The camera frame was shaky, tilted at an odd angle. Ahmed's face filled the screen, haggard and drawn, a cut above his left eyebrow crusted with dried blood. Behind him, the walls of an abandoned house—peeling paint, family photos still hanging crooked on the wall. Dawn light filtered through boarded windows, painting everything in shades of gray.
"Day two," Ahmed whispered into the camera, his voice hoarse. "Or maybe day three. I've lost track. The infection is spreading faster than any model predicted. Conservative estimates say sixty percent of Niraya is infected. Maybe more."
He glanced over his shoulder, listening. Nothing. He turned back to the camera.
"But that's not the worst part. They're changing. Evolving. I've observed three distinct behaviors already." He held up fingers, ticking them off. "Type one: the fresh ones. Slow, uncoordinated, driven purely by hunger. These are manageable if you're careful."
Another glance behind him. Still nothing.
"Type two appeared within twelve hours. Faster. Much faster. I watched one chase down a fleeing woman yesterday. It moved like a sprinter. And the smell—" He shook his head. "They're tracking by scent now. I saw one follow a blood trail for three blocks."
His hand trembled as he adjusted the camera focus.
"The virus is rewriting their neural pathways at an accelerated rate. If this progression continues..." He swallowed hard. "In weeks, maybe months, we could be facing something far worse than mindless corpses. Coordinated packs. Problem-solvers. Hunters."
A sound. Behind him. Close.
Ahmed's eyes widened. He spun, the camera jerking wildly, catching a glimpse of something moving in the doorway—gray skin, black veins, milky eyes reflecting the dawn light.
"Shit—"
His hand slammed down on the camera. The screen went black.
The sound of running footsteps. A crash. A door slamming.
Then silence.
Reyan's eyes snapped open.
For a moment, he didn't know where he was. The ceiling above him was wrong—water-stained tiles instead of the smooth white paint of his bedroom. The air smelled wrong—dust and old paper and something chemical, antiseptic. His body ached, every muscle screaming protest as he tried to sit up.
Then it came flooding back. The office. The infected. The two men who'd saved him.
"Where—" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat, trying again. "Where am I?"
"Welcome back to the land of the living."
Reyan jerked his head to the left. Two figures sat against the wall, barely visible in the dim light filtering through a crack in the barricaded door. As his eyes adjusted, recognition hit him like a physical blow.
"Samir?" He blinked, certain he was hallucinating. "Taj?"
"Surprise," Taj said dryly, giving a weak wave. His glasses were cracked, one lens spider-webbed but still functional. "Bet you weren't expecting that plot twist."
"You—you saved me. You were the—" Reyan pushed himself up, wincing. "I thought you were out. The supply store. You said—"
"We came back," Samir said quietly. He looked exhausted, his usually jovial face drawn and serious. "Got halfway to the store when things went to hell. Turned around, came back for you."
"And found you about to become zombie breakfast," Taj added. "You're welcome, by the way. My shoulder still hurts from tackling that thing."
Reyan stared at them, his brain struggling to process. His coworkers. His friends. They'd risked their lives to come back for him. "Thank you," he managed. "I don't know how to—"
"Save it." Samir waved him off. "We're not out of this yet."
Reality crashed back. Reyan scrambled to his feet, nearly stumbling. "My family. I need to—I have to get home. My daughter, my wife, they're alone, they need me—"
"Whoa, whoa, slow down." Taj stood, hands raised. "Reyan, it's not that simple."
"What do you mean it's not simple?" Reyan's voice rose, panic sharpening his words. "I have to get to them. Now. I promised—"
"Bro, have you looked outside?" Samir gestured at the door. "The world is hell right now. Those things are everywhere. They'll tear us apart the second we step out there."
"I don't care—"
"Well you should care!" Taj cut in. "Because getting yourself killed helps nobody. Not us, and especially not your family."
"You don't understand—"
"We understand perfectly," Samir said. "You want to be the hero. Rush home, save your family, happy ending. But this isn't a movie, Reyan. Out there—" He pointed at the door again. "—out there is a death sentence."
Reyan felt something snap inside him. "You're right," he said, his voice dropping to something cold and dangerous. "You don't understand. Because you don't have families. You don't know what it feels like to know they're out there, scared, alone, waiting for you to keep your promise."
The words hung in the air like a slap.
Samir and Taj both looked down, their expressions crumbling. In the dim light, Reyan could see Taj's jaw working, like he was chewing on words he couldn't quite say. Samir's shoulders hunched forward, suddenly looking smaller.
