"Ahem... cough."
Emily cleared her throat deliberately, the sound cutting through the quiet room. She turned away instinctively, feeling heat rise to her cheeks despite her best efforts to remain composed.
Rachel jerked upright in bed, startled, and immediately yanked the thin blanket up to her nose. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She didn't dare look directly at Emily—couldn't bear to see the judgment she was certain would be written across the other woman's face.
For several excruciating seconds, the silence hung heavy and awkward between them.
Emily's emotions churned in a confusing tangle. She should be happy—relieved, even—that her brother had found someone in this hellish new world. But instead, her chest felt tight, constricted by feelings she couldn't quite name and didn't want to examine too closely.
"Uh... it's not—" Rachel stammered from beneath the covers, peeking out with wide, mortified eyes. "I swear, this isn't what it looks like..."
Emily exhaled slowly and forced a small, carefully neutral smile. "It's fine. You don't need to explain anything to me."
She stepped closer to the bed, her movements deliberate and measured. When Rachel tried to scramble up to greet her properly, Emily raised a hand to stop her.
"Don't worry about formalities," Emily said, her tone softening slightly. "Just... treat me like a sister, alright?"
Rachel blinked in surprise. From everything she'd heard, Emily Miller was supposed to be serious, commanding, even intimidating—the kind of woman who ran operations with clinical efficiency and didn't tolerate weakness. But right now, her expression was gentle, her eyes almost kind.
"Okay... sis," Rachel said quietly, the word feeling strange on her tongue. She reached for her scattered clothes beside the bed, fumbling to dress herself while still half-hidden beneath the blanket.
Emily set a small tray down on the nightstand—a bowl of instant oatmeal and a thermos of lukewarm water. "You should stay in bed and rest. You're still recovering from everything. Eat when you feel up to it."
Rachel stared at the tray, hesitating. She didn't dare accept it too eagerly. Everyone in the hospital knew how important Emily was to Ethan—how much he valued her opinion, her judgment. One wrong move, and Emily could turn his favor cold.
Noticing the hesitation, Emily didn't push. She simply turned and handed the tray to one of the other women nearby, a quiet gesture that spoke volumes about the hierarchy already forming in their small community.
Despite her loyalty to Ethan, Rachel couldn't help but think strategically about the future. If Ethan's influence continued to grow—and it would—there would inevitably be more people, more followers, more competition. More women. Someone would have to manage the household, coordinate resources, maintain order among the growing group.
Rachel didn't expect to ever surpass Emily—that position was untouchable. But being second? That was a goal worth pursuing.
To secure that place, she needed to be more than just attractive. She needed to be useful. She'd learn to cook with limited supplies, manage inventory, coordinate the other survivors, even fight if necessary. She refused to become mere decoration in a world where decoration had no value.
Emily's voice pulled her from her thoughts. "Rachel... were you a celebrity before all this started?"
Rachel froze, halfway through buttoning her shirt. "Yeah," she admitted quietly. "I was in Chicago for a fan meet-and-greet event. Then... well, the world ended."
She gave a nervous, self-deprecating laugh, remembering her first encounter with Ethan—when she'd accidentally drawn an entire horde of infected directly toward him with her panicked screaming. He'd knocked her unconscious just to shut her up and save both their lives. At the time, she'd been horrified, terrified. Now she just felt embarrassed by how useless she'd been.
"Guess I wasn't the brightest star on that stage after all," she muttered.
Emily's lips curved into a faint, almost sympathetic smile. "At least you survived. In this world, that counts for more than fame ever did."
Rachel nodded and began eating slowly, grateful for the food despite its blandness. Around them, Emily distributed rationed meals to the other survivors—crackers, small cans of processed ham, bottled water. No one complained. Hunger had stripped away the luxury of preference.
Once everyone had finished their meager breakfast, Emily stood and began issuing calm, clear instructions. Clean the bloodstains in the hallway. Patch the broken windows with whatever materials they could find. Reinforce the barricades on the ground floor. The apartment complex had taken heavy damage during the initial outbreak, and if they didn't secure it properly, another horde would inevitably find its way inside.
The next morning, Chicago was eerily quiet.
The world hadn't completely collapsed yet—not visibly, at least. People still clung to the belief that the government would fix everything, that the military would sweep in and restore order. But that hope was growing thinner by the hour, stretched gossamer-thin over a reality that contradicted it at every turn.
The downtown police precinct had transformed into an improvised fortress.
During the first chaotic hours of the outbreak, many officers had been bitten or infected. Some inmates had escaped during the confusion, disappearing into the burning city. The survivors—barely a dozen police officers—had retreated to the west wing of the building, barricading entrances with overturned desks, filing cabinets, and anything else they could move.
Ethan made his way there now, moving through narrow alleyways and staying off the main streets where clusters of undead still wandered aimlessly. His boots splashed through filthy puddles as he navigated the urban decay, his senses sharp, his movements efficient.
Every now and then, a distant scream echoed through the concrete canyons, or a car exploded somewhere in the distance. Chicago was dying, and it was dying loudly.
He gripped the steel pipe firmly in his right hand, dispatching any infected that crossed his path with brutal efficiency—a measured strike to the skull, a dull thud, then silence. No wasted movement. No unnecessary risks.
From the top of an abandoned office building across the street, Ethan crouched near a shattered window and studied the police station below.
Roughly eighty infected shambled around the courtyard, their movements jerky and aimless. Several bodies lay near the main entrance—torn open, partially devoured, clothes shredded. But something about the carnage bothered him.
Those weren't bite marks.
They were claw marks—deep, ragged gouges that spoke of something larger, stronger, more aggressive than the standard infected.
Ethan's jaw tightened. Something else had been feeding here. Something worse.
Inside the precinct's west wing, tension crackled like static electricity among the surviving officers.
"Captain Harris, those things are attacking the windows again!" one officer shouted, his voice edged with panic. "Two of them have cracks—they almost broke through this time!"
"Watch your damn mouth!" Officer Linda Perez snapped, her voice sharp as broken glass. "Those 'things' used to be our partners!"
"Partners or not, they're monsters now!" another officer shot back, his face flushed with anger and fear. "Half our team's been torn apart by those zombie dogs. You still want to hold a memorial service for them?"
"Enough!" Captain Harris raised his hand, his voice cutting through the argument like a whip crack. His face was pale and drawn, dark circles under his eyes testament to sleepless nights spent managing impossible decisions. "Reinforce those windows. Keep them out, no matter what it takes."
The room fell into tense silence.
After a moment, Officer Bennett spoke hesitantly. "Sir... what about the inmates in the holding cells?"
Captain Harris's brow furrowed deeply. He'd been trying not to think about that particular problem. "Keep them locked up. Give them water when we can spare it. A few rations if we have enough. We can't afford more chaos right now."
The west wing's holding area had once contained petty criminals—drunks, shoplifters, minor offenders waiting for bail hearings. But now those men were trapped in cages, growing more desperate and dangerous by the hour.
Between the infected outside and the prisoners inside, the remaining officers were caught in a slowly tightening vice. Food would run out in three days, maybe four if they stretched it. Water supplies were already low.
And none of them knew that Ethan Miller was already watching from across the street, hidden in the shadows of the abandoned building, calculating his next move with cold, tactical precision.
He studied the infected in the courtyard, counted the windows still intact, noted the weak points in the precinct's defenses.
Then he smiled faintly.
"Time to make an entrance," he whispered to himself.