There was a thin, constant ringing in my ears.
Somewhere close by, something was ticking.
I opened my eyes.
For a few seconds, I didn't know where I was. The world was sideways. My cheek was pressed against something cold. Strands of hair hung across my face, and tiny pieces of glass glittered beneath me like somebody had scattered sugar over the road.
Road? I blinked. My head hurt. There was a smell too. Burnt rubber. Metal. Something sharp and chemical that made the back of my throat sting.
Where was I...? I tried to move, but pain instantly shot through my ankle.
"Ah—!" My voice sounded distant beneath the ringing.
Something dug hard across my chest. A strap. Seatbelt.
...That's right. I was—
The car. Mum. The school. Mr Han. Ethan's brother had come to get us and— A horn.
Someone running into the road. Ethan shouting something. Then— I couldn't remember.
My eyes focused properly.
The Audi was lying on its side. Or I was.
No. The whole car had overturned.
The passenger-side windows were beneath us now, crushed against the road. I was hanging awkwardly from my seatbelt, one shoulder pressed into Linda beside me while loose school bags and bits of rubbish had fallen into what had become the bottom of the car.
"Linda...?"
Nothing.
My heart kicked.
"Linda!"
A groan came from beneath me.
"...Stop yelling."
"You're okay."
"No," she muttered. "My leg is fucking killing me."
"Ethan?"
Movement above us.
"Ughh... I'm here."
His voice shook.
I looked up.
He was hanging from his belt on the other side of the rear seat, one hand braced against what used to be the driver's-side door.
"Ethan..."
He was staring towards the front.
I followed his eyes.
His brother wasn't moving.
"Bro?"
Nothing.
Ethan fought with his seatbelt.
"Bro!"
A weak cough answered him.
Then something hissed beneath the bonnet.
Ethan froze.
A sharp petrol smell reached me a second later.
"We need to get out." Ethan immediately moved.
He tore the buckle free and dropped against the passenger-side door, catching himself with one hand. A sharp grimace crossed his face as his other arm pressed instinctively against his ribs. Ethan scrambled towards the rear and kicked at the driver's-side door above us until it gave with a metallic groan.
Fresh air rushed in. Ethan shoved the school bags that had fallen near him through the opening before hauling himself out first.
"Linda!" He reached back down immediately.
Linda was still fighting with her belt.
"It's stuck!"
"Hold on."
Ethan leaned halfway into the car, caught her beneath both arms and pulled.
"Ow—! Ethan, my leg!"
"I know, I know!"
The buckle came loose.
Linda dropped against me before Ethan dragged her upwards, inch by inch, until she disappeared through the open door.
Another hiss came from the front. Louder. Something underneath the bonnet popped.
"Celeste!"
I was already undoing my belt. I dropped hard onto my shoulder.
"Ah—!"
"Come on!"
I crawled towards him.
Broken glass dug into my palms. My ankle screamed every time I pushed with it, but Ethan's hand found my wrist. He pulled. I got one knee over the edge. Then my shoe caught against something inside.
"Wait—"
"Just pull it!"
"My foot—!"
Another sharp pop. Ethan yanked harder. My shoe came off.
I spilled over the side of the car and landed against him.
We both nearly went down.
"Move!" He shoved me towards Linda. I stumbled the first few steps before turning back.
Ethan hadn't followed. He was staring into the car.
Through the shattered windscreen, I could see his brother.
Still in the driver's seat.
His head had lifted.
One leg was buried somewhere beneath the dashboard. Blood covered the side of his face.
"Ethan..."
His brother moved one hand.
Just a little. Towards him. Ethan took a step forward.
The car hissed again. He stopped.
I could see his chest moving. Fast.
His eyes went from his brother to the smoke leaking through the crushed bonnet.
Back to his brother.
"Ethan!" Linda shouted.
He flinched. His brother's mouth moved.
"Ethan..."
Barely louder than the hiss coming from the car.
He took another half-step towards the car.
Then something sparked underneath it.
He jumped backwards.
"No."
It came out under his breath.
"Ethan—"
"No."
He backed away again.
His brother was still reaching for him.
"Come on!" Linda screamed.
Ethan turned.
And ran.
For one second, I just stood there.
