
"We've been out here all day. It's hard to find a girl who hasn't been... compromised. You let us have a little fun with her there, and we might let you walk away with your boots still on."
Zahra's breath hitched. The shock of the words hit her like a physical blow. It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since the world broke, and the veneer of civilization hadn't just cracked—it had vaporized.
"You're acting like animals," Drake said, his voice dropping to a dangerous register.
"The drones are still up. The cameras are still recording. You think the law won't come back for you?"
"The law?" The leader laughed, a high, manic sound. "Look around, old man! The world is ending. This is happening everywhere. D.C., New York, London—it's all going down. No one is coming to save you, and no one is coming to judge us."
"This is a local quarantine," Drake countered, trying to keep his voice steady. "The military is at the border. They've blocked the calls to stop the panic. If you try to leave, they wont put a bullet in you. You aren't in a new world—you're just in a cage with the lights turned off."
"Shut up!" the leader barked, his face flushing with sudden rage. "It doesn't matter! We're fucked anyway! Hand her over, or we take her off your corpse!"
In one fluid motion, Drake pulled his handgun and leveled it at the leader's chest. "Walk away. Now."
The group scattered for cover behind the abandoned cars on the street. Drake kept his sights on the leader, his finger tightening on the trigger. He didn't want to kill.
He was still thinking like a man of the old world. He was waiting for the threat to back down.
He didn't see the man in the back—the one hiding behind the rusted frame of a transit bus.
CRACK.
The gunshot shattered the silence like a hammer on glass. Drake felt a white-hot iron rod drive into his left shoulder. The force spun him around, his own gun discharging into the ceiling as he fell.
"Drake!" Zahra screamed, lunging for him.
"Stay down!" he roared, rolling behind the heavy metal base of the checkout counter. Blood, dark and hot, was already beginning to soak through his jacket.
He gritted his teeth, the pain threatening to gray out his vision. He peered around the corner of the counter, aiming his weapon at the front door. A shadow moved. Drake fired. The bullet shattered a brick near a man's head, sending the group scrambling back into the street.
"I'm okay," Drake gasped to Zahra, though his face was turning dark.
"I'm okay. Check the shelves... find something... gauze, alcohol, duct tape. Anything to stop the bleeding."
Zahra scrambled away into the dark aisles, her hands shaking so violently she could barely hold the flashlight.
Minutes ticked by.
The men outside were shouting to each other, their voices filled with a mix of fear and adrenaline-fueled bloodlust. Drake held his gun steady with his right hand, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side. The floor beneath him was becoming slick with his own blood.
Then, he heard it.
A different sound. A chorus of clicking, faster and more frantic than before. The gunshot had done more than scatter the looters; it had rung the dinner bell for every zombie within six blocks.
"Hurry, Zahra!" Drake hissed. "The noise... they're coming back!"
"I found a first aid kit!" she cried, rushing back toward him.
But as she reached the counter, a brilliant, flickering light filled the store. A glass bottle, stuffed with a burning rag, sailed through the shattered window. It hit the floor near a display of seasonal clothing and exploded in a roar of orange flame.
"No!" Drake yelled.
The looters weren't coming back in. They were burning them out.
The fire spread with terrifying speed, fed by the dry fabrics and the cheap plastic of the store's interior. Thick, black smoke began to fill the air, mixing with the spores that were undoubtedly swirling outside.
"Zahra, get to the back. There shouldbe another door!" Drake shoved the handgun into her hand. "If it's locked, shoot the hinges! We have to go through the fire!"
He stood up, the world tilting dangerously as the loss of blood began to take its toll.
Through the wall of flames growing at the front of the store, he saw the silhouettes of the looters waiting across the street, their weapons raised. And behind them, emerging from the smoky haze of the city, were the pale, twitching forms of the infected, drawn by the light and the heat.
Drake gripped his sister's hand, his vision blurring. "On three," he whispered. "We run, and we don't stop until we hit safely."