Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

You know how those stories usually go.

It always starts as a joke first, as some half-serious fantasy people throw around online or in the back of classrooms while pretending not to mean it. The nerds and burnouts and weird little loners imagining themselves in a world finally cracked open wide enough for them to matter, katana in hand, shotgun over the shoulder, blood on their boots while they carve through hordes of monsters and become heroes in the kind of apocalypse that only ever looks beautiful from far away, the kind born in cheap paperbacks, late-night movies, conspiracy forums, and those awful adaptations that suck every ounce of fear out of the concept and replace it with cool one-liners and actors too pretty to look hungry. Those things always begin in fiction before they rot their way into reality. Then shit gets serious, but only quietly at first, so quietly most people barely even notice it happening, with some interview buried between politics and weather forecasts on a Tuesday evening, a panel of exhausted scientists talking in careful voices about the possibility of a new infection they found somewhere overseas. Something aggressive, neurological, unstable, words nobody really listens to because people trust systems more than they trust fear, because doctors are supposed to handle these things, governments are supposed to stop them before they spread, someone somewhere is paid enough to keep the world standing upright.

Well, saving humanity apparently isn’t paid enough anyway.

So ignorance eventually curdles into panic the second people realize this time the story is real, and that moment always comes too late, because humanity has this amazing talent for laughing at disasters right until they are clawing at the front door. You see how weak humans really are then, how fast civilization peels away when survival enters the room. One major outbreak, one patient zero slipping out of whatever facility they kept them locked inside, one bite delivered in some parking lot or hospital corridor, then another, then another after that, infection multiplying faster than fear itself until the whole thing collapses under its own weight so quickly it almost looks stupid, almost pathetic, cities falling apart in less than a week while the television keeps pretending things are under control. Boom, no more humans, at least not the kind people used to recognize. Just bodies wandering endlessly through the ruins, dead-eyed and starving, humanity stripped down to its ugliest and most basic instinct, turning the world into a graveyard filled with things wearing human faces badly. Some people say the apocalypse revealed humanity for what it truly was all along. Others think it just gave everyone permission to stop pretending.

It’s been a few years since it happened.

Life got better in some ways for Nat, which probably says more about how fucking miserable her life already was before the world ended than anything else. New Jersey had always felt rotten to her even before the dead started walking through it, all collapsing trailers, cigarette burns in old furniture, screaming through thin walls at three in the morning, the smell of beer and mildew baked permanently into the air. 

The day the outbreak began, she shot her dad. Sort of. Things escalated the way they always did with him, ugly words turning sharp and dangerous until the trailer felt too small to breathe inside, and she had wanted to shoot him, really wanted to for once instead of just imagining it while staring at the ceiling at night, but in the end it happened almost by accident, one stupid violent second where the gun jerked between them and the bullet split straight through the middle of his forehead. Dead instantly. Dropped before she even fully understood what she’d done. Nat just stood there frozen with the gun still shaking in her hands, staring at the blood crawling across the dirty floorboards while the television somewhere in the background hissed static and emergency alerts no one was listening to anymore. Then she ran.

Worst possible day for that, really.

Because outside, the static of ordinary life had already turned into something else entirely, into screams echoing through neighborhoods, barking dogs losing their minds behind fences, car crashes folding metal into the streets, distant gunshots snapping through the air like firecrackers, and everywhere around her the world was burning, not metaphorically this time, but truly, flames climbing buildings while smoke swallowed the sky whole and people tore each other apart in the middle of the road under flashing ambulance lights that nobody was coming to answer anymore.

It was no imagination anymore. Gun still clutched in her trembling hand, fingers sticky with drying blood that no amount of sweat seemed able to wash away, face soaked with tears she did not even remember crying, Nat had started running for an entirely different reason now, because nobody came looking for justice that day, nobody cared enough about one dead man in a collapsing trailer when the entire world was busy ripping itself apart at the seams, and whatever punishment existed for her had been drowned beneath the sound of sirens, screaming, and the earth itself finally deciding it had enough of humanity crawling across its surface like parasites.

In another life, in another version of the world where everything had stayed boring and cruel in the ordinary way instead of mutating into this nightmare, she probably would have been someone else entirely, maybe prettier, maybe happier, maybe just drunk enough not to think so hard all the damn time. Tonight could have been different. Tonight she could have been legal at last, squeezed inside some shitty club and neon lights flickering overhead while sweat and cigarette smoke stuck to her skin, cheap alcohol burning down her throat as strangers pressed against her on the dancefloor, music loud enough to drown out the noise in her head for a few precious hours before waking up hungover the next morning. 

Instead, she was sweating for real now, soaked through with rain and panic and feverish exhaustion while alcohol splashed carelessly over her arm from an old bottle clenched between her knees, disinfecting a wound that made her vision pulse white at the edges. A leather belt was tied brutally tight around her bicep, cutting into flesh hard enough to leave deep angry marks, while the other end stayed trapped between her teeth to stop herself from screaming too loudly.

“Fuck—” she hissed under her breath, voice cracking as another wave of pain shot through her arm hard enough to make her stomach twist, her boots slipping slightly against the thick branch she perched on high above the forest floor, the bark wet and rough beneath her soles as she scraped desperately for balance, fingers digging into the trunk beside her while the entire tree groaned beneath shifting weight and wind. “Happy fucking birthday,” she muttered after a second, head tipping back against the bark as exhaustion rolled through her body in heavy nauseating waves, eyes half-lidded from lack of sleep, hunger, and the kind of pain that settled deep into the bones and refused to leave.

Below her, somewhere between the dark woods and the muddy trail cutting through them, voices suddenly cut through the rain-soaked silence.

“Where the fuck does she go?! Come on, this way!”

Nat froze instantly.

She could hear them crashing through the undergrowth beneath her perch, boots sucking against wet earth, branches snapping under hurried footsteps, flashlights slicing violently through the trees in jagged bursts of white light that swept dangerously close to her hiding spot before darting away again. The forest smelled like mud, wet leaves, sweat, and rot, that thick disgusting smell of decay lingering everywhere now no matter how far civilization had collapsed behind them, and somewhere farther away she could still hear the distant guttural moans of the dead wandering aimlessly through the dark.

Ironically, the zombies were not the greatest threat to her life.

But honestly, maybe she should have expected that from the start, because even before the world ended people had always been crueler than monsters, smarter about it too, and now that laws were gone and survival had become the only thing left worth protecting, humanity had stopped pretending otherwise altogether.

She had always been alone in the way she survived, the kind of person who drifted in and out of places without leaving much behind except cigarette ash and empty cans, never staying with groups long enough to become part of them because experience had taught her that people eventually started asking things from you the second they thought you belonged somewhere. It had not always been like that though. Back in the beginning, when the world still felt temporary in its collapse and everybody kept talking about rebuilding, about safe zones and communities and sticking together, Nat had actually tried once. She had stayed with a group camped out inside an old radio tower somewhere near the edge of Pennsylvania, a rusted skeletal thing looming over the trees like a dead monument, and for a little while she almost let herself believe in it, in the shared meals and lookout shifts and tired conversations whispered around lantern light while storms rattled the metal walls outside. Then the whole thing went to shit so badly and so quickly that afterward she stopped believing in groups altogether.

She does not like thinking about it now.

Doesn’t like remembering the screaming echoing up those narrow staircases, the smell of blood trapped inside the damp metal corridors, the way people turned selfish the second supplies got low enough to count, or the horrible realization that the infected were not even what destroyed them in the end. People did. People always did. That place taught her fast what mattered and what didn’t, taught her priorities with a gun pressed against the back of her skull and panic flooding every room, taught her that trust in this world was just another stupid way to die. Ever since then, she moved alone, slept alone, stole alone, and left before anyone could start expecting loyalty from her.

Right now though, all her focus is dedicated to the much more immediate problem of not falling out of the fucking tree.

Her injured arm burned violently every time she moved it, muscles trembling from strain as she balanced awkwardly against the thick branch, rainwater dripping from soaked pine needles onto the back of her neck while cold wind pushed through the forest hard enough to make the branches sway beneath her. The bag hanging from her shoulder clinked softly every time she shifted, stuffed with stolen ammunition, cans of food, bottles of water, all grabbed in a rush that now felt increasingly less worth it considering the situation she had gotten herself into afterward. Earlier that day she had tracked a group of survivors moving through an abandoned town several miles away, watching them quietly from rooftops and shattered storefronts while hidden behind broken windows coated in dust. They looked healthy from a distance, well-fed enough to still move with energy instead of dragging themselves around half-dead like most people nowadays, and that usually meant supplies. Good supplies. The kind worth risking something for.

What she had not expected was the sheer amount of fucking guns they carried.

The second they caught sight of her digging through one of their supply crates, the entire thing exploded into chaos so fast she barely remembered half of it afterward, just flashes of gunfire erupting through empty streets, shattered glass crunching beneath her boots as she sprinted through alleys flooded with old rainwater, infected drawn by the noise stumbling out from dark buildings while survivors shouted behind her. One thing led to another the way it always did in this rotten world, and suddenly she was running through the entire goddamn city with bullets cracking past her head close enough to hear, vaulting over abandoned cars and fences until concrete slowly gave way to forest and darkness swallowed her whole. They outnumbered her badly, though honestly that part wasn’t difficult anymore. Most groups did.

After long endless minutes perched in silence high above the forest floor, breathing shallowly every time voices drifted too close beneath her, she eventually heard the sounds begin to fade away into the distance. Footsteps disappeared first, then flashlight beams, then angry voices swallowed gradually by the dead silence of the woods until all that remained was the distant groaning of the wind moving through trees. Somewhere farther away, a burst of gunfire suddenly cracked through the night and made Nat flinch instinctively hard enough to almost lose her balance again, pulse hammering violently against her ribs. Probably shooting at zombies. Maybe not. Didn’t really matter either way, because for once it wasn’t her being hunted anymore.

So after maybe an hour of forcing herself to stay perfectly still in freezing darkness while her muscles cramped and her ankle slowly went numb beneath her weight, she finally started climbing down.

And because exhaustion makes idiots out of everyone eventually, she got careless.

Her boot scraped suddenly against wet bark halfway down the trunk, slipping violently before she could catch herself properly, and in one horrible second her balance disappeared entirely. She slammed downward awkwardly, one foot hitting the ground first at a twisted angle before the rest of her body crashed after it, hard enough to knock the breath straight out of her lungs as she landed painfully on her ass in the mud beneath the tree.

“Fuck!” she yelped instantly, the sharp burst of pain shooting up her leg so sudden and brutal it almost made her nauseous.

For a second she just stayed there breathing hard through clenched teeth, rain dripping from her hair into her eyes while her ankle throbbed violently beneath her weight, already swelling inside her boot.

Great. She had definitely just sprained it. Absolutely fucking great.

And as if the night had not already handed her enough problems to carry, for one sharp horrible instant Nat felt something else out there with her, something hidden somewhere beyond the trees where the darkness thickened too much for her eyes to properly cut through, and suddenly every exhausted nerve in her body snapped painfully awake. It was not even a sound exactly, more like the unmistakable feeling of presence, that instinct clawing up the spine telling you that you are not alone even before your brain manages to explain why. Something moving. Something watching. Maybe both.

She reacted before she could even think about it properly, scrambling awkwardly backward through the mud despite the screaming protest of her ankle, fingers fumbling immediately for the gun hanging from the strap against her shoulder while her back slammed hard against the trunk of the tree she had fallen from. Her breathing turned shallow instantly, pulse hammering violently in her ears loud enough to almost drown out the forest itself as she raised the gun with both shaking hands and aimed between the thick shadows of the woods, eyes darting desperately from branch to branch, from bush to bush, waiting for something to lunge out at her throat.

Nothing came.

No infected stumbling through the undergrowth. No gunfire. No figures stepping out from the dark. Just the endless black forest stretching around her beneath the weak silver glow of the moon filtering through clouds overhead, wet leaves shifting softly in the wind while rainwater dripped lazily from branches onto the forest floor. At least nothing was currently trying to rip her apart.

Maybe she was getting paranoid.

Honestly, she had every fucking reason to be by now. The threat of death had spent the last year following her around like a shadow too stubborn to disappear, lingering behind every closed door, every strange noise, every unfamiliar face, until eventually her body stopped understanding the difference between caution and terror. Out here, paranoia was usually the thing keeping people alive longer than everybody else. And speaking of survival, she really needed to get moving again before sunrise, before those assholes circled back, before anything worse found her limping around the woods half-injured and exhausted. She needed to leave this place entirely. Leave the city behind. Keep moving west.

West had become less of a destination now and more like some distant unfinished thought dragging her forward every morning.

She had left New Jersey years ago at this point, crossing highways, forests, dead towns, and abandoned states one miserable mile at a time while the country rotted around her, always heading toward the opposite coast because somewhere deep down she had convinced herself there would be something different waiting there. Maybe safety. Maybe the ocean. Maybe absolutely fucking nothing. Before the world ended she had always dreamed about traveling anyway, about escaping the suffocating misery of home and seeing something bigger than broken trailers and liquor stores and dead-end roads. Funny enough, the apocalypse had technically given her exactly that.

Not exactly the version she had in mind though.

With a quiet curse muttered through clenched teeth, Nat forced herself back onto her feet, nearly collapsing immediately as pain shot viciously through her ankle and up her leg hard enough to blur her vision for half a second. She hissed under her breath, adjusting the heavy backpack higher onto her shoulder while trying not to aggravate her injured arm at the same time, every movement making her feel like her body was slowly being held together with duct tape and spite alone. Her gun stayed clenched tightly between her hands afterward, fingers wrapped around it with the familiarity of muscle memory more than comfort.

It was not the first injury she had survived. Probably wouldn’t be the last either. That did not make any of this shit less annoying.

By now her body was basically a collection of half-healed wounds layered on top of older ones, scars crossing over scars until she barely remembered what untouched skin even looked like anymore. None of them had ever healed properly either, not really, because proper healing required rest and safety and stability, things the world had stopped offering a long fucking time ago. The worst one was still the massive scar stretching across her back, thick and ugly and twisted beneath the skin where stitches should have existed but never did, a souvenir from another disaster she preferred not to revisit too often. At least she could not really look at it herself. That almost felt merciful.

She started walking slowly through the forest afterward, careful with every uneven step, boots sinking softly into wet earth while branches brushed against her soaked jacket as she moved deeper between the trees. The woods were dark enough now that shapes blurred together at the edges, forcing her to rely less on sight and more on instinct, on sound, on the tiny shifts in the environment most people stopped noticing until it was too late. Life out here had sharpened that part of her brutally well. She knew how footsteps sounded against mud versus leaves. Knew how infected moved compared to animals. Knew the difference between wind disturbing bushes and hands disturbing them. Even after spending so much time around gunfire loud enough to leave her ears ringing for hours, she could still catch the smallest wrong sound when survival demanded it.

So she definitely fucking heard that.

Something shifted abruptly somewhere behind a dense patch of bushes off to her left, low and deliberate and far too heavy to be the wind moving branches around. Nat stopped instantly, every muscle locking tight beneath adrenaline as her grip tightened around the gun. The forest seemed to hold its breath with her.

Then she snapped the weapon upward and aimed directly toward the sound.

But nobody came.

Nothing stumbled out from the bushes, no infected dragging itself through the undergrowth, no survivor stepping into the open with a gun raised, not even some frightened animal startled by her presence. The forest remained still in that suffocating way only nighttime woods could, where every shadow looked deeper than it should and every silence felt almost deliberate, like the entire place was quietly listening to her breathe. Nat kept the gun aimed for several long seconds anyway, arms tense despite the pain screaming through her shoulder, eyes fixed on the dark leaves shifting softly under weak wind.

