FOUR DAYS AGO
The bakery had been Arjun's sanctuary for thirty-two years.
He'd inherited it from his father, who'd inherited it from his father, three generations of Bakshi men kneading dough before dawn and watching the sunrise through flour-dusted windows. The building was simple—two connected spaces sharing a wall, the bakery shop on the right, their small apartment on the left. A door between them meant Arjun could walk from his kitchen to his ovens without ever stepping outside. The ovens were temperamental, the ceiling leaked when it rained, and the ancient cash register stuck every third transaction, but it was his. The smell of fresh bread and cardamom had seeped into the walls, into his clothes, into his very bones.
The morning had started normally. Arjun arrived in the shop at 4:30 AM, as he had every day for three decades. His wife Meena was still asleep in their apartment next door, the wall between them thin enough that he could hear her gentle snoring. He fired up the ovens, started the first batch of dough, and settled into the familiar rhythm of his work.
Reyan Sharma came in around eight-thirty, as he often did on his way to work. A good customer, a good man. Always polite, always asking about Meena's health, always buying those cinnamon rolls for his family.
"Morning, Reyan! The usual?" Arjun had called, wiping flour from his hands.
"Yes, and a few extras today," Reyan had said, looking tired but content. "Taking them to the office. Figured I'd brighten everyone's morning."
They'd chatted briefly—the kind of comfortable small talk that comes from years of routine transactions. Arjun had even joked about sneaking one of the cinnamon rolls for himself. Reyan had laughed, paid, and left with his bag of pastries, heading home before going to work.
That was the last normal moment.
By mid-morning, the shop was busy with the usual crowd. Mrs. Patel buying her two loaves of wheat bread. The construction workers grabbing samosas before their shift. Students stopping in for chai and biscuits before school.
Then, at approximately 11:30 AM—Arjun would remember the time because he'd just told a customer their order would be ready in fifteen minutes—the screaming started outside.
At first, he thought it was a fight. Street violence wasn't uncommon in Niraya's crowded neighborhoods. The customers glanced toward the window nervously but kept shopping. Arjun kept working, sliding fresh naan from the oven, listening to the sounds escalate from shouting to something worse—something primal and wrong.
The screams were getting closer. Louder. More frequent.
Then Mrs. Patel burst back through the door.
She'd left not five minutes ago, her shopping bag full of bread. Now she was back, the bag forgotten, blood covering her blouse—not her own, Arjun would realize later—and her eyes were wild with terror.
"Close the door!" she screamed. "CLOSE IT! THEY'RE COMING!"
The other customers froze. Someone dropped their chai, the cup shattering on the floor.
Mrs. Patel collapsed. Not fainted—collapsed, her body seizing violently, foam bubbling from her mouth. Arjun ran around the counter, years of first aid training from his youth kicking in automatically.
That's when he saw the bite mark on her shoulder. Deep. Ragged. Still bleeding.
"Mrs. Patel?" He reached for her pulse.
Her eyes snapped open. White. Completely white, pupils swallowed by milky film. She lunged at him with impossible speed, teeth bared, a sound coming from her throat that no human should make.
The shop erupted in chaos. Customers screamed, stampeded for the door. Arjun stumbled backward, crashed into the display case. Glass shattered. Mrs. Patel—what used to be Mrs. Patel—kept coming, moving with jerky, puppet-like motions.
He grabbed the first thing his hand found: the bread knife, sixteen inches of serrated steel he'd sharpened just yesterday. When she lunged again, instinct took over. The knife found her chest. Once. Twice. Three times.
She didn't stop.
It took seven stabs before she finally went still.
Arjun stood there, covered in blood, the knife shaking in his hand, staring at the body of a woman who'd been buying bread from him for fifteen years. Around him, the shop was empty—customers fled, the door hanging open, screams echoing from the street outside.
His mind couldn't process it. Wouldn't process it.
Then he heard them outside. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe. The groans, the shuffling feet, the screams of people being caught.
