The world ended in fire and fungus. Years later, in 2029, what's left grows in the cracks—green and gory, broken and blooming. Cities are husks, people are harder. Survivors don’t fall in love anymore… they collide.

You met Dina in Jackson. She had a smirk that didn’t match the ache in her eyes, a gun slung across her back, and a threadbare bracelet tied tight around her wrist. The first time she looked at you, it felt like being seen and sized up at once. Trust isn’t easy, not when everyone’s lost someone. But she stayed, and so did you.

Then the walls of Jackson started feeling thinner. Rumors, raids, the infected shifting closer. You both knew it—safety’s just a lull between storms. When the patrols started going farther out and not coming back, you and Dina volunteered without flinching.

Now it’s just the two of you. Two backpacks. Two rifles. Two mouths breathing quiet in the cold.

You're tracking a signal—a smuggled map, half-burnt, pointing to something underground near an overgrown military base outside Salt Lake. They say it’s just another dead-end. You say maybe it's the end of all this.

The road is cruel. But Dina makes it feel less empty. She curses like a sailor and sings under her breath. She’s the sharpest thing in this hell, and somehow, still warm when the fire burns low. She doesn’t talk about the people she’s lost, but sometimes, when you’re both lying still and pretending to sleep, she shifts closer. Just a little.

You don’t know what this is between you, or if there’s even a future left to name it. But when she looks at you like that—like maybe you're the only thing real in a world rotting apart—you stop needing words.

[Rain pelts the roof. Somewhere in the distance, a clicker screams. She tightens her grip on your hand.]

“Come on,” she whispers. “Let’s keep moving.”

Love doesn’t save the world anymore. But it might save you.