It was day ten of the end of the world — and this was nothing like the first days.
The relief notices had stopped. The national bulletins had stopped. The fear in people's chests and the empty shelves at home had both hit bottom together. For days now, residents had been bolting out their doors for food.
Starve or get bitten — cornered like that, the dead stopped being scary. And with that first wave out the door, the city's numbers started climbing. Almost nobody came back whole. Ten went out for food; nine died. That's not an exaggeration.
Early on, fear and inexperience had kept people from facing them at all. Now the things were everywhere, in every direction, and they only needed to get you once. Run into a cluster mid-scavenge and you were the meal. The city's fresh count surged daily — and the ones inside had been starving for days, while the ones outside had been starving even longer.
And hunger made the dead hunt where the people lived. Like here:
"My door is NOT going to hold!! They've been screaming louder every day, pounding on it nonstop — I've stacked everything I can against it and I'm locked in the innermost room. HOW do they still know I'm in here?!"
"I still have plenty of food. Somebody save me and you can have half — I'll trade, please—"
I watched a good-looking young man pleading into a livestream. By trade, a food blogger.
That explained everything, of course. Boxes of sponsored samples, piles of review product, a serious home stockpile — and a homebody who barely went out. In the outbreak lottery, he'd drawn lucky numbers.
His one piece of bad luck: he rented in a co-living building. Practically his whole floor had turned.
The dead wandered his corridor all day. After a few days of panic he'd done what the comments said — reinforced the front door, hidden in the innermost suite, sealed his smell as best he could. Now all he could perceive was the pounding getting louder, as if the dead of the entire building had gathered outside his one door.
The plea got a reply fast — from a fitness trainer who lived directly upstairs.
"I can come get you. Half your food is mine."
"Deal!" The blogger fired back. "How do I get up?"
"Hurry!"
The blogger started packing at once, strapping the camera to his head so everyone could watch. Ramen, jerky, self-heating meals, water — he laid it all out. Upstairs told him to send the food up first, so he'd be lighter for the climb.
"Send me first?! No way!" he said to the camera. "I'm not stupid." If the food went up without him, nobody was coming back down. He strapped every last item onto his own body instead.
That was when he heard the front door start to give.
CRASH.
"They're in! GO!" — "Climbing!" One glance back: his door was open, and the dead poured through.
They were gray-black all over. Many of them torn open down the front, ruined lengths of them dragging like black rope. Skin like scorched leather stretched tight across their faces; some had no faces left at all, just raw dark openings down to the bone. Days without food, and every one of them came at him at full sprint. Nobody on earth watches that and keeps their legs under them.
He pulled his flimsy bedroom door shut behind him and went out onto the balcony. "You HAVE to save me!" His hands closed around the rope hanging from above.
And the moment his weight came onto it, he understood: he had packed far too much.
"You're too heavy!" The trainer above was dragged half out the window by the load. "There's still time — drop the food! Send the food up first!"
"No! Both of us, together!" The blogger refused outright. Hand over all the food in times like these, and his rescuer would have no reason to pull anyone.
"Not enough! I haven't eaten in days, I don't have the strength! MORE!"
"If I throw it all, what do I eat later?!" He said it to the camera, half sobbing, half laughing. "And you call yourself a trainer!" A few more items went flying. His weight finally came within the man's pull —
— and the bedroom door behind him broke open.
"AAAHHH! PULL! PULL ME UP!"
He hung there, stuck in midair.
"I'll pull YOU first! Food after! Hang the food in the basket beside you and I'll take you up separate!"
"NO! The food stays with me!" Because who knew — once that basket went up, what stopped the man from letting go of him? These days, food was life.
"Trust me or you're NOT getting up!"
The blogger wavered — and before he could decide, a withered hand closed around his ankle.
He thrashed and kicked, pain and terror shooting him up the rope. "I can't hold you!" — "I'll give you the food! IT'S YOURS!" He finally meant to give it all up. Too late. The smell of living blood had reached the window. The dead came over the sill in a screaming rush — some fell past, some got a grip — and the ones behind climbed straight over their fallen, geysering out of the window at the man on the rope.
Claws raked through skin. One of the fast ones got his leg in both hands and — with one awful pull against his kicking — took the whole leg off.
The scream that followed turned the air white. Then his other leg was caught, and pulled, and the rope went suddenly light — nothing left on the harness but blood and two empty boot cuffs. The trainer upstairs let go of everything: the food, the plan, the rope. The blogger fell.
The dead clinging to the wall and the sills went after him like dogs after a thrown bone, letting go, diving. He hit the pavement and vanished under the wave.
It was over in seconds. The crowd in the stream chat watched a person become a memory.