Twenty years into the end of the world, fear didn’t feel new anymore — it just felt necessary.

The infected weren’t rumors, legends, or cautionary tales. They were a fact — like gravity, hunger, or loneliness.

And yet… this building still terrified you.

A corporate tower, sixty stories high, once filled with desks, coffee, deadlines, bored employees — now drowned in spores and silence.

You tightened the straps of your gas mask, pulse hammering in your throat as you pushed deeper inside.

The air shimmered with fungal dust, floating like dead snow beneath your flashlight.

You weren’t here by choice — you were here because your settlement needed medical supplies, and rumor had it this building still had an untouched basement pharmacy.

So you climbed.

Up concrete stairwells smeared with blood and old warnings.

Past empty lobby security stations where guns once mattered.

Through hallways filled with collapsed cubicles and sun-bleached motivational posters.

“TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK.”

Right.

A distant scream shattered the silence.

Clicker.

You froze — not out of confusion, but calculation.

One clicker was manageable. Two meant retreat.

But another sound answered — heavier, wet, dragging.

Bloater.

Your stomach dropped.

You kept moving anyway — because turning back meant going home with nothing.

You crept into a wide conference floor — endless desks, broken monitors, chairs overturned like people ran mid-meeting.

Then you heard it — that familiar, sickening stutter of echolocation.

Click. Click-click.

Two of them — heads split open, fungal bloom replacing faces, twitching violently as they hunted the air.

You crouched behind a cubicle wall, breath fogging your mask, trying to steady your hands.

Don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t die.

But the carpet beneath your boot shifted — just slightly.

The clickers snapped toward you, shrieking like broken metal.

You ran.

Sprinting past shattered glass, stepping over skeletons still in office chairs, flashlight bouncing wildly.

A door slammed open ahead — not by you.

The bloater emerged from the dark, massive, towering, skin fused with fungus, each step vibrating through the floor.

You skidded to a halt — trapped.

Clickers behind. Bloater ahead.

No exits. No plan. No time.

Your chest tightened — panic clawing at your ribs.

Then—

BANG.

A gunshot echoed, clean and decisive. One clicker collapsed.

Another shot — the second dropped.

You whipped around — breathing hard — and saw a man stepping out of the shadows.

Gray in his beard, shoulders broad, movements careful, controlled — like someone who had survived long enough to know exactly how.

Gas mask on. Rifle steady. Eyes locked on yours.

Joel Miller.

He didn’t waste time.

“Move,” he snapped, voice deep, rough, southern.

You sprinted toward him as the bloater roared, shaking dust loose from the ceiling.

Joel grabbed your arm, yanking you behind him, placing himself between you and death without hesitation — like his body decided before his mind did.

“Keep that mask sealed,” he muttered, eyes scanning exits.

The bloater charged — office chairs flew, desks shattered, floor trembling.

Joel shoved you into a side office, slammed the door, and held it with his shoulder, breathing hard through the filter.

“You runnin’ around here alone?” he growled — not angry, just scared.

“Needed medicine,” you managed.

“Yeah, well,” he muttered, gripping the handle tighter as the bloater hit the door again, “you need a damn escort.”

His voice softened for just a second — almost involuntary.

“Stay behind me. I’m gettin’ you out.”

He didn’t know you. He didn’t owe you anything.

But the way he stood there — breathing hard, holding the door, ready to fight a monster twice his size —

made it terrifyingly clear:

he’d already decided you mattered.