The screaming started like distant thunder—a rumble on the edge of hearing that grew into a roar.
My Death Aura blazed with power, sensing death after death after death. Not dozens. Not hundreds. Thousands of lights extinguishing across the city in a single, cascading wave.
And then, one by one, those lights flickered back on.
Different now. Cold. Hungry.
They're rising, I thought. All of them, all at once.
"What's happening?" Liu Feng rushed to the window, his face pale in the darkness. "Those sounds—"
A car alarm shrieked somewhere in the distance. Then another. Then a dozen. The night erupted with the wail of sirens—police, fire, ambulance—all converging on a city that was already beyond saving.
Through the barred windows, I watched the distant skyline. A fire bloomed in the downtown district, orange light reflecting off the glass towers. Then another fire, closer. Then a third.
"The apocalypse," I said calmly. "Just as I told you."
Max Yang stood frozen by the door, her hand white-knuckled on the crowbar she'd been cleaning. For all her preparation, for all her belief that something was coming, the reality had struck her speechless.
Hui Zhang came thundering down from the roof, taking the stairs three at a time. "There's—there are fires everywhere. I counted at least fifteen. And the screaming—"
He stopped when he saw my face.
"You knew," he said, his voice hollow. "You actually knew. I thought—part of me still thought—"
"That I was crazy." I nodded. "I know. It doesn't matter now."
------------------------------
Ghost pressed against my ankle, her fur bristling. Through our bond, I felt her confusion—not fear, exactly, but a primal recognition that the world had fundamentally changed.
Master. The death-smell. It's everywhere.
I know.
What do we do?
We survive. And we claim what's ours.
I walked to the window, my Death Aura expanding to its full range. A hundred meters. Not enough to cover the city, but enough to feel the immediate chaos.
Three blocks north, a woman died—I felt her heart stop, felt the brief darkness, and then felt her rise. She was confused now, staggering, but in minutes she would be hunting.
Two blocks east, a family. Parents and two children. The father had turned first—he'd been among the initial infected—and now his cold hands were reaching for his wife while the children screamed.
I closed my eyes and felt it all.
Death. Rebirth. Hunger.
The cycle that would consume the world.
"Wei." Max Yang's voice cut through my trance. "We need to secure the compound. Now."
I opened my eyes. "You're right."
She was staring at me strangely, and I realized my eyes must be glowing again—that amber light my power produced when I was drawing heavily on it.
"Your eyes," Liu Feng whispered. "They're—"
"Later," I said. "Right now, we have work to do."
------------------------------
The next two hours were controlled panic.
We sealed every entrance that wasn't already reinforced. Hui Zhang and Liu Feng dragged furniture to block the ground-floor windows, while Max Yang and I made sure the main gate was secured with all three locks and the steel bar.
Outside, the chaos intensified. Gunshots now—some distant, some close enough to make Liu Feng flinch. Screaming that rose and cut off abruptly. The crash of breaking glass. The roar of engines as people tried to flee, only to find the streets already clogged with abandoned vehicles.
Through my Death Aura, I tracked it all.
The initial wave of infected had been massive—thousands of people who had contracted the virus in the preceding days, all reaching critical mass at almost the same moment. They'd died, risen, and attacked within minutes of each other.
Now the second wave was beginning. The people they'd bitten. The people who'd tried to help them and been overwhelmed. The emergency responders who'd rushed in without understanding what they were facing.
Every death fed the tide.
Every new zombie meant more deaths to come.
Perfect, some dark part of me whispered. More for the army.
I pushed the thought aside. There would be time for that later. Right now, my priority was keeping these people alive.
------------------------------
At 2:47 AM, the first zombie reached our compound.
I sensed it before the others heard it—a shuffling, lurching presence at the edge of my range, moving with the clumsy determination of the newly risen.
"Something's coming," I said quietly.
Max Yang froze. "Where?"
"The main gate. One of them." I paused, focusing. "Female. Middle-aged. Died from a bite to the neck."
The others stared at me.
"How do you—" Hui Zhang started.
"Later," I repeated.
We moved to the gate, crowbars ready. Through the steel-reinforced doors, we could hear it now—a ragged breathing that wasn't breathing at all, just air moving through dead lungs. Fingers scraping against metal.
Then a moan. Low, guttural, hungry.
"Christ," Liu Feng whispered. "That's Mrs. Park. She runs the fruit stand on Third Street. I bought apples from her last week."
Mrs. Park, I thought. Dead now. Or undead, which is arguably worse.
But as I felt her scratching at our gate, something stirred in my power. An instinct. A possibility.
Claim her, it whispered. She's yours for the taking.
I reached out with my Death Aura, not to sense but to command. The same way I'd bonded Ghost, but different—Ghost had been dying, not dead. This was something else entirely.