Nothing.

And somehow, instead of relief, she felt frustration crawling slowly beneath her skin.

A weird one too. Sharp. Uncomfortable. Familiar by now.

Because this was not the first time it had happened over the last few weeks, this feeling of catching something just beyond perception, hearing movement where there should not be any, sensing eyes lingering somewhere outside her line of sight only for the world to immediately turn empty the second she looked directly at it. She could not even pinpoint exactly when it had started becoming a pattern instead of isolated moments born from exhaustion, but she remembered the first time she truly noticed it.

It had happened near that abandoned zoo several weeks back.

The place had looked dead from the outside, overtaken by vines and rust and silence, cages hanging open beneath gray skies while faded signs flapped weakly in the wind like ghosts of something already forgotten long before the apocalypse ever arrived. Nat had only stopped there because she thought there might still be supplies hidden somewhere inside the employee buildings, maybe canned food, maybe medicine, maybe anything worth carrying. At first the place seemed completely deserted except for the distant cries of loose animals echoing somewhere far deeper inside the park. Then she heard it.

Not footsteps exactly. Not breathing either.

Just… something.

A sound lingering right at the edge of recognition, like air shifting wrong behind her, like a low groan muffled too far away to properly identify, like movement stopping every single time she turned around fast enough to catch it. She remembered slowly walking between empty exhibits with her hand hovering near her gun, pulse growing louder and louder in her ears while every instinct screamed that something was nearby even though every cage and corridor stayed completely empty. Nothing ever appeared then either. Nothing attacked. Nothing revealed itself. But the feeling never really left afterward.

Maybe she really was getting paranoid.

Although that raised another question entirely, because did paranoid people even realize they were paranoid? Could someone losing their mind actually stop long enough to wonder about it rationally, or was the whole point that they believed every fear completely? Nat was pretty sure paranoia was not supposed to work like this, but honestly she did not know jackshit about mental health in the first place. Nobody in her life had exactly been big on therapy or emotional self-awareness. Before the world ended people already called her unstable enough for getting angry too quickly or shutting down too hard, and now she spent most days alone in the wilderness talking to herself under her breath while carrying enough trauma to drown in, so who the fuck knew anymore.

Eventually, after several more seconds of silence dragging painfully long, she forced herself to move closer to the bush anyway, because some stubborn angry part of her needed proof one way or another. The branches shifted softly as she pushed them aside with the barrel of her gun, flashlight beam cutting through damp leaves and tangled undergrowth while her injured ankle protested every cautious step forward.

Nothing there either. No tracks except old mud. No animals. No infected. No people.

Diagnosis complete.

And according to Doctor Nat, there were only three possible explanations left now: either she was really paranoid, or she was outright fucking crazy, though honestly she was not entirely sure what the difference between those two things even was anymore, or something out there really was following her and simply happened to be very good at hiding.

None of those options felt particularly comforting.

After a while she finally lowered the gun with a tired curse under her breath and continued deeper into the forest, trying her best to ignore that awful crawling feeling lingering stubbornly at the back of her neck, the one telling her that even with the woods silent again, she still was not alone out there.

~

But it came back.

Again and again and again, that same unbearable feeling curling around the edges of her mind no matter how much she tried ignoring it, the constant sensation of being watched from somewhere just outside her field of vision, like invisible eyes kept tracing every step she took without ever revealing themselves. At first she managed to convince herself it was stress, exhaustion, trauma, whatever fancy word people used before the world ended to explain why somebody could no longer feel safe inside their own skin, but after several more days of it following her from abandoned roads to empty buildings to endless forests, even Nat started having trouble dismissing it so easily.

The feeling lingered everywhere now.

In the silence between footsteps. In reflections caught briefly inside dirty windows. In the moments right before sleep when the world turned still enough for instincts to start screaming louder than reason. And eventually she started genuinely worrying about it while hiding inside some old gas station stranded alongside a dead highway somewhere in the middle of nowhere, the kind of forgotten roadside stop with broken pumps rusting beneath gray skies and faded advertisements peeling away from the walls in long rotten strips. Feeling watched inside cities was one thing. Hell, cities were full of people and infected and scavengers and all kinds of horrible shit hiding around corners. Even out in the woods it sometimes made sense. But this was different now. This thing, whatever it was, felt consistent. Deliberate. Like it had attached itself specifically to her trail and simply refused to let go.

Which honestly almost managed to bother her more than losing her fucking headphones.

Almost.

Because seriously, of all the things she had been forced to abandon while running from those armed assholes through the city, why the fuck did it have to be the headphones? The memory still irritated her enough to make her jaw tighten every time she thought about it. One second they had been hanging safely around her neck while she sprinted through alleyways, and the next they were gone somewhere behind her alongside half the little pieces of normalcy she still carried around like charms against the apocalypse. Sure, objectively speaking they were not even that valuable compared to everything else she owned. The sound quality sucked half the time, one side crackled if the wire bent too sharply, and the tape holding the padding together should have given up months ago. But they were old. Older than almost everything else she still had left. Older than the end of the world.

That had to count for something.

Those headphones belonged to the version of her that existed before all this, before blood and gunpowder and rotting cities became everyday background noise. She remembered wearing them inside her trailer back in New Jersey while drowning out her parents screaming at each other through thin walls, remembered long bus rides with music blasting loud enough to make the rest of the world disappear for a little while, remembered sleeping with them on because silence back then somehow felt worse. They were stupid and broken and worthless to anybody else, but to Nat they carried pieces of herself the apocalypse had not fully managed to chew apart yet. Losing them felt strangely personal, like accidentally dropping the last proof that she used to belong to a normal world once.

So naturally she had been thinking about them nonstop ever since.

Which meant the constant ghost-like sensation following her around was only adding fuel to an already miserable mood.

Now she stood inside the gas station slowly digging through dusty shelves and overturned storage boxes in search of literally anything useful while cold fluorescent lights flickered weakly overhead, powered somehow by a generator she had not yet found. The place smelled stale and ancient, like mildew soaked into old carpet mixed with gasoline and decay, shattered glass crunching beneath her boots every time she shifted weight off her injured ankle. Most of the shelves had already been looted long ago, stripped nearly bare except for useless junk scattered across the floor, but desperation had lowered her standards months ago. Even expired food started looking appealing after enough hungry nights.

And then she felt it again.

That same horrible awareness sliding suddenly across the back of her neck like fingers brushing lightly against skin.

Soft. Subtle. Almost delicate.

Like the whisper of a summer breeze slipping through one of the shattered windows behind her.

Except summer was long fucking gone.

Winter had been slowly creeping closer for weeks now, whispering icy promises against her cheeks every morning while the air grew sharper and the nights colder, and there was absolutely no wind outside. She knew because she had been standing out there only minutes ago beneath a sky so still and dull it felt frozen in place, the trees motionless against the horizon without even the slightest rustle of leaves. If the weather had suddenly decided to move again, she would have noticed.

“For fuck sake,” Nat muttered sharply under her breath, frustration swelling hot and ugly somewhere deep inside her chest before climbing into her throat until it almost physically hurt to swallow.

Because at this point she no longer knew which possibility pissed her off more: that something really might be following her, or that she might slowly be losing her goddamn mind alone in the middle of the apocalypse.

If she was going to die, then honestly Nat would rather it happen fast. Quick. Violent. Abrupt enough that she would not have time to really process it. She did not want one of those long miserable deaths people whispered about around campfires in the early days of the outbreak, slowly bleeding out in some abandoned building while infection crawled through the veins inch by inch, or worse, feeling herself transform little by little into one of those things wandering endlessly out there with empty eyes and rotting mouths. No fucking thank you. She carried an emergency bullet specifically for that kind of nightmare, one tucked away mentally from the rest of her ammunition with a very clear purpose attached to it. If things ever got that bad, she already knew exactly where she would aim.

So whatever this thing was, it either needed to show itself now or finally fuck off and leave her alone.

Nat stood motionless near the center of the gas station for a long moment afterward, gun still raised while the weak fluorescent lights above her buzzed faintly overhead like dying insects. The cold air inside the building pressed strangely heavy against her skin. Slowly, carefully, she shifted one foot against the filthy tiled floor, dragging the sole of her boot loud enough to echo faintly through the empty aisles. Then another step. Casual. Aimless. She forced herself to move like somebody distracted, somebody still searching shelves instead of hunting shadows, hoping whatever kept stalking her would take the bait and finally slip up.

Her gun never lowered once.

She kept her breathing steady too, eyes flicking lazily between shelves while every muscle inside her body remained wound painfully tight beneath the act, waiting for movement, waiting for one wrong sound, one twitch, one silhouette crossing the corner of her vision.

But nothing came.

Again.

And somehow that almost felt worse now.

It was as if whatever this thing was simply knew. Knew she was listening too carefully. Knew she was focused on it. Knew exactly how to linger just outside her grasp long enough to drive her completely fucking insane. The stillness inside the gas station became unbearable after a while, not empty silence but something heavier, deliberate almost.

Eventually frustration started grinding painfully against the inside of her skull hard enough that she nearly gave up altogether. Patience had never exactly been one of Nat’s virtues. Most of the time she reacted first and regretted things afterward. But behind a rifle? That was different. A gun had taught her patience in ways nothing else ever could. She knew how to wait motionless for hours if she needed to, knew how to let anger settle quietly beneath focus until the exact right second arrived. Even now, exhausted and limping and increasingly irritated out of her mind, she stayed perfectly still with the weapon raised.

Then finally— movement.

Tiny. Fast. But real.

A shadow shifting abruptly near the back of the station between two collapsed shelves. Nat reacted instantly before thought could even catch up, adrenaline detonating through her body all at once as she lunged forward hard enough to nearly slip on scattered debris. She shoved violently through the aisles, bumping her shoulder against one of the rusted shelves so hard it rattled loudly through the building, pain flashing through her injured arm sharp enough to make her wince, but she barely registered it. Her boots hammered across broken tiles while overturned products scattered beneath her feet, pulse roaring in her ears as she sprinted toward the movement.

Then suddenly she burst out through the front entrance almost violently, momentum practically spitting her out of the gas station and onto the cracked asphalt outside.

For one disorienting second the sudden shift between darkness and gray daylight blurred her vision just enough.

Enough to lose it completely. Nothing stood outside waiting for her.

It was as if the shadow itself had simply been swallowed whole by the world the second she reached it, erased cleanly without leaving behind even the smallest trace that it had ever existed at all.

Except…

Nat’s eyes narrowed suddenly toward the ground near her boots.

Something was different.

Something new sat there against the cracked asphalt directly outside the gas station entrance, strange enough that she knew instantly it had not been there before. Dirt. Fresh dark soil scattered loosely across the pavement alongside little bits of torn plants and crushed greenery, messy and damp like somebody had dragged a piece of forest floor directly into the middle of the road. It looked horribly out of place against the gray dead asphalt, impossible to miss once noticed.

Nat stared at it silently for several long seconds.

She genuinely had no idea what the fuck to make of this anymore.

On the bright side, at least this technically proved she was not completely losing her mind, because unless hallucinations suddenly started landscaping roads now, something had absolutely placed this here. Which unfortunately created an entirely new and much worse problem instead. Because if she was not crazy, then something real was following her around, something capable of moving fast enough to disappear before she could catch it while leaving behind weird little traces like breadcrumbs.

Fantastic.

So what now?

She was being stalked by some kind of murderous forest goblin with a passion for dramatic exits into piles of dirt and plants? Yeah, no, absolutely not. Her imagination officially stopped there for today because that explanation sounded fucking ridiculous even inside the apocalypse.

~

Another incident happened after that.

At this point Nat had started trying to convince herself that if she ignored the whole thing hard enough maybe it would eventually stop, maybe her brain would finally settle down and quit inventing ghosts in the corners of abandoned buildings, but the world apparently had other plans for her. She had found shelter one night inside the remains of an old maintenance building near the side of the highway, nothing more than cracked concrete walls and a leaking roof barely holding itself together against the cold, but it was enclosed enough to keep most of the wind off her back and hidden enough that she could sleep without immediately expecting a knife against her throat. She remembered checking every room carefully before settling there too, every corner, every broken doorway, gun raised the entire time because trust no longer existed in her vocabulary. The place had been empty. Completely empty.

Then she woke up the next morning with fresh dirt scattered near where she slept alongside little pieces of plants and moss arranged carelessly across the floor like somebody had intentionally left them there for her to notice.

That was the moment she genuinely started considering the possibility that she might finally be losing her fucking mind.

Although to be fair, starvation probably was not helping much either.

God, she was getting hungry now. Really hungry. The kind of hunger that stopped feeling sharp after a while and instead settled into the body like a constant hollow ache, a painful emptiness gnawing steadily beneath her ribs no matter how much water she drank to try and quiet it down. Food had become harder and harder to find the farther west she traveled. Most places had already been stripped bare months ago by scavengers more desperate than her, leaving behind only empty shelves, rotten leftovers, and the lingering smell of dust and decay. Every town she crossed through felt emptier than the last, abandoned so completely it was like humanity had evaporated overnight and left only skeletons of civilization behind. Her stomach felt just as empty.

Eventually desperation pushed her into opening one of the expired cans she found buried beneath debris inside an abandoned convenience store.

“How does that even expire?” she muttered tiredly under her breath while crouched beneath the rusted remains of a bus shelter later that afternoon, rain tapping softly against the cracked plastic roof overhead while cold air curled around her soaked clothes. She pried the lid open slowly with her knife, expecting disappointment but not disaster.

The smell hit her instantly.

Nat recoiled so hard she almost dropped the can completely, gagging violently as the odor punched straight into the back of her throat, sour and rotten and thick enough to make her stomach twist painfully despite the fact there was almost nothing left inside it to throw up. She turned her head away immediately, dry heaving into the dirt beside the bench while her eyes watered from the sheer disgust of it.

Honestly, somewhere deep in her brain she had kind of assumed canned food lasted forever. Or at least close enough. That was the whole point of cans, right? Tiny metal survival miracles waiting out the apocalypse indefinitely. Apparently not. Apparently even preserved food eventually gave up on humanity too.

Well. She learned something new today. Unfortunately it was not the kind of knowledge she actually wanted right now. 

All her body really managed afterward was another miserable groan from her stomach loud enough to almost sound offended.

At least her arm felt better.

The swelling had finally started going down, leaving behind only a dull ache instead of the sharp tearing pain from before. Her ankle, however, remained absolutely fucked, though honestly she was not surprised by that at all considering she had barely given it a second to recover properly. Resting was not something Nat knew how to do anymore. Every time she stayed in one place too long her skin started crawling with anxiety until it became impossible to breathe normally. Sitting still reminded her too much of home somehow, of being trapped in that trailer waiting for the next explosion of screaming or violence or disappointment. Movement felt safer, even when it hurt. As long as she kept walking, she stayed alive.

Still, exhaustion eventually won anyway.

By the time night arrived again her eyelids felt heavier than the backpack hanging off her shoulders, limbs aching with the deep brutal fatigue that came from surviving too many bad nights in a row without proper sleep. So she finally stopped beneath an old bridge stretching over an empty road, tucked far enough underneath it to stay hidden from rain and wandering eyes but open enough that she still had escape routes if something came after her during the night. That part mattered. Always. She built a tiny fire there more for warmth than comfort, feeding it scraps carefully while shadows danced weakly across the concrete around her.

