Leo Cormac sat in the semi-darkness of the bunker, buried beneath the first floor of his two-story cottage in the suburbs. His gaze was fixed on the monitor, where the gray streets of the City dissolved in the dim, blurred light of a cloudy day. The cameras mounted on his roof broadcast desolate intersections, littered with the rusting skeletons of smashed and abandoned cars. Their windows gaped like black voids, and the wreckage of signs lay on the sidewalks like the bones of a dead city.
Somewhere out there, beyond the thick concrete walls of his refuge, they roamed—the mad ones. Neither human nor beast, but something in between: shadows with empty eyes, driven by a chaotic, senseless rage that knew neither purpose nor pity. Heavy clouds blanketed the sky, their grayness merging with the horizon, making it impossible to guess when day would yield to night.
Leo was used to navigating by the faint glimpses of the sun, but on overcast days like this, that habit became useless. It left him in an ignorance that tightened his chest. He tried to stay close to the bunker, knowing the mad ones became more active during the day. Their ragged, convulsive movements resembled broken mechanisms ready to snap at any moment.
At night they slowed, as if losing strength, and only then could he risk venturing out, relying on the darkness as his ally.
He ran a finger across the cold touchscreen of his tablet, switching the view from one camera to another. The sound of his breathing echoed in the cramped space. The solar panels on the roof were still working, their low hum powering the bunker, the server, and the camera network—his only eyes in this dead world.
Back in 2025, when the world held its breath awaiting nuclear war, Leo had poured everything into this basement. He reinforced the walls with concrete, installed air filters, stockpiled canned goods and water, preparing for a blast that never came.
But in 2030, the gas arrived—colorless, odorless, shrouding the city in mystery. No one knew where it came from: maybe a leak from an abandoned secret lab, or perhaps a military experiment gone wrong. This invisible poison didn't kill the body, but devoured the mind, turning people into creatures that wandered the streets, smashed storefronts, and attacked anything that moved, leaving chaos in their wake.
Leo leaned back in his chair, his spine cracking from sitting so long. He rubbed his temples, feeling his head buzz from lack of sleep—he hadn't slept for two days now. His eyes were red, his eyelids heavy.
During the day he checked the bunker systems, repaired equipment, counted his remaining supplies, every movement laced with fatigue. At night he slipped outside, creeping through dark alleys to gather food, usable batteries, any spare parts that might come in handy. Each step was accompanied by the fear that a single wrong sound would attract the mad ones.
They weren't searching for him, like in the old zombie movies he and Anna used to love rewatching on cozy evenings. They didn't emit animal cries or pound on doors with hungry roars. They simply were—a chaotic, senseless threat, ready to tear apart anything in their path, their footsteps echoing through the empty streets.
Leo sometimes thought their madness was a reflection of his own loneliness, a mirror in which he saw himself: locked in a concrete cage, where silence and solitude gnawed at his soul more fiercely than the fear of death.
He stood up and stretched, his joints creaking like old floorboards. He walked over to the metal door leading from the bunker into the house. Its cold metal chilled his fingers as he habitually checked the perimeter via the tablet, the screen casting a faint light on his haggard face.
The street looked empty, but Leo knew it was an illusion. The mad ones could appear at any moment, especially in weather like this, when the clouds hid the sun and shadows merged with the asphalt, creating traps for the eyes.
He put on a light bulletproof vest, its weight pressing on his shoulders, and checked the charge of the electroshock weapon—a homemade device assembled from an old battery and wires. Its sparks crackled during testing. He tucked a revolver into his pocket. He had few bullets left; their metal felt cold against his fingers, lending a sense of assurance. He saved them for a last resort. The electroshock weapon was more reliable, not raising the noise that could attract those others—the ones more dangerous than the mad ones, whose silhouettes sometimes flickered on the horizon.
Entering the first floor of the house, Leo made the rounds of the rooms, checking the motion sensors by the windows. Their faint blinking was calming but didn't dispel the anxiety. Back in 2025, he had installed rolling shutters with steel sheets, capable of lowering at the slightest press of a button. They left narrow slits for ventilation, their screech echoing in the emptiness.
The walls were reinforced, but he still inspected them daily, running his fingers over the cold concrete, searching for cracks or dents left by time and the fury of the mad ones. They didn't try to break in, but sometimes, in a fit of madness, they beat against the walls or threw stones and pieces of metal, their blows leaving grooves in the steel.
Once he found deep scratches on the front door, as if someone had scraped metal against it. He stood before it for ten minutes, imagining a mad one, feeling no pain, beating against it over and over until its fingers turned to shreds.
In the backyard, overgrown with weeds whose thorns snagged clothing, stood a water collector, filtering rain and condensation. Its rusty body shook in the wind. The endless rains, constantly falling in this damp City, were his salvation. Their drops drummed on the roof, but the mad ones sometimes broke street pipes, and water flowed over the asphalt, carrying away dirt and debris.
