PLATFORM: FACEBOOK TIMELINE
USER: TYLER JORDAN
STATUS: ONLINE via Starlink Satellite Uplink (Mobile Connection)
BATTERY: 68% (Not Charging)
DATE: MONDAY. DAY 36 POST-EVENT (NIGHT).
LOCATION: UNKNOWN (APPROX. 2 MILES FROM SUPER-MART)
[Post Visibility: Public]
My kingdom is gone.
I am writing this on my phone, hiding in the crawlspace under a flooded suburban house. My hands are shaking so badly I can barely hit the keys. I can smell the mud, the mold, and the lingering scent of smoke on my own skin.
If you are reading this, do not stay in one place. Do not build walls. Walls just make it harder for you to run when they inevitably get in. And they will get in.
THE RAIN OF BODIES
When the first ceiling tile cracked in the pharmacy, I froze.
It's a specific sound—the snap of dry plaster and the groan of cheap aluminum framing. I looked up, paralyzed, watching a spiderweb of fractures spread across the white acoustic tiles above our heads.
"Move!" Nayla screamed.
She slammed her shoulder into me, knocking me sideways into a rack of cough syrup just as the ceiling gave way.
It wasn't one zombie. It was three of them. They fell through the roof like wet sandbags, crashing onto the linoleum where I had been standing a second ago. They didn't land gracefully. I heard bones snap on impact. One of them, a teenager still wearing a backpack, broke his leg so badly the bone tore through his jeans.
But they didn't scream in pain. They hissed.
The one with the broken leg dragged himself toward me, claws scrabbling on the waxed floor. The other two—a woman in a pantsuit and a man in mechanic's coveralls—scrambled to their feet instantly.
"The roof is soft!" Nayla yelled, pumping her shotgun. BOOM.
The blast took the mechanic's head off. Black blood sprayed over the rows of aspirin.
"They're coming through the vents!" I shouted, raising my AR-15.
I fired blindly at the ceiling. Bang-bang-bang. Dust and insulation rained down, blinding us. But more bodies were falling. The Alpha wasn't just sending them to attack; he was pouring them into the room like water. They were sacrificing their bodies to crush us.
We were trapped in a ten-by-ten steel cage. The heavy security gate I had lowered was now locking us in with them. The pharmacy had become a kill box.
"We have to open the gate!" I yelled over the roar of the horde.
"We can't!" Nayla fired again, blowing a hole in the woman's chest. "Look!"
I looked through the steel mesh of the gate. The main floor of the Super-Mart was a sea of grey skin. Hundreds of them were pressed against the cage, fingers hooked through the mesh, shaking it. They were waiting for us to come out.
Inside, more were dropping from the ceiling. A heavy infected landed on the pharmacy counter, crushing the computer terminal.
"Back!" I grabbed Nayla's tactical vest and dragged her toward the rear of the pharmacy. "Get behind the counter!"
We dove behind the heavy wooden dispensing counter just as another section of the ceiling collapsed, burying the center of the room in debris and bodies.
We were huddled in the corner, surrounded. The smell was overpowering—a mix of drywall dust, ancient rot, and the metallic tang of adrenaline.
"Think, Tyler!" Nayla hissed, reloading her shotgun with trembling hands. "You're the engineer. Get us out of here."
"I... I can't," I stammered. "The walls are steel. The gate is locked. The roof is open."
"We need a hole," she said, eyes wide. "Make a hole."
I looked around the pharmacy. Shelves of pills. bandages. Rubbing alcohol.
Alcohol.
My eyes locked onto the bottom shelf. Gallon jugs of 99% Isopropyl Alcohol. Highly flammable.
"The back wall," I said, pointing to the drywall behind the prescription racks. It was the only wall that wasn't reinforced steel because it backed up to the employee bathrooms, not the store floor. "It's just drywall and studs. If we can weaken it..."
"We weaken it with bullets," Nayla said.
"No. We burn it."
I grabbed three gallons of alcohol and uncapped them. "Cover me!"
Nayla popped up over the counter and unleashed hell. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. She was clearing the space in front of us, buying me seconds.
I splashed the alcohol over the back wall, soaking the drywall, the shelves, and the floor. The fumes were dizzying. I threw the last jug at the feet of the zombies stumbling over the debris pile.
"Fire in the hole!" I screamed.
I pulled a lighter from my pocket—my lucky Zippo—struck it, and threw it.
WHOOSH.
The air was sucked out of the room for a split second, replaced by a wall of blue and orange flame. The heat was intense, singing my eyebrows. The alcohol fire roared up the back wall, eating through the paint and paper.
The zombies caught in the splash zone didn't stop. They walked through the fire, their clothes burning, their skin blistering. But the fire did its job. It created a barrier.
"The wall!" I yelled. "Kick it!"
The fire had eaten the paper, leaving the gypsum crumbly and weak. I slammed my boot into the burning wall. It cracked. I kicked again. CRUNCH.
A hole opened up. I saw the white tiles of the employee bathroom on the other side.
"Go!" I grabbed Nayla and shoved her toward the burning hole. She scrambled through, coughing.
I turned back one last time. A zombie—burning from head to toe, looking like a demon from hell—lunged at me. I slammed the butt of my rifle into its face and dove through the wall, tumbling onto the cool tile of the bathroom floor.
