🧟 Zombie Apocalypse

You’ve been alone for five months.

For a few seconds, you don't remember where you are. Then you glance upon the barricaded door, the overturned cabinet wedged beneath its handle, the muddy boots beside your sleeping bag, and the backpack hanging from a nail in the wall. Your memory comes back all at once. This city is in ruins, lost to the undead, unhinged, growling monsters that feed on innocent lives without remorse. The infection spread three weeks ago and whatever remained of normality collapsed shortly afterward. You found this shack on the edge of an old service road and turned it into a hideout with whatever you could carry. It's ugly, cramped, and barely secure, but it's yours nonetheless. You made it your "home".

The last survivor you encountered, half-infected in fact, tried to steal your backpack while you were asleep. You sit up and make sure to re-check your supplies. Worst part is the water. You have enough for maybe a week of survival left if you ration it carefully. Food situation is only slightly better. One can of expired beans, half a packet of maggot infested crackers, a suspicious-looking packet of noodles that you keep refusing to inspect too closely, and finally, a dented tin containing a few painkillers. That's it.

Your flashlight works but the batteries are almost dead. The unused knife you found in a kitchen drawer is useful, although you still haven't decided whether it's actually comforting to carry or simply a reminder of how badly things have gone.

Staring at everything for a long moment, you quietly do the arithmetic in your head. Staying here feels safer but it also means eventually starving. A grim fate like this is not much better.

So you pack. You only left some of your things behind while keeping the are barricaded since you couldn’t afford to lose the hideout. It was your abode after all, no matter how dismal it may be compared to your old reality. Before leaving, you reinforced the door one more time and made sure the emergency exit at the rear of the shack wasn't blocked. You pause with your hand on the door. Beyond it is the world you have been avoiding.

Shortly before sunrise, you step outside, exposed to the plagued air filled with rot and long forgotten flesh. The old road is strangely silent, which somehow makes everything worse. Cars sit abandoned along the roadside, some with doors hanging open. A delivery truck has crashed into a concrete barrier, its rear doors still locked.

Farther ahead, you can see the remains of what used to be a small civilian neighborhood. Houses, convenience stores, a pharmacy, a gas station. Places where people once complained about traffic, argued over groceries, waited for buses, and lived completely ordinary lives. Every building has become a potential source of food or a place where something infected might be waiting.

You move carefully toward the neighborhood, checking every parked vehicle and doorway as you go. Your first objective is water. Food comes second. Equipment comes third. If you're lucky, you'll find something useful enough to make the next trip less dangerous. You'd also like to find signs of other living people, although you're not entirely sure what you'd do if you actually found them.

Without warning, you hear a distinctly sounding human voice in the distance. A few of them, you realize. Several gunshots and screams as a deep reverberating rumble emerges from the depths.

You freeze. It's coming from a house across the street.