The thudding against the gate was a heartbeat. A slow, stupid, relentless heartbeat that measured out the longest night of my life. I sat with my back against the wooden door, the baseball bat across my knees, and I listened. Thud. Thud. Thud.
After what felt like hours, it stopped.
Not all at once. The rhythm just… slowed. The impacts became weaker, further apart. Then there was a long silence, broken only by the distant moans that seemed to come from every direction now. Then a new sound. A slow, dragging scrape. The thing was moving away.
Jonah hadn't moved from behind the counter. His breathing had evened out into the shallow rhythm of exhausted sleep. Shock will do that to you. It shuts you down.
I couldn't afford to shut down. The panic was still there, a cold animal clawing at the inside of my ribs, but I had to put it in a box. In the ring, if you let fear in, you've already lost. You have to focus on what you can control.
So I did what I always did when the world felt like it was coming apart. I made a list in my head. A cold, hard assessment of our situation.
Shelter. We were in a box. A steel gate, a solid wood door. No other way out. That was bad. If something got in, we had nowhere to go.
Threats. One Walker, now gone. But the moans outside meant there were more. And the fast one. The Runner. That was a different kind of problem. I didn't know the rules for that one yet.
Resources. The food and water in our backpacks wouldn't last two days. My flashlight was dying. We had a bat and a multi tool. That was it.
Personnel. I was tired but functioning. Jonah was out of commission.
The list was terrible. But seeing the problems lined up like that, neat and separate, made them feel less like a tidal wave and more like a series of walls to climb. One at a time.
First, I needed to see. Really see where we were.
I waited until the first grey light of dawn began seeping through the gate's slats. It didn't make things better. It just made the nightmare detailed. The thin beams of light cut through the dusty air of the bodega, illuminating the crowded shelves. Cans of beans. Bags of rice. A display of cheap lighters. A rack of city postcards that no tourist would ever buy again. It all looked like artifacts from a dead world.
I stood up slowly, my joints stiff and aching. The silence outside was worse than the thudding had been. It was a listening silence.
I walked to the gate and peered through a vertical slit.
The street was a crime scene. The crashed car was still there, its one good headlight now dead. The pavement around it was stained a dark, purplish black. The newspaper box the woman had hidden behind last night was dented. There were no bodies. They were gone.
Across the street, the laundromat's glass front was a spiderweb of cracks. The sushi restaurant's neon sign was dark. Up and down the block, every storefront showed signs of violence. Broken glass. Splintered doors. This wasn't a neighborhood hiding. It was a neighborhood that had been gutted.
But there was no movement. The dawn light had stilled everything. The chaos had moved on, chasing survivors or noise deeper into the city.
"Clear for now," I whispered to myself. The words felt strange in my mouth.
I turned back to the shop. Jonah was stirring. He sat up, blinking in the grey light, looking around like he wasn't sure where he was. Then he remembered. His shoulders slumped.
"We need to know what we have," I said. My voice was hoarse. "We need to search this place. Properly."
Jonah just nodded. He looked hollowed out.
I started with the counter. My flashlight beam was weak, but it was enough. I swept it under the register. Dust bunnies. A lost pen. Then the beam caught on something metallic.
A shotgun.
It was an old side by side double barrel, the wood stock scratched and worn. It lay on two simple brackets, like it had been there for years. Mr. Chen had always waved it off as for "rowdy kids." We all knew what it was really for.
Next to it was a small metal cash box. Locked.
"Jonah," I said. "The key ring. The small silver key."
He fumbled in his pocket and handed me the ring. I found the small key. It fit. The lock turned with a smooth click.
Inside, on top of a neat stack of bills, were two boxes of red shotgun shells. 12 gauge. I took one box out. It was heavier than I expected. I knew nothing about guns. I'd never held one. But I knew the theory from movies. Break it open. Load it. Close it. Point. The reality of it felt dangerous and final.
I set the shells on the counter and kept looking.
Behind a faded floral curtain next to the cooler was a door. The stockroom.
It was unlocked.
I pushed it open and my breath caught.
The room was small and windowless, lined with floor to ceiling metal shelves. And they were full. Cases of bottled water. Cartons of canned soup and stew. Giant bags of beans and rice. Boxes of protein bars. Batteries. Candles. A real first aid kit, not the travel size one I had. Heavy duty LED lanterns.
Mr. Chen was a preparer. A man who believed in bulk discounts and being ready for a hurricane. He had been ready for a storm.
He just hadn't been ready for this.
A wave of relief hit me so hard it felt like weakness. My knees actually went soft for a second. We had time. Not forever. But we had a chance.
I carried two lanterns back into the main shop. I put one on the counter and clicked it on. A bright, white light flooded the space, chasing the grim dawn shadows into the corners. It made the place feel less like a tomb.
The light seemed to wake Jonah up more fully. He stared at the shotgun. "Do you know how to use that?"
"In theory," I said. "It's a last resort. The sound would bring every one of those things for blocks."
"So what do we use?" He gestured to my bat.
I didn't answer right away. I went back to the gate and looked out again. I needed to understand what we were up against. Really understand.
"They're slow," I said, thinking out loud. "Clumsy. They don't feel pain. They just… want. They're attracted to sound. To movement."
I thought about my training. Every move in Taekwondo was built on a foundation of cause and effect. A strike causes pain, causes a flinch, creates an opening. A sweep takes balance, causes a fall. But if your opponent doesn't feel pain, and doesn't care about balance, the whole foundation crumbles.
"My training is useless against them," I said. The admission tasted bitter. "You can't block something that will walk right through your guard. You can't throw something that doesn't care if it hits the ground. You can only break it."