THE GAUNTLET
We were out of the cage, but we weren't out of the fire.
We scrambled to our feet in the narrow hallway behind the pharmacy. The fire alarm was blaring now—a deafening, rhythmic screech that added to the chaos. Sprinklers hissed to life, drenching us in foul-smelling water.
"Where now?" Nayla coughed, wiping soot from her eyes.
"The loading bay," I gasped. "It's reinforced. It has a heavy steel door to the outside."
"Lead the way."
We ran. The back corridors of the Super-Mart were a maze of stockrooms and offices. Usually, this area was empty. Today, it was a war zone.
Zombies were breaking in through the fire exits. The Alpha had coordinated attacks on every door.
We turned a corner near the dairy cooler and ran straight into a group of three. I didn't hesitate. I raised the AR-15 and double-tapped the first two. The third one—a massive man in a butcher's apron—charged me.
I pulled the trigger. Click.
Jam.
"Down!" Nayla screamed.
I dropped to my knees. The shotgun roared over my head. The butcher was blasted backward, sliding into a pallet of yogurt.
"My gun is jammed," I yelled, scrambling up.
"Use the nail gun!" she shouted, pointing to the tool belt I still had strapped to my waist.
We hit the loading bay doors. They were double steel doors, heavy and grey. I slammed my shoulder into the crash bar.
It wouldn't budge.
"It's blocked!" I yelled, panic rising in my throat.
"You blocked it!" Nayla yelled back. "You said you stacked shelves against it!"
I froze. She was right. I had engineered this fortress too well. I had stacked three tons of steel shelving on the other side of this door to keep them out. Now, it was keeping us in.
"Oh god," I whispered. "I trapped us."
"The window!" Nayla pointed.
High up on the wall, about fifteen feet off the ground, was a small ventilation window. It was narrow, but maybe—just maybe—we could fit.
"Stack the pallets!" I ordered.
There were wooden pallets scattered around the bay. We started throwing them into a pile, frantically building a crude staircase. My heart was hammering so hard I thought it would burst.
BANG.
The door behind us—the one leading back to the store—shuddered. Something was hitting it.
BANG.
"They're coming," Nayla whispered.
We scrambled up the wobbly stack of pallets. I boosted Nayla up first. She grabbed the window ledge and pulled herself up. She smashed the glass with the butt of her shotgun and cleared the jagged shards.
"Come on!" She reached a hand down.
I grabbed her wrist. She pulled, straining. I dug my boots into the wood, climbing.
Just as my fingers touched the ledge, the door to the loading bay exploded inward.
It wasn't just zombies. It was Him.
The Alpha.
He stood in the doorway, flanked by two dozen infected. He looked… calm. He scanned the room, his yellow eyes locking onto us instantly. He didn't roar. He didn't run.
He pointed at the stack of pallets.
The horde surged forward. They didn't try to climb. They threw themselves at the base of the stack, tearing at the wood, trying to topple us.
"Climb!" Nayla screamed, pulling me so hard I felt my shoulder pop.
I scrambled through the window, scraping my chest raw on the concrete frame. I tumbled out onto the asphalt of the rear loading dock.
"They're coming through the window!" I yelled.
Nayla grabbed a dumpster lid—a heavy plastic slab—and jammed it against the window opening from the outside. "Help me brace it!"
We shoved a heavy metal dumpster against the wall, pinning the lid over the window. We could hear them scratching on the other side, thumping against the plastic.
But we were out.
THE FALL
We stood in the alley behind the Super-Mart, gasping for air. The sun was setting, casting long, bloody shadows across the city.
I looked up at the building. My fortress.
Smoke was pouring from the roof vents—the fire from the pharmacy was spreading. The white-painted glass at the front was shattered. The solar panels I had been so proud of were likely being trampled.
"It's gone," I whispered. "Everything I built."
"You're alive," Nayla said, checking her ammo. She had two shells left. "That's what matters."
"Where do we go?" I asked. "I don't have a plan. I don't have food. I don't have water."
"I do," she said. "I have a safe house. It's not a fortress, but it's hidden. It's about two miles north."
"North?" I shook my head. "That's through the residential district. It's a death sentence."
"Staying here is a death sentence," she said, nodding toward the end of the alley.
I looked. Rounding the corner of the building were three zombies. They saw us. They screeched.
"Run," I said.
We ran. We didn't stop running until my lungs burned and my legs felt like lead. We dodged through backyards, hopped fences, and finally crawled into the crawlspace of this flooded house to wait out the night.
It's dark now. I can hear them shuffling on the street above us.
I used to be the King of Aisle 4. I used to have a bed, a computer, and a farm. Now, I have a jammed rifle, a concussed head, and a partner I barely know.
But as I sit here in the mud, listening to Nayla breathing in the dark, I realize something.
The Alpha... he let us go.
In the loading bay, he could have swarmed the pallets faster. He could have grabbed my leg. But he stood back. He watched us climb.
Why?
It feels like he wasn't trying to kill us. It feels like he was evicting us. He wanted the fortress. He wanted the supplies. He drove the human out of the cave so he could move in.
We aren't the apex predators anymore. We are the pests. And they just called the exterminator.
Signing off.
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