Chapter 1: The First Night: Shattered Innocence
The last normal sound was the hum of the refrigerator. It stopped, and the silence it left behind was a physical thing, thick and suffocating. Matt stood in the doorway of the living room, the bowl of half-eaten cereal forgotten in his hand, milk gone lukewarm.
He saw their feet first. His mom’s fuzzy pink slippers, the ones he’d teased her about just yesterday. His dad’s thick wool socks, a hole in the left heel. They were lying on the rug in front of the cold fireplace, side by side, holding hands.
His brain tried to assemble the scene in pieces, rejecting the whole. The dark, almost black streaks down the pale skin of their inner arms. The straight-edged utility knife from the garage, clean and sharp, placed neatly on the coffee table. The two empty bottles of his dad’s good bourbon beside it. His mom’s face was turned toward his dad’s, her expression calm, as if she’d just whispered a secret. His dad looked straight up at the ceiling, his jaw set in that firm line he used when fixing something difficult.
The cereal bowl hit the floor. Porcelain shattered, milky oaties spraying across the floorboards. The sound was obscenely loud.
He didn’t move. He just stared. His breath came in shallow, useless pulls. This wasn’t happening. This was a mistake. A weird, terrible mistake. He took a step forward, his sneaker crunching on ceramic. “Dad?” The word was a dry crackle.
No answer. Just the deafening silence of the house.
He knelt. He touched his mom’s cheek. Cold. Not sleep-cold. Different cold. A cold that went all the way down to a place where there was no warmth left to lose. He recoiled, wiping his hand on his jeans.
A piece of notebook paper was tucked under his father’s other hand. Matt’s vision swam as he pulled it free. His dad’s tight, engineer’s script.
Matt. We felt it changing this morning. The fog behind the eyes. The hunger that isn’t for food. We saw the news. We know what comes next. We won’t let it have us. We won’t let you see us that way. The gun is in the safe. The code is your birthday. We love you more than life. Don’t look back. Go. Now.
He read it three times. The words blurred. The fog. The hunger. The TV was off. He hadn’t checked his phone since last night. He fumbled it from his pocket now, his fingers numb. The screen lit up with a avalanche of notifications—missed calls, text threads exploding, social media alerts screaming.
PLAGUE? RIOTS IN CITY CENTER
STAY INSIDE LOCK DOORS OFFICIAL STATEMENT
ITS THE FUCKING ZOMBIES MAN THEYRE BITING PEOPLE
A video auto-played from a news site. Shaky cell phone footage. A man in a business suit sprinting down a street, his mouth a red ruin, before tackling a woman. The camera jerked away, screams distorting the audio.
Matt dropped the phone. It clattered on the rug beside his parents’ joined hands. The world tilted. Zombies. A stupid, laughable word from the games he played, the movies he watched with a bowl of popcorn. Not a word written in his father’s precise handwriting on a suicide note.
A sound tore through the heavy quiet of the house. A scream, high and thin and terror-stricken, from somewhere down the street. It was cut off abruptly.
It acted like a switch. The paralyzing shock shattered into something sharper, cleaner. A hyper-focused clarity. He looked from his parents’ still forms to the note. Don’t look back.
He stood up. His legs felt like someone else’s. He walked to the den, to the wall safe behind the boring landscape painting. His hands didn’t shake as he dialed the code. 0-6-2-1. A soft click.
Inside, the pistol rested on a stack of documents. A Glock 19. His dad had taken him to the range a few times, drilled the safety rules into his head until he could recite them in his sleep. Treat every gun as if it’s loaded. Never point it at anything you’re not willing to destroy. Matt picked it up. The weight was familiar, a heavy, serious truth in his hand. A box of 9mm ammunition sat beside it. He grabbed it.
In the garage, the hunting knife was in its case on the workbench. A fixed blade, sharpened to a cruel edge. He slid it into the belt of his jeans. It felt awkward, alien.
He moved through the house now, a ghost in his own life. He shoved a backpack from his closet full of junk: a hoodie, a half-empty bag of jerky from his desk drawer, a bottle of water from the fridge. He grabbed his phone charger. He didn’t look into the living room again.
From the back door, he peered out into the yard. The neighbor’s dog, a friendly golden retriever, was lying motionless on the lawn. He saw the dark splash on the grass around its head. Further down, Mr. Henderson from two houses over was shuffling slowly across his driveway. His movements were all wrong. Stiff, jerky, his head lolling to one side. A dark stain covered the front of his golf shirt.
Matt closed the door softly, locking it. He leaned his forehead against the cool wood. He could hear his own heart, a frantic drum against his ribs. He thought of his parents on the rug. Their choice. Their final, devastating act of love. They had spared him one horror by committing another.
He had no plan. No safe place to go. The only truth was the gun in his hand and the knife at his hip, and the screaming that was now coming from more than one direction, a rising chorus of panic from the world outside.
He took a deep, ragged breath. The smell of his house—laundry detergent, the faint scent of his mom’s lavender candle—filled his lungs one last time.
He turned the knob, and stepped out into the new world.
He turned the knob, and stepped out into the new world.
The air outside was wrong. It smelled of turned earth and something coppery, underneath the usual cut-grass and barbecue scents of the neighborhood. A car alarm wailed somewhere in the distance, cycling through its panicked siren. There was another sound, too—a low, dragging moan that didn’t come from any animal he knew.
His sneakers were quiet on the paved driveway. The keys in his pocket felt like they were burning a hole through the denim. He’d grabbed them off the hook automatically, a relic of a ritual from a week ago: Don’t forget your keys, Matt.
He fumbled them out. His dad’s car, a black BMW 5 Series, sat in the driveway. His dad loved that car. Called it “The Beast” because of the engine. It’s not a sensible car, his mom would say, smiling. It’s a feeling.