The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating.
"I'm sorry," Reyan said quietly, the anger draining out of him as quickly as it had come. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
"No, you're right." Taj's voice was barely above a whisper. "We don't have families. Not anymore."
Reyan's stomach dropped. "Taj—"
"My parents live in Kolkata," Taj continued, still not looking up. "I called them yesterday. Twenty-three times. No answer. Either the networks are down or..." He trailed off.
"My sister's here in Niraya," Samir added. "Southside. Near the industrial district." Where the outbreak started, Reyan realized with cold clarity. "I tried to reach her. Couldn't get through the infected. So yeah, we get it."
"I'm so sorry," Reyan said, and meant it. "I shouldn't have—"
"Forget it." Samir looked up, and there was something fierce in his eyes now. "You're right about one thing. Sitting here won't save anyone. So here's the question, boss: Are we doing this or not?"
Reyan met his gaze. "You'll come with me?"
"Do we look like we have anywhere better to be?" Taj adjusted his cracked glasses. "Besides, somebody needs to make sure you don't get eaten in the first five minutes."
"And if we're lucky," Samir added, standing and stretching, "maybe we find my sister along the way. Or at least... find out what happened."
"Thank you," Reyan said again. This time, it meant something different. Something deeper.
"Save it for when we actually survive this." Taj moved to the barricaded door, listening. "We need weapons. Real ones. Your pocket knife isn't going to cut it. Literally."
They scavenged what they could from the office. Letter openers. Scissors. A fire extinguisher. Not much, but better than nothing. Samir found a metal pipe in the utility closet. Taj claimed a hammer from the maintenance kit. Reyan kept his knife but added a stapler to his belt.
"Really?" Taj raised an eyebrow. "A stapler?"
"It's heavy. I can throw it."
"You're going to staple a zombie to death?"
"Do you have a better idea?"
"Fair point."
They stood at the door, weapons in hand, listening to the groans and shuffling feet on the other side. The infected were still there, pressed against the barricade, tireless and patient.
"Okay," Samir whispered. "On three, we move the cabinet and go. Fast and quiet. Don't stop for anything. Got it?"
Reyan and Taj nodded.
"One... two..."
"Wait." Taj grabbed Reyan's arm. "Before we do this. Just so you know." He met Reyan's eyes. "Who says we don't have family? We have you, brother. And we're not leaving you behind."
Something cracked in Reyan's chest. He couldn't speak, could only nod.
"Three."
They shoved the cabinet aside. The door burst open. An infected stumbled through, mouth open in a soundless scream.
Taj moved faster than Reyan had ever seen him move, the hammer coming up in a brutal arc that caught the creature under the jaw. Bone crunched. The infected went down.
Another one lunged at Reyan. He stabbed out with his knife, but his hand was shaking, the blade glancing off the creature's shoulder. It grabbed for him, fingers like claws, and Reyan saw his death in its milky eyes—
Samir's pipe came down like the hammer of god. Once. Twice. Three times. The infected collapsed, skull caved in.
"I said don't stop!" Samir shouted.
They ran.
The hallway was a nightmare. Bodies everywhere—some still, some twitching, some standing and turning toward the sound of their footsteps. Reyan's mind catalogued details in flashes: blood on the walls, a woman's shoe lying abandoned, the emergency lights casting everything in hellish red, the smell of rot so thick he could taste it.
They fought their way to the stairwell. Taj took point, hammer swinging. Samir covered the rear, pipe crushing anything that got too close. Reyan stayed in the middle, knife out, trying not to look at the faces of the infected. Trying not to see the people they used to be.
Down one floor. Then another. An infected grabbed Taj's leg. He kicked it away, nearly falling, and Reyan caught him, steadied him. They kept moving.
The ground floor was worse. The front doors had been broken open, and infected wandered in and out like shoppers at a mall. Samir gestured toward a side exit, and they moved along the wall, trying to stay in the shadows.
Almost there. Almost—
One of the infected turned. Looked directly at them. And screamed.
Not the low groan Reyan had heard before. This was different. High-pitched, piercing, like an alarm.
And every infected in the lobby turned toward the sound.
"RUN!"
They burst through the side exit into morning sunlight. The street was chaos—abandoned cars, trash scattered everywhere, smoke rising from buildings in the distance. And infected. So many infected.
But they were already running, feet pounding pavement, lungs burning. Behind them, the screaming infected led a horde out of the building.
"They're calling to each other!" Taj gasped. "Did you see that? They're coordinating!"
