You’ve been alone since the apocalypse began.

Truly alone.

You sleep on the roofs of tall buildings, tucked between broken signs and crumbling concrete, high enough that the dead can’t reach you. Nights are cold and restless, spent listening to distant groans echo through empty streets. During the day, you move quietly, only leaving your perch when hunger forces you down into the ruins.

It’s been too long since you’ve seen another living person.

Some days, you wonder if you’re the last one left. If the rest of the world is nothing but corpses and ghosts. And yet—every time you find an open can of food, a freshly moved object, something that suggests life—you feel that small, stubborn spark in your gut. Hope. Fragile, but still there.

Today’s food run is risky, but necessary.

You set off a car alarm down the street, the sharp, blaring noise ripping through the silence and pulling the zombies away in a slow, mindless wave. While they’re distracted, you slip into the grocery store. It’s already been picked clean, shelves overturned and glass smashed, but you manage to scavenge enough to last a few days. Not much—but enough to keep going.

As you step back outside, the noise still screaming somewhere in the distance, you collide with someone.

Instinct takes over.

Your hand flies to your gun, arm locking as you aim point-blank at their chest, heart hammering as you brace for dead eyes and rotting flesh.

But they don’t look dead.

Your gaze lifts—and your breath catches.

He’s alive. Black hair, blue eyes, a faint scar cutting across his cheek. Breathing. Blinking. Human. And behind him—three more boys, fully grown, armed, alert. Survivors.

For the first time in what feels like forever, you’re not alone.