Chapter 1: Neon and Rot
The brass pole bit into Jenney's shoulder blades, cold enough to make her teeth ache. She pressed harder anyway, letting the metal dig in, because the pain kept her tethered to the moment. Kept her from sliding back into the memory of those fingers—not fingers, not anymore—closing around her ankle in the shower while the water ran pink and the tiles turned to slip.
The window behind her shuddered. Another body thudded against the plywood, and a splinter the size of a toothpick jabbed into her bare hip.
She didn't scream. She was pretty sure she'd used up all her screams somewhere between the third floor and the pool.
"Would you stop moving?" Jane hissed from somewhere to Jenney's left. "You're making the whole stage vibrate."
"I'm not moving. The dead guys are moving. Take it up with them."
Jane made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. The strobe light caught her face—half shadow, half glitter, her mascara smeared into two black rivers that made her look like a sad clown who'd been crying for a decade. She was still wearing the glow-in-the-dark body paint from whatever club night she'd stumbled into before the world ended, and the neon swirls on her skin pulsed like a dying heartbeat every time the disco ball swung.
The disco ball. God. Jenney stared up at it—that sad, dented sphere still spinning on its rusted chain, throwing fractured light across the ruins. Whoever owned this place had probably paid good money for the ambiance. Now it just illuminated the apocalypse in shades of cheap purple.
"Has anyone checked the back office again?" Lily asked. She was crouched near the edge of the stage, her knees pulled to her chest, her dark hair hanging in strings around her face. She had that look—the one Jenney recognized from art students who'd spent too many all-nighters staring at canvases that made no sense. Eyes too bright. Movements too quick. Like she was seeing something the rest of them couldn't.
"For what?" Jane snapped. "More dusty ledgers? A secret stash of Cheetos? Because I already checked. Twice."
"Maybe a phone. Radio. Something."
"The power's out, genius. Even if we found a radio, who would we call? The zombie hotline?"
The window shuddered again. This time, the plywood groaned—a long, low sound that made Jenney's stomach clench.
Sarah hadn't said anything in twenty minutes. She sat with her back against the far wall, her arms wrapped around her knees, her blonde hair curtaining her face. The rope burns on her wrists were still raw and red, and Jenney couldn't stop looking at them—those angry circles that matched the ones she'd seen on the streetlamp outside, the ones that told a story she didn't want to imagine.
"Sarah." Jenney kept her voice soft. "You okay?"
Nothing.
"Sarah."
"I'm fine." The words came out flat. Dead. Fitting, given the circumstances.
Jane caught Jenney's eye and shook her head—let it go—and Jenney did, because what else was she supposed to do? They were four naked women trapped in a strip club with a horde of undead scratching at the doors and nothing but a wall of cheap vodka to keep them company. Trauma bonding had its limits.
The club smelled like spilled beer and copper and something else—something rot-sweet that crept in through the cracks. Jenney had stopped trying to identify it about an hour ago. Some things were better left unknown.
"We should do something," Lily said. She stood up, her bare feet making small sounds against the sticky floor. "We can't just sit here waiting to die."
"And do what, exactly?" Jane gestured at the boarded windows, the barricaded door, the absolute nothing they had in terms of weapons or clothes or a plan. "Go out there and ask them nicely to leave?"
"I don't know. Something."
"Great plan. Very specific."
Jenney pushed off the pole, her legs unsteady. She'd been running for hours before she found this place—running through backyards and over fences and down streets that had turned into graveyards—and her body was finally starting to register the abuse. Every muscle ached. Her feet were cut in a dozen places. The chlorine from the pool had dried in her hair and left it stiff and straw-like against her shoulders.
She walked to the edge of the stage and peered through a gap in the plywood. The parking lot stretched out like a graveyard, littered with abandoned cars and broken glass and bodies that moved when they shouldn't. A cluster of them had gathered near the entrance—maybe a dozen, maybe more—their faces tilted up toward the building like flowers toward the sun.
Except flowers didn't have jaws hanging loose. Flowers didn't leave trails of something dark and wet behind them.
"How many?" Jane asked.
"Too many."
"That's not a number."
"It's the only one that matters."
Jenney turned away from the window. Her reflection stared back at her from a cracked mirror behind the bar—a broken, hollow-eyed girl with wet hair and shaking hands. She barely recognized herself. Twelve hours ago, she'd been in her apartment, complaining about a paper due Monday, rolling her eyes at her roommate's obsession with some reality show. Twelve hours ago, she'd stepped into the shower without a care in the world.
Now she was here. Naked and afraid and standing in the ruins of a place she never would have set foot in under any other circumstances.
The irony wasn't lost on her.
"We need clothes," she said. "We need food. We need a way out of here that doesn't involve becoming zombie chow."
"Wow, thanks. I hadn't thought of any of that." Jane's voice dripped with sarcasm, but there was a tremor underneath. A crack in the armor.
"I'm just saying—"
"I know what you're saying. I'm saying it doesn't help."
Lily moved toward the bar, her steps careful and deliberate. She ran her hands along the dusty bottles lined up on the shelf—vodka, whiskey, something green that might have been Midori in another life—and pulled one down. The label was faded, peeling at the corners.
"At least we won't die sober," she said, and twisted off the cap.
She took a long pull, grimaced, and passed the bottle to Jane. Jane stared at it for a moment, then shrugged and drank.
Jenney watched them pass the bottle back and forth, watched the liquor burn pink in their cheeks, and felt something twist in her chest. They were all so young. Nineteen, eighteen, nineteen. They should have been worrying about finals and crushes and what to wear to the next party. Not this. Never this.
The air shifted. The groaning outside grew louder—a chorus of hungry sounds that rose and fell like waves. Jenney turned back to the window just in time to see a hand punch through the plywood. Fingers—gray, skeletal, tipped with broken nails—clawed at the splintered wood, widening the hole.
"Shit." She grabbed the nearest thing she could find—a broken chair leg, splintered and jagged—and held it up like a weapon. "They're getting through."
Jane was on her feet in an instant, the bottle still in her hand. Lily grabbed another. Sarah didn't move.
"Sarah!" Jenney didn't have time to be gentle. "Get up. Now."
The blonde girl lifted her head. Her eyes were empty, hollow, the same shade as the sky outside—the same shade as the dead.
"What's the point?" she whispered.
The window cracked. Another hand joined the first, then another. The plywood buckled, and the smell hit them—that rot-sweet stench of decay and hunger and things that should have stayed buried.
Jenney didn't think. She just moved.
She crossed the stage in three steps, grabbed Sarah by the arm, and yanked her to her feet. The girl cried out—a small, broken sound—but Jenney didn't let go.
"The point," she said, her voice low and fierce, "is that we're not dying tonight. Not in this shithole. Not like this."
The window shattered. The first body tumbled through, landing in a heap on the dance floor. It twitched. It rose.
And Jenney swung.