I looked at the man still trapped inside.
Then at Ethan.
Then the smoke thickened.
I ran too.
Linda couldn't. Ethan reached her first, throwing her arm across his shoulders and practically dragging her along. I caught her other side.
We made it across the grass. Maybe ten metres. Maybe fifteen.
Then there was a dull whump behind us.
Heat struck my back.
Linda screamed.
I ducked instinctively as glass scattered across the road behind us.
When I turned around, the front half of the Audi was burning.
Orange flame rolled through the broken windscreen.
For a few seconds, Ethan didn't make a sound.
He wasn't even breathing properly.
He stared at the car. His face had gone completely white.
"I..."
Nothing followed.
He took one step towards it.
Then stopped again. There was no reaching it now.
Fire had already swallowed the driver's side.
Ethan's hands started shaking.
Linda was crying beside him. She caught his sleeve.
"I-I... couldn't." He stammered.
"It was... it was going to blow..."
Neither of us answered.
"You saw it..."
His eyes found mine.
"...Right?"
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
Linda tightened her hand around his arm.
"You would've died too..."
Ethan looked at her.
She nodded. "You would've died..."
His breathing slowed.
"That's right... I couldn't... He was stuck..."
I looked back at the car.
His brother had been alive.
That was the part I couldn't stop thinking about.
He had been alive when Ethan turned away.
We didn't make it home that day.
None of us even knew which home we were supposed to try first.
Mine was too far to walk with Linda barely able to stand. Ethan wanted to head towards his own neighbourhood at first, although he stopped saying that once the smoke from the Audi disappeared behind the buildings. Linda's family lived in another direction entirely.
For a while, our entire plan was just to get off the road.
That was harder than it sounded.
Every few minutes, sirens passed through the streets while cars forced their way through traffic and groups of people hurried somewhere.
Maybe they were just as lost as we were.
We limped behind a row of shophouses instead, keeping away from the main road whenever we could. Ethan supported Linda most of the way. I followed beside them with one shoe missing and my ankle throbbing every time it touched the ground.
Nobody talked much. Ethan didn't mention his brother again. Linda didn't either.
I kept checking my phone.
Mum didn't answer. Dad didn't answer. I kept sending messages anyway.
I'm okay.
I'm with Linda and Ethan.
Please reply.
The little ticks beside them became the most important things in the world.
By the time the sun started dropping between the apartment blocks, we had made it less than two kilometres.
It felt like twenty.
"We can't keep walking like this," Linda said.
She didn't need to explain why.
Her face had gone pale, and Ethan was practically carrying her now.
He looked around.
Most of the ground-floor shops along the old shophouses had already pulled their shutters down. One convenience store was still lit, with several people crowded inside behind the locked glass doors. They watched us pass. We'd already tried knocking. Nobody had opened. Further along, a narrow staircase was squeezed between a hair salon and an electronics shop, leading up to the second floor. A faded sign above it advertised a tuition centre.
The front door was locked, so Ethan smashed the narrow glass panel beside the handle with a broken umbrella left beside the staircase. It took a few tries before the pane gave way, scattering glass across the floor. He reached through, unlocked it from the inside, and we slipped in before pulling the door shut behind us.
Only then did we explore the tuition centre. Thankfully, there was no one inside. We dragged whatever we could find against the entrance—desks, chairs, even a filing cabinet.
...The tuition centre became ours for the night.
We drank from the water dispenser, ate whatever we could find in the pantry and used the first-aid kit from behind reception to wrap Linda's leg and my ankle. Ethan's wrist had swollen badly by then, but he could still move his fingers, so we decided that meant it probably wasn't broken. None of us really knew.
Messages kept coming in from classmates, family chats and school groups, most of them asking the same questions nobody had answers to. There were reports of attacks in other parts of Eden, videos being passed around, warnings to stay indoors and arguments over what was actually happening.
Linda had no luck with her family either. Ethan stopped checking his phone after a while. By evening, we had pulled the blinds shut and switched off most of the lights. The roads outside gradually emptied, though sirens continued passing through the district long after dark.
Near midnight, a national emergency alert appeared on our phones, reaffirming what the day had already made clear... society was beginning to crumble.
We stayed where we were.