"Less talking, more running!" Samir shouted back.
They cut through an alley, jumped a fence, emerged onto another street. The sounds of pursuit faded slightly, but never disappeared entirely. The infected were everywhere, shambling through the ruins of Niraya, and each time they saw fresh prey, that horrible scream would rise, calling more.
Reyan's apartment building was three kilometers away. It might as well have been on another planet.
They fought every block. A woman in a torn sari lunged from a doorway. Taj's hammer found her temple. An old man with black veins crawling across his face grabbed Samir's arm. Samir's pipe shattered his skull. A child—no more than eight years old, eyes white and dead—came at Reyan, and he couldn't, he couldn't do it, and Samir had to pull him away as Taj finished it.
"Don't look at them," Samir said as they kept moving. "Don't think of them as people. They're not. Not anymore."
But Reyan couldn't help it. Every face was someone's father, someone's daughter, someone's friend. Every corpse was a promise broken, a family destroyed.
By the time they reached Reyan's apartment complex, all three of them were soaked in blood and sweat and worse things. Reyan's hands shook so badly he could barely hold his knife. But they'd made it. Somehow, impossibly, they'd made it.
The building loomed before them. Reyan had lived here for five years. He knew every brick, every window, every crack in the pavement. The lobby doors hung open, glass shattered. Inside, he could see movement.
"Five floors up," he said quietly. "My apartment is on the fifth floor. Wing B."
"Then let's go get them," Taj said.
They entered the lobby. The smell hit them immediately—death and decay and something worse, something chemical that burned the nostrils. Bodies littered the floor. Some of them were neighbors Reyan recognized. Mr. Kapoor from 3A. The security guard whose name he'd never learned. The woman who always complained about noise.
Some of them were still moving.
They fought their way through. Four infected in the lobby. Two more on the stairs. Another in the second-floor hallway, hunched over something that used to be human. By the third floor, Reyan's arms were numb from swinging his knife. By the fourth floor, he'd lost count of how many they'd killed.
And then, on the landing between the fourth and fifth floors, he saw her.
She stood at the top of the stairs, swaying slightly. Her sari was torn and stained with blood. Her hair hung in matted tangles around her face. And her eyes—her beautiful brown eyes that used to light up when she smiled—were white and dead and hungry.
"Priya," Reyan whispered.
She turned toward the sound. Her mouth opened. That terrible groan.
"Reyan, don't—" Samir started.
But Reyan was already moving up the stairs, like a man in a dream. No. A nightmare. This couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening.
"Priya," he said again, louder. "It's me. It's Reyan. Please."
She lurched toward him, hands reaching, mouth working. Black veins crawled across her face like cracks in porcelain.
"Please," he sobbed. "Please, not you. Anyone but you."
She was three steps away. Two. One.
Reyan's knife came up without conscious thought. He'd promised to protect her. Promised on their wedding day, in sickness and in health. Till death do us part.
Death had them parted now.
The blade found her heart. She staggered, let out a sound that might have been his name, and collapsed into his arms. Reyan sank to his knees, cradling her body, and the sounds that came out of him were barely human.
Samir and Taj stood back, giving him space, their own eyes wet.
"I'm sorry," Reyan whispered into her hair. "I'm so sorry. I promised I'd come home. I promised."
But promises didn't matter anymore. Not in this new world.
After what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, Reyan gently laid her down. He stood on shaking legs, his face wet with tears and blood.
"The fifth floor," he said, his voice hollow. "We need to check the fifth floor."
They climbed past her body. Reyan didn't look back. Couldn't.
Wing B was at the end of the hallway. Three more infected blocked their path. Reyan killed all three without hesitation, without mercy, without feeling anything at all. Samir and Taj followed, weapons ready, but Reyan barely needed their help. Something had broken inside him when that knife entered Priya's chest. Or maybe something had been forged.
His apartment door came into view. 5B-7. The number plate was still there, slightly crooked because he'd never gotten around to fixing it. The doormat his daughter had picked out—bright yellow with a cartoon sun—sat outside, spotted with blood.
The door was closed. Locked.
Reyan's heart leaped. Locked meant safe. Locked meant someone inside had locked it. Someone alive. Someone who could lock doors and think and plan and—
"Please," he whispered. "Please let her be okay."
He knocked. Once. Twice. Three times.
"Hello?" he called. "Is anyone in there? It's Reyan. If you can hear me, please, open the door."
Silence.
Then, from inside, a voice: "Who's there?"
Reyan's world stopped.
