Silas walked along the side of the street, keeping close to the walls.
His steps were slow and measured, each one placed where the rubble wouldn't crunch or shift. He had learned quickly that sound carried far in the silence of the city.
Then his ear twitched.
A low growl drifted through the air, rough, also too close. He stopped immediately, listening. It came again, this time joined by more of them.
The sound wasn't random. It moved together, rising and falling in rhythm like a crowd breathing in the same pattern.
Without thinking, he ducked behind a burned-out car and slid underneath it. The metal was still warm from the sun. He pressed his body close to the ground and tried to control his breathing.
The first shadows passed.
Feet dragged against the asphalt, slow and uneven. Dozens of them, maybe more. Through the gap beneath the car, he could see pale legs shuffling past, some bare, some wrapped in torn clothes, all moving in a strange, synchronized flow. Their growls blended into one low rumble that vibrated through the air.
"Holy shit," he whispered under his breath.
There were hundreds of them. The mass moved like water splitting around obstacles, some turning corners, others breaking off in smaller groups.
A few stopped entirely, standing in the sunlight as if they'd forgotten why they were walking at all. Their skin steamed slightly under the heat, but none reacted to it.
Silas stayed still, barely daring to blink. The horde kept moving, a slow river of bodies sliding past the wreckage. The placw suddenly stank of decaying flesh.
He waited for a while. Not until the last sound faded into the distance did he move again, his muscles tight and stiff from the tension.
As he stayed under the car, watching the last of the horde pass, something else caught his attention.
These ones looked different from the creatures he'd fought in the hospital. Their bodies were gray and sunken, the skin cracked and peeling.
Their movements were slower, clumsier, more like the kind of zombies every movie had shown a thousand times.
The ones inside the hospital hadn't been like that. They were faster, stronger, and their shapes had twisted into something less human. He thought about the nest, about the black substance that had held him, and about her.
The Weeping Mother.
That was what he had started calling her. It wasn't like he had anything better to do than name it like it was a game boss, and somehow the name fit. Every time he tried not to think about that moment, her voice crept back into his head. My Ashley.
A part of him still felt responsible. Maybe if he had found the girl sooner, Margaret wouldn't have gone back.
Maybe she had returned to look for her daughter, only to end up in that cocoon, changed into that thing.
He didn't know if any of it was true, but it was easier to believe that than to accept that monsters like her just appeared on their own.
Silas looked back down the street where the horde had gone. None of it matched what he remembered from stories or games. The walking dead were one thing. The Weeping Mother was something else entirely.
And if something like her existed, he had no idea what else was out there.
Well, he was a special case too.
As he crouched beside the car, he glanced through the cracked window. He'd been searching for a weapon since leaving the hospital. Nothing felt dumber than walking through a city full of corpses with bare hands.
Inside, on the back seat, something caught his eye, a baseball bat. The wood looked old but solid. He smiled a little. "My luck," he muttered.
He tried the door first, careful not to make noise, but the frame was bent inward. The handle barely moved.
He adjusted his grip, gave it a light pull, then stopped when the whole door tore loose. The metal screamed as it came off the hinges, crashing against the pavement.
He stared at the handle still in his hand. It had bent under his grip.
"What the fuck…" he whispered.
The sound of the impact echoed down the street. For a moment, he froze, waiting for something to react. Nothing came, but the quiet after that noise felt worse than before.
He reached in through the open frame and grabbed the bat. The wood felt good in his hands, the weight balanced. At least now he wasn't empty-handed.
Without waiting around to see if anything had heard him, Silas started moving again, keeping his steps light and his eyes on the nearest alley.
Unfortunately for Silas, his walk didn't go as smoothly as he had hoped. His parents' house wasn't far, but the path there was anything but simple.
Sections of the road had collapsed, cars were piled up against each other, and the buildings that still stood looked ready to fall with a strong gust of wind.
Zombies weren't the biggest danger anymore, the environment was.
He took longer routes, weaving through alleys and over broken sidewalks.
Every so often he stopped to hide, crouching behind cars or walls when he heard the distant shuffling of the infected.
He didn't think he could take on more than one at a time, not yet at least. That was what he believed, and he wasn't ready to test it.
By the time he reached the edge of the old residential district, the sun had begun to fall. The sky turned from gold to a deep orange, then darker still.
That was when he felt it.
A strange wave of energy spread through him, slow at first, then strong enough to make him stop walking.
It felt like a rush of adrenaline, fulfilling and electric. His fatigue faded, his legs steadied followed by every sense in his body being enhanced.
His vision cleared, his hearing widened, and even the faintest smells reached him with clarity.
It was too much to dismiss as luck or coincidence. The moment the sun dipped lower, his body came alive again.
But unfortunately for Silas, his wish to avoid fighting wouldn't hold for long.
He walked carefully, his eyes scanning the street ahead. The night air had cooled, the city quieter now except for the faint hum of insects somewhere in the distance. Then something moved, so fast that for a moment he thought he'd imagined it.
A blur crossed in front of him, close enough for the rush of air to brush his face. He froze mid-step. His eyes followed the motion, but whatever it was had already vanished behind the next corner.
Infected.
He questioned his vision, but his sight had been flawless ever since and even better when the sun went down.
What he'd seen wasn't a trick of the light. Something had definitely moved that fast.
He tightened his grip on the bat, his pulse steady but his muscles tense. Whatever was out there wasn't the kind of infected he'd seen before.