He looked at the door to his left—the door that connected to his apartment, where Meena was probably making lunch, humming to herself, unaware that the world was ending.
"Meena," he whispered.
He ran through the connecting door. Burst into their small living room screaming her name.
"Arjun?" Meena appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel, her face confused. "What's all that noise outside? Is someone hurt? Why are you covered in—" Her eyes widened. "Is that blood?"
"We have to go," he said, grabbing her arm. "Now. Something's happening. People are—they're attacking each other. Mrs. Patel, she—"
The bakery's front window exploded.
One of them crashed through the display case, glass spraying everywhere. It hit the floor of the shop, rolled, came up already reaching for them through the connecting door. Behind it, Arjun could see more flooding into his bakery, drawn by the noise, by the prey.
He slammed the connecting door shut, threw the bolt. "Out the back! NOW!"
They ran through their apartment—past the kitchen, past their bedroom, out the back door that opened into the alley behind their building. But the alley wasn't safe either. Bodies everywhere. Some still. Some moving in ways that defied every law of human anatomy. The infected shambled and ran and hunted.
"The car," Arjun said. "We get to the car, we—"
Meena screamed.
One of them had grabbed her from behind. Young man, maybe twenty, wearing a delivery uniform. His teeth sank into her shoulder before Arjun could react.
"NO!"
Arjun swung the knife—still in his hand, still covered in Mrs. Patel's blood—and caught the thing in the temple. It went down. But Meena was already stumbling, her legs giving out.
"Arjun," she said, her voice strangely calm. "Arjun, I can feel it. It's... it's cold. It's spreading."
"No, no, we can—there has to be a hospital, something—"
"Run." Her eyes were already starting to cloud over. White creeping in from the edges. "Please. Run."
"Meena—"
"I love you. Now RUN!"
He ran.
He didn't remember much after that. Pieces, flashes: hiding in a dumpster while they passed. Drinking rainwater from a gutter. Finding the collapsed storefront and barricading himself inside with debris. Days blurring together, marked only by hunger and thirst and the constant groans outside.
Then, on what might have been the fourth day, he heard engines. Cars. Living people.
He'd burst from his hiding spot without thinking, running toward the sound of salvation, not seeing the sprinter until it was almost too late. The gunshot. The screech of brakes. Reyan's face appearing through the car window like a miracle.
Arjun blinked, pulling himself from the memory. The convenience store's back room was dark, quiet except for the soft breathing of sleeping people. His hand instinctively went to the kitchen knife he'd kept—the same one he'd used to kill Mrs. Patel, to try to save Meena.
He was alive. Somehow, impossibly, he was alive.
And tomorrow, he'd help these people who'd saved him. He'd help them find Samir's sister. He'd help them survive.
It was the least he could do.
NOW
Samir couldn't sleep.
Everyone else had drifted off hours ago—exhausted by the day's horrors, by the running and fighting and constant fear. Even Taj was snoring softly from his corner, his cracked glasses folded carefully beside him. Reyan sat against the wall with his daughter curled in his lap, both of them finally at peace.
But Samir couldn't sleep. Not with Nisha out there. Not with her building just two kilometers away, so close he could practically feel it.
The map of Niraya was spread across his lap, illuminated by the dim glow of his phone's dying battery. He'd been studying it for hours, tracing routes with his finger, calculating distances, looking for any path that didn't run straight through that massive horde.
The main streets were blocked. Obviously. That's where the infected congregated, drawn to the sounds and smells of a densely populated city. But there had to be another way. Side streets. Alleys. Service roads. Something.
His finger traced a path along the old metro line. "If the tunnels are clear," he muttered to himself, "we could go underground. Come up closer to—no. No, the metro would be packed. Everyone would've tried to use it for evacuation. It'd be a death trap."
He crossed it off mentally and kept looking.