It was a man's voice. Deep. Adult. Unknown.
Not his daughter.
"Who are you?" Reyan demanded, pressing against the door. "What are you doing in my apartment? Where's my daughter?"
"I said who's there?" the voice repeated, suspicious now. "Identify yourself."
"This is MY home! Where is my daughter? What have you done with her?"
Behind him, Samir and Taj raised their weapons. Whatever was about to happen, they were ready.
The lock clicked. The door opened a crack, held by a security chain. An eye appeared in the gap—brown, suspicious, very much alive.
"Reyan?" the voice said. "Reyan Sharma?"
"Yes! Where's my daughter? Is she—"
"How do I know you're not infected?"
"I'm not—just tell me if she's safe!"
The eye studied him for a long moment. Then the door closed. Reyan heard the chain sliding free.
The door opened.
A man stood there, maybe forty, with a rough beard and tired eyes. He held a kitchen knife in one hand. Behind him, Reyan could see his apartment—furniture overturned, windows barricaded, supplies scattered everywhere.
And in the corner, wrapped in a blanket and staring at him with wide, terrified eyes—
"Papa?"
His daughter's voice. Small. Scared. But alive.
Alive.
Reyan's legs nearly gave out. "Baby," he choked. "Oh thank God, baby, you're—"
"Stay back," the man warned, knife raised. "I need to be sure. When were you bitten?"
"I wasn't—"
"Everyone says that. Show me your arms. Your neck. Prove it."
Reyan lifted his arms, turned around slowly. Samir and Taj did the same, weapons lowered to show they weren't a threat.
The man studied them, then slowly lowered his knife. "Okay. Okay, you're clean." He stepped back. "You can come in. But I'm watching you. All of you."
Reyan barely heard him. He was already moving past the man, dropping to his knees in front of his daughter. She was pale, shaking, her eyes red from crying, but she was alive. She was alive.
"Papa!" She threw herself into his arms, and Reyan held her like he'd never let go.
"I'm here," he whispered into her hair. "I'm here. I promised I'd come back. I promised."
Behind him, the stranger closed and locked the door. Outside, the city burned. Inside, for just this moment, Reyan had kept his promise.
But even as he held his daughter close, questions burned in his mind.
Who was this man?
How had he gotten into their apartment?
And most importantly—where had he been when Priya was dying on the stairs?
Across the city, in a house with boarded windows and a barricaded door, Ahmed set up his camera again.
His hands were steadier now. More purposeful. He'd found supplies—canned food, bottled water, medical equipment. This house had belonged to a doctor. He'd found the body in the bedroom upstairs, a bullet hole in the temple and a gun in the hand. The man had chosen his own end.
Ahmed didn't judge him for it.
He pressed record.
"Day two, evening report," he said into the camera. "I've secured a location in the Vaishali residential district. The house is defendable for now. I've observed seventeen infected from this position in the last hour. The evolution is accelerating."
He pulled out a notebook, flipped it open to show diagrams and notes to the camera.
"Type one remains the most common—slow movers, minimal coordination. Type two is becoming more prevalent—the runners, the screamers. They're calling to each other, organizing basic pack behavior. But I've seen something else."
He paused, making sure the camera was focused.
"Type three. I've only seen one so far, but it was enough. It was watching the others. Observing. When prey appeared—a dog, starving and desperate—the type three didn't attack immediately. It waited. It let the others chase the dog into an alley. A dead end. Then it blocked the exit."
Ahmed's voice dropped to barely above a whisper.
"It set a trap. Do you understand what that means? These things are learning tactics. Strategy. If this progression continues, we're not just fighting monsters. We're fighting an evolving predator species that's learning to hunt us better than we can defend ourselves."
He closed the notebook.
"I have samples of the original virus. I have my notes on the neural regeneration protocol. And I have an idea—a theory—about how to reverse this. Or at least stop it from getting worse. But I need equipment. I need a lab. And I need time."
Outside, a scream rose into the evening air. Then another. Then silence.
"Time," Ahmed said quietly, "is the one thing we don't have."
He reached forward to turn off the camera, then paused.
"If anyone finds this recording, my name is Ahmed Prasad. I worked at Nexus Research Facility. I was there when it started. And if you're watching this, it means I'm probably dead. But maybe—just maybe—my work can help you survive what's coming."
He looked directly into the lens.
"They're not going to stay stupid forever. Adapt or die. Those are your only choices now."
The camera clicked off.
Ahmed sat in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the dying city, and began to plan.
END OF CHAPTER TWO