Matt hit the fob. The car chirped, the parking lights flashing once. The sound was bizarrely normal. He yanked the door open and slid inside, the familiar scent of leather and his dad’s aftershave wrapping around him like a ghost. He shoved the key into the ignition, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror.
Movement. At the end of the driveway. Mr. Henderson wasn’t in his own driveway anymore. He was shuffling onto their lawn, his movements a grotesque parody of his usual grumpy stroll. His head snapped up, milky eyes locking onto the car.
Matt turned the key.
The engine roared to life with a deep, throaty growl that usually made his dad grin. The sound was instantly swallowed by a chorus of guttural groans. From behind hedges, from around corners, figures straightened and began lurching toward the noise. Five of them. Seven. More spilling into the street.
“No, no, no,” Matt whispered. He jammed the gearshift into reverse, stomped on the gas. The car shot backward into the street, tires squealing. He wrenched the wheel, slammed it into drive, and punched it.
The BMW responded like a bullet. He tore down his tree-lined street, past the house with the perfect flower boxes, past the tricycle overturned on a lawn. He saw Mrs. Garza pressed against her bay window, her face a mask of terror, a bloody handprint smearing the glass beside her. He didn’t slow down.
Driving was automatic. His hands knew the way out of the suburb, even as his brain screamed. He took turns too fast, the car’s tires protesting. He blew through a stop sign and nearly T-boned a silent, abandoned minivan. He swerved around it, his heart hammering against his ribs.
He didn’t know where he was going. The only thought was out. Out of the city. The radio sputtered static and emergency alerts. “…seek shelter…containment failing…avoid population centers…” He switched it off. The silence was worse.
He found himself on the winding road leading up to the cliffs. The city overlook. He and his parents had come up here for the Fourth of July fireworks just a few months ago, sharing a blanket and laughing.
He pulled into the gravel lot. It was empty. He killed the engine, and the sudden quiet was a physical shock. The only sound was the tick of the cooling engine and a far-off, faint pop-pop-pop that might have been gunfire.
He got out.
The view sprawled before him. His city, the one he’d been born in, the grid of streets and clusters of high-rises, was smoking. Not from one fire, but from dozens. Plumes of dark gray rose into the late afternoon sky. No car horns. No plane trails. The 405 freeway, always a clogged artery, was a frozen, glittering river of abandoned vehicles. A ghost town with a pulse of silent, spreading fire.
He leaned against the cold car roof, his breath coming in shudders. The immensity of it crushed the air from his lungs. His home was down there. His parents were back there, on the rug. Everything was gone.
The gravel crunched behind him.
He turned, too slow.
It was on him. A man, or what was left of one, in the tattered remains of a jogging suit. Its face was a grey mask of dried blood, one eye socket empty. It smelled of decay and open earth.
It lurched forward with a startling burst of speed. A dry groan rattled from its throat.
Matt tried to sidestep, but his foot slipped on the loose gravel. The thing’s weight slammed into him, driving the air from his lungs. He hit the ground hard, the back of his skull cracking against the gravel. Stars burst in his vision.
The zombie landed on top of him. Its weight was immense, pinning his legs. Rotten fingers clawed at his jacket, snagging the fabric. Its face descended, jaws unhinging, blackened teeth aiming for his throat. A sound, a wet, rasping snarl, poured from its mouth. The stench was overwhelming.
Matt got his hands up. His palms pressed against the cold, leathery skin of its collarbone. He pushed, his arms shaking instantly with the strain. The zombie’s face hovered inches from his, the empty eye socket a dark pit of nothing. Drool, thick and viscous, dripped onto his chin.
He was strong from lacrosse, from weight training. But this was different. This was a terror that turned his muscles to water. The face got closer, the gnashing teeth snapping at the air.
His right hand scrambled, fumbling at his belt. His fingers closed around the textured grip of the hunting knife. He didn’t think. He wrenched it free, brought his arm up in a clumsy, desperate arc, and drove the blade into the side of the thing’s head.
There was a terrible resistance, then a sickening crunch-pop as the tip pierced bone. The zombie’s frantic snarling cut off. Its body went limp, a sack of dead weight collapsing fully on top of him.
Matt lay there, trapped under the corpse, hyperventilating. He stared at the gray clouds smearing across the sky. The coppery smell of blood—his blood? its blood?—filled his nose. He could feel the cold seep of the thing’s body into his own.
A groan echoed from the tree line at the edge of the lot. Then another, closer.
Adrenaline burned through the paralyzing fear. He shoved, heaving the corpse off him. It rolled to the side with a dull thud. Matt scrambled to his knees, vomit rising in his throat. He swallowed it back, acid burning his esophagus.
The knife was still embedded in the zombie’s skull. He wrapped his hand around the hilt, planted a foot on its shoulder for leverage, and pulled. The blade came free with a wet, sucking sound. He didn’t look at it.
More shapes were emerging from the shadows of the pines. Drawn by the noise. Drawn by him.
He stumbled to the car, yanked the door open, and fell into the driver’s seat. He slammed the door lock just as a skeletal hand thudded against the window, leaving a greasy smear. He didn’t look. He started the car, the roar of the engine scattering the birds from the trees.
He reversed, gravel spraying, and pointed the car down the mountain road. Away from the city. Away from the overlook. Away from the thing on the ground that used to be a man.
He drove, one hand white-knuckled on the wheel, the other still clutching the sticky knife. He drove past the last suburbs, past the exits for big-box stores and car dealerships. The buildings thinned, replaced by fields and the occasional farmhouse. The sky darkened from smoke-grey to twilight purple.
He didn’t know where he was going. Just into the deepening country, where the only lights were the stars beginning to prick the sky, cold and indifferent, and the twin beams of his father’s car cutting a path through the gathering dark.