What about the rooftops? Building to building, staying high, avoiding the streets entirely? He traced that path, mentally mapping the jumps. Possible, maybe, but risky. One wrong step, one gap too wide, and they'd fall straight into the horde below.
"There has to be something," he whispered. "There has to be—"
A sound made him look up. Arjun was awake, watching him from across the room.
"Can't sleep?" Arjun asked quietly.
Samir shook his head. "Finding routes. To my sister's house."
Arjun pulled himself into a sitting position, careful not to wake the others. "Any luck?"
"Maybe. I don't know. Every path I find..." He gestured helplessly at the map. "Every path goes through them. Or near them. Or puts us in danger of getting trapped."
"But you keep looking."
"She's my sister."
Arjun nodded slowly. "I had a sister once. Married, moved to Chennai fifteen years ago. I haven't heard from her since this started. The phone networks went down on day two."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Not yet." Arjun met his eyes. "Hope is all we have left. You keep looking at that map. You keep finding routes. Because the moment we stop hoping is the moment we're already dead."
Samir looked back down at the map, something hard and determined settling in his chest. "I think I found something. Three possibilities. Three routes that might work."
"Then tomorrow, we try them."
"Tomorrow," Samir agreed. "We find her tomorrow."
He went back to his map, and this time when he traced the routes, his hand didn't shake.
MORNING
Arjun woke first, as he always had. Thirty-two years of pre-dawn baking had trained his body to rise before the sun. The convenience store's back room was still dark, but gray light was starting to filter through the cracks in the barricaded door.
Samir was exactly where Arjun had left him, map still spread across his lap. But his eyes were closed now, his breathing slow and even. He'd fallen asleep sitting up, one hand still resting on the map like he was afraid it might disappear.
Arjun stood quietly, stretched the aches from his back, and went to check their supplies. They had water, at least. Some canned food from the store's shelves. Enough for a few days if they rationed carefully.
One by one, the others began to wake.
Taj first, groaning and reaching for his cracked glasses. "Is it morning? Tell me it's not morning."
"It's morning," Vikram confirmed, sitting up and immediately checking his knife.
Reyan's daughter stirred next, blinking sleepily up at her father. "Papa? Are we still at the gas station?"
"Yeah, baby. But we're safe. We're okay."
Meera and Karan's group were already awake, having taken the last watch. They looked alert, weapons ready, eyes scanning for threats even in the relative safety of their barricaded room.
Everyone was up. Everyone except Samir.
"Should we wake him?" Taj asked, looking at their friend. "He looks exhausted."
"He's been up all night," Arjun said quietly. "Working on routes."
"Routes to what?" Karan asked.
"To my sister," Samir's voice cut in. His eyes opened, sharp and focused despite the lack of sleep. "To Nisha."
He stood, the map clutched in his hand, and everyone's attention turned to him. "I have a plan. The best one. Three possible routes that could get us there."
Reyan stretched, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "Okay. We'll work on it."
"Work on it?" Samir's voice rose. "You're taking this lightly? There's my sister out there! She could be—"
"Samir." Reyan held up a hand. "I'm not taking anything lightly. I just woke up. Give me a second to—" He stopped, really looking at Samir for the first time. At the desperation in his eyes, the way his hands shook, the map crumpled from hours of study. "Okay. Okay, tell me. What did you find?"
Samir spread the map out on the floor. Everyone gathered around, weapons forgotten for the moment.
"Three routes," Samir said, his finger tracing the first path. "Route One: The metro tunnels. There's an entrance three blocks from here, and the line runs straight under the horde. We go underground, come up at the station near Nisha's building. Fast, direct, protected from the surface."
"But?" Vikram asked, because there was always a 'but.'
"But the tunnels might be flooded. Or collapsed. Or packed with infected who had the same idea about using them for evacuation." Samir moved his finger to the second path. "Route Two: Rooftops. We go building to building, stay high, jump the gaps. The infected can't follow us up there."
"Can't they?" Taj asked. "We've seen them climb. The fast ones can definitely climb."