Leo tried to collect as much water as he could before the system failed, his hands trembling as he adjusted the valves. Returning to the bunker, he walked to the far corner where his small hydroponic greenhouse stood—his pride, a source of faint hope. In it, he had planted potatoes, lettuce, and some herbs, growing them under LED lamps. Their weak light cast shadows on the walls.
He checked the humidity and light sensors, adjusted the hose supplying water, feeling how fragile this life was amidst the chaos.
Finished with the greenhouse, Leo caught his reflection in the cracked screen of an old tablet he used instead of a mirror. His face was overgrown with stubble, his eyes red, his eyelids heavy as lead slabs.
Should shave, he thought, but immediately smirked, the bitter sound echoing in the void. For whom? For himself? For the mad ones roaming beyond the walls?
He imagined standing before them, clean-shaven, in a fresh shirt, and nearly laughed, but the laugh caught in his throat, replaced by a viscous emptiness. He was alone. For three months now. Sometimes it seemed he had forgotten what a human voice sounded like, aside from his own—hoarse and tired.
Leo walked to the work station in another corner of the bunker, where a metal table was piled with a 3D printer, a soldering iron, a toolbox, and coils of wire. The smell of metal and plastic filled the air. Here he repaired electronics, printed spare parts, assembled sensors, his fingers moving automatically while his mind wandered in the past.
Taking a screwdriver, he opened the panel of the solar inverter and checked the connections. The batteries were draining faster than he had calculated—dust on the panels must be the reason. He would have to climb onto the roof at night and clean them, risking a run-in with the mad ones, their shadows flickering in his thoughts.
He tightened a screw, his fingers trembling from fatigue. "You're still managing," he whispered to himself, "though your nerves are starting to fray." But his voice sounded unconvincing, its echo dissolving in the concrete walls.
He poured coffee from a thermos, inhaling the bitter aroma—the last bridge to the past, when he drank it in the office, discussing internet memes with colleagues and laughing at their jokes.
Now the office was an empty pile of concrete, and his colleagues… He pushed the thought away, clenching his teeth. Sitting before the computer monitor, he turned on the surveillance camera feed. The street came alive in shades of red and blue. Two figures flickered in an alley—mad ones.
A man in a torn jacket, probably once an office worker, dragged a metal rod along the asphalt, striking sparks. Their weak light reflected in puddles. Next to him, a woman in the remnants of a dress, once bright red, now gray with grime, stumbled along as if she had forgotten where she was going. Her long, tangled hair fell over her face.
Leo involuntarily lingered his gaze on her, his heart tightening with a mix of pity and horror. She was young, around thirty, and in her movements, despite their chaos, a shadow of her former life could be guessed. Loneliness washed over him in a wave, warm and bitter, and he turned away from the screen, gritting his teeth.
Don't look at her. Don't even think, he ordered himself. But his eyes returned to the image on their own.
The mad ones roamed the streets, sometimes colliding with each other. He saw how two women in torn dresses—one in tatters that might have been an evening gown, the other in the remains of an office suit—clashed by a broken storefront.
They fought silently, with frenzy, scratching each other until one fell, and the other wandered off, not noticing her victory. The men fought too, but less often. More often they roamed, breaking anything they came across. One in the remnants of a construction helmet beat his fist against a wall until his own blood mixed with the grime.
Leo watched them, and a heavy feeling grew in his chest. Just recently they had been people, with faces full of emotion, with voices sounding in a crowd. Now they were shadows, ghosts of past lives. But in their movements he still saw traces of the past, and that was the worst part—a reminder that he could share their fate.
He turned off the camera feed, took a sip of coffee, and burned his lips. The bitter taste brought him back to reality. He must no longer think of them as people—that made him weak, vulnerable. But loneliness was stronger. In the darkest moments he imagined walking out to them, removing his respirator, looking into their empty eyes—say, that one in the torn red dress—and asking himself: would he become one of them? Would he forget the pain?
He shook his head, chasing the thought away. "You won't give up, Leo," he whispered. "Just not today."
Closer to noon, he tended to the air filters. The gas still hung in the air, though its concentration was dropping. A respirator was mandatory outside; the fear of the gas's return nested in every breath. In the bunker, the filters worked flawlessly. He replaced the charcoal cartridge and checked the sensors on the tablet. All clear.
Then he sat at the 3D printer, printing new mounts for a camera damaged last week. Its buzzing was soothing.
The clouds thickened, the sky darkened. Night would come soon—his time. He opened the supply cabinet, selected a can of stewed beans and a piece of dried fish. Water boiled cozily, homely, on the hotplate.
By five in the evening, the rain began. Leo put on a leather jacket, checked the revolver and electroshock weapon, and tucked a flashlight into his belt. Opening the hatch, he froze; the silence pressed down, reminding him of his solitude. He glanced at his watch—5:25 PM—put on the respirator, and stepped into the darkness, where the shadows waited.