When morning came, there was a dead rabbit lying beside the dying embers.

Just there.

Placed almost neatly near the fire like some kind of offering.

Nat stared at it in complete silence for several long seconds after waking up, brain struggling desperately to catch up with what her eyes were seeing. The rabbit looked fresh too, not torn apart by infected or rotted by disease, just dead and abandoned there beside her while pale morning light filtered weakly beneath the bridge overhead.

“What the actual fuck.”

At that point, some deeply exhausted irrational corner of her brain genuinely started entertaining the possibility of divine intervention.

Because seriously, what else was she supposed to think anymore?

The rational side of her mind fought back immediately of course, trying very hard to insist there had to be some normal explanation for this. Maybe the rabbit crawled there injured during the night and happened to die nearby. Maybe a predator dropped it accidentally. Maybe this was still all one giant misunderstanding fueled by stress and hunger and isolation slowly melting her brain into soup. But after the dirt. After the plants. After weeks of feeling eyes following her through empty roads and forests where nothing ever appeared—well, okay, maybe she was willing to plead temporary insanity now.

And honestly, out of every possible explanation her exhausted mind could invent for all of this, God had definitely not been anywhere near the top of the list. Nat had never exactly been the praying type even before civilization collapsed. But the whole situation had become so bizarre, so unnervingly deliberate, that her thoughts were beginning to wander into places she normally would have laughed at.

Which worried her almost as much as the thing following her in the first place.

So what now? God suddenly cared?

That was fucking rich.

Nat sat there beside the weak remains of the fire with grease still staining her fingers from the rabbit, staring blankly into the gray morning light beneath the bridge while that thought rolled bitterly around inside her skull. Because if some divine force had apparently decided to start watching over her now of all times, then honestly it had an absolutely terrible sense of timing. God had not exactly shown up for the important moments before.

Would have been nice if He had cared back when that one girl came at her screaming with a rusted saw in the middle of an abandoned hardware store, eyes wild enough to make the infected look reasonable by comparison. Nat could still remember the sound the blade made chewing into metal shelves while she fought her off, sparks flying everywhere beneath flickering emergency lights. Or maybe God could have stepped in during that other disaster, the one with the giant fucking brute of a man built like a tank who kept unloading bullets into the apartment building she was trapped inside because he thought she stole from him (maybe she did). The walls had practically exploded around her every time he fired, chunks of concrete raining through the stairwell while she crawled through smoke and dust trying not to die.

And honestly, if there was ever a good moment for divine intervention, it probably should have been the hanging incident.

That one definitely deserved a miracle.

Nat still remembered the rope biting into her throat while a crowd of half-starved fanatics prayed around her like lunatics beneath torchlight, faces glowing feverishly in the dark while they screamed about cleansing souls and punishment and sacrifice. The only reason she survived that night at all was because the infected crashed through their barricades before they could finish the job. Some blessing.

So yeah, funny how apparently God skipped all of that but might now decide hunger was finally where He drew the line.

Maybe even divine beings thought it would look stupid on the metaphorical epitaph if starvation turned out to be the thing that finally killed Natalie Scatorccio after everything else that had already tried.

Honestly? Fair enough.

Obviously she cooked the rabbit.

At some point survival instincts outweighed existential horror, and a free meal dropped mysteriously beside her campfire was still a free fucking meal in the apocalypse. She cleaned it carefully beneath the bridge while trying very hard not to think too deeply about where it came from, skewered the meat over the fire, and forced herself to focus only on practical things like heat and smell and whether or not it was fully cooked. The scent alone almost drove her insane after days of near starvation, rich and savory enough to make her stomach cramp painfully in anticipation.

And when she finally ate it, she let herself enjoy it too. Every single bite.

The meat was warm and real and filling in a way canned food and scavenged scraps never managed to be anymore, and for the first time in days the hollow ache inside her stomach eased slightly instead of growing worse. Sitting there in silence while chewing slowly beside the fire almost felt human again somehow. Or at least close enough to remember what humanity used to feel like.

Honestly, considering the circumstances, eating the mystery rabbit was probably still the sanest choice available to her.

Probably.

But later that same day, while limping down another empty road beneath dull overcast skies, she passed by an old church standing crooked near the edge of a dying town, and suddenly the entire situation hit her with full absurd force.

The church looked ancient and abandoned, stained glass shattered inward while vines crawled up the stone walls like nature itself was slowly reclaiming God’s house piece by piece. A wooden cross still hung crooked above the entrance, swaying softly whenever cold wind moved through the street. Nat stopped there for a moment staring at it while her thoughts spiraled somewhere between exhaustion and irritation and genuine confusion.

Because this whole thing was ridiculous. Completely fucking ridiculous.

And maybe, at this point, she could afford to become a little ridiculous too.

She was tired of feeling hunted without answers. Tired of sleeping with one eye open waiting for dirt or dead animals or invisible eyes to appear again. Whatever this thing was—person, animal, hallucination, forest spirit, guardian angel, whatever the fuck—it kept following her, and she could not continue living like this forever with paranoia chewing holes through her brain every waking hour.

So she decided to catch it.

Or at least try.

Nat had learned how to make traps a long time ago. Survival out here demanded weird skills eventually, and over the years she had become decent at improvising with scraps and junk and desperation. So after several more hours of walking she eventually found a place isolated enough to work with: an old workshop half-hidden between collapsing buildings near the outskirts of another dead town. The structure looked unstable but usable, shadows thick inside from broken windows boarded up unevenly while rusted tools and abandoned machinery still cluttered the lower floor. More importantly, there was enough junk lying around to improvise something effective, and she still carried rope.

That was enough.

By sunset she had turned the place into a mess of hidden traps and warning systems stitched together from pure paranoia and stubbornness, wires stretched low across entrances, loose metal pieces balanced carefully to make noise if disturbed, broken glass scattered strategically where footsteps might miss it in the dark. Her ankle screamed at her the entire time, but frustration kept her moving anyway.

She planned on sleeping upstairs afterward, hidden on the first floor overlooking the workshop below with her rifle ready beside her, and hopefully sometime during the night whatever had been stalking her would finally slip up.

Or at least that was the plan.

Because if nothing showed up again…

Well.

Then she was going to have a much bigger problem on her hands, considering she definitely did not carry antipsychotics around in her backpack, and honestly she had no fucking clue what people were even supposed to take when their mind started unraveling in the middle of the apocalypse.

She had planned the whole thing carefully enough that she actually felt a little proud of herself by the time night settled over the workshop. The traps were positioned with enough precision that whatever had been following her should theoretically be able to make it a decent way inside before realizing something was wrong, because Nat knew fear made people sloppy and she wanted the thing comfortable before the panic hit. Nothing near the entrance would trigger immediately. No obvious wires. No loud alarms right away. If the stalker stepped deep enough into the center of the room though, then things would start moving. Loose metal tools suspended carefully above would crash down first, loud enough to echo through the entire building, and if the thing panicked and rushed toward the staircase where she waited above, then the real trap would trigger: the hidden ankle snare attached to an improvised pulley system she spent nearly an hour rigging together from old chains, rope, and pure spite. One wrong step and suddenly her mystery stalker would find itself hanging upside down from the ceiling like some grotesque fucking chandelier made specifically for her enjoyment.

And if it got scared instead and tried escaping through the same door it entered from?

Then the secondary traps would stop it there too. Broken glass. Snare wire. Collapsing junk piles rigged carefully enough to block exits or at least slow something down long enough for her to get a clean shot.

It was perfect.

Or at least as perfect as anything built by a sleep-deprived apocalypse survivor with a sprained ankle could realistically be.

Still, despite all that preparation, Nat could not relax once she finally settled upstairs for the night. The old wooden chair she dragged creaked softly beneath her weight every time she shifted, rifle resting tightly across her lap while weak moonlight filtered through broken windows and painted long pale shadows across the workshop below. The building groaned constantly around her too, old pipes clicking somewhere inside the walls while loose metal rattled softly whenever wind brushed against the structure outside. Every sound made her tense instinctively.

She could not sleep.

Her eyes stayed wide open for hours, fixed stubbornly on the darkness below while adrenaline and anticipation burned too hot beneath her skin to allow rest. She kept expecting movement. A noise. Another glimpse of dirt or flowers appearing from nowhere. Anything. But the workshop remained empty except for dust and silence and the occasional distant groan of infected wandering somewhere outside in the dead streets beyond.

At some point she started wondering if the whole thing had been a waste.

Another paranoid episode spiraling too far because isolation had finally cooked her brain completely. But even then she stayed in the chair. Stubbornly. Patiently. Waiting anyway.

By the second night though, exhaustion finally won.

Her body simply gave up on her.

The transition between wakefulness and sleep happened so gradually she barely even noticed it at first, her thoughts growing slower and heavier while the rifle slipped slightly against her lap and her aching limbs sank deeper into the chair. One second she was staring into darkness trying desperately to stay alert, and the next—

Snap.

Nat jolted awake instantly.

Not fully at first, just enough for her half-asleep brain to recognize something had happened downstairs. But it was not the loud violent chaos she expected. None of the major traps had triggered. No crashing metal. No collapsing shelves. No shattered glass exploding across the room. The sound had been smaller than that. Sharper. Like one single piece of the setup had quietly failed on its own somewhere in the dark.

For several groggy seconds her exhausted mind struggled uselessly to process it. Then her eyes drifted slowly downward across the floor.

And there it was again.

The fucking dirt.

Fresh dark soil scattered across the concrete beneath the weak moonlight exactly like before, accompanied by those same weird little plants and flowers arranged in messy patches around it because apparently whatever cosmic asshole was haunting her had developed a very specific aesthetic by now.

“Oh you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me—”

Nat exploded out of the chair instantly, adrenaline tearing the last remains of sleep completely out of her body as she grabbed the rifle and rushed toward the railing overlooking the workshop floor below. Her injured ankle screamed the second she put weight on it but she ignored it completely, heart hammering violently while she searched the darkness for movement.

Then she finally saw what had triggered the trap. And honestly, it was not remotely what she had prepared herself for.

A zombie hung upside down from the ceiling.

Just a regular fucking infected swinging slowly back and forth in the pulley snare like some horrible rotten piñata suspended high above the center of the workshop, its ankle caught tightly in the rope. The moonlight made the entire scene look bizarrely theatrical, shadows stretching around the dangling corpse while the ropes creaked softly overhead.

Nat stared at it in complete disbelief for a second.

“How the fuck did you manage to not trigger the other things, you little shit—” she snapped aloud in pure exhausted frustration, tightening both hands around the rifle hard enough for her knuckles to ache while the infected continued swaying uselessly in the air below her.

What truly threw Nat off though was not the trap itself, nor the fact that the thing hanging upside down from her ceiling snare happened to be an infected, but the absolute unnatural silence coming from it.

Because zombies were never quiet.

Even the slow ones made noise constantly, endless wet groaning and snarling and those horrible choking sounds that seemed to crawl straight out of dead throats without ever stopping, like the infection itself could not stand silence. Every infected she had ever encountered carried that awful soundtrack of decay around with them. But this thing? Nothing. Not a single sound escaped it. No snapping teeth. No frustrated growls. No mindless moans vibrating through the dark workshop. It just hung there swaying gently from the rope, face tilted slightly toward her while the shadows rocked softly beneath it.

And the eyes.

Jesus fucking Christ, the eyes.

Even from the second floor Nat could see them clearly in the darkness, pure white without any visible pupils at all, milky and empty like frost-covered glass reflecting moonlight back at her unnaturally bright. That alone should have made the thing look more monstrous, more terrifying, but somehow the stillness of it made everything worse instead. She knew for certain it was infected. There was no mistaking the grayness of dead flesh stretched too tightly over bone, the slight twitching movements in its limbs, the unmistakable wrongness infected bodies carried even when standing still. But it was not behaving like one.

Not even close.

Slowly, carefully, Nat started making her way down the staircase toward it, boots creaking softly against old wood while her rifle stayed trained directly on the dangling figure the entire time. Every step made the infected sway slightly in the air above the workshop floor, rope groaning faintly overhead as fingers twitched uselessly toward nothing.

“Are you my fucking stalker,” she muttered under her breath once she reached the bottom steps, the question spoken more for herself than because she genuinely expected an answer. Truthfully, asking questions to zombies probably ranked somewhere pretty high on the list of signs that her mental state was deteriorating rapidly. Still, after weeks of paranoia and dirt piles and mysterious dead rabbits, the words slipped out anyway.

The infected simply stared at her in silence.

As Nat edged closer, more details slowly emerged from the shadows beneath the weak moonlight spilling through broken windows overhead. The thing had once been a woman, that much was obvious now. Long brown curls hung downward in tangled waves toward the floor, surprisingly clean compared to most infected she had seen wandering around out there, and her face—despite the gray dead skin and hollow eyes—still carried traces of softness beneath the rot. She was not nearly as bloodied or decomposed as the others either. Most infected looked ripped apart by the world after enough months wandering outside, skin hanging loose in strips while filth and dried gore practically fused into them permanently. This one looked… maintained somehow. Not alive. Definitely not alive. But less ruined.

Her forehead carried the ugliest wound though.

A thick scar carved directly into the center of it, vertical and deliberate enough that for one deeply uncomfortable second Nat thought of a third eye split open across dead flesh. The skin around it looked badly healed, puckered and uneven like whatever caused the injury happened long before death ever touched her. But the throat wound was worse.

Nat’s eyes narrowed instinctively as she stepped closer beneath the hanging corpse.

The woman’s throat looked shredded. Not fully open anymore, but not healed properly either. Torn flesh stretched unevenly around old damage that should not have looked the way it did after infection. The wound sat in this horrible in-between state, half-scarred and half-rotten at the same time, like the body itself could not decide whether to decay or recover.

Was that even possible?

The infected were infected everywhere, right? The disease spread through the entire body. It animated dead tissue. So technically… technically could injuries heal afterward? Badly maybe? Wrongly? Nat honestly had no fucking clue. She had spent years surviving them, shooting them, running from them, but nobody out here exactly published scientific journals about zombie anatomy anymore.

Then she noticed the clothes. And that somehow made the entire thing even stranger.

The woman was wrapped in layers of odd weathered garments that looked almost primitive compared to modern clothing, pieces of fur stitched unevenly into thick fabric alongside some ragged cloak or robe hanging loosely around her upside-down body. Everything about it looked ancient and handmade, worn down by weather and travel until the materials barely held together anymore. It reminded Nat weirdly of something tribal or ceremonial, though she could not place exactly why.

And then—

Her stomach dropped violently.

“Is that my fucking headphones?!”

The words practically burst out of her in horrified disbelief as her eyes snapped downward toward the infected woman’s limp hand. Even hanging upside down, pale dead fingers still curled loosely around a painfully familiar object dangling uselessly beside her face. Old tape holding cracked padding together. Bent wire near the left speaker. Scratched plastic she recognized instantly even in the dark.

Her headphones.

Nat stared between the object and the woman’s silent white-eyed face in complete disbelief, adrenaline suddenly flooding back into her bloodstream all over again while her grip tightened around the rifle hard enough to hurt.

It had been weeks now since she lost those headphones. Weeks of walking through dead towns and forests and endless cracked highways stretching west beneath gray skies, weeks of sleeping with one eye open while that horrible feeling of being watched followed stubbornly behind her like a ghost refusing to leave. And now suddenly everything slammed together all at once in the worst possible way.

This infected had been following her.

The realization settled heavily into Nat’s chest while she stared at the upside-down woman hanging silently in her trap, and somehow that answer only made everything even more confusing instead of less. Because okay, fine, mystery solved technically. The shadow in the woods. The dirt. The flowers. The feeling of footsteps trailing behind her for miles. Apparently all of it came from this bizarre white-eyed infected woman.

But then… why?

Why follow her for weeks across half the fucking country without attacking once? Why bring her food? Why return the headphones instead of tearing her throat out the first chance she got? Most infected lost their minds entirely within seconds of spotting something alive, all snapping teeth and blind violence driven by hunger so primal it barely even looked human anymore. This thing should have tried devouring her brains in the forest days ago instead of apparently playing weird cryptic scavenger hunts with dirt piles and dead rabbits.

What the fuck did infected even want from living people beyond eating them anyway?

Nat’s eyes stayed fixed on the object dangling from the woman’s hand while her thoughts spiraled faster and faster. There was absolutely no doubt those were her headphones either. Even upside down in weak moonlight she immediately recognized the stupid little star scratched into the side years ago with the tip of a knife during some bored sleepless night back in New Jersey. The carving was crooked and messy because she had been high at the time, but it was hers. Completely unmistakable.

Too many questions crashed through her skull all at once after that.

Frustration finally snapped tight enough to push her into movement before she could think too hard about the insanity of the situation. Nat stepped forward abruptly and yanked the headphones straight from the infected woman’s loose grasp. The motion happened fast, instinctive, half-expecting the corpse to suddenly react violently the second she got close enough.

But nothing happened.

No resistance.

No snapping jaws lunging toward her wrist. No sudden claws grabbing for flesh. The infected simply let go without a fight, body swaying slightly from the force while those horrible white eyes remained fixed silently on her.

Still.

Awfully, disturbingly still.

Nat immediately stumbled backward afterward anyway, clutching the headphones tightly against her chest while confusion twisted harder and harder inside her stomach. This was not how any of this was supposed to go. She had wanted answers so badly for days now, wanted something concrete instead of shadows and paranoia eating holes through her brain, but standing here face-to-face with the actual source of it all somehow felt even worse. Her frustration had nowhere to land anymore because every explanation she reached for immediately collapsed into nonsense.

“What kind of infected are you…” she groaned under her breath eventually, eyes narrowing sharply while her fingers curled protectively around the headphones like they might disappear again if she loosened her grip for even a second.

Then suddenly the woman moved.

Not violently.

Not lunging.

Just… moved.

The motion was small enough that under normal circumstances Nat might not even have noticed it, but right now every nerve in her body sat stretched painfully thin already, so the second the infected shifted its shoulders slightly while hanging there upside down, Nat nearly jumped clean out of her skin. Her rifle jerked upward instantly in reflex, finger grazing the trigger hard enough that for one terrifying second she almost blew the thing’s head apart before stopping herself.

Her heart slammed violently against her ribs while she stared at it breathing hard.

Then realization hit.

“…Did you just fucking shrug?”

The words came out breathless and incredulous all at once while Nat stood frozen beneath the hanging corpse, genuinely unable to process what she had just seen. Because the movement absolutely looked like a shrug. Small and awkward because of the whole upside-down hanging situation, sure, but unmistakably a shrug nonetheless.

Like it understood her question.

Like it responded.

Silence swallowed the workshop afterward except for the faint creaking of ropes overhead while Nat stared up at the infected woman in complete disbelief. The white-eyed corpse simply stared back upside down beneath hanging curls and pale moonlight, expression unreadable but undeniably aware in some horrible impossible way.

At that point Nat officially abandoned every remaining attempt at rational thought.

New theory: she was already dead.

Maybe she died weeks ago somewhere out on the road without realizing it, and this entire nightmare was actually hell specifically designed to fuck with her personally. Because honestly? A sentient zombie returning stolen headphones and shrugging sarcastically at her questions sounded exactly like the kind of psychological torture some devil would come up with for entertainment.

“What the FUCK is going on,” she muttered weakly to herself, sounding genuinely exhausted by reality itself now. 

“Stop fucking shrugging, this is not helping!” Nat yelped in pure exasperation as the infected woman somehow managed to awkwardly shrug again despite hanging upside down from a pulley trap like the world’s most horrifying decoration.

The motion looked ridiculous enough that for one deeply cursed second Nat almost forgot she was currently arguing with a corpse.

Honestly, she should have shot it already. That probably would have been the normal reaction here. Most survivors would not have hesitated the second they realized something infected was moving strangely. Hell, most survivors would have put a bullet through its skull long before noticing the weird behavior at all. But Nat had never really been trigger-happy when it came to people. Or infected. Or honestly anyone unless survival absolutely cornered her into it. The rifle mattered to her more as comfort than anything else, a heavy familiar weight slung across her back that made the world feel slightly less dangerous simply because it was there. It was protection. Distance. Control. And somewhere deep down, it also represented the moment everything changed.

The outbreak started with a gun in her hands after all.

Letting go of it always felt wrong somehow, like abandoning the very thing that kept dragging her forward afterward. So yeah, despite the fear currently twisting through her stomach, her first instinct had not been to shoot this thing when she came downstairs. Besides, gunshots were rarely worth the trouble anymore unless absolutely necessary. Noise traveled too far in dead cities. One bullet could solve a problem and create five worse ones in less than ten minutes. Infected heard everything. So did desperate people.

That was why she had not shot it.

That was the very reasonable explanation she kept aggressively repeating to herself while standing there wide-eyed in front of the world’s first apparently sarcastic zombie.

“Are you… are you the one that left the rabbits around?” she asked hesitantly after a while, the question sounding increasingly insane the second it left her mouth. Her voice echoed faintly through the workshop while she stared up at the hanging woman clutching. Honestly, she could barely believe she was having this conversation at all. If this even counted as a conversation.

The infected stayed perfectly still afterward. For several painfully awkward seconds absolutely nothing happened, long enough that Nat almost started regretting asking out loud in the first place. Then finally, very slowly, the woman dipped her head once in a small deliberate nod.

Nat closed her eyes immediately and let out the longest most exhausted sigh imaginable. Her free hand came up to pinch hard against the bridge of her nose while she stood there trying desperately to process the fact that she had just successfully communicated with a zombie about wildlife offerings.

She had seen weird shit before. Plenty of weird shit. The apocalypse practically specialized in weird shit. She had seen cults worshipping infected like saints, survivors wearing walker skin to hide among hordes, people driven so insane by isolation they forgot how conversations worked entirely. But this? This was winning by a landslide. At least if she were simply hallucinating there would be a reasonable explanation buried somewhere underneath all of it. Trauma. Starvation. Sleep deprivation. Easy. Understandable. Human.

But this thing?

This weird silent infected woman hanging upside down while nodding politely at questions about rabbits? Absolutely none of that felt reasonable.

“And the dirt? Are you the one leaving dirt everywhere too?” Nat continued eventually, leaning heavily against a nearby crate now because her ankle was starting to throb again beneath her weight. Exhaustion dripped from every word she spoke. At this point she sounded less scared and more deeply inconvenienced by reality itself.

The infected shifted slightly overhead. Then somehow, impossibly, Nat noticed a faint change in her expression. Not a full expression exactly. More like hesitation. Embarrassment maybe. The dead woman’s head tilted subtly away while her shoulders twitched again in another tiny awkward shrugging motion.

Nat stared upward in complete silence for two full seconds. Then her eyebrows shot practically to the fucking ceiling.

“Oh my god, are you fucking blushing now? Is that it?”

The disbelief in her voice bordered on genuine outrage at this point. Because no. Absolutely not. There was simply no universe where she was standing inside a ruined workshop accusing a zombie of being embarrassed about leaving her mysterious little dirt presents around like some socially awkward stalker.

And yet somehow that really appeared to be what was happening. Nat actually laughed once after that. A short sharp completely exhausted laugh dragged violently out of her by sheer absurdity alone before she immediately looked around the empty workshop afterward like maybe the universe itself would finally explain the joke to her.

Nothing did.

The infected just continued hanging there upside down in awkward silence while moonlight painted her skin silver beneath the rafters overhead.

The more Nat stared at her, the less monstrous she actually started to look. Which honestly felt like a deeply concerning realization to have about an infected.

Sure, the eyes were still absolutely horrifying, those strange pupil-less white irises glowing faintly in the dark every time moonlight caught them wrong, but beyond that? The rest of her looked… almost normal in a weird way. Or at least closer to normal than any infected Nat had encountered before. The scars looked ugly, yeah, especially the split mark across her forehead and the ruined throat, but Nat herself carried enough ugly scars beneath her clothes to stop judging people on that front a long time ago. Hell, the giant mess stretched across her own back probably looked worse than anything this woman had. And okay, the skin tone definitely leaned heavily toward corpse territory, all gray and sickly beneath the dim light, but honestly Nat herself had looked half-dead for months now between the exhaustion, the hunger hollowing out her face, and the constant stress eating away at her body piece by piece.

The weird clothes?

Whatever.

Nat had long since stopped pretending fashion standards still existed after the apocalypse. Everybody dressed like raccoons digging through the remains of civilization anyway. Fur cloaks and strange robes barely even ranked on the weirdness scale anymore.

And objectively speaking—

The infected woman was actually kind of pretty.

For a corpse.

“Oh my god, what the fuck am I even saying to myself right now…” Nat muttered immediately afterward, physically shaking her head hard like she could dislodge the thought from her brain before it settled there permanently.

Yeah.

The apocalypse was definitely getting to her now. No question about it anymore.

Still, despite the growing insanity of the situation, one important thing remained true: she had trapped the stalker. That part was done. Whatever this infected woman was, whatever weird impossible behavior she kept displaying, she was still hanging upside down from Nat’s trap right now instead of lurking invisibly in the woods tormenting her for weeks. Technically speaking, Nat had won. She could literally just leave her there if she wanted. Problem solved.

Probably.

“You can’t actually get hurt like that, right?” Nat asked eventually, gesturing vaguely toward the whole upside-down situation with her rifle barrel while leaning more comfortably against the crate now. “Blood can’t rush to your brain since… you know. You don’t really have one anymore…”

The infected frowned immediately. Actually frowned. Not some random twitch of dead muscles either. A genuine offended little expression pulling across her face while her brows scrunched together visibly.

Nat blinked at her in disbelief.

“Okay, do not look at me like I just insulted you!” she defended herself instantly, throwing one hand upward in exasperation. “That’s literally how your whole thing works, I do not make the fucking rules here.”

The dead woman slowly shook her head. Nat stared at her for a second.

“…What, you got a brain now?” she deadpanned flatly. “You’re feeling blood rushing because of the whole upside-down thing?”

Silence followed again for several long seconds beneath the creaking ropes overhead. Then, incredibly, the infected nodded once.

Nat immediately pointed accusingly at her with the rifle like she’d just caught someone in the middle of a terrible lie.

“Oh, you are absolutely fucking with me now. You’re a terrible liar by the way,” she snapped, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. Because despite how strangely restrained the woman’s expressions were overall, the hesitation before that nod had been painfully obvious. Tiny. Brief. But there.

And then somehow the infected actually seemed to blush again afterward. Just faintly. A slight darkening beneath the gray skin around her cheeks while she awkwardly looked away upside down. Nat stared at her in complete exhausted silence.

“Is this some kind of technique to get me to put you down so you can finally jump me or something?” she asked eventually, genuine suspicion slipping back into her voice despite the absurdity of the situation. “Do you get off on fucking with your prey before eating it? Is that like… a thing now? Kinky-ass infected?”

The second the words left her mouth, the dead woman’s eyes widened dramatically in what looked horrifyingly close to offended embarrassment.

Which somehow made everything infinitely worse.

What the fuck was she even supposed to do now? Nat stood there in the middle of the workshop staring at the upside-down infected woman while the full absurdity of the situation slowly crushed down onto her shoulders harder and harder with every passing second. This had gone way too far to still qualify as some normal encounter anymore. Usually things with infected ended in one of two ways: either you shot them, or you ran away from them. That was it. Clean. Simple. 

But now?

Now she had talked to this thing for so long that simply pulling the trigger suddenly felt… strange. Not impossible exactly. Nat was not stupid enough to forget the thing in front of her was still infected. But the situation had become tangled in a way she did not know how to deal with anymore. She could not exactly shake the woman’s hand and send her politely on her way either. That would be insane. Completely fucking insane.

And besides, what would she even do with her?

Nat was not a scientist. She barely passed high school. She had absolutely no idea what kind of horrifying biological accident had created an infected capable of nodding, blushing, and apparently bringing back headphones for sentimental reasons, nor did she have any clue what to do about it now that it existed. Maybe this woman had died differently somehow. Maybe something in the infection failed. Maybe some fragment of consciousness simply refused to rot away properly after death. Whatever the explanation was, it sat hanging upside down in front of her looking increasingly less like a monster and increasingly more like a deeply awkward person trapped inside a corpse.

Which honestly felt worse somehow.

And okay, despite the constant reservations screaming in the back of Nat’s head that this was still probably going to end with her getting violently eaten alive, the infected woman technically had not tried killing her once yet. If she wanted Nat dead, she probably had dozens of chances already during those weeks spent stalking her through forests and abandoned towns. She could have attacked while Nat slept. Could have bitten her during the rabbit incident. Could have lunged the second Nat came downstairs earlier tonight. But she had not.

So then what now?

Nat could end this instantly if she wanted. One bullet. Problem solved. Or she could leave the woman hanging there and simply walk away, let the trap deal with the issue eventually while she continued west pretending none of this ever happened. Life would resume. Probably.

…

“If I cut the rope, you’re not gonna jump me?” Nat asked cautiously after a long silence, immediately hating herself a little for even saying the sentence out loud.

Seriously. What the fuck was she doing?

The infected woman shaked her head so frantically at the question that Nat almost recoiled in surprise. It was by far the most openly emotional reaction she had shown since the beginning, curls bouncing awkwardly while she hung there upside down looking almost desperate about it. Nat narrowed her eyes immediately, suspicion clawing back into place out of pure survival instinct.

Still.

Slowly, cautiously, she lowered the rifle until it hung against her side again from the worn leather strap crossing her shoulder. The familiar weight of it bounced lightly against her hip while she reached instead for the knife strapped at her belt. Every movement felt horribly tense now, the kind of tension where even breathing too loudly seemed dangerous.

The infected watched her carefully the entire time.

Those strange white eyes followed every step while Nat approached the pulley mechanism, boots crunching softly against scattered debris across the workshop floor. Her grip tightened around the knife handle hard enough to ache. Some part of her genuinely expected the woman to suddenly snap, expected claws or teeth or violence to erupt instantly once the restraint disappeared.

But there was no hesitation once she reached the rope.

No dramatic internal debate. No countdown.

Nat just did it.

One sharp slice through the tensioned rope and suddenly the entire pulley system snapped loose overhead with a violent creak. The infected woman dropped instantly face-first toward the concrete below, hitting the floor with a deeply pathetic thud before collapsing into an awkward heap of limbs and tangled fabric.

For one long second neither of them moved.

Then slowly, stiffly, the woman pushed herself upright again. Nat stood several feet away gripping the knife tightly while watching her with open suspicion, ready to react if literally anything threatening happened. But instead the infected simply dusted herself off in this weird exhausted little motion before finally straightening fully to her feet beneath the moonlight spilling through the broken windows.

And then Nat realized something horrifying.

