The second day of the apocalypse dawned grey and silent, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
Emily blinked awake in the adjacent motel room, her eyelids heavy with exhaustion. She hadn't slept well—not because of the cold concrete floor or the threadbare blanket she'd wrapped around herself, but because of them. All night long, rhythmic sounds had filtered through the thin walls separating her room from theirs. Muffled voices. Desperate gasps. The unmistakable evidence of two people clinging to each other in the darkness.
She sat up slowly, wincing as her stiff muscles protested. In this dead city, where the groans of the undead had become nothing more than background noise, the raw, fragile sounds of human intimacy felt almost more unsettling. It reminded her of everything they'd lost. Everything they might never have again.
"Those two really don't know when to stop," she muttered, running a hand through her tangled hair. Part of her was annoyed. But another part—a part she refused to acknowledge—envied her.
She stared at the water-stained ceiling, tracing the cracks with her eyes. Outside, the city remained eerily quiet. No cars. No voices. Just the occasional shuffle of feet and the distant, inhuman moans that never quite stopped.
In the room next door, Ethan sat up in bed, his chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. Sweat still clung to his skin despite the morning chill. Beside him, Rachel lay curled on her side, fast asleep. Her breathing was shallow, her body trembling slightly even in unconsciousness.
Ethan leaned back against the worn headboard and reached for his phone on the nightstand. The screen lit up immediately, and to his continued amazement, he had signal. Full bars. Internet access. Even the power was still running, and when he'd checked earlier, the water taps still worked.
"Guess civilization doesn't collapse in a single day," he murmured to himself.
The government must have kept the infrastructure running—at least for now. How long that would last was anyone's guess, but he'd take advantage of it while he could.
He opened his browser and navigated to one of the national emergency forums that had sprung up overnight. What he found was chaos distilled into text and pixels. The threads scrolled endlessly, each one a window into someone else's nightmare:
"Is anyone in Houston still alive? Please respond!"
"HELP! Trapped in Westfield Mall parking garage. Zombies everywhere. Running out of food."
"Can anyone confirm if people are awakening superpowers like in the movies? Saw something weird yesterday."
"This has to be fake, right? Mass hysteria? Government experiment gone wrong?"
The last one made Ethan snort. People were still in denial, even with corpses walking the streets.
He scrolled further and paused on a post that made his stomach turn. A woman, probably desperate, offering food and supplies in exchange for "company and protection." The comments below were savage—mocking her, propositioning her, tearing her apart with the same cruel humor the internet had always specialized in.
"People really never learn," Ethan said, shaking his head. "End of the world, and they're still the same."
But he wasn't like them. He didn't have to beg or bargain or degrade himself for scraps.
Because unlike everyone else struggling to survive out there, he had something special.
He had the System.
"System," Ethan said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper so as not to wake Rachel. "When can I unlock abilities?"
The response came immediately, manifesting as text in his mind's eye—mechanical, emotionless.
[When the Host's Physical Strength reaches 100, the Extraordinary Path will unlock. At that threshold, the Host may awaken their first ability.]
"The Extraordinary Path, huh?" A grin tugged at the corner of Ethan's mouth. "So I need to hit peak human condition before I get actual powers. Makes sense, I guess. No shortcuts."
He focused his thoughts, and his personal status panel materialized before his eyes—visible only to him, translucent and glowing faintly:
HOST: Ethan
ABILITY: None (Locked)
PHYSICAL STRENGTH: 30
SPEED: 30
ATTACK POWER: 33
POINTS REMAINING: 156
He'd already spent a significant chunk of his initial points yesterday, dumping them into his basic physical attributes and purchasing a skill called Vehicle Mastery. That particular investment had already paid for itself—allowing him to hotwire a car, navigate debris-choked streets, and even jury-rig a broken fuel pump with nothing but instinct and supernatural competence.
But he needed more. More points. More power. More control.
And there was only one way to get them: kill more zombies.
Ethan was about to close the forum when a particular post caught his attention. The title alone made his pulse quicken:
"Strange Zombie – Captured on Camera. NOT LIKE THE OTHERS."
The post had already garnered thousands of views and hundreds of replies. He clicked it open.
The attached video showed shaky phone footage filmed from a second-story window. Below, in a residential street, a horde of the undead shuffled aimlessly—the standard shambling corpses that had overrun the city. Their movements were mechanical, purposeless, driven only by basic hunger.
Then, about fifteen seconds in, everything changed.
A deep, guttural roar tore through the audio, distorting the phone's speakers. The camera jerked, refocusing on a figure emerging from the mass of bodies.
It was enormous.
Nearly seven feet tall, its body was grotesquely muscular, veins bulging under greyish-black skin that looked almost armored. Its eyes—previously milky and dead like the others—now glowed with a faint, sickly yellow light. When it moved, the other zombies instinctively pulled back, as if recognizing a predator in their midst.
Ethan's heart hammered in his chest. He replayed the clip once. Twice. Three times.
"That's… not normal," he whispered.
His mind raced. The System had mentioned it before—tiers. Not all zombies were created equal. There were different levels, different classifications. This thing on the screen wasn't just a reanimated corpse. It was something more.
An Advanced Zombie.
"First-level, second-level…" Ethan muttered, his excitement building despite the obvious danger. "If the regular ones are tier one, then this thing has to be tier two. Maybe higher."
He leaned forward, eyes gleaming with something between fear and ambition.
"If I can kill one of those," he said slowly, a dangerous grin spreading across his face, "how many points would that give me?"
Beside him, Rachel stirred slightly but didn't wake. Ethan glanced at her—her face peaceful for the first time since the outbreak began—and felt a strange mixture of protectiveness and determination settle over him.
This world was going to devour the weak. The unprepared. The ones still clinging to the old rules, the old morality, the old ways of thinking.
But not him.
He had the System. He had a path forward. And he was going to climb it, no matter what—or who—stood in his way.
Outside, weak sunlight finally broke through the perpetual smog hanging over the city, painting the ruined streets in shades of gold and grey. Somewhere in the distance, carried on the wind, came another roar—deep, guttural, and unmistakably hungry.
The Advanced Zombie was hunting.
And soon, Ethan would be hunting it.
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