The hollow cavern of the warehouse felt different. The crushing, suffocating isolation of the past few days had finally broken.
Brice hadn’t expected to find survivors when he ducked into the collapsed subway station to escape the encroaching horde, and he certainly hadn’t expected to end up dragging two of them back to his fortified warehouse.
For the first time since the sky changed, there were voices inside instead of just the wind howling through the shattered skylights.
David sat on an overturned, rusted metal desk, grunting with effort as he used the heavy heel of his work boot to stomp a bent length of galvanized steel pipe back into something resembling a straight line. He was a broad-shouldered man, an electrician by trade, with calloused hands and weary, deeply lined eyes that looked like they hadn’t seen sleep in a decade.
Across the floor, Carla was shoulder-deep in a toppled filing cabinet, tossing out waterlogged invoices from 2018. She was sharper, younger—maybe a grad student before the world ended—with a cynical edge and a stare that could cut glass. Her hair was matted with sweat and drywall dust.
“Found something,” she called out, pulling her arm back.
Brice looked up from where he was sitting on a stack of wooden pallets, testing the newly mended grip of his tire iron. His shoulder still carried a dull, deep-tissue throb from his encounter with the hound. “What is it?”
She held up a small cardboard box, its corners swollen and peeling. “Bicycle playing cards. Looks like a full deck.”
Brice let out a short, raspy laugh. “Well. Civilization is officially gone, the power grid is dead, but at least we can still lose at poker.”
David paused his stomping, wiping a streak of grease from his forehead. “You play?”
“I lose professionally,” Brice corrected.
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Carla offered a faint, fleeting smile—the first genuine crack in her armor since Brice had pulled them out of that tunnel. “That’s oddly specific.”
Brice shrugged. “I’ve had years of practice.”
The three of them shared a laugh. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t long. But for a few seconds, the ash and the blood of the outside world disappeared.
By sunset, they had fortified themselves back in the main loading bay, dragging heavy wooden pallets across the doors.
Brice sat near a cracked window, methodically running a spit-slicked whetstone over the edge of his hunting knife. The metallic shhhk, shhhk sound was rhythmic. Grounding.
David sat a few feet away, picking dirt out from under his nails. “You hunt?”
“Grew up doing it,” Brice said, not looking up from the blade. “My grandfather taught me. Claimed it built character. Mostly it just built a tolerance for mosquito bites and sitting perfectly still in the freezing cold.”
David nodded slowly. “Figures. You were pretty calm back there in the subway tunnel.”
Brice stopped sharpening. “I wasn’t calm. I was terrified. My heart was trying to crack my ribs. I’ve just learned that screaming doesn’t usually solve the problem.”
As true darkness swallowed the ruined skyline of Los Angeles, Brice built a small fire inside a corroded steel 55-gallon drum. The three of them huddled around the flickering orange glow, passing around three bags of severely expired sour cream and onion chips David had liberated from a vending machine, sharing a single, lukewarm bottle of scavenged water. It tasted strongly of hot plastic.
Carla watched Brice from across the flames. “You keep doing that.”
Brice blinked. “Huh?”
“The ring.” She pointed to his left hand. “You spin it around your finger whenever you’re lost in thought.”
Brice looked down. The scratched gold band caught the firelight. He managed a soft, sad smile. “My wife gave it to me. Angel.”
“Where is she?” Carla asked quietly.
“The Philippines. She was visiting family when… the Wave hit.”
David winced. “Man. You think she’s okay?”
Brice stared directly into the core of the fire. “I have to believe she is. Because if I stop believing that…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Nobody asked him to clarify.
David picked up a piece of loose concrete and tossed it into the drum. “My wife and little boy were visiting her parents down in San Diego. I haven’t heard a word. Phones are dead.”
Brice nodded slowly. “We’ll find them.”
David looked up, his eyes glassy. “You really believe that?”
Brice met his gaze. It was a hard, unflinching look. “No. But I think believing beats giving up.”
Finally, Brice let out a heavy breath and leaned back against a concrete pillar. “So. Just so we’re clear. If this whole apocalypse thing works out… I’m charging both of you rent for this warehouse.”
David laughed, a genuine, startling sound. “With what money?”
Brice tapped his chin. “Good point. I’ll take monster jerky.”
Carla’s nose wrinkled in deep disgust. “Please tell me that’s a joke.”
Brice looked at her, entirely straight-faced. “Depends on the marinade.”
She lobbed her empty, crumpled chip bag at his head. He caught it effortlessly. The three of them laughed, and for a moment, it almost felt like old friends sitting around a fire on a bad camping trip.
Later that night, as the fire died down to embers, Brice drifted off to sleep, his hand resting on the tire iron.
He didn’t see David slowly stand up, check to make sure the others were asleep, and slip quietly out the side door into the ruined city. But Carla did.
She pressed herself against the wall, her eyes narrowing as she watched David disappear into the dark, whispering a shocking line to herself: “What did you just do, David?”