“Oh, you’re fucking tall, you freak,” she huffed immediately, genuine disbelief slipping into her voice despite herself.

Because holy shit.

Even from the opposite side of the workshop she could tell now that the woman towered over her by at least a full head, maybe more. Hanging upside down had hidden it completely before, but standing normally she looked almost unnervingly tall beneath all those strange fur-lined layers and worn robes, broad shoulders blocking part of the pale moonlight behind her while tangled brown curls spilled down around scarred gray skin.

Honestly, the size alone would have made the stalking infinitely more terrifying if Nat had realized it sooner.

Now she was almost grateful the mysterious shadow haunting her for weeks had mostly stayed hidden in forests and darkness instead of fully stepping into view earlier, because catching sight of this giant silent white-eyed woman trailing behind her on some lonely road at night probably would have sent her directly into cardiac arrest.

And… she was blushing again.

There stood this impossibly tall infected woman in the middle of a ruined workshop, gray skin and white dead eyes and scars carved across her body like something dragged straight out of a nightmare, and somehow she kept reacting with the shy embarrassment of somebody getting complimented at a fucking bar. Nat’s life had become so aggressively weird over the last year that part of her almost accepted it immediately now, which honestly felt like the most worrying detail of all.

“Look,” Nat sighed eventually, exhaustion dragging heavily through her voice while she rubbed a hand across her face, “you’re free now, alright? Go wherever. Do whatever the infected usually do, I don’t fucking know. I’m gonna go now.”

The words sounded strangely awkward hanging there between them in the workshop silence, like she was ending some first date instead of dismissing a sentient zombie.

Still keeping one cautious eye fixed firmly on the woman, Nat started backing toward the staircase again before finally turning enough to climb upward. Every creak of the old wood beneath her boots seemed unbearably loud now while cold air drifted through the broken windows around the upper floor. Her backpack still sat abandoned near the chair she had fallen asleep in earlier, alongside a few scattered supplies and the remnants of her miserable little stakeout. She grabbed everything quickly, slinging the worn backpack over one shoulder while her rifle knocked lightly against her hip again.

The infected never moved the entire time.

Not one inch.

She simply remained standing there in the center of the workshop silent and weirdly serious now that she was no longer dangling upside down. The stillness almost made her look carved from stone rather than dead flesh, broad shoulders unmoving beneath those ragged fur-lined clothes while her white eyes followed Nat carefully across the room. There was something strangely intense about the way she watched her too, not predatory exactly, but focused in a way Nat did not entirely trust.

Eventually Nat made her way back downstairs and toward the entrance, carefully weaving through her own traps while the cold night air seeped through broken walls and cracks around the building. Outside looked dark and miserable as usual, the road beyond swallowed by dead silence beneath a cloudy sky.

Then she stepped over the final trap near the doorway and out into the freezing night. The cold hit immediately, sharp against her cheeks and hands after the relative shelter of the workshop, carrying that familiar smell of wet asphalt and distant rot lingering permanently over the world now. Nat adjusted her backpack higher onto her shoulder and immediately started walking away without another word, boots crunching softly over debris scattered across the abandoned road outside.

And then instinct made her glance back. Just in time to see the infected woman one step away from walking directly into the entrance trap.

“Stop!” Nat barked loudly enough for her voice to echo slightly through the empty street.

The woman froze instantly mid-step.

“There’s a trap there,” Nat pointed out with visible exasperation already bleeding back into her voice while gesturing sharply toward the hidden wire. “Step over it, idiot.”

The infected obediently stepped over the trap.

Nat stared at her in disbelief for half a second afterward. Then another thought hit her suddenly.

“…How the fuck did you avoid every trap I put around the entrance before?” she asked suspiciously, narrowing her eyes again. Because seriously, the place had been rigged like a paranoid death maze. There was no way somebody unfamiliar with the building should have slipped through all that unnoticed.

The infected woman remained silent for a second before slowly raising one hand and pointing upward instead.

Nat followed the gesture toward one of the broken second-floor windows along the outside wall of the workshop. The thing sat ridiculously high off the ground, completely unreachable without support or climbing equipment, surrounded by cracked brick with no obvious way up.

Nat stared at it. Then slowly looked back at the towering infected woman.

“…Of course,” she muttered flatly. “Why the fuck didn’t I think about that.” Sarcasm dripped from every word.

Honestly, at this point the revelation that her weird stalker apparently climbed buildings like some horrifying undead raccoon barely even phased her anymore. With one final exhausted huff, Nat turned away again and this time genuinely started walking.

The road stretched endlessly through darkness ahead of her, lined with abandoned cars rusting silently beneath weak moonlight while distant trees swayed softly in the cold wind. Her boots echoed faintly against cracked asphalt as she limped onward, each step pulling slightly at her still-injured ankle while the familiar weight of exhaustion settled back across her shoulders. The night felt colder now somehow, quieter too after all the chaos inside the workshop.

For several long minutes she walked alone through the dead world. Then she felt it again. That same awful sensation crawling suddenly across the back of her neck, the one she now knew all too well. Presence. Eyes. Somebody there.

Nat stopped walking immediately. Slowly, with the exhausted resignation of somebody already knowing exactly what she was about to see, she turned around toward the empty road behind her.

The infected woman stood several feet away in the darkness. Silent. Tall. Watching her.

“Oh my god,” Nat deadpanned while staring at her in complete disbelief, “of course you’re fucking following me.”

~

She wished she could say that she immediately got rid of the infected after that, that she regained some common sense, set another trap somewhere along the road, maybe put a bullet through the thing’s skull and walked away before this whole bizarre situation rooted itself any deeper into her life. That would have been the smart thing to do. The reasonable thing. The kind of story survivors told each other afterward while pretending they still understood how the world worked.

But she did not do any of that. And honestly, Nat could not even explain why.

Maybe it was exhaustion finally softening parts of her survival instincts that used to stay razor sharp. Maybe loneliness had started eating through her worse than she realized after months and months spent talking mostly to herself and abandoned buildings. Or maybe there was just something about those strange white eyes and awkward little gestures that made pulling the trigger feel impossible now that she knew there was something conscious staring back at her.

Whatever the reason, she let it happen.

So for the next several long miserable days on the road, the infected followed her.

Not aggressively. Not even closely most of the time. She simply lingered there somewhere behind or beside her like an enormous silent shadow refusing to disappear, keeping enough distance not to immediately provoke Nat while never fully leaving either. It should have terrified her constantly. Honestly, part of her still expected to wake up with teeth in her throat every single night. But as the days stretched onward and nothing happened except occasional awkward staring, the fear slowly started mutating into something stranger. Something harder to define.

The first night after the workshop, Nat made camp near the remains of an overturned truck abandoned beside the road. The fire crackled weakly against the cold darkness while she sat wrapped in her jacket cleaning mud from her boots, exhaustion hanging heavy across every aching limb. And there, farther back near the tree line where moonlight barely touched the woods, stood the infected woman watching silently. Tall and motionless beside one of the trees like some creepy fucking forest cryptid.

Nat kept glancing toward her over the flames throughout the night, half-expecting movement, but the woman simply remained there with those pale eyes fixed on her from the darkness while cold wind shifted through the branches overhead. It should have been unsettling beyond belief. Instead, weirdly enough, it mostly just felt… present. Like Nat had somehow accidentally acquired the world’s strangest bodyguard.

The second night, the infected was not there at first.

Nat noticed immediately too, though she aggressively refused to think too hard about the fact she noticed at all. She sat alone beside another small fire under the remains of an old highway overpass, absently poking at the flames while listening to distant infected cries echoing somewhere far away in the city beyond. The absence lingered strangely in the air around her, enough that she caught herself glancing toward shadows every few minutes before rolling her eyes at herself in irritation.

Then eventually the woman appeared again out of the darkness. Silent as always. This time she carried something in one hand.

Nat straightened slightly as the infected approached the edge of the firelight, pale fingers loosely gripping a dead bird by its wings before carefully lowering it onto the ground between them. Afterward she immediately took several steps backward again like some enormous skittish animal waiting cautiously for approval.

“...Is that for me?” Nat asked slowly, voice low with disbelief.

The infected nodded once.

So Nat reached forward and picked up the bird.

At this point she was significantly less hungry than before. Not full exactly, nobody was ever really full anymore in this world, but definitely better fed than she had been in weeks. Ironically enough, she had probably eaten more meat over the last few days than during entire stretches of her old life before the apocalypse. Nat actually was decent at hunting too when conditions allowed it. The problem was noise. Using the rifle became riskier every month as the infected population grew denser and survivor groups more desperate. One shot could turn a successful hunt into a death sentence fast.

Good thing, apparently, she now possessed one infected woman capable of hunting barehanded like some terrifying undead forest creature.

By the fifth night, the weirdness had settled into something almost routine.

Nat sat cross-legged near the fire skinning another rabbit while snow threatened faintly at the edges of the freezing night air, fingers moving automatically through the familiar motions despite the stiffness in her injured arm. The infected woman lingered nearby half-hidden in darkness again, broad silhouette barely visible beyond the firelight while her pale eyes reflected faintly gold from the flames.

“Do you eat meat too?” Nat asked casually after a while, surprising herself slightly with how natural the question sounded now.

The infected nodded from the shadows. Nat hesitated briefly while continuing to work the knife carefully beneath the rabbit’s fur. Then finally she glanced up toward her again.

“Do you want to eat with me?”

The words left her mouth before she fully processed them.

But honestly… it felt right somehow. Strange as all this was, Nat had spent the last several days surviving because of this woman. The food. The hunting. The quiet company following her through empty roads without demanding anything in return. Sharing a fire suddenly did not seem that absurd compared to everything else anymore.

The infected visibly froze in surprise. Then slowly, awkwardly, she pointed toward herself like she genuinely needed confirmation.

Nat rolled her eyes immediately.

“Yes, you dumbass,” she huffed. “I’m not talking to some other infected hiding in the bushes.”

For a second the woman just stared at her. Then slowly, carefully, she smiled. It was small. Barely there. A little uncertain around the edges like maybe smiling itself had become unfamiliar after death. But it transformed her entire face in a way Nat was absolutely not prepared for. Suddenly the scars and pale skin and white eyes mattered less beneath that expression. For one dangerous second she almost looked warm. Human, even.

And something weird twisted sharply low in Nat’s stomach when she looked at her mouth.

Nat immediately looked away from her lips and shook her head hard afterward like she could physically knock the thought loose before it settled somewhere permanent.

Maybe she was just hungry again. Yeah. That had to be it.

She ate weirdly.

That was one of the first things Nat truly started noticing once the shock of traveling with an infected wore off enough for her brain to focus on details instead of constant survival panic. Because she had seen infected feed before. Everybody had. It was one of those sights the apocalypse forced permanently into your skull whether you wanted it there or not: bodies swarming over screaming people, mouths tearing through flesh in frantic jerking motions while blood sprayed everywhere and bones cracked beneath desperate hands and teeth. There was never anything human left in the way they ate. Just violence. Hunger. Consumption stripped down into its ugliest rawest form.

But this woman?

This woman ate slowly.

Not elegant exactly, because there was absolutely nothing elegant about an undead six-foot-something cryptid crouched beside a fire gnawing on roasted rabbit meat, but careful somehow. Deliberate. She still stuffed way too much food into her mouth at once like she either forgot or no longer cared about basic manners, yet after that she actually chewed thoughtfully instead of ripping and devouring. The motions looked almost delicate in contrast to every other infected Nat had ever witnessed. Which honestly only made the entire thing more unsettling sometimes.

Absurd too, because despite the weirdly careful chewing, she still got messy every single time. Meat juice and grease constantly slipped from the corners of her mouth while she ate, sometimes dripping down onto her fingers or chin because apparently death had not magically improved her coordination. Nat had watched her wipe at it once with visible annoyance afterward, which somehow made the situation feel even stranger.

Not that Nat paid that much attention.

She just… noticed things.

Obviously.

The woman sat close enough now that noticing became unavoidable. Sometimes the infected sat barely a few feet away now beneath the flickering firelight, broad shoulders wrapped in those heavy fur-lined layers while fingers turned food carefully over the flames. It would have been harder not to look at her by that point.

And lately noticing things felt like all Nat did anymore.

The days dragged onward slowly as winter tightened colder fingers around the world, and somewhere along the road Nat realized she had stopped encountering infected nearly as often as before. Not completely. She still saw them sometimes wandering through empty fields or limping aimlessly across abandoned highways in the distance. Occasionally pale figures appeared watching silently from broken windows whenever they passed through dead towns. But ever since the tall awkward infected started traveling beside her, actual dangerous encounters became strangely rare. She no longer woke to snarling outside shelters. No more sudden desperate sprints through buildings while infected clawed after her. No more panicked fights ending in blood and bruises.

It was like the world itself had started stepping aside for them. Or more accurately, stepping aside for her.

Nat noticed how ordinary infected reacted too whenever they crossed paths. Most simply drifted away now. A few occasionally stared longer than usual before retreating into the distance again. None attacked. None approached.

It felt less like luck every day. It felt like protection.

And honestly? That thought should have terrified her more than it did.

She also noticed the woman herself changing slowly around her. At first the infected kept a careful distance constantly, lingering behind trees or near roadsides while following. But now? Now she walked closer during the day too. Sometimes only a foot or so away while they crossed empty stretches of dead land together beneath gray skies. Their shoulders almost brushed occasionally when squeezing through abandoned buildings. Nat stopped instinctively reaching for her rifle every time it happened somewhere along the way without even realizing it.

Truthfully, she was not really scared of her anymore. Maybe not at all. Which honestly sounded insane if she said it aloud.

Sometimes Nat still woke to find little piles of dirt and flowers arranged carefully near wherever she slept, usually accompanied by the infected woman sitting nearby watching her expectantly in the early morning light like she was waiting for some kind of reaction. Nat still had absolutely no clue what the hell those were supposed to mean. Gifts maybe? Rituals? Some weird infected instinct? The flowers always looked carefully chosen too, little scraps of color against dead gray landscapes, arranged in ways that felt intentional even when half-wilted from cold weather.

The whole thing carried this strange sense of meaning Nat could almost feel pressing at the edge of understanding without ever fully grasping it. Like the woman expected her to recognize something obvious that Nat simply did not know how to read.

“Is it because of the scars on your throat that you can’t talk?” Nat asked one afternoon while rummaging through the remains of an old roadside store, her voice echoing faintly through dusty aisles stripped mostly bare years ago.

She crouched in front of a cabinet near the back wall trying to pry open a stubborn compartment with her knife while weak winter light filtered through shattered windows overhead. The infected woman lingered nearby in silence as usual.

When Nat finally glanced back toward her, she noticed the woman standing completely still beside a broken display case instead.

Jewelry.

Old dusty bracelets and necklaces still scattered behind cracked glass beneath layers of dirt and neglect. The infected stared at them quietly while fingers hovered carefully across the remains like she was afraid to touch anything too hard.

Nat’s question finally seemed to register because after several distracted seconds the woman nodded absentmindedly without looking away from the display. Her fingertips brushed gently over one particular bracelet lying half-buried beneath dust.

Nat watched her for a moment before snorting softly. “Saw something you liked?” she asked while finally abandoning the cabinet entirely to wander closer instead.

The infected stayed silent. But not empty silence. There was something heavier in the stillness this time.

Nat slowed slightly beside her. “…Memories?” she guessed more carefully now.

The woman’s fingers stopped moving altogether. Inside the broken display case, beneath shattered glass and dust, lay several old bracelets with names engraved across thin metal plates. Cheap personalized jewelry left abandoned with the rest of the dead world. The infected stared at them like they mattered.

There was silence after that.

Not empty silence either. The kind that stretched heavy between two people carrying something fragile inside it, something that once spoken aloud would probably change the shape of things permanently afterward. Nat could feel it instinctively while standing beside the broken jewelry display with dust floating through pale winter light around them. Somewhere deep down, she already knew asking more questions mattered now. Maybe too much. Maybe this whole road had been leading here from the very beginning the second she decided not to shoot the strange infected woman hanging upside down in her trap.

Maybe it had always been inevitable. Like one of those stories where fate quietly drags people together long before they realize they are already drowning inside it. Still, Nat could not stop herself from asking.

“Any one of them got your name?” Her voice came out softer than intended, almost careful, while she watched the woman continue staring down into the broken display case.

And then Nat saw it.

Sadness.

Not fully human maybe, not as openly readable as ordinary expressions, but there all the same lingering somewhere deep inside those impossible white eyes. It moved through her face like the shadow beneath dark water before a storm rises over the sea, vast and quiet and dangerous in a way Nat could feel more than understand. For one strange suspended moment it felt like looking into an ocean swallowing itself whole after surviving a tempest, waves still trembling beneath the surface long after the violence passed.

And somehow Nat realized she was already standing waist-deep inside it beside her.

Eventually the infected woman moved. Slowly, awkwardly, gray fingers reached down into the shattered glass and closed around one of the bracelets lying abandoned there. The movement lacked the clumsy hunger infected usually carried too. Careful. Deliberate. Like the tiny object actually mattered. She lifted it gently from the dust before finally turning back toward Nat with the bracelet resting loosely in her palm.

Nat leaned slightly closer to read the engraving. “Charlotte?” she asked quietly.

The woman nodded once.

Something twisted strangely in Nat’s chest afterward. She probably should have stopped there. Should have left the moment untouched instead of pushing further into it. But she did it anyway because apparently every survival instinct she ever possessed had long since dissolved somewhere on this road beside her.

“Should I call you that?”

The infected immediately shook her head.

Nat frowned slightly. “Then what?” she whispered, watching her carefully now.

And for the briefest instant— Nat could swear she saw color flicker beneath the white.

Not fully. Not enough to truly appear. But something moved there beneath the dead pale emptiness of Charlotte’s eyes, like an iris trying desperately to surface through fog before vanishing again. A whisper of something alive hidden deep underneath whatever the infection had done to her. Nat caught only the ghost of it before it disappeared entirely again, but now that she noticed it she could not stop thinking about it.

What color had her eyes been before all this? Blue maybe. Sharp and intense. Or green.

Maybe brown and warm beneath sunlight. Nat did not know why the thought suddenly mattered so much to her. But it did.

Charlotte’s thumb brushed slowly across the engraved name on the bracelet while silence settled between them again. Nat watched the movement absently, mind still snagged somewhere on the almost-color she thought she saw moments ago.

Then finally she cleared her throat softly. “I can, like… call you Char?”

Charlotte frowned immediately. Not angry exactly. More like deeply unconvinced.

“Okay,” Nat muttered. “Not Char.”

She tilted her head thoughtfully afterward.

“Lot?”

This time the infected woman hesitated. Her shoulders lifted slightly in uncertainty while she made a vague face that looked painfully close to maybe.

Nat snorted softly under her breath.

“Lottie?”

Everything changed slightly after that.

Charlotte—Lottie—tightened her fingers gently around the bracelet in her hand, and then slowly, almost shyly, the faintest smile drew itself across her face. And for some reason Nat’s stomach twisted all over again when she saw it.

Nat almost looked away after that.

The smile lingering on Lottie’s face did something strange to her chest, something uncomfortable and warm all at once, and instinctively she felt the urge to break eye contact before it settled too deeply beneath her skin. She did not entirely understand why suddenly knowing this infected woman’s name made the air between them feel heavier somehow, more intimate in a way that had absolutely no business existing in the middle of a dead world filled with corpses and ruined buildings.

But before she could look elsewhere, Lottie caught her gaze again immediately.

Those pale white eyes locked onto hers with impossible focus while one large gray hand slowly lifted to point directly back at Nat.

“Me?” Nat asked softly, almost stupidly.

Lottie’s expression shifted instantly afterward. The smile widened just slightly while she gave one of those maddening little shrugs again, shoulders lifting loosely as if the answer should already be obvious. Then her eyes drifted briefly around the abandoned store before flicking back toward Nat with unmistakable amusement hidden somewhere beneath the dead stillness of her face.

Nat stared at her in disbelief. She is fucking smirking, she realized internally with genuine horror. How the fuck did someone manage to tease another person without saying a single word?

Because that was absolutely what Lottie was doing now. The shrug. The look. The expectant patience while waiting for Nat to understand what she meant. Somehow the infected woman had developed an entire personality entirely through silence and weird expressions and Nat hated how easily she was beginning to read it.

“Okay, fuck off,” Nat snorted finally, shaking her head while heat crawled annoyingly up the back of her neck for reasons she aggressively refused to examine too closely.

Then after a second she added more quietly: “Nat.”

Simple.

Just that.

Maybe because despite how insane everything surrounding them had become, there was still something strangely simple buried underneath it all too. A girl wandering endlessly west through the apocalypse. A dead woman following her through empty roads carrying flowers and rabbits and old headphones. Two lonely things crossing paths at the end of the world.

Simple in the kind of way that absolutely was not simple at all once you looked too closely.

And this time—

This time Lottie truly smiled.

Not the small hesitant thing from before. Not the shy uncertain expression hiding carefully behind skin and scars. This one broke fully across her face all at once, bright and immediate and startlingly alive despite everything wrong about her existence. It transformed her completely beneath the weak winter sunlight filtering through the broken windows, enough that for one impossible second Nat could almost picture who she must have been before the world died.

There were canines showing too. Sharp. Noticeably too sharp. That should have terrified Nat instantly. It did not.

Instead she just looked at her. Really looked.

At the way the smile softened the harshness of the scars crossing Lottie’s face. At the pale curls falling around her shoulders. At the flicker of warmth somehow surviving inside those impossible dead eyes whenever they settled on her. Nat stood there completely still beside the shattered jewelry display while the cold abandoned store faded quietly around them, and for once she did not immediately drag her gaze away from something frightening.

She held the moment instead.

Until eventually Lottie seemed to notice how long Nat had been staring.

The smile faltered slightly afterward, not disappearing entirely but turning smaller and suddenly shy while she looked aside first. Then without another word she turned and wandered deeper into the store pretending to search through old shelves again, though Nat caught the way her shoulders shifted faintly like shyness still lingered there beneath the heavy fur-lined layers.

Nat watched her go for several seconds longer than necessary before finally exhaling softly to herself.

Yeah.

She was definitely completely fucked now.

~

Things were great somehow. Or at least as great as things could realistically become at the end of the world while traveling across a dying country beside an infected woman who should technically be trying to eat her alive.

But genuinely, against all logic and survival instinct and common fucking sense, Nat found herself settling into it. Into them. The endless road west no longer felt quite so empty anymore once another pair of footsteps existed beside hers consistently. Days still dragged long and cold beneath gray skies, and hunger still came and went in ugly waves depending on what they managed to scavenge or hunt, but something softer had started weaving itself carefully through the cracks of survival now.

Companionship maybe.

As terrifying as that word sounded in her head.

They kept heading west together because neither of them really had anywhere else to go. Sometimes they stopped in abandoned towns for days if supplies looked promising enough. Sometimes they walked endlessly from sunrise to nightfall without speaking, boots crunching side by side across dead highways while wind howled through empty fields around them. And eventually, somewhere between ruined gas stations and collapsing suburbs, they discovered running together too.

That happened in one town after accidentally attracting a small group of infected while scavenging an old pharmacy. Nat remembered bursting out through the back door clutching half a backpack full of supplies while snarls erupted behind her through shattered aisles, immediately expecting the usual adrenaline-filled sprint for survival. But then Lottie had appeared beside her out of nowhere, long strides effortlessly matching Nat’s desperate pace while the two of them tore together through dead streets beneath flickering traffic lights.

And somehow Nat ended up laughing.

Actually laughing breathlessly while jumping over abandoned bicycles and overturned trash cans with infected trailing uselessly behind them. Lottie had looked toward her at one point during the sprint too, curls flying wildly behind her while that sharp-toothed grin flashed briefly across her face again. It felt insane. It probably was insane.

Still, Nat remembered the sound of their footsteps echoing together through empty streets long afterward.

Now winter lingered close enough to taste in the air.

Cold mornings settled frost across roadsides and dead grass while Nat’s ankle stubbornly refused to heal correctly no matter how long she ignored it. The constant ache had started spreading higher lately too, and every few days another cough scratched painfully at the back of her throat just enough to make her paranoid. She needed medicine. Painkillers. Antibiotics maybe. Anything useful really. Winter killed people fast even without infected involved, and Nat preferred preparation over freezing to death from some random untreated infection because she happened to be too stubborn to rest properly.

That was how they found themselves crouched at the edge of a forest overlooking a secluded ranch glowing warmly in the distance beneath the darkening evening sky.

Fresh footprints cut through the mud leading toward the property. Human ones. Recent. Lights burned inside several windows too, soft yellow spilling against snow-dusted ground while smoke drifted lazily upward from a chimney. People definitely lived there.

Nat crouched lower behind the trees while studying the place carefully. Beside her, Lottie remained silent and alert beneath the shadows of the forest.

They made it as far as the edge of the clearing before Nat finally stopped moving altogether. Instinctively, without even really thinking about it anymore, she reached one hand outward until her palm pressed flat against Lottie’s chest to halt her too.

Honestly, Nat had absolutely no clue when she started doing things like that.

Touching Lottie had simply… happened more and more over the weeks. Small things at first. Brushing shoulders while walking. Fingers grabbing sleeves to pull her attention somewhere. Hands briefly resting against her arm during conversations. Somewhere along the road it stopped feeling unnatural.

“You can’t come with me,” Nat whispered while crouching beside her in the cold underbrush. “Stay here, okay?”

Immediately Lottie made that particular little frown she always wore whenever she disagreed with one of Nat’s plans but lacked the ability to verbally complain about it. Her brows pulled together while those white eyes fixed stubbornly on Nat’s face with obvious disapproval.

Nat rolled her eyes softly.

“Look,” she muttered, leaning closer automatically to keep her voice low, “I gotta stay quiet, alright? We do not want bullets flying or some useless fight starting because somebody spots a seven-foot-tall zombie cryptid wandering through their yard.”

Lottie’s expression flattened immediately.

“We need discretion,” Nat continued despite the faint smile threatening at the corners of her mouth now. “I’m gonna pray there’s medicine in there, and you are gonna stay here and look pretty.”

The second the words left her mouth, she watched the cold flush across Lottie’s face deepen noticeably into something else entirely.

And immediately afterward Nat felt heat rise into her own cheeks too.

“Don’t be weird,” she whispered quickly, though the hand resting against Lottie’s chest never actually moved away. 

“If I’m not back in ten minutes,” Nat continued more quietly now, eyes locked onto those impossible white ones, “or if there’s movement in there, then you can come in, alright?”

Lottie still looked unconvinced. But after a long tense second, she finally nodded once.

And honestly, Nat knew this should not feel like a big deal. She had infiltrated places alone hundreds of times before. Sneaking into occupied buildings became second nature during the apocalypse. Usually it was easier alone too, smaller target, less noise, fewer complications.

Still. Somehow after weeks spent with Lottie constantly somewhere near her shadow, the idea of separating even briefly now left this weird tightness twisting low in her stomach that she aggressively tried not to examine too closely.

It was ridiculous. She would be fine.

Probably.

She began slipping forward through the frozen landscape carefully after that, boots sinking softly into fresh snow while cold air clawed at her lungs with every measured breath. Before fully leaving the tree line though, Nat glanced back one last time toward Lottie hidden among the dark woods behind her just to make sure she had actually listened for once.

She had. Lottie remained crouched exactly where Nat left her, tall silhouette half-swallowed by shadows and falling snow while those pale eyes stayed fixed stubbornly on her from between the trees.

The sight twisted something annoyingly soft in Nat’s chest again.

“Good girl,” she teased quietly under her breath before turning away.

Immediately she caught the faint flustered shift in Lottie’s expression even from the distance, the infected woman freezing visibly for a second like the words physically hit her somewhere unprotected. Nat smirked faintly to herself afterward before the expression vanished just as quickly.

Because the second her boots pressed fully into the open snowfield leading toward the ranch, every trace of softness disappeared from her face entirely. Survival swallowed her whole again in an instant. Her posture lowered automatically, shoulders relaxing into practiced stealth while focus sharpened behind her eyes until she almost stopped looking human herself beneath the dark winter sky.

This was familiar territory. Sneaking through danger. Breathing carefully while death waited one wrong step away.

Nat moved through the world quietly enough to resemble another shadow crossing the snow, each foot placed deliberately to avoid unnecessary crunching while freezing wind carried the scent of smoke and wet wood from the ranch ahead. Snow had started falling properly now too, thick quiet flakes drifting steadily from the sky overhead and settling across her jacket and hair. Honestly the weather helped more than it hurt. The storm softened visibility around the property and muffled smaller sounds beneath the constant whisper of snowfall. If she stayed careful enough, the patrols would never notice her.

She paused behind an overturned cart abandoned near the edge of the property after spotting movement ahead. A patrol. Nat crouched lower immediately, one gloved hand braced against the frozen wood while she watched a figure carrying a lantern slowly pass across the ranch grounds. The warm orange glow swayed softly through the snowstorm, illuminating patches of muddy footprints and fencing before disappearing again into darkness. Voices drifted faintly through the cold too. Multiple voices. More than she liked.

Her jaw tightened slightly. There were too many people awake for this hour. Normally places like this settled down hard after dark because staying visible too long attracted problems, infected or otherwise. But the ranch still buzzed quietly with activity beneath the snowfall. Patrols outside. Light spilling from several windows. Occasional shadows moving behind curtains. Nat listened carefully while counting footsteps and voices the way survival taught her to years ago.

At least ten people. Maybe twelve. Possibly more if some were sleeping already inside.

Too many for comfort, but still manageable if she avoided being seen altogether. Because at the end of the day Nat did not need to fight anybody here. She just needed medicine. Maybe canned food if she got lucky. Then she could disappear back into the storm before anyone realized someone slipped through their defenses.

Easy. Or as easy as anything got anymore.

So she forced herself calmer. Slower. Lighter. Like a feather brushing across grass. Or whatever poetic bullshit people used to say before the world ended.

When the lantern-carrying patrol finally moved farther down along the property line, Nat slipped silently from behind the overturned cart and crossed the open stretch behind him. Snow gathered quickly along her shoulders and hair now while the ranch loomed closer with every careful step, old wooden walls glowing warmly against the freezing darkness surrounding them.

And then finally she could hear the voices properly. Fragments at first drifting through cracked windows and open doorways while she pressed herself low beside the side of a storage shed near the main building.

“…told you it was a bust, we never should’ve—”

“…after what happened in Portland…”

“…I don’t care, this is dangerous…”

“…yeah but think of all the food, supplies…”

“…Seattle is still dangerous…”

Nat froze instinctively at the last word.

Seattle.

The name lingered strangely in the air while snow hissed softly around the buildings. She stayed crouched beside the wall listening harder now, careful not to let even her breathing carry too loudly. The voices sounded tense. Exhausted. Like people arguing after surviving something ugly together.