I turned to face Jonah. "So we don't fight them unless we have to. We avoid. We are quiet. If we have to fight, we use this." I lifted the bat. "And we aim to destroy. Not to disable. The head. The spine. Nothing else matters."
Jonah was watching me, his eyes wide. "What about the fast one?"
"The Runner," I said. The name felt right. "If we see it, we run. We get behind a door. We do not try to fight it. It's faster than us. We only get one mistake with something that fast."
I started moving again. Action was the only thing keeping the fear down. I went into the stockroom and began hauling sacks of rice and cases of water. I built a low barricade in front of the wooden door behind the gate. It wouldn't stop anything determined, but it would slow it down. It would give us a second.
I found a notepad and pen behind the counter and handed them to Jonah. "I need you to do an inventory. Everything in the back. Food, water, medicine, tools. Write it all down. We need to know exactly what we have."
He took the pad. For a moment he just stared at it. Then he stood up, his movements stiff. He picked up the lantern. "Okay," he said. Just that. But it was something. He had a job. A purpose. It was the best medicine for shock.
He disappeared into the stockroom, and I heard the sound of a pen scratching on paper.
I took the first watch. I turned off the lantern on the counter. Its light was a beacon shining out through the gate. I sat on an upturned milk crate in the near dark, the bat across my lap, the shotgun leaning against the counter within reach.
The night wasn't quiet. The thudding was gone, but the moans rose and fell like a sick wind. Distant screams, fewer now, cut through the dark. Once, a dog barked frantically from a street over. The barking turned into a sharp, surprised yelp. Then silence.
I thought about my students. Luca, the nervous kid. Had he made it home? Were his parents alive? I thought about Mr. Chen, who was probably visiting his sister in the suburbs. Was he out there somewhere? Shuffling? Hungry?
I pushed the thoughts away. They led to a hollow, helpless feeling. I focused on my breathing. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. I focused on the sounds outside, mapping them in my head. Direction. Distance.
I was no longer Alex Calderon, the orphan, the college student, the instructor. I was a set of eyes. A set of ears. A guard. A resource.
A few hours before dawn, a new sound cut through the moaning.
A human voice.
"Help! Please! Is someone in there!"
A woman. Young. Terrified. The voice came from the street, just to the left of the bodega.
I was on my feet in an instant, pressed against the wall beside the gate. I didn't make a sound. I looked out.
I saw her. She was maybe my age. Wearing pajama shorts and a tank top. No shoes. She was crouched behind the rusty skeleton of the newspaper box, her face streaked with soot and tears. She was looking right at the bodega gate.
"I saw a light earlier! Please! There are things out here!"
The dragging scrape from earlier stopped. Then it started again, faster. Coming back toward the gate. The Walker had heard her.
"Oh god, no," the woman whimpered. She scrambled back, pressing herself against the brick wall.
More shapes emerged from the shadows of doorways across the street. Two more Walkers. Drawn by the sound of her voice like moths to a flame. They began their slow, terrible shuffle toward her hiding spot.
Jonah appeared at the stockroom curtain, the lantern light outlining him. "Alex," he whispered. "We have to…"
"We have to what?" My voice was a harsh rasp. "Open the gate? The noise will bring a dozen more. That Runner could be out there. We let her in, we risk everything. Our food. Our water. Our lives."
"We can't just watch!" His voice broke.
We were watching.
The woman saw the Walkers closing in. She stumbled to her feet and tried to run. One of them, closer than she realized, lunged. Its hand closed on a handful of her tank top. She screamed. A raw, primal sound that ripped through the night. She yanked herself free, the fabric tearing, and sprinted barefoot down the street. The three Walkers shuffled after her, already falling behind.
But her scream had done its work.
From the alley across the street, the one where I'd seen the Runner vanish, a new figure shot out.
It didn't shuffle.
It sprinted.
It wasn't the same one. This one wore tattered hospital scrubs. It moved with that same low, loping gallop. It didn't grab her. It tackled her. It drove her to the pavement with a force I could hear from inside the shop. The scream was cut off with a wet, crunching thud.
The Runner didn't feed like the Walker. It was violent. Frantic. Its head jerked down once, twice. Then it stopped. It stood up. It looked around, its movements quick and jerky. It sniffed the air.
Then it turned. And it looked directly at the bodega gate.
It took a step forward.
My hand found the shotgun on the counter. My heart was a hammer against my ribs. This was it. The first real test.
The Runner took another step. Then it paused. Its head tilted. From deep in the city, a long, dying wail of a siren blared. Some emergency vehicle's last gasp.
The Runner's head snapped toward the sound. And with a burst of that impossible speed, it was gone. Vanishing down the street toward the new noise.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. My hands were trembling.
On the street, the woman wasn't moving. The three Walkers reached her. They knelt. They began their work.
Jonah was crying. Silent tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. He had his fist pressed against his mouth.
I turned away from the gate. My face felt like it was made of stone. The lesson was the most brutal one yet. And it wasn't about zombies.
"The first rule," I said. My voice sounded hollow, dead, in the small, bright space. "No heroics. No exceptions. Your life, and the life of the person next to you, is all that matters. Everyone else is a threat. Or a distraction. Or bait."
I looked at Jonah. His eyes were wide with a new kind of horror. Not the horror of the monsters outside, but the horror of the cold, simple math that now governed the world.
"Welcome to the new world," I said.
I picked up the baseball bat and went back to my crate. I sat down facing the gate.
Outside, the moaning chorus continued. A lullaby for the damned.
Dawn was still hours away.