Chapter 1: The Handy Man
The Palisades Manor was a fortress of sculpted privilege, an exotic resort hotel carved into the affluent bedrock of the Upper Hudson Valley, just close enough to New York City to smell the money but far enough away to pretend pollution didn't exist. It was a place where people paid a week's average wage for a single cocktail, and where Nathaniel Hanadaob 'Nate' was as essential, and as ignored, as the rebar holding the foundation together.
Nate was the resort's primary handyman, a trade descriptor that infuriated the general manager but accurately described the breadth of Nate's expertise. He could trace a complex HVAC failure in the Presidential Suite, restore corrupted hotel network code, or patch a weeping pipe in the underground kitchens, all before 9 AM. He was a master of none, but proficient in everything that broke down, which, in a structure built on vanity and cheap contracting, was frequent.
He was a man built like a sturdy oak door, strong, solid, and utterly unremarkable. His face carried the perpetual shadow of someone who saw the worst messes in the cleanest places. His uniform, a gray polo embroidered with the discreet Manor logo, was always clean but always slightly faded compared to the pristine shirts of the front-of-house staff.
A typical day for Nate was a choreography of avoidance. He moved through the gilded hallways like a ghost, his black rubber-soled work boots soundless on the imported marble. Guests, clad in expensive loungewear and oversized sunglasses, looked straight through him, or worse, treated him as an extension of the architecture, something to be inconvenienced by.
This morning was no different. He had already wrestled a rogue disposal in the main dining hall, a job that involved retrieving a diamond earring lost during a particularly drunken brunch and now he was wrestling with the oppressive humidity of the ground-level laundry room, trying to re-calibrate a temperamental industrial dryer that spun clothes but refused to heat.
A shrill crackle erupted from his Motorola radio, taped crudely to the side of his heavy tool belt.
"Maintenance, this is Front Desk, urgent call for 1403. Presidential Suite. They are demanding immediate rectification." The voice of Brenda, the high-strung concierge, was sharp with forced politeness. "They report the master entertainment center is and I quote 'not recognizing the streaming service credentials.'"
Nate sighed, a sound that only he heard under the roar of the dryer. Suite 1403 cost upwards of fifteen thousand dollars a night. A call from 1403 meant dropping everything, regardless of how trivial the actual problem was.
He retrieved his specialized diagnostic kit, a slim aluminum briefcase containing delicate wiring probes and software keys. He knew the problem wouldn't be the streaming service; it would be the proprietary smart panel that governed the suite's lighting, audio, and climate control, now likely suffering from a network handshake issue due to a power flicker three days ago that only Nate had noted.
He took the staff elevator up, emerging on the fourteenth floor, a private section reserved for the resort's most untouchable clientele. The air here was chilled and scented with expensive sandalwood.
He rapped quietly on the dark mahogany door.
The door was yanked open by a man who looked like a magazine cover model that had been genetically modified for maximum aggression. Sun-tanned, immaculate white polo, and a wrist heavy with a watch that could fund Nate's retirement. This was Pierce.
"Finally," Pierce sneered, stepping aside just enough to let Nate squeeze past, but not enough to acknowledge his presence. "Took you long enough. It's impossible to work out with this garbage system not loading my motivational playlist."
The suite was breathtakingly vast, a corner room with panoramic windows offering a dizzying view of the manicured grounds and the distant, hazy skyline of the city. Scattered carelessly across a marble coffee table were hundred-dollar bills, keys to a sports car, and empty bottles of Voss water.
On the cream leather sofa sat the other half of the demanding pair: a woman in her mid-twenties, stunningly attractive, with perfect blonde hair and cheekbones that looked like they were sculpted by a vengeful god. This was Skylar. She was staring at her phone, her expression a mix of profound boredom and irritation.
"Just hurry, please," she said, not looking up, her voice laced with the annoyance of a deity bothered by a minor insect. She punctuated the demand with a heavy theatrical sigh.