Portland. Seattle. West coast names. Which meant she was getting closer. Closer to the ocean she spent years chasing across the corpse of America. Closer to whatever future waited there for her.

Or for them now, maybe.

The thought appeared suddenly and unexpectedly enough that Nat almost frowned at herself in irritation before pushing it aside completely. No time for that right now.

Right now she just needed to get inside without dying.

She continued moving afterward, circling carefully around the outer wall of the ranch while snow thickened harder around her with every passing minute. The storm had started turning ugly now, wind dragging white sheets across the property until buildings blurred softly at the edges beneath the dark sky. Nat should have stayed fully focused on that. On the patrols. On entrances and exits and shadows and escape routes.

Instead her thoughts kept spiraling uselessly around the fragments of conversation she overheard. Portland. Seattle. West coast names whispering through the storm like ghosts pulling her farther forward. For years now she had chased that direction without truly knowing why beyond simple stubbornness and some vague childhood dream of seeing the ocean from the other side of the country. But hearing those places spoken aloud suddenly made it feel real again somehow. Close enough to touch maybe.

Too close for her brain to stay properly quiet about it. And distraction got people killed.

It happened fast too. One tiny mistake. One careless turn around the corner of the building while her mind still swam somewhere miles away with thoughts of coastlines and escape and whether Lottie would even understand what an ocean looked like now.

Then suddenly there was someone directly in front of her. A man.

For one horrible suspended second they simply stared at each other. Nat saw the recognition forming immediately in his face too. Shock first. Then confusion. Then the sharp intake of breath right before shouting.

Death. Not hers. She refused.

Her body moved before thought caught up. Pure instinct exploded through her limbs while panic slammed violently against her ribs hard enough to stop her heart entirely for a second. Her breath caught somewhere painfully behind her throat as she lunged forward, hands shooting upward desperately like she was trying to catch something falling through the air before it shattered. Maybe herself.

One hand clamped violently over the man’s mouth before sound escaped him while her other arm wrapped beneath his neck hard enough to wrench him backward against her chest. The impact slammed both of them into the wooden wall beside the building with a muffled crack swallowed thankfully beneath the growing roar of the snowstorm.

The man struggled instantly. Hard.

Nat felt panic and adrenaline exploding through his body while he twisted violently in her grip, boots scraping uselessly through snow as muffled screams vibrated desperately against her palm. He clawed at her arm, at her jacket, fingers digging painfully into fabric while she held him tighter and tighter with every ounce of strength exhaustion still left inside her body.

No noise.

Please no noise.

Snow hurled itself sideways across her face while wind howled louder around the ranch, almost violent now. Nat squeezed her jaw painfully tight as the man fought against her, her own breath shaking harder with every passing second while she forced his head backward against her shoulder. Her arm crushed tighter beneath his throat instinctively. Harder. Harder still.

The struggling weakened. Then slowed. Then stopped. And suddenly the only thing left moving was the storm itself.

Nat stayed frozen there several agonizing seconds longer anyway, holding onto the dead weight in her arms while her heartbeat pounded sickeningly inside her skull. The man hung limp against her finally, snow gathering silently across his shoulders and hair.

Quiet. Too quiet. Eventually she let go. The body collapsed heavily into the snow at her feet with a dull thud, face disappearing sideways into white powder almost peacefully. Nat stared down at him for half a second afterward, chest rising sharply beneath shallow breaths while guilt and survival tangled together so tightly inside her that she no longer knew where one ended and the other began.

She needed to move faster. No time.

No fucking time.

Swallowing hard, Nat forced herself onward along the wall until she found a gap between two old warped wooden planks wide enough to peer through. Light spilled weakly from inside the building beyond.

People. Several. Her eyes adjusted quickly while she scanned the room. Some kind of stable maybe. One man already asleep slumped awkwardly beside a workbench near the far wall. Two others sitting near a fire muttering quietly while shadows flickered orange across exhausted faces. Another stood farther back near a window watching the storm outside absentmindedly.

Too many.

But then Nat spotted it.

Supplies.

Near the rear wall almost directly beside where she crouched outside sat several backpacks and stacked boxes shoved carelessly together beneath hanging tools and blankets. Medicine maybe. Food definitely. Enough to matter.

Her pulse jumped immediately. That had to be it.

Carefully she squeezed herself sideways between the weakened wooden planks, body slipping slowly into the dark interior space while every creak of wood beneath the storm made her stomach tighten painfully. She barely breathed while lowering herself fully inside.

Then stopped dead.

A horse stood directly beside her. Attached inside one of the stable boxes only a few feet away, a large body half-covered by blankets while it slept quietly in the dim light. The animal shifted slightly at her sudden presence, warm breath drifting softly into the cold air.

Nat froze completely. Because horses made noise. And if that thing woke up startled, she was absolutely fucked.

She waited. Completely motionless beside the sleeping horse while cold air and hay dust settled around her in the dim stable. Every muscle in her body locked painfully tight beneath layers of tension as she watched the people inside through narrow gaps in the wooden dividers separating the stalls. The storm outside helped cover smaller sounds, but not enough for recklessness. One wrong movement in here and the entire ranch would come down on her before she ever reached the supplies.

So she waited longer. Waited until the men by the fire turned their attention fully back toward their conversation. Waited until the figure near the window leaned farther outward to stare into the storm instead. Waited until the exhausted man at the workbench shifted in his sleep with a muttered curse that briefly distracted everyone nearby.

Then finally Nat moved. Fast. Quiet. She slipped from one stall to the next like another shadow threading itself through the stable interior, boots barely brushing the ground while snowmelt dripped softly from her clothes onto the packed dirt floor. Her pulse hammered violently inside her throat now. Not fear exactly. Something sharper. The unbearable awareness that every second mattered.

The supplies had been shoved inside another stall farther down the row, half-open enough for her to see clearly now that she was closer. Blankets. Packs. Boxes stacked carelessly together beside saddles and tools. Close enough to search if she stayed low and quick about it. Nat crouched immediately beside them, letting out the faintest strained breath through her nose. A tiny puff of white fog escaped into the freezing air before disappearing instantly.

Then she started digging. Fast hands moving through piles of useless junk while frustration tightened steadily behind her ribs. Clothes. Torn gloves. Broken flashlights. Random trash people carried because the apocalypse turned everyone into desperate hoarders terrified of throwing anything away.

More junk. More fucking junk.

A protein bar.

She kept searching harder afterward, fingers moving almost violently through bags and boxes now while every second stretched tighter around her throat. Nothing useful. Nothing worth risking her life for. Some bullets—wrong caliber. A hunting knife she did not need. Batteries too corroded to matter. More blankets. More garbage.

Then finally—Medicine.

Nat nearly swore aloud from relief.

Not a miracle stash exactly, but enough. A few bottles. Painkillers. Antibiotics maybe. Bandages too. Not a jackpot, but close enough that her chest physically loosened for the first time in days at the sight of it. Good enough that she immediately shoved everything she could grab into her backpack without even checking labels properly. Anything medical mattered now.

And then voices exploded outside.

“…they killed Kenny!”

Nat froze instantly.

“They fucking killed him! Someone’s here!”

Everything changed all at once afterward. The stable erupted into sudden movement and noise while adrenaline slammed violently through Nat’s body hard enough to make her dizzy. Men were shouting now. Chairs scraping. Boots pounding across wooden floors. The horses shifted nervously in their stalls as panic rippled outward through the ranch.

Nat moved immediately, pressing herself hard against the inner wall of the stall while gripping her backpack tightly against her chest.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck.

She was trapped.

She could already hear footsteps outside rushing closer through the snowstorm, multiple voices shouting over each other now while lantern light flickered wildly across cracks between the wooden boards. 

Nat’s breathing turned shallow automatically while survival instinct screamed through every nerve in her body. Her hand reached immediately for the rifle slung across her shoulder. Fingers wrapped tightly around it until her knuckles ached. Cold metal. Familiar weight.

Comfort and death all at once.

She tightened her grip harder while listening to the footsteps closing in fast outside the stable doors. One person maybe. Maybe more.

Either way, if they stepped inside and spotted her, stealth was over. After that it became shooting and running and praying she made it back to the forest alive before the entire ranch filled her full of holes.

And somewhere out there beyond the storm and trees, Lottie was waiting.

The thought hit Nat suddenly and strangely hard. Not because she needed help. She absolutely did not need help. But because for the first time in a very long while, the idea of dying somewhere alone in the dark no longer felt inevitable anymore. The stable door creaked violently somewhere nearby.

Nat raised the rifle slowly into position.

The stall door burst open hard enough for cold wind and snow to swirl violently inside alongside the figure entering. Nat reacted before thought even caught up with her body.

There was no time to hesitate, no space left for morality or doubt or careful planning, only instinct honed sharp through years of surviving one disaster after another. Before the person could fully step inside, before they could turn their head enough to spot the shape of her hiding in the stall, Nat fired.

The rifle exploded through the stable with a deafening crack. The shot hit square through the person’s back, the force jerking their body violently forward while the bullet tore clean through chest and flesh and kept going straight into the wooden wall beyond. Blood sprayed hot and dark across the backpacks stacked nearby, drenching fabric instantly while the body collapsed face-first into the supplies with a horrible heavy sound.

Dead immediately. Nat barely even registered the face.

Silence followed after the gunshot.

A long horrible stretched silence where even the storm outside seemed to pause for half a heartbeat. Smoke curled faintly from the rifle barrel while Nat stood frozen inside the stall, pulse roaring so loudly in her ears it almost drowned everything else out.

Then— “Did you find it, Mary?”

The voice came from dangerously close. Too close. Right outside the stall.

Nat moved entirely on instinct again. She lunged outward from cover before the person could react, rifle already raised as her shoulder slammed hard against the wooden divider. The man turning toward her barely had time for his eyes to widen before she pulled the trigger again.

Another crack split through the stable. The bullet hit directly between his eyes. His body dropped immediately onto its knees first like strings had been cut loose inside him, then folded forward into the dirt and hay without another sound.

And behind him stood two more people. Wide-eyed. Frozen. For one suspended second everybody simply stared at each other through drifting gun smoke and lantern light.

Then one of them screamed: “We found it! In the stable!”

Weapons came up instantly afterward. Nat threw herself sideways just as gunfire erupted.

Bullets ripped violently through the stall she had occupied seconds earlier, wood exploding apart around her in showers of splinters while horses screamed in panic somewhere deeper inside the stable. The entire building descended into chaos instantly. More shouting outside. More boots running through snow. Lantern light flashing wildly through gaps in the walls.

Nat hit the ground hard inside the next stall before scrambling immediately back onto her feet again. No time. No cover. They were too many and she was already cornered. So she ran.

Shots tore through the stable behind her while she shoved herself toward the rear wall searching desperately for escape, splintered wood and debris flying past her face every time another bullet punched through nearby. Her backpack slammed painfully against her shoulders as she moved. Horses kicked and panicked around her now, adding more noise and confusion into the madness.

Then finally— the hole.

The gap she squeezed through earlier between the weakened planks. Nat hurled herself toward it without slowing down, practically diving through the narrow opening just as another bullet shattered against the wall inches above her head.

And suddenly the storm swallowed her whole again.

The snow outside had turned violent while she was inside. Absolutely blinding now. Wind screamed across the ranch hard enough to steal breath straight from her lungs while thick snow whipped sideways through the darkness until she could barely see more than a few feet ahead. The cold hit her face like knives immediately.

For one terrible second she hesitated. The ranch behind her had become pure chaos now. Voices shouting. Lanterns moving wildly through the storm. Gunfire cracking dangerously close. Somewhere people were already spilling out into the snow looking for her.

Then more bullets ripped through the white darkness nearby. Too close. Nat flinched violently before forcing herself forward at last, letting the storm consume her entirely as she staggered deeper into the snow-covered night.

Every step felt heavier now. Snow dragged at her legs while freezing wind clawed at her jacket and hair, trying to push her backward toward the ranch again. She could barely hear anything properly anymore beneath the storm except distant shouting and occasional gunshots echoing somewhere behind her.

And somewhere ahead in the white frozen void—

Lottie.

Please still be there.

Her mind kept snagging stupidly on Lottie even while she ran for her life through the storm. On her name. On the shape of her smile. On the almost-color Nat thought she saw buried deep beneath those dead white eyes sometimes.

The thoughts tangled uselessly through her head while snow and adrenaline blurred everything together around her. Her breathing came ragged now, uneven from exhaustion and panic and cold slicing straight through her lungs. Visibility collapsed harder with every passing second too until the entire world became nothing but violent white chaos swallowing roads and trees alike.

At first Nat thought the storm itself was making her vision blur that badly. But no. Something else was wrong. Because she suddenly realized she could barely hear anything anymore either. The gunshots behind her sounded distant now, muffled beneath the pounding of blood through her skull. The snowstorm seemed to close tighter and tighter around her until the world narrowed into disconnected fragments of movement and freezing air and instinct dragging her forward.

Which was why she never registered the body behind her until it slammed into her full force.

Nat hit the ground violently.

Snow exploded upward around her while pain ripped through her already ruined ankle the second her body crashed sideways into the frozen earth. The rifle tore loose from her grip somewhere into the darkness while another body landed hard on top of her immediately after.

“You fucking slut—”

The words came through clenched teeth right beside her face.

Nat barely had enough time to twist partly onto her back before she finally saw him. A man. Young maybe. Or maybe exhaustion and rage simply hollowed him out into something older. His eyes were bloodshot wide with fury while snow gathered rapidly across his hair and shoulders. Anger flared through every sharp breath ripping from his nostrils while one gloved hand pinned her shoulder brutally against the ground.

And against her throat— A knife.

Cold metal pressing hard enough to bite into skin already numbed by winter. Death was no longer whispering now. It screamed directly into her face through the storm. Nat froze completely beneath him. Not because she wanted to. Because instinct simply failed her all at once. Her body exhausted. Her lungs burning. Her ankle useless beneath the weight pinning her down. She could smell blood on him already too, sharp and metallic beneath the snow and cold air.

This was it.

After everything.

After crossing the entire fucking country. After surviving infected and starvation and violent people and winter and loneliness and herself— this would be how it ended. Some stranger kneeling over her in the snow with a knife at her throat while the storm buried both their bodies before morning.

And unbelievably, absurdly, her final thought was Lottie.

Still waiting somewhere back near the forest. Still believing Nat would return. Nat never made it back to her. The realization hit harder than the knife somehow.

Then suddenly—

Nothing.

The pressure vanished from her throat instantly.

One second death leaned over her breathing hot rage into her face and the next there was only snow whipping violently across her vision again. The weight disappeared. The knife disappeared. Everything happened too fast for her brain to properly follow.

A breath away from dying— and suddenly she was free.

Nat scrambled backward immediately on pure survival instinct, hands clawing desperately through snow while she shoved herself upright enough to see what happened. Her lungs dragged ragged panicked breaths into her chest while the storm screamed around her.

And then she saw her.

Lottie.

On top of the man. Eating him alive. The sight rooted Nat completely in place.

Lottie tore into him with horrifying violent force while the man screamed beneath her, twisting uselessly against the impossible strength pinning him into the snow. This was no awkward shy woman smiling over campfires anymore. This was an infected. Truly infected. Savage and starving and monstrous in the rawest possible way.

She devoured him exactly the way infected were supposed to.

