The morning air felt wrong.
It wasn't cold, yet everyone shivered. It wasn't silent, yet no one spoke. A strange tension stretched across the apartment complex like the sky itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to snap.
The crow feather from the previous night still lay on the mess table, untouched, as if even moving it might invite a curse. Shivansh stared at it while chewing dry toast, half-burnt and flavorless. His eyes were bloodshot he hadn't slept, not after what he'd seen in the tunnel, not after the sound of infected scratching faintly from the other end of that narrow concrete throat.
Downstairs, the survivors moved like ghosts half-alert, half-afraid. No one raised their voice. No child cried. Even baby Tina, usually restless at dawn, was unusually quiet in Kavita's lap. There was a strange pressure in the air, like the world knew today mattered.
Inside Tower B's common hall, Shivansh, Parth, and Imran huddled around the society map. The tunnel route was marked in red. The police station circled in black. Dinesh had drawn in the old storm drains and broken alleyways like veins in a dying body.
"This is it," Shivansh said, voice low and clipped. "Final prep before nightfall. After this, there's no backup. No fallback."
He looked around. Imran nodded silently. Samarjeet rubbed his temple like his old migraines were returning. Niharika adjusted the straps on her empty backpack, already visualizing how she'd fill it. Deepak was the only one still chewing on something, but even he didn't look relaxed.
"We'll move in two teams," Shivansh continued. "Team A hits the PS riot gear, smoke, tear gas, if anything's left. Team B works on the tunnel. Fix lighting, reinforce the path, prep fallback bags."
Parth crossed his arms. "You really think the Crows are coming tonight?"
Imran answered instead. "No. I know it."
No one argued after that.
By 8 AM, both teams were set. Aarav was checking a rusted toolbox. Mukul prepped his drone on the rooftop, fingers twitching slightly over the controls. Zoya stood beside him, scanning the surroundings with binoculars. Nothing unusual until a flicker caught her eye.
At the far corner of the outer fence, near Block D's overgrown lawn, a figure was pacing back and forth, back and forth. It didn't lunge or groan. It just walked, stopped, then tilted its head slowly toward the breeze.
"What the hell…" Zoya muttered.
Then came the sound: a soft, off-beat clinking from a bell. It had come loose from one of the tower balconies and was twisting erratically in the wind. The pacing infected wasn't the only one. Zoya now saw three more figures, slowly gravitating toward the sound. Not charging. Not moaning. Just drawn, like moths to static.
"Mukul," she whispered. "Take it out."
He didn't ask why. The drone was still booting. She pulled out her slingshot, aimed high, and in one clean snap the bell fall, clattering against the concrete. The infected froze for a moment… then slowly began to drift away.
Below, Dinesh had seen it too. He looked up at Zoya, worry in his eyes.
"They're listening," he said. "They're not just wandering anymore."
By the time both teams exited the society one toward the PS, the other toward the tunnel entrance Delhi had gone still again. But not empty.
The rusted WagonR swerved around a toppled barricade, its tires crunching over broken glass and dried blood.
Rohini Sector-11 looked like it hadn't breathed in weeks. Shop shutters hung half open, some clawed with bloodied handprints. A stray bicycle leaned against a Pan shop window, its front wheel slowly turning driven only by the wind.
In the back seat, Deepak tightened the rope around a jerrycan of fuel. Samarjeet scanned their flanks through the open window, alert. Imran, riding shotgun, held a torch in one hand and a half-loaded police pistol in the other.
Shivansh gripped the wheel tightly. His cricket bat sat across his lap like it belonged there. It did. It had seen blood. It had kept him alive.
"This is the last stretch," Imran muttered. "We go in, pick clean, get out. No stunts."
The station emerged just ahead PS Rohini Sector-11. The gate hung off its hinges. A Delhi Police jeep lay upside down near the entrance, doors open, its lights shattered like broken eyes.
Shivansh parked behind a pharmacy next door. No alarms. No backup.
Only dust and dread. They entered the station through a broken grill window on the east side. Inside, it smelled of old urine, charred fabric, and death.
Filing cabinets lay overturned. Blood trails painted the walls. A bullet-ridden Rakshak riot van sat half-disassembled in the inner courtyard. Someone had tried to defend this place. They'd failed.
"Armory's in the basement," Samarjeet said. "Locker keys would've been in the CO's cabin."
They crept past the booking counter, stepping over shattered cups and a torn photo frame of some inspector's family. Niharika stayed near the door watching their rear.
The CO's cabin was ransacked but luck struck.
Inside a locked drawer, Imran found two metal keyrings and a sealed locker register. "They left in a hurry," he whispered.
The basement was colder thick with stale air and the faint stink of something decomposed.
Samarjeet unlocked the first steel shutter. Inside: three Delhi Police .303 rifles, covered in dust and cobwebs. Beside them, four SLRs on wooden racks. Deepak opened a storage tin his eyes lit up.
"Sir… this is real," he muttered.
300 rounds total a mix of .303 and 7.62mm, packed in faded green boxes.
Two riot shields, cracked but usable. Six tear gas shells. Four bulletproof jackets. A stash of metal batons and fiber helmets.
In another locked cell:
Three empty LPG cylinders, a coil of copper wire, two old toolboxes, and a dusty detonator switch.
"I'll Try to build something with this in case we need a diversion," Samarjeet said. "Deepak, you'll handle wiring?"
The drunkard nodded grimly. They began loading fast. Shivansh slung an SLR, but kept the bat strapped to his back. He looked around once, scanning the shadows. The air felt… wrong.
From a dark corridor, a faint scuffing sound. Imran turned torch ready.
A constable in uniform limped into view his face was gone. Just raw meat, one eye hanging loose, jaw twitching uselessly.
They didn't wait. Shivansh swung the bat a meaty thud, skull crushed against the cement pillar. But it was too late. The groans began.
More infected emerged from the holding cells. One still had cuffs on, dragging a fractured ankle behind him. Another wore a half-burnt traffic jacket, intestines trailing like wires.
Samarjeet fired a warning shot. "Out! Out now!" They ran. Deepak tossed two tear gas shells behind them. Smoke filled the narrow hall.
Upstairs, Niharika kicked open the emergency door. They staggered into the daylight coughing, bleeding, but alive.
They threw the gear into the Bolero. Imran fired a few wild shots to keep infected heads down. As Shivansh slammed the door shut, he looked back at the crumbling station one last time. "Thanks, Papa," he whispered.
Then they drove toward a final stand that was now locked in fate.
The sun had begun to dip by a hand's length, casting long shadows through the broken grills of Tower B. Inside the society, the silence wasn't comforting it was the kind that made people pause mid-step, unsure if what they heard was wind or something worse.
On the terrace, Zoya adjusted the zoom on Mukul's drone controller. The feed showed the eastern road leading toward the mall now eerily still. Near the gate, a handful of infected stood in loose formation, unmoving.
"They're not roaming anymore," she said quietly. "They're just… standing there."
Mukul leaned closer to the screen. "Like they're waiting for a signal." Neither of them said it aloud, but they both knew what that meant.
Underground, Parth, Aarav, and Dinesh worked in silence. The tunnel was cramped, stinking of old concrete and damp soil. Sweat soaked their collars as they dragged broken grill pieces across the floor. The path stretched almost five hundred meters to the east toward an abandoned stretch behind a construction site.
"This exit," Parth said, wiping his forehead, "if the Crows break through, we move everyone through this. No second chances."
Dinesh nodded, lifting a rusted tin sheet they'd salvaged earlier. Together, they fixed it across the tunnel opening and began piling leaves, stones, and broken branches over it. From a few steps away, it looked like a natural pile of junk. No one would notice unless they were looking for it.
Aarav stepped back and scanned the tree line. "Won't hold up if they're already waiting near here."
"They're not," Parth said firmly. "and they won't."
Inside Tower B, Gurleen was arguing with Rekha over the latest ration count. A few cans of grain were missing. No one admitted to it.
Back in the society courtyard, Shahida sat cross-legged on the cracked tiles near the locked swing set, her piece of chalk clutched in one hand but forgotten. The half-finished sun she'd been drawing looked more like a smear now. Beside her, Vedant shuffled a worn UNO deck between his fingers, not really dealing, not really focused. The Verma twins sat across from him, knees pulled up to their chests. No one was laughing. No one asked for their turn.
They were just… there. Trying to stay children in a place that was no longer built for them.
One of the twins looked up, his voice hushed, like he didn't want the buildings to hear. "Will they come with guns and other bad things?"
Vedant hesitated, eyes flicking toward the gate in the distance, then back to the cards. "I don't know," he said after a pause. "I hope not. Maybe they'll talk first. Maybe they'll listen."
"You think so?"
He didn't answer. Just kept shuffling, slower now. The deck slipped from his hands and scattered across the floor, cards face-up Draw Four, Skip, Wild. No one moved to pick them up.
Shahida finally broke the silence. "They won't listen. No one does now."
"You think someone's stealing?" Gurleen hissed, standing near the ration crates stacked in the corner of the common area.
Rekha rubbed her forehead slowly, eyes weary, voice low. "At this point, I just think people are scared… doing whatever they can to feel in control. Even if it's stupid."
"The grain bags were sealed yesterday," Gurleen muttered. "Today, one's lighter. I don't believe in accidents."
Ankita stood near the window, arms crossed, watching the sky more than the argument. She didn't chime in. Not yet.
Kavita passed through, baby Tina bundled to her chest, a bottle half-filled with boiled water in her other hand. Her jaw was tight, her steps faster than usual. She didn't speak. But the way her eyes flicked toward the food crates and then quickly away said enough.
"I'm not accusing anyone," Gurleen snapped, "but if this continues, we'll run out before we even hit a week."
"You're assuming we'll last a few days," Rekha replied, her voice sharper now.
A beat of silence. Then Ankita finally spoke.
"Just… hold it together. Please." She didn't look at either of them. Her eyes were still fixed somewhere out the window, to the direction where the road vanished past the skyline. "They still haven't come back yet and he's out there. My son. With nothing but a bat and some hope with a plan to get us all to safety."