The entertainment center was a behemoth, a 120-inch micro-LED screen built into a wall of smoked glass. Nate knelt down immediately, ignoring the couple, his gaze focused intently on the small service panel beneath the screen.
"I'm telling my guy, this place is going downhill," Pierce was saying loudly into his phone, pacing the length of the room. He spoke as if Nate were deaf. "I mean, you pay top-dollar for privacy and amenities, and the basic tech fails. Seriously, what do these people even do all day? It's not rocket science."
Nate accessed the panel. The issue, as predicted, was a corrupted IP addressing scheme in the localized subnet repeater, probably caused by a faulty surge protector. It wasn't simple wiring, but low-level system administration.
He pulled out a compact diagnostic tablet and plugged a fiber cable into the server port. His large, scarred hands, hands that had touched every broken, dirty, and dangerous part of the resort worked with a delicate precision that belied their roughness.
Skylar finally looked up from her phone, not at Nate, but past him, towards Pierce. "Are you done yet? I really need to watch that interview. This whole delay is messing up my schedule."
Pierce walked over and leaned against the wall, crossing his expensive arms. He lowered his voice, in a mocking tone he clearly intended Nate to hear clearly. "Look at him, babe. He probably thinks he's a genius because he knows how to shove a little wire into a port. It's adorable."
Nate felt the familiar tightening in his chest, not anger, but the acceptance of his place. A few years ago he might have had a problem with that, when he was still an OG. He had long left that life. He was now a very different man approaching his thirties. He had long ago understood that his competence was invisible to those who paid others to exist beneath them. He was just the lever, not the mechanism. He didn't offer a defense. He didn't even look up.
Three more lines of code, he calculated. Then I'm out.
The silence in the suite, save for Pierce's breathing and the gentle tap of Nate's fingers on the tablet, was thick and heavy, the silence of extreme luxury, where the outside world was shut out entirely.
He uploaded the fix, reset the repeater bridge, and the amber light on the panel turned satisfyingly green. He retracted the fiber cable, coiled it neatly, and carefully replaced the service panel cover, ensuring the expensive veneer was perfectly aligned.
The moment he stood up, the massive screen clicked to life, the colors vibrant and hyper-real. The default image of the resort logo flashed for a second, then transitioned seamlessly to the required streaming service login screen.
"There you go," Nate muttered, his first and only verbal contribution to the interaction.
Skylar snatched the remote off the table. "Took you long enough. Whatever."
She navigated quickly, pulling up the streaming channel Pierce had been demanding. The screen filled with a chaotic, loud reality television show—the precise moment Pierce's motivational playlist began to blare aggressively from the unseen surround sound speakers.
"Perfect," Pierce grunted, checking his reflection in the smoked glass wall. He reached into his pocket. "Here, maintenance guy. Grab yourself a coffee." He flicked a tightly folded twenty-dollar bill onto the marble table, letting it spin once before it landed near Nate's worn work boot.
Nate paused. He looked down at the twenty. It was less money than Pierce spent on the valet tip downstairs. Nate didn't touch it.
"Is there anything else, sir?" Nate asked, his voice flat.
"Go on, get lost," Pierce waved a dismissive hand, turning back to the volume controls. "Don't break anything on the way out."
Nate nodded curtly, already moving toward the door, keen to return to the relative sanity of the basement.
He reached for the door handle when the reality show Skylar was watching suddenly dissolved into a chaotic, screaming mess of emergency graphics.
The volume of the motivational workout music was abruptly cut by a chilling, synthesized alarm tone that ripped through the quiet luxury of the suite.
BEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEP.
The screen flashed red and black, displaying the official seal of the Emergency Broadcast System.
Skylar dropped the remote, her perfectly manicured hand flying to her mouth. Pierce's arrogance evaporated, replaced by a confused frown.
"What the hell is this?" Pierce demanded, turning to look at the massive screen, momentarily forgetting Nate's presence.
A severe-looking, sweat-drenched news anchor appeared on the screen, his tie askew, the background of his studio feed visibly rocking.
"...This is not a test," the anchor stammered, his professionalism fractured by terror. "Repeat, this is an official emergency broadcast. We are receiving widespread, unverified reports of extreme violence and unusual aggressive behavior originating from the outer boroughs and rapidly spreading inward. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to leave your location. Lock all doors and windows. These attacks appear to be..."
The anchor paled, his eyes widening in pure horror, shifting off-screen.
Simultaneously, a sound ripped through the expensive soundproofing of Suite 1403, a sound that was not the manicured sound of the resort, nor the distant drone of NYC traffic. It was a high-pitched, gargling scream immediately followed by a chorus of deep, wet, animalistic tearing sounds coming from somewhere far below in the resort's public areas.
The news anchor on the screen suddenly clawed at his neck, issuing a choked cry. A figure, blurred but undeniably human, slammed into the frame behind him, its face a mask of black liquid and rage. The camera feed shuddered violently, then plunged into static.
Silence. A devastating, profound silence in the luxury suite.
Pierce stared at the static, his expensive veneer of calm shattered. "What… what was that? Is this some kind of sick prank?"
Skylar's denial was more guttural. "No, no, no, this is the Palisades. This stuff doesn't happen here! Call someone, Pierce!"
Another sound quickly followed the first: a rhythmic, heavy thump-thump-thump echoing up the ventilation shaft, accompanied by splintering wood, getting closer to the resort's upper levels.
Nate, already focused on the door handle, did not panic. He simply processed inputs. Screams, chaos, extreme violence, emergency lockdown. He didn't need the word 'zombie' to understand the nature of the shift. The world outside had just invaded the perfect vacuum of the Palisades Manor.
He looked at Pierce and Skylar. They were frozen in the center of the thousand-dollar suite, their eyes wide with the realization that their wealth and privilege had become entirely irrelevant.
Nate finally bent down, his hand unerringly reaching for the twenty-dollar bill on the carpet. He plucked it up, folded it neatly, and tucked it into his pocket. It was the only thing of practical value the man had given him all day.
He then pulled his keys from his belt, selecting the master key he rarely used, the key that opened the rarely utilized maintenance stairs and tunnels of the resort.
"The main hallways will be locked down now, if they're not already compromised," Nate stated, his voice quiet, steady, and entirely lacking in the deference he had used moments before. He was talking not to his superiors, but to two very loud, very fragile obstacles.
Pierce finally seemed to register Nate's presence, turning on him with sudden aggression. "Where do you think you're going? You need to call security! You work here! What the hell are you doing?"
Nate didn't raise his voice, but the sudden density of his gaze stopped Pierce cold. "I am getting out of the kill zone," he said simply. He jerked his head toward the massive windows overlooking the manicured lawns, where the small, dark figures of what looked like infected bellhops were already tearing apart a tourist attempting to cross the patio fountain. "You should move too. Or just stay here. Your suite is about to attract a lot of attention with that noise."
He turned the handle, pulled the door open, revealing the polished hallway outside. The hallway, moments ago pristine, was now punctuated by the distant, wet sounds of violence.
Nate stepped into the hallway, his boots silent. He knew every access point, every poorly secured window, every weak point in the Palisades Manor. He knew where the kitchen staff kept the heavy cutlery, and where the cleaning supply closets held industrial-grade bleach. He knew the resort wasn't a fortress; it was a glass cage.
As he closed the heavy mahogany door behind him, sealing the arrogant couple inside their terrified luxury box, Nate's mind was already running a complex triage of survival. He had been invisible for so long. Now, Nate, the quiet, competent man who specialized in what everyone else ignored, was finally the most equipped person in the building. He had a map, a skillset, and a deep, quiet familiarity with the dark underbelly of this perfect, doomed place. The apocalypse had arrived, and Nathaniel 'Nate' Hanadaob finally had his work cut out for him.