The sun rose, but it no longer burned gold. It hung low and red, a dying ember in the sky, as if it too had grown weary of watching humanity crumble. The air was thick with a strange static — not quite wind, not quite silence — something in between, like the earth itself was holding its breath.
Aisha stood on the rooftop of the abandoned hospital, watching the horizon swallow the city. Nairobi had become a skeleton of glass and ash. The towers still stood, but their windows were blind. Streets that once choked with matatus and shouting vendors were now ghostly lanes littered with abandoned cars and the echoes of yesterday.
She adjusted the strap of her rifle, a habit she had picked up in the last six months. Survival had replaced sleep, and trust had become rarer than water.
Down below, Malik and Father Gideon were scavenging through the pharmacy. They moved quietly, every step measured. Noise was dangerous now — it attracted them.
The "Echoes," as people called them, weren't human anymore. Once infected by the Black Wave, their bodies changed — bones twisted, eyes glazed white, their minds wiped clean of memory or mercy. They hunted sound, heat, and life itself.
Aisha closed her eyes for a moment, remembering her younger brother, Juma. The last time she saw him, he was running toward their home in Eastleigh, calling her name. That was before the power grids failed, before communication died, before the world stopped pretending it could be saved.
Now, survival was the only religion left.
"Found something!" Malik's voice cut through the still air. He held up a small box of antibiotics. It felt like gold.
Father Gideon crossed himself. "A blessing, even now. Perhaps the Lord has not turned His face entirely."
Aisha didn't respond. Her faith had ended the day she buried her mother in a shallow grave behind a burnt church.
Suddenly, the air shifted. The static turned sharp.
Then came the sound — a low, guttural wail that crawled up their spines. An Echo.
Malik froze. "They're close."
Aisha's heart began to hammer. She dropped to her knees, scanning the horizon through her rifle scope. Movement — two, maybe three figures — emerging from the mist of dust and smoke, crawling over the wreckage of an overturned bus.
"Get inside," she hissed.
They sprinted back into the building, locking the steel doors behind them. The Echoes' shrieks echoed through the halls, bouncing off the walls like broken glass.
In the dim light of the corridor, Aisha whispered, "We can't stay here tonight."
Father Gideon nodded. "Then where?"
Aisha looked out through the shattered window — toward the distant hills, faintly glowing with flickers of fire. Smoke rose like black prayers into the blood-red sky.
"The Safe Zone," she said finally. "If it still exists."
Malik gave a grim laugh. "You really believe that?"
She met his eyes — hollow, determined, tired.
"I don't believe," she said. "I just can't stop moving."
Outside, the screams faded into silence again — the kind of silence that didn't comfort, but warned.
It was the silence before the storm.