Rekha's expression softened. She walked over and stood beside Ankita, nodding slightly. "My Niharika's with them. She still thinks I don't know that she volunteered to go out with them. She packed quietly, thinking I'd be too distracted to notice."
"I told Shivansh not to be the one leading," Ankita whispered. "But he didn't listen. He just said 'Who else will do it, Ma?'"
The words hung in the air.
"I just want him to come back," she added after a pause. "Not a hero. Just… safe." On the landing above, Shradha sat against the wall, legs drawn up, her eyes on the sky. "We'll know by nightfall," she murmured. "One way or another."
On the rooftop, Zoya was helping Mukul with his drone battery one last time. The infected were still there eight of them now. Not rushing. Not attacking. Just standing. One had a bent arm twitching at its side. Another swayed like it was listening to something only it could hear.
The Wagon R bounced over broken concrete as it turned onto the final stretch before the society gates. The sun was dropping fast, dipping orange behind the towers. The roads, once loud with life, now looked like a memory burnt into bone silent, scorched, and crawling with death.
"Slow," Imran said, scanning ahead through the cracked windshield. They saw them almost at the same time.
Near the outer gate, at least twenty infected roamed near the entrance some pacing, others squatting, and one chewing on a dead bird. Their skin was sagging, torn in places. A few twitched at the distant rumble of the engine.
"They heard us," Niharika whispered, voice dry.
Samarjeet tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Shivansh sitting beside him with his cricket bat rested on his laps, dented, splintered at one edge from the last fight. He looked at it, then ahead.
"We don't fire," Imran said again. "If the Crows are watching from the highway, they'll hear it. No sound. Only steel."
Samarjeet nodded. "We fight on foot."
The Wagon R came to a halt thirty meters from the gates. As the engine cut, the growls started. A head turned. Then another. The closest one a woman in a postman's uniform screamed without lips and broke into a sprint.
"Go!" Shivansh shouted. They burst out of the vehicle.
The first hit came fast. Shivansh swung the bat with full force crack! splinters flew as the skull gave in. Another lunged from the left he kicked it square in the chest, sending it crashing into the divider. But they were coming fast now, relentless.
Imran jammed a rebar through one's eye and yanked it back clean. Niharika ducked low, slicing the Achilles of another infected with a construction knife. Samarjeet rammed one against the hood with a riot shield and smashed its face until the blood stopped spraying.
But they were swarming. "Behind you!" Deepak yelled.
Shivansh turned too late an infected man with half a face leapt onto him, snarling. Shivansh dropped hard, the bat clattering out of reach. The infected opened its blood-matted jaw, diving for his neck.
A metal pipe cracked across its temple.
Deepak roared as he hit it again, again until it collapsed, twitching. He reached down and pulled Shivansh up by the arm.
"You alright?" he asked, breathing hard. Shivansh nodded, shaken. Deepak turned his bleeding arm away.
They kept going. Bodies dropped. Blood splattered. The bat cracked again this time, it snapped in half as Shivansh brought it down on a soldier's infected skull. He stared at the jagged handle in his hand, chest heaving.
He threw the splinters aside and picked up a bloodied crowbar from the ground.
By the time the only a few infected lefts, twitching in a puddle of oil and blood, the team stood gasping at the gate smeared, bruised, but standing.
The society gate opened slowly. Parth, Aarav, and Zoya were waiting, came out with Iron rods in hand and smashed the head of the left-over zombies. After that no words were exchanged. Just nods.
They dragged in the weapons crates, two gas cylinders, ropes, and tear gas shells silent. The explosives and gear were stashed in a secluded stairwell near Tower D, hidden under tarps, no one told except the original team. It would be used only if they had no other choice.
Inside the common room, water was passed around. No one asked where Deepak had gone. He slipped away quietly, into a locked toilet stall, clutching his bleeding forearm with shaking fingers.
"Just a scratch," he whispered to himself. "Just a scratch."
Up on the terrace, Mukul adjusted the drone feed. Everyone gathered behind him as he zoomed in on the highway split just outside the mall ruins.
Two Crows.
One held binoculars. The other taller, lean stood facing the drone's direction, unmoving. Then he raised a sign made from cardboard.
SUNDOWN.
Imran exhaled sharply. "They're not guessing. They're timing this."
Zoya looked at the horizon. "We don't have much light left."
Below, Shivansh sat on the steps of Tower B, head hanging. He held the broken bat in one hand, turning it slowly in his fingers.
His voice came low, just loud enough for Samarjeet to hear.
"I thought I could protect everyone just by being the guy who gives a damn. By doing the right thing. Being the son my dad raised."
Samarjeet sat beside him.
"You still can. But to survive this" he paused, "you'll have to be more than that."
Shivansh looked up. The wind had died. Not even the crows made a sound now. He nodded once and stood. The bat was left behind on the steps. That bat had been with him since Day One. A symbol. His safety. His weapon. His belief that maybe he could fight through this as a son, as a brother, as just a good man.
But now He knew that it wasn't going to be enough.