Mrs. Park stopped scratching.
Through my power, I felt her confusion. She was dead, her mind gone, but something in her still responded to commands. And right now, that something was listening to me.
Turn around, I commanded silently. Walk away.
For a long moment, nothing happened. The other three held their breath, crowbars raised, ready for the gate to give way.
Then I felt it—a shift in Mrs. Park's intent. The hunger was still there, but it was receding, overwritten by a more powerful directive.
Footsteps shuffled away from the gate.
Silence.
"She's... leaving?" Hui Zhang peered through the barred window. "I can see her. She's just walking away. Why would she—"
He turned to look at me. They all did.
I kept my expression neutral. "They're newly risen. Confused. Sometimes they wander."
It was a weak excuse. None of them bought it. But none of them pressed the issue either.
Not yet.
------------------------------
By 4 AM, the immediate danger had passed.
The zombies were spreading outward from the initial infection points, following the screams of panicking humans. Our compound, quiet and fortified, attracted little attention. The few that wandered close, I turned away with subtle commands—so subtle that even I wasn't fully sure how I was doing it.
My power was evolving. Growing stronger by the minute. The mass death had fed it somehow, expanded my range, sharpened my control.
This is what I was made for, I realized. This is what ten thousand years prepared me for.
We gathered in the main room, exhausted but too wired to sleep. Liu Feng had made tea—a strangely domestic gesture in the midst of apocalypse—and we sat in the dim light of a battery-powered lantern.
"So," Max Yang said finally. "What happens now?"
I sipped my tea, considering.
"The initial chaos will last about a week," I said. "Mass panic, evacuation attempts, military response. Most of it will fail. By Day 7, the major cities will be overrun."
"How do you know this?" Hui Zhang demanded. "And don't say 'later' again."
I met his gaze. "I've seen it before."
"Seen it? How is that possible? This just started—"
"I've lived through the apocalypse once already," I said quietly. "A very long time ago, from my perspective. I died at the end of it. And then I woke up seven days before it began."
The silence was absolute.
Liu Feng's teacup trembled in his hands. Max Yang's eyes had gone very wide. Hui Zhang looked like he wanted to call me insane but couldn't reconcile that with everything he'd just witnessed.
"That's..." Liu Feng started. "That's impossible."
"So is the dead rising to eat the living," I said. "And yet."
I gestured toward the window, where distant fires still flickered against the night sky.
"I came back," I continued. "I don't know how or why. But I came back with knowledge. Power. And a chance to do things differently."
"Why tell us this?" Max Yang asked. Her voice was steady, but I could see her processing, calculating. "You could have kept pretending."
"Because we're going to be together for a long time," I said. "And because you deserve to know who you're trusting with your lives."
Part of the truth, I added silently. Not all of it. Not yet.
The full truth—that I was becoming something inhuman, that my power let me command the dead, that I had lived ten thousand years and lost everything including my humanity—that could wait.
For now, the time traveler story was enough.
------------------------------
Dawn came gray and smoke-filled.
Through the compound's upper windows, we watched the sun rise over a city transformed. Fires still burned in multiple districts. The streets were littered with abandoned cars, some crashed, some simply left where they stopped.
And moving among the wreckage, shambling figures.
Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, spreading like spilled oil through the urban landscape.
"There are so many," Liu Feng whispered.
"This is just the beginning," I said. "By tonight, there will be ten times as many. By tomorrow, fifty times."
"And we're supposed to just... hide here?" Hui Zhang's voice was bitter. "Wait for them to come tear down the walls?"
"No." I turned from the window. "We're supposed to survive. And to do that, we need resources. More supplies. More people. And eventually, a bigger territory."
"You're talking about expanding? Now?" Max Yang raised an eyebrow. "With those things everywhere?"
I smiled—a thin, humorless expression that made Liu Feng step back.
"Those things," I said, "are less dangerous than you think. At least, they are to me."
I could feel them out there. Dozens within my range, more at the edges. Hungry, mindless, waiting for commands.
My army, I thought. All I have to do is claim them.
But not yet. Not in front of witnesses. Not until I'd prepared them for what I really was.
"Stay here," I said. "Keep the compound secured. I'm going out."
"Out?" Hui Zhang stared at me like I'd lost my mind. "Out there? With those—"
"Someone needs to scout the area," I said. "Check on the neighboring buildings. See if there are other survivors who might join us." I paused. "And I need to know how bad it really is."
Max Yang studied me for a long moment. "You can handle it?"
I can do more than handle it, I thought. I can command it.
"Yes," I said aloud. "I can handle it."
I walked to the door, Ghost falling into step beside me.
"Be careful," Liu Feng called.
I didn't answer.
Careful wasn't what I was planning.