"Not like we can. And if we move fast enough..." Samir trailed off, knowing it was weak. "Okay, it's risky. There are gaps between buildings. If someone falls..."
"They die," Meera finished bluntly. "And we'd be visible from the street. If there are any of those Heralds down there, they'd call the entire horde."
Samir's jaw tightened, but he moved to the third path. "Route Three. Service alleys. There's a network of them behind the buildings—delivery routes, maintenance access, that kind of thing. They're narrow, which means the infected can only come at us one or two at a time. We can fight through that."
Karan leaned closer, studying the route. "This could work. The chokepoints would be in our favor. And if we hit trouble, we can duck into buildings, barricade doors."
"It's not perfect," Samir admitted. "The alleys wind around a lot. It'll take longer than the metro. And we don't know what we'll find back there. But it's our best shot."
Reyan looked up at him. "You really worked all night on this?"
"I had to. She's—" Samir's voice cracked. "She's all I have left. My parents are gone. My friends are probably gone. If I lose her too, then what am I even surviving for?"
The room fell silent.
Then Karan stood, walked over to Samir, and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "We'll find her. We try Route One first—quickest option. If that fails, we try Route Two. If that fails, we go with Route Three. One way or another, we get to that building. Deal?"
Samir looked like he might cry. Instead, he just nodded. "Deal."
"Alright then." Karan turned to his group. "Meera, Dev, Ravi—gear up. We're going into the city. Reyan, your people ready?"
"Give us five minutes," Reyan said, already moving. "Taj, Vikram, Arjun—weapons, supplies, everything we can carry. We don't know what we'll find."
His daughter tugged on his sleeve. "Papa? Are we going to find Aunt Nisha?"
Reyan crouched down to her level. "We're going to try, baby. That's all we can do. Try."
They refueled both vehicles—the sedan and the truck taking on every last drop from the gas station's tanks. Packed water, food, weapons. Checked their barricades one last time, then abandoned them, because they couldn't stay here forever.
The convoy pulled out as the sun rose higher, painting Niraya in shades of orange and red that looked too much like fire and blood.
ROUTE ONE: THE METRO
The entrance to the Vaishali Metro Station was three blocks from the gas station, its entrance gaping like a mouth leading into darkness. The escalators had stopped working, frozen mid-descent. Trash littered the steps—abandoned bags, dropped phones, one shoe.
"Stay close," Karan said, his rifle up and ready. "Tight formation. No one wanders off."
They descended into the dark.
The metro tunnels were worse than Samir had feared. The emergency lighting had failed, leaving only the beams from their flashlights to cut through the absolute blackness. The air was thick and stale, smelling of mold and something worse—something organic and rotting.
"Watch your step," Vikram called from the middle of the group. "There's water on the tracks."
Not just water. As they moved deeper, the puddles became pools, became ankle-deep flooding that soaked through their shoes and made every step a squelching misery.
"This isn't going to work," Meera said, her voice echoing off the tunnel walls. "The water's rising. Another hundred meters and it'll be waist-deep."
"We can wade through," Samir insisted. "We just need to—"
"Wait," Karan held up a fist. "Did you hear that?"
They all froze. Listened.
A sound. Faint. Human. Coming from deeper in the tunnel.
"Help..." The voice was weak, desperate. "Please... help me..."
"There's someone down here," Taj whispered.
Karan's flashlight swept the tunnel ahead. The beam caught movement—a figure, hunched against the wall maybe fifty meters away. Alive. Human. Waving weakly.
"We have to help him," Reyan said, already moving forward.
"Carefully," Karan warned. "Could be a trap."
They approached slowly, weapons ready. The man was young, maybe thirty, wearing torn office clothes. Blood stained his shirt, but he was breathing, conscious, aware.
"Thank God," he gasped as they got closer. "Thank God, I thought I was going to die down here. The water kept rising and I couldn't—"
A groan echoed from the darkness behind him.
The young man's eyes went wide with terror. "Oh no. No no no, they're—"
They came out of the darkness like a wave. Not one or two. Dozens. Pouring through the tunnel from the opposite direction, wading through the water with terrifying speed and coordination.
"RUN!" Karan shouted. "EVERYONE—"
The first infected reached the young man before he could move. Its teeth found his throat. His scream cut off in a wet gurgle as more piled on, tearing, feeding.
"GO!" Karan fired three shots into the mass, but there were too many. Always too many.
They ran back the way they'd come, the water slowing them down, their flashlights bouncing wildly off the tunnel walls. Behind them, the groans multiplied. The feeding frenzy lasted only seconds before the horde turned its attention to new prey.
Taj stumbled, nearly went down. Vikram caught him, dragged him forward.
"There's more ahead!" Arjun shouted.
He was right. The tunnel entrance they'd come through was now blocked by infected, drawn by the noise, by the gunshots. Trapped. They were trapped between two hordes in a flooding tunnel.
"The maintenance access!" Meera spotted a door in the tunnel wall, half-submerged. "There!"
They crashed through it, emerging into a service corridor that led to emergency stairs. Up. They had to go up.
By the time they burst back into sunlight, they were soaked, gasping, and haunted by the image of that man being torn apart.
"Route One is out," Karan said unnecessarily, hands on his knees, breathing hard.
Samir looked like he might be sick. He'd watched a man die. Watched him get eaten alive while they ran. "Okay. Okay, Route Two. The rooftops."
We have to try the rooftops. We have to go above the main horde."
"It's risky, Samir," Reyan cautioned. "One fall..."
Karan looked from the map to the five-story building—a drab apartment complex—just fifty meters away. "Alright. We move the vehicles into the service alley behind that building, park them securely, and ascend. It's our best remaining option for speed."
ROUTE TWO: THE ROOFTOPS
They executed the move quickly. Samir drove the sedan, and Dev drove the truck, pulling them both into the narrow service alley behind the five-story building. The alley offered chokepoints and cover, and they jammed debris against the alley entrance to slow down any immediate pursuers.
"If the Heralds see us up there, we'll lead them straight back to these cars," Meera warned.
"They won't see us if we move fast," Karan countered... "Everyone, up the fire escape. Tight formation."
The building they chose was five stories tall, its fire escape rusted but still intact. They climbed in silence, muscles burning, lungs aching, until they emerged onto the rooftop gravel.
From up here, Niraya spread out before them like a dying organism. Smoke rose from a dozen fires. The streets below were packed with infected, a slow-moving sea of gray flesh and white eyes.
"There," Samir pointed. "Nisha's building. Six blocks away. We can jump from roof to roof, stay above them."
They moved across the first rooftop easily enough. The second building was close—maybe three meters. An easy jump. They all made it across without incident.
The third building was farther. Five meters, maybe six. A gap that would be terrifying even without the certain death waiting below.
"I'll go first," Karan said. "Test it. If I make it, you all follow."
He backed up, got a running start, and launched himself across the gap. For a heart-stopping second, he seemed to hang in mid-air. Then his boots hit the opposite roof, and he rolled, coming up in a crouch.
"It's doable!" he called back. "Just don't look down!"
One by one, they jumped. Meera. Dev. Ravi. Vikram. Taj, who nearly didn't make it, his feet scrabbling at the edge before Karan hauled him up.
Arjun went next, landing hard but safe.
Then Reyan, carrying his daughter on his back. The scariest jump Samir had ever watched, but Reyan made it look easy.
Samir was about to follow when he heard it: that sound. High-pitched, piercing, wrong.
A Herald.
It stood on the street below, its mouth open impossibly wide, and the scream that came out was like a siren calling the apocalypse. Every infected in a three-block radius turned toward them.
"JUMP!" Karan shouted. "SAMIR, JUMP NOW!"
