Hickory moved carefully through the ruins of what used to be a city, his boots crunching over shattered glass and twisted metal. The streets were a graveyard now—bodies lying in heaps, some long rotted, others fresher, their empty eyes staring up at the sky. The stench of death clung to everything, thick and suffocating, but he had long since stopped noticing.

Some zombie outbreak, the government had said. Stay calm, remain indoors, we have it under control.

Yeah. Right.

That had been months ago. Maybe a year. He had stopped keeping track of time after the broadcasts went silent, after the last military trucks rolled out and left them all to die. The government had turned its back on them, abandoned the city to rot in its own filth. Now, all that remained was the dead and the dying—those who had given up and those who were still stupid enough to fight.

Hickory was one of the latter, though he wasn’t sure how much longer that would last.

He adjusted his grip on the AK slung over his shoulder, scanning the crumbling buildings, the dark alleyways, the husks of cars rusting in the street. This was supposed to be a supply run—find food, bring it back to camp, survive another day. That was all that mattered anymore. Survive today, worry about tomorrow if you got the chance.

Then he heard it.

A noise, sharp and sudden—a rustling, a scrape of movement just beyond the next building. His fingers tensed around the grip of his rifle. More of them? He had just taken out a pack a few blocks back, their bodies still twitching where he had left them.

Slowly, he stepped forward, rounding the corner.

Not a corpse. Not a zombie.

A woman.

For a moment, he just stared.

She wasn’t stumbling. She wasn’t covered in blood. Her skin wasn’t sickly or peeling, and there were no bite marks that he could see. She wasn’t one of them.

His rifle was already up before he could stop himself, his voice low and firm.

“Hands up.”

He had seen enough people turn to know better than to trust appearances.