Teeth ripping flesh apart in brutal jerking motions while blood sprayed black across the snowstorm around them. Nat could hear skin tearing. Hear wet choking screams breaking apart into gargled nothing beneath Lottie’s hands. She tore into his throat first, then deeper, shredding through flesh and veins while hot blood drenched her face and clothes in thick dark streaks.

The snow beneath them turned black-red almost instantly.

Nat could see bone already. White splinters jutting through ruined meat while blood and skin hung obscenely from Lottie’s mouth each time she pulled away to bite again. The man’s movements weakened horribly fast beneath her until eventually he stopped moving altogether except for occasional dying spasms disappearing beneath the storm.

It was terrible. Absolutely terrible. And the worst part —the truly horrifying part— was that Nat was not scared.

Not really.

Against all logic and instinct and common human sense, terror never fully came. She watched the brutality unfolding in front of her, watched blood paint Lottie’s face and sharp teeth while the storm swallowed the screams, and somewhere beneath the shock and horror there was only one overwhelming feeling crushing through Nat’s chest instead: Relief.

Lottie came for her.

Her heartbeat came back all at once afterward. Violently. Nat could hear it hammering inside her ears so loudly it almost drowned out the storm itself, every pulse crashing through her chest hard enough to hurt while adrenaline flooded back into limbs that moments ago felt completely frozen beneath death. But strangely, alongside the panic came warmth too. Real warmth spreading shakily through her body despite the snow and blood and freezing wind tearing around them.

Because she was alive. Lottie had saved her. The realization sat huge and terrifying inside her ribs while she stared at the infected woman crouched over the corpse.

Then Lottie looked back at her. And the expression on her face made Nat’s breath catch all over again.

She looked… scared.

Not feral. Not hungry anymore. Scared.

Blood covered her mouth and hands and chin in horrible dark streaks while pieces of torn flesh still clung obscenely to her clothes, yet beneath all of that there was unmistakable fear flickering across her features the second her eyes met Nat’s. Fear of her. Fear of what Nat must think now after finally seeing the monster underneath everything else.

The sight twisted painfully through Nat’s chest before she could stop it.

Then reality slammed back all at once. Voices. Shouting through the storm. Lights cutting wildly through the snow somewhere behind them while more gunshots cracked across the darkness. The ranch had not disappeared just because Nat nearly died in front of it. If anything, the chaos was getting closer.

Oh.

So this still was not the end.

Nat forced herself upright immediately despite the screaming protest from her ankle and lungs. The world tilted dangerously for half a second while exhaustion clawed at her vision again, but she pushed through it hard enough to stumble forward anyway. Lottie still had not moved from atop the corpse, frozen there beneath the storm like she genuinely expected Nat to recoil or run from her now.

Instead Nat grabbed her hand. Cold. Blood-slick. Trembling slightly beneath her fingers.

And then they ran.

Together.

They crashed into the woods blindly while the storm swallowed them whole, branches whipping against their faces and clothes as snow dragged heavily at every desperate step. Behind them voices echoed faintly through the darkness while flashlight beams cut weakly between trees somewhere too close for comfort.

So they kept running.

Nat’s lungs burned raw almost immediately. Her injured ankle threatened to collapse beneath her every few steps while snow soaked through her boots until her feet felt numb and useless. Beside her Lottie moved faster, stronger, practically dragging Nat forward at times when exhaustion made her stumble too hard. Their hands stayed locked together the entire time.

Neither of them let go.

Hours seemed to blur together afterward beneath endless darkness and storm. The ranch disappeared eventually. The voices too. Gunshots faded into nothing until the only sounds left were ragged breathing and wind tearing through dead trees overhead. Still they kept moving long after immediate danger vanished because stopping felt impossible now. Like if they slowed down even once, everything chasing them might finally catch up.

Eventually pain forced the decision for them.

Nat nearly collapsed outright while climbing over a frozen embankment somewhere deep in the woods, vision swimming badly enough that Lottie had to physically catch her before she hit the ground. After that they found shelter almost by accident: a shallow cave hidden between jagged rocks half-covered by snow and dead branches.

The moment they stumbled inside, Nat finally let go of Lottie’s hand.

Only because her legs completely gave out beneath her.

She crashed heavily against the cave floor with a strained groan while her backpack slipped from her shoulders beside her. Every inch of her body screamed now. Her ankle throbbed violently. Her chest hurt from cold air and running. Her head spun so badly she had to squeeze her eyes shut for several long seconds just to stop the world from tilting sideways.

Still breathing. Still alive somehow.

Eventually survival instinct dragged her upright enough to start a fire near the cave entrance. It took longer than usual because her hands would not stop shaking properly, but finally weak flames flickered alive against the darkness, casting trembling orange light across stone walls and scattered supplies. Warmth returned slowly after that.

Nat sat there breathing hard beside the fire for a while before finally managing a rough ragged: “…Thanks.”

The word felt too small for what happened out there in the snow. Then she looked up properly.

And realized Lottie was gone. Not entirely. Just farther back inside the cave where the firelight barely reached. She sat turned away from Nat near the deeper shadows, knees drawn tightly against her chest while curls fell messily around blood-covered shoulders. Completely silent again. Completely still. Like she was hiding.

She almost found it cute.

Which honestly felt insane considering the amount of blood still covering Lottie’s mouth and hands somewhere beneath the shadows of the cave.

But there was something strangely endearing in the contrast of her, in the way someone so tall and broad and visibly dangerous could still somehow curl into herself small enough to resemble a frightened animal hiding from punishment. Lottie looked capable of ripping people apart with her bare hands because she literally was, Nat had just seen it happen in the snow not even an hour ago, and yet now she sat folded inward against the stone wall with her knees pulled tightly to her chest like she wished she could disappear completely into the darkness before Nat decided to fear her after all.

Nat understood why she acted that way too. A lot had happened in very little time.

The ranch. The blood. The killing. The fact Nat finally saw exactly what Lottie truly was beneath all the awkward smiles and flower offerings and soft looks across campfires. And beyond even that, there was… them.

Them still felt painfully new. Fragile. Undefined.

Something delicate growing quietly between two ruined people at the end of the world without either of them really knowing what to call it yet. Nat did not even dare name most of it inside her own head because the feelings sitting there frightened her more than infected ever had. They were too warm. Too deep already. Too dangerously close to becoming something permanent.

Still, despite all the terror tangled inside her chest lately, there were also things Nat knew with absolute certainty now. 

One of them sat shivering in the shadows a few feet away pretending not to be hurt.

“Come here, Lottie,” Nat called softly before coughing harshly afterward, her throat scraped raw from cold air and smoke and running.

Lottie did not move. She stayed exactly where she was with her back turned toward the firelight, shoulders rigid beneath bloodstained layers while silence filled the cave again.

Nat sighed quietly through her nose. Then forced herself back onto her feet despite how violently every muscle protested the effort. Pain immediately flared through her ankle hard enough to make her wince, but she ignored it stubbornly while limping slowly deeper into the cave instead. The fire crackled faintly behind her while darkness thickened colder around the stone walls.

She stopped directly behind Lottie afterward. Only for a second though. Not because she hesitated exactly. More because this still felt unfamiliar somehow. Nat was not used to answering situations like this with softness. She understood anger. Distance. Running away before things mattered too much. But comfort? Reaching toward someone instead of retreating from them? That still sat awkwardly inside her bones like clothes that did not quite fit yet.

Still.

She knew what she wanted to do.

So she did it anyway.

Nat slowly crouched down behind Lottie before carefully wrapping both arms around her from behind, pressing herself close enough that her chest rested fully against the other woman’s back while her face tucked instinctively against the soft mess of curls falling around her shoulders.

And god— her hair really was soft.

Incredibly soft actually, despite the snow and blood and endless travel. Nat probably should not have been surprised anymore after weeks spent noticing every ridiculous little detail about her, but still the feeling made something ache warmly beneath her ribs.

At first Lottie flinched hard beneath the contact. Nat felt it immediately, the brief instinctive tension rushing through her body like she expected rejection instead of touch. But then slowly, little by little, the stiffness melted away beneath Nat’s arms until her shoulders loosened again.

And then Nat felt it. A trembling hand carefully settling over her own. Small. Hesitant. Like she still could not fully believe this was real.

“I don’t care,” Nat whispered finally into her hair, eyes slipping closed almost automatically. “You do not scare me, Lottie.”

For a moment there was only silence afterward. Then Nat heard it. A rough uneven breath catching somewhere deep in Lottie’s chest. Almost like a suppressed sob except quieter, stranger, the sound rusty from disuse after so long spent unable to properly speak or cry or maybe even breathe correctly anymore.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Nat continued softly, tightening her arms slightly around her waist while exhaustion and relief settled heavy through her bones all at once. “What I saw out there.”

And it was true. Terrifyingly true.

Because Nat had watched Lottie tear someone apart with her teeth in the snowstorm like an animal, had seen blood and bone and hunger painted across her body in the most horrifying way imaginable, and somehow none of it erased the girl who carried flowers to her while she slept. None of it erased the shy smiles or awkward shrugs or careful hands offering food beside campfires.

Lottie was both things.

And Nat wanted all of her anyway.

So she stayed there holding her in the darkness while the storm howled faintly outside the cave entrance and the fire crackled softly somewhere behind them. She let herself sink fully into the contact too, into the strange comfort of Lottie’s body pressed close against hers. Maybe her skin stayed cold to the touch because of whatever infection lived inside her veins now, but that did not stop warmth from spreading violently through Nat every time they touched. Goosebumps still rose across her arms. Her stomach still twisted strangely whenever Lottie looked at her too long.

Dead or not, Lottie still knew exactly how to make Nat feel warm.

And Nat had started becoming greedy about it too. About the warmth. About the closeness.

She liked pretending it only happened because winter had finally started sinking its teeth properly into the world around them, because nights had become colder and longer and cruel enough that anybody would naturally cling to another body for comfort. That sounded easier. Safer. Less terrifying than admitting the truth sitting deeper beneath her ribs every time Lottie touched her.

Because Nat wanted it now. Constantly. The warmth of her beside campfires. The weight of her presence following behind her through empty roads. The quiet little glances they exchanged when the world felt less unbearable for a moment. She wanted all of it with a frightening intensity that kept growing bigger the more time passed.

And maybe that was dangerous.

Maybe letting herself need someone this badly at the end of the world was the dumbest possible thing she could do.

But right now, crouched there in the dark with her arms wrapped around Lottie’s waist while exhaustion and fear still trembled violently through her body after almost dying in the snow, Nat could not stop herself anymore.

So despite the hesitation clawing at her throat, she asked for it anyway. Demanded it maybe. Because lately this had become the thing she craved most without fully understanding why.

“Hug me,” she whispered shakily against Lottie’s hair, voice rough and trembling from cold and emotion and exhaustion alike. “Hug me back, Lottie.”

For a second nothing happened.

Then Nat felt movement beneath her hands. A tiny shift first. Almost startled. She could physically feel Lottie’s stomach tighten sharply beneath layers of fabric and cold skin while surprise rippled through her body at the request. Like she genuinely had not considered Nat might want something from her too beyond survival and company and food brought silently through the woods.

It did not last long though. Because slowly Lottie began turning inside Nat’s arms. Nat loosened her hold enough to let her move properly but never fully let go, hands lingering instinctively against her waist while the taller woman carefully twisted around to face her instead.

And finally Lottie’s face came fully into view again beneath the firelight. Nat’s breath caught softly.

Because she saw it again.

That color.

Not fully. Never fully. But enough. The bonfire flickered weakly through the cave, lighting only parts of Lottie’s bloodstained face at a time while shadows swallowed the rest, and there in those brief moments Nat could swear she saw warmth buried deep beneath the endless white of her eyes. Something human still lingering stubbornly underneath the infection.

Brown.

Nat suddenly knew it with absolute certainty despite having no proof whatsoever.

Lottie used to have brown eyes.

She could feel it somehow. The certainty settled instinctively inside her chest the moment she looked at her properly. Brown fit her. Brown fit the softness hidden beneath all that terrifying strength. Brown fit her smiles and the way she blushed and the strange quiet tenderness always lingering around her movements whenever she looked at Nat.

She must have had the prettiest eyes in the world once.

Maybe she still did.

Nat’s hands moved before she consciously decided to touch her.

One palm came up slowly to cup Lottie’s cheek while the other followed instinctively after, fingers spreading carefully along cold skin streaked with drying blood. Lottie froze beneath the touch immediately, those almost-brown eyes widening just slightly while Nat gently brushed her thumb beneath one cheekbone.

Blood smeared across her fingertips. Nat carefully wiped some of it away, dragging the pad of her thumb softly through the mess staining Lottie’s face while the fire crackled quietly behind them.

“You’re such a messy eater,” Nat snorted weakly, affection slipping embarrassingly easily into her voice despite herself.

Lottie immediately glanced away afterward. Shy. Actually shy.

A flush slowly darkened across her features again while she avoided Nat’s gaze with visible embarrassment, and somehow Nat found that infinitely better to look at than the blood. Better than the violence. Better than the terrifying thing she became out there in the snow.

This suited her face more. Softness did.

And god, Nat liked seeing her like that way too much.

Lottie hid her face carefully against the crook of Nat’s neck afterward, hesitant at first like she still expected rejection somewhere at the end of every touch, every glance, every fragile moment between them. The movement felt almost unbearably gentle coming from someone capable of such terrifying violence, her forehead brushing awkwardly against Nat’s shoulder before finally settling there fully as if drawn by instinct stronger than fear.

Nat immediately brought one hand to the back of her head in response, fingers threading softly through tangled curls still damp from snow and streaked faintly with dried blood. She guided her closer without even thinking about it, encouraging the contact instead of retreating from it, holding her there against her neck while Lottie slowly melted into the embrace little by little beneath her hands.

And there, in the darkness of the cave, they stayed wrapped around each other. In the darkness of the cave, in the glow of the bonfire, in the bite of winter, in the warmth of one another.

Nat could feel the strange contradiction of her everywhere.

The unnatural coldness lingering against her skin where infection had claimed her body long ago. The terrifying strength hidden beneath tired limbs now curled carefully around Nat’s waist. The faint trembling still running through her every once in a while as if she could not fully believe she was allowed this closeness at all.

Nat buried her face briefly into Lottie’s hair and closed her eyes.

She did not care anymore.

About infected or human or what rules the world used to have before everything collapsed into blood and snow and survival. She did not care what scientists would call Lottie or what terrified survivors with rifles would do if they saw them together sitting like this beside a fire. None of it mattered enough anymore compared to the simple undeniable truth sitting heavily inside Nat’s chest now.

Lottie belonged with her.

Somewhere along the road, somewhere between flowers left beside campfires and shared meals beneath dead skies and hands clasped tightly together while running through storms, Lottie had quietly become hers in the strangest softest way possible. Not possession. Never that. Just… part of her life now. Part of the shape survival had taken.

Part of her team.

And Nat would protect that with everything she had left. They were going west together.

Toward the ocean.

Toward whatever remained waiting at the edge of the world after all this death and winter and ruin finally ended. Nat could picture it suddenly with painful clarity too: grey waves crashing endlessly beneath cold skies while salt filled the air instead of smoke and blood, Lottie standing beside her at the shoreline with that quiet expression she always wore whenever she found something beautiful.

They would make it there somehow.

Nat swore it silently against Lottie’s hair while tightening her arms around her just a little more.

No matter what waited for them between here and the coast, no matter how broken or monstrous or exhausted they both already were, they would find the ocean together.

She was certain of it.