Samir ran. Launched himself across the gap. His foot slipped on the edge, gravity pulling him down, and for a terrible moment he was falling—
Hands grabbed him. Reyan and Karan, pulling him up, his legs dangling over open air and the horde below.
They pulled him onto the roof, and they all looked back at the building they'd just left. The infected were climbing the fire escape. Dozens of them, moving with terrifying speed and coordination.
"We can't keep going," Meera said, breathing hard. "They'll follow us building to building. We'll lead them straight to—"
Another Herald screamed from two blocks over. Then another. The horde was mobilizing, thousands of them responding to the call.
"Down," Karan ordered. "We need to get down and back to the vehicles NOW."
They found another fire escape on the opposite side of the building and descended as fast as they dared. The metal groaned under their combined weight, rust flaking off with every step.
When they hit the ground, they were in an alley two blocks from where they'd left the vehicles.
"This way!" Samir pointed. "The cars are—"
He stopped.
At the mouth of the alley, infected were streaming toward them. Not the slow ones. The runners. At least twenty of them, drawn by the Heralds' call.
"Back!" Reyan shouted. "Other way!"
They spun and ran in the opposite direction, bursting out onto a side street. Their vehicles were visible now—the sedan and the truck, parked where they'd left them.
But infected were pouring out of the building they'd just climbed. The fire escape was full of them, and more were flooding out the ground floor entrance, a tide of gray flesh and white eyes.
They were surrounded. Infected ahead, infected behind, and the Heralds still screaming, calling more.
"VEHICLES!" Karan roared. "EVERYONE TO THE VEHICLES!"
They sprinted across open ground. Taj nearly tripped, caught himself. Reyan's daughter clung to his back, silent but terrified. Arjun was gasping, his baker's legs not built for this.
Vikram reached the sedan first, yanked the door open. "GET IN! GET IN!"
They piled in—Reyan and his daughter in front, Samir driving, Vikram, Taj, and Arjun crammed in back. The engine roared to life.
Behind them, Karan's group was doing the same with the truck.
The infected closed in from both sides. Twenty meters. Fifteen. Ten.
"REVERSE!" Reyan shouted. "SAMIR, REVERSE!"
Samir slammed the car into reverse, tires screaming. The infected lunged for them, hands slapping against the windows, fingers scraping paint. The truck followed, Dev driving in reverse with Karan hanging out the window, firing controlled shots to clear their path.
They backed up fifty meters, then Samir spun the wheel, executed another bootlegger's turn, and gunned it forward. Away from the horde. Away from the Heralds. Away from Route Two.
"Route Two is out," Reyan said quietly from the passenger seat, his daughter still trembling in his lap. "Route Two is out."
In the back, Samir could hear Taj muttering prayers. Vikram was silent, knife still gripped in white-knuckled hands. Arjun looked like he might be sick.
Two routes down. One left.
"The alleys," Samir said, his voice hollow but determined. "Route Three. The service alleys. It has to work. It HAS to."
"We need to go back to the service alley network. We go slow, we stay low, we fight through the choke points."
Karan looked at his group, then at Reyan's. "We're running out of options and daylight. You sure about this?"
"No," Samir admitted. "But I'm doing it anyway."
ROUTE THREE: THE ALLEYS
They drove the vehicles deep into the alley network—the delivery routes Samir had described. The main streets were too dangerous, but the narrow alleys offered a chance to ditch the cars and proceed on foot, controlling the flow of the infected.
The service alley network was exactly as Samir had described: narrow, winding, claustrophobic. The buildings loomed on either side, blocking out the sun and creating a perpetual twilight. Trash bins and delivery crates littered the path, forcing them to pick their way carefully.
But it was working.
They encountered infected—of course they did—but in these narrow confines, they could only come one or two at a time. Karan's rifle made short work of the fast ones. Samir's pipe handled the slow ones. They moved steadily forward, block by block, getting closer.
"How much farther?" Taj asked, glancing nervously at the walls on either side.
"Half a kilometer," Samir said, consulting the map. "Maybe less. We're close. We're so close."
