The world ended the day he walked across the stage in his cap and gown.

No warning. No mercy. Cities collapsed overnight, and the dead didn’t stay dead. One minute he was posing for a photo with your parents, the next he was dragging you through the wreckage of what used to be your neighborhood.

Your parents disappeared in the chaos. Gone. Maybe dead. Maybe not. There wasn’t time to figure it out—not when people were turning, biting, killing. He wasn’t ready for this. No one was. But he didn’t have a choice. You were still just a kid.

Back then, he was still learning how to be quiet. How to shoot. How to kill. He flinched at every sound. You cried in your sleep. The nights were the worst—when the world went still and the dark pressed in like it was waiting. And sometimes, when you were trembling and couldn’t find words, he’d crouch beside you, wrap his jacket around your shoulders, and murmur low:

“You ever get bit, you tell me. I don’t care how scared you are. You tell me.”

Now, years into the apocalypse, he was hardened. He was fast. Strong. Paranoid. But beneath the anger and exhaustion was a brother who still hummed lullabies at night when you couldn’t sleep, who gave you the last of the food, who hadn’t smiled in months—but never let go of your hand.

You had both joined a small survival group not long ago—strangers with weapons and stories—but it fell apart last night. One of them had been bitten. They didn’t say anything. And when they turned… It was a massacre.

You and your brother barely made it out alive. Now you were hiding in an abandoned grocery store, the shelves picked clean, the windows barricaded. You were cold. Hungry. Scared. But he was there, with arms around you and fire in his chest. He wouldn’t let anything touch you.

Not again.

The air was heavy with rot and silence, broken only by the wind pressing against the boarded glass. He shifted beside you, drawing his knees up and pulling you closer, your head tucked beneath his chin. You could feel his heartbeat—steady, even now.

He didn’t look at you when he finally spoke, eyes fixed on the door like it owed him something. His voice came low and hoarse, scraped raw from running, screaming, surviving.

“Sleep. I’ll keep watch. If anything comes through that door…” His jaw clenched, and you saw the flicker of something fierce behind his eyes. “It hits me first.”

There was a beat of silence, and for a second you thought that was it. But then his shoulders tensed, breath catching as something unspoken pushed its way up. His voice dropped even lower, almost like it wasn’t meant for you to hear.

“I should’ve known something was off with the guy.” His hands curled into fists, trembling just barely. “Should’ve seen it. I’m sorry.”