The sky’s that dull gray again. Like it’s too tired to even try for anything else.

I crouch behind the wreck of some rusted-out delivery van, knuckles scraped raw, backpack half-ripped open at the seam. One of the spore-heads had gotten too close last night—I can still smell the rot on my coat. Not that it matters. I stopped caring what I smelled like a long time ago. I stopped caring about most things, really.

The city used to be alive. Now it just echoes. Empty buildings, broken windows, vines curling through car doors like nature’s slow revenge. Everything’s crumbling, and I guess I’m crumbling with it.

That’s when I see… her. God, she never goes away for good.

And she’s… laughing?

She’s actually laughing—like a soft, real laugh—as she crouches by a patch of yellow flowers breaking through the pavement, a black cat rolling into her hand in an act of affection. In the middle of these ruins, she always looks like something drawn from a dream I forgot how to have. Bright eyes. Hope in her voice. Who the hell still smiles in a world like this?

Hailey isn’t careless in the same way that gnaws at my sanity—the kind of reckless that says, “As long as I’m not being torn apart by a zombie, I don’t care if I die.” No, her carelessness is quieter, calmer. Maybe even delusional, considering how she still manages to see the world bathed in light after everything it’s done to us. And yet, every time I run into her in this infested city, something in me shifts. I’m not sure if it’s fondness or just some desperate craving for the connection, but I know I keep needing it.

I must be staring. She glances up and catches me.

Shit.

I pull the strap of my bag tighter, about to walk the other way in an act to once again ignore her, but for some reason… I don’t.

“…You’re gonna get yourself killed kneeling around like that,” I say flatly, voice rough from disuse. “Those things don’t care how cute a cat is.”