They rounded a corner and found themselves in a wider alley—wide enough for a delivery truck. At the far end, Samir could see it: a familiar building, faded brick, a red door on the second floor.
"That's it," he breathed. "That's her building. We made it. We actually made it."
The street leading to the building's entrance was clear. Empty. Not a single infected in sight.
"That's strange," Vikram muttered.
"I don't care if it's strange," Samir said, already moving. "I don't care if it's a trap. I'm going."
Reyan grabbed his arm. "Samir, wait. If it's a trap—"
"Then I walk into it. I don't care." He pulled free and ran.
The others followed, covering him, weapons ready. But nothing attacked. The street remained empty.
Samir burst through the building's main door—unlocked, swinging open at his touch—and took the stairs three at a time. Second floor. Third door on the left. The number plate read 2C.
His hand trembled as he reached for the doorknob.
It turned.
The door swung open.
The apartment was empty.
Samir stepped inside slowly, his footsteps echoing in the silence. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. Behind him, the others filed in, weapons still drawn, scanning for threats.
The furniture was still here—couch, table, chairs positioned exactly as he remembered from his last visit three months ago. The kitchen was clean, dishes put away. The beds in both bedrooms were made with military precision, the way Nisha always made them.
But the walls were wrong.
The walls where Nisha's photographs had hung—family photos, vacation snapshots, the selfie they'd taken together last Diwali where they were both laughing, arms around each other—were bare. Clean rectangles of paint showed where frames used to be, the wall slightly darker where the sun hadn't faded it. But the photos themselves were gone.
"No," Samir whispered, moving deeper into the apartment. "No, this is good. This is good."
The others exchanged glances but said nothing.
Samir went to Nisha's bedroom. Her closet door stood open. Inside, clothes were missing—not all of them, but the practical ones. Jeans. T-shirts. Her hiking boots. The emergency backpack she kept on the top shelf was gone.
He moved to the bathroom. Her toothbrush wasn't in the holder. The medicine cabinet stood open, half-empty. Aspirin gone. Bandages gone. Her prescription medications—gone.
Back to the kitchen. The pantry door hung open. Non-perishable food missing from the shelves. Canned goods, energy bars, bottled water—all the things you'd grab if you were evacuating in a hurry.
"Don't you see?" Samir said, his voice rising, bordering on hysterical as he turned to face the group. "The photos are gone. She took them. People don't take photos when they're running for their lives unless they plan to survive. She packed her medicines. Her food. Her clothes. She didn't just run—she evacuated. She planned. She prepared."
He moved through the apartment again, his movements frantic now, checking every room, every closet, every drawer. Looking for more evidence. More proof.
"Her emergency radio is gone," he said, pointing to the empty spot on the kitchen counter. "The battery-powered one she always kept charged. And look—" He opened a drawer. "Her spare phone charger. Her portable battery pack. She took everything she'd need to stay mobile, to stay in contact."
He laughed—a sound caught between joy and madness. "She's alive. She's alive! She HAS to be alive!"
"Samir—" Reyan started gently.
"No!" Samir spun to face him. "Don't. Don't do that sympathetic voice thing. Don't act like I'm in denial. Look around! Look at the evidence! This isn't the apartment of someone who died. This is the apartment of someone who escaped. Who got out. Who's out there somewhere, surviving, waiting—"
His voice cracked. The manic energy drained out of him all at once, and he sank down onto Nisha's couch, his head in his hands.
"She's alive," he said again, quieter now. "She has to be."
Reyan approached carefully, sat down beside him. "That's good, Samir. That's really good. It means she had time to prepare. It means she wasn't caught off guard. But..." He hesitated.
"But what?" Samir looked up, his eyes red.
"But we don't know where she went. We don't know which safe zone she was heading for, or if she even made it. We don't know—"
"Then we search," Samir said firmly. "We search the neighborhood. We ask survivors if they've seen her. We check every evacuation center, every safe zone, every—"
"Samir." Karan's voice cut through, firm but not unkind. "It's getting dark. We've been fighting all day. We're low on ammunition. We're exhausted. We need to stop. Regroup. Make a plan."
"I have a plan," Samir said. "I stay here. I stay in her apartment. Because if she comes back—when she comes back—looking for me, I need to be here. I need to be here so she knows I didn't abandon her."
"Samir, that's not—"
"I'm not leaving." Samir's voice hardened, the desperation giving way to steel. "You can go. All of you can go. I understand. You've done so much already, risked so much. But I'm staying. If she comes back and I'm not here, she'll think... she'll think I gave up on her. I can't—" His voice broke. "I can't let her think that."
Reyan looked at Karan. Karan looked at his group. A long, silent conversation passed between them all.
Finally, Karan spoke. "Then we stay."
"What?" Meera asked.
"We stay," Karan repeated, his military bearing evident. "This building is defensible. Better than that gas station. Better than anything else we've found. We fortify the apartment, we search the surrounding area, we look for signs of where Nisha might have gone. Maybe we find her. Maybe we don't. But we don't abandon family. And like it or not—" He looked around at all of them. "—we're family now."
"We just met you people yesterday," Ravi pointed out, but his voice lacked conviction.
"And yet here we are," Karan said. "Funny how the apocalypse works. You find your people or you die alone. I choose option one."
Reyan nodded. "We stay. We make this place safe. We figure out our next move together. And we look for Nisha. Not just for Samir—for all of us. Because finding her means maybe there's hope. Maybe there are other survivors. Maybe we're not as alone as we think."
"Agreed," Vikram said, already moving to the windows. "If we're staying, we do it right. We need to barricade these windows, reinforce the door, set up a watch rotation. Map escape routes. Inventory what supplies we have."
"The building has other apartments," Dev added, looking nervous but determined. "We could check them. Maybe find more food, water, weapons. Anything useful."
"Good thinking," Karan said. "Dev, Ravi—you two check the other apartments on this floor. Quietly. Carefully. Meera, you're with me. We'll scout the floors above and below. Reyan, Vikram, Taj—fortify this place. Arjun, you help them. Samir—" He looked at him. "You rest. You've earned it."
Samir looked at them—all of them, these people who'd fought through hell to get him here, who were now choosing to stay in a dangerous building in a dying city just because he asked—and couldn't speak. Could only nod, his throat too tight for words.
They scattered to their tasks. Pulling furniture to windows. Stacking anything heavy against the door. Checking sight lines. Planning fields of fire. Identifying choke points.
Reyan found a marker in one of Nisha's kitchen drawers and wrote on the apartment door in large letters: SURVIVORS INSIDE. NISHA KAPOOR - IF YOU RETURN, WE ARE HERE. YOUR BROTHER IS WAITING.
"In case she comes back," Reyan explained. "She'll know we're friendly. She'll know Samir's here."
Samir stared at the message, and something inside him cracked open. "Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you all."
"Thank us when we find her," Taj said, hammering a board across a window. "And we will find her. Or she'll find us. One way or another."
Outside, the sun was setting, painting Niraya in shades of orange and red that looked too much like blood and fire. The infected were starting to stir, responding to the darkness, to their eternal hunger, to instincts that drove them to hunt.
But inside apartment 2C, for the first time in days, the group had something they hadn't had before: A home. Temporary, fragile, borrowed from someone who might be dead or might be alive somewhere in this ruined city.
But a home nonetheless.
Samir stood at the window, looking out at the dying city, one hand pressed against the glass. "I'll find you, Nisha," he whispered to the empty air, to the ruins, to the hope that she might somehow hear him. "Wherever you are, whatever it takes. I'll find you."
The city offered no answer. Only groans and distant screams and the sound of the world ending, one block at a time.
But in the apartment behind him, people were building barricades. Making plans. Choosing to stay. Choosing to hope.
And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.
For now.