None of us had anywhere better to go.
Morning came anyway.
We tried going home. That lasted less than an hour.
The roads were worse than they had been the night before. Abandoned cars clogged the larger junctions, buses sat where their drivers had left them, and the few people still moving openly did so in groups or at a run. We made it several streets before spotting enough blood on the pavement to turn around. With Linda barely able to walk and neither Ethan nor me in much better shape, there was no point pretending we could cross half the city like that.
So we went back to the tuition centre.
The second day passed mostly indoors. We rationed what little food was left, filled whatever bottles we could find from the water dispenser and watched the news until the reports stopped telling us anything useful.
By the third day, staying in one place was no longer enough.
The pantry was empty, and the row below us had changed. Some of the shops that had been occupied the first afternoon were shuttered now. Others had been broken into during the night, their doors hanging open or glass scattered across the pavement. A few people had simply left.
Ethan and I searched the places that were already open while Linda remained upstairs.
We didn't have to break into anything yet.
Most of what was left had already been picked through, but we came back with bottled drinks, biscuits, canned food, a pair of trainers that almost fit me and whatever else we could use.
That bought us a few more days.
The tuition centre lasted longer than I expected. We slept across the classroom floors, used spare cushions as pillows and kept the blinds drawn whenever we were inside. The electricity became less reliable as the week went on, so we charged our phones whenever we could and filled every bottle we had whenever the taps still worked.
Linda's leg improved enough that she no longer needed both of us to support her. That didn't stop her from sticking close to Ethan anyway.
Not that either of them seemed bothered.
They sat together when we ate, moved together whenever we went outside, and somehow always ended up sleeping beside each other even though there was an entire classroom floor to choose from. Not touching, usually. Just close enough that Linda could roll over and find him without really trying.
I slept on the other side of the room.
It wasn't like I cared.
The streets changed faster than we did. More shutters stayed down each morning, windows were broken where they hadn't been the day before, and some shops were simply left open with everything useful already taken. We started going farther whenever food ran low.
At first, we only searched places that had clearly been abandoned. After a while, that became harder to tell. A locked door could mean someone was still inside, or that whoever owned the place had left days ago.
The first window Ethan broke bothered me.
By the third, none of us said anything.
We learnt which streets stayed quiet, which buildings had back exits and which routes were worth avoiding entirely. Books and worksheets disappeared from our bags first. Water, batteries, plasters and canned food took their place.
The tuition centre eventually stopped being worth defending.
Too many infected began wandering through the row below, and one morning we came back to find the entrance downstairs smashed open.
So we moved.
The next place lasted three nights.
The one after that lasted five.
Linda could walk properly again by then, though she still stayed near Ethan whenever we went anywhere. He usually took the lead, and she rarely argued with him anymore. If he decided a route looked bad, she agreed. If he said we should leave somewhere, she was already packing.
Sometimes before I had even decided whether I agreed.
Most of the time, he was right.
That made it harder to complain.
At night, the two of them still ended up close together. Sometimes Linda fell asleep against his shoulder. Once, I woke up and found Ethan with his jacket folded beneath her head while he slept beside her on the floor.
I turned over and went back to sleep.
We never spoke about his brother.
The days became harder to separate after that.
Morning meant checking what food remained. Afternoon meant moving if we had to. Night meant finding somewhere with a door we could block and another way out if things went wrong.
We still checked our phones, though there was less to find each time.
Some classmates had made it home. Others were staying with relatives, neighbours or whoever had taken them in. A few names simply stopped appearing.
Our families never replied.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped saying we would try again tomorrow.
Food decided where we went after that.
The easy places were empty by then. Convenience stores had been stripped first, followed by supermarkets and anything close to the main roads. Smaller shops lasted longer, but only because fewer people thought to check them.
We started searching behind counters.
Inside stockrooms.
Upstairs.
Anywhere food might still have been left.
By then, food wasn't the only thing people were looking for.
We started seeing groups.
Some were harmless enough. Neighbours who had taken over a block together, families sharing supplies between apartments, people marking doors to show which units had already been searched.
Others were harder to understand.
One afternoon, we passed a group standing beneath a pedestrian bridge with handwritten signs about judgement and the end of the world. A man with a portable speaker called after anyone who walked past, telling them there was still time to repent.
We kept walking.
A few days later, we found another group handing out bread near an old community hall.
The bread was free.
Staying wasn't.
They wanted people to sleep inside, help guard the building and hand over whatever supplies they were carrying so everything could be "shared properly".
They seemed especially welcoming towards women.
Ethan didn't even let us get close.
There were rumours about other places too. Shelters that would take anyone. Shelters that only took families. People offering food in exchange for work. Men guarding supermarkets they didn't own. Someone supposedly running a clinic out of a church. Someone else claiming the military would evacuate anyone who reached a particular station.
Half of it was probably nonsense.
The three of us stayed together and kept moving.
By then, three weeks had passed.
Ethan. Linda. Celeste.
For the three high school students, it had been the roughest twenty one days of their lives. Mental fatigue was building up, as bitter days pass without end.
By late afternoon, the three of them were preparing for another supply run.
Linda sat nearby rubbing at her injured leg while Ethan went through their bags.
"Tell me again why we're going out."
"Because we're out of food."
"We had food."
"We had half a tin of beans."
"We would've had more if someone actually carried more yesterday."
Celeste looked up.
Linda didn't even bother looking back at her.
"...I carried what I could."
"You carried water and two cans."
"My bag was full."
"With what?"
Celeste went quiet.
Linda finally glanced over her shoulder.
"That's what I thought."
Ethan sighed.
"Just leave it."
For a second, Celeste thought he meant Linda.
Then he added, "But you do need to start taking more when we find something. We can't keep going back out because we run short."
Celeste tightened her grip around the straps of her bag.
"Okay."
Linda gave a tired laugh.
"That's all you ever say."
Celeste didn't answer.
"At least I have a reason I can't carry much."
"Your leg's still fucked," Ethan said.
"Exactly."
He looked down at it. Linda had been walking properly again for several days, but the limp returned whenever they spent too long outside.
"Then take it easy today."
Linda frowned. "What?"
"Stay here. We'll go."
"We?"
Ethan glanced at Celeste.
She already knew what that meant.
Linda followed his eyes and gave a small shrug. "Fine. Just don't take forever."
"We won't."
"And don't come back with three cans and call it a supply run."
Celeste looked at her.
Linda didn't seem to notice.
Ethan picked up his bag. "We'll find something."
He checked the knife tucked into his pocket, then headed for the door.
Celeste followed.
Linda remained behind.
By the time Ethan and Celeste reached the commercial district, the sun was already beginning to sink behind the buildings.
They had gone farther than usual that day. Most of the nearby shops had either been emptied or claimed, and anything easy to reach had stopped being worth the trip several days ago.
Neither spoke much along the way.
Most of the units around them were workshops and small wholesalers, the kind of businesses they would never have noticed before the outbreak. Metal shutters covered half the entrances. Others had already been forced open sometime since the outbreak.
Ethan checked each one as they passed.
"That one."
Celeste looked over.
A shutter near the end of the row had been bent upwards, leaving enough room to crawl beneath.
"Someone's already been inside."
"Doesn't mean they took everything."
He crouched and looked through the gap.
Celeste stayed where she was.
After a moment, Ethan glanced back.
"You coming?"
"...Yeah."
She followed him inside.
The unit was darker than it had looked from the road. Light came through the gap beneath the shutter and from a narrow row of windows near the ceiling, enough to make out shelves, stacked cartons and a counter running along one wall.
Most of it had already been searched.
Open boxes littered the floor. Someone had torn through a cabinet near the entrance and left its contents scattered around their feet.
Ethan stepped over them.
"Check the back."
Celeste took the opposite aisle.
Cleaning supplies. Paper cups. Plastic containers. Several boxes of printer ink cartridges. Useless to them.
Nothing they could eat.
She reached the end and looked over at Ethan.
He was already farther inside.
"Anything?"
"No."
"Keep looking."
Celeste bit back the answer that came to mind.
She opened another cupboard.
Empty.
The next contained packets of coffee and powdered creamer.
"Coffee."
"Take it."
"...We don't even have hot water."
"We might."
She put it in her bag.
There was a narrow door behind the counter, partly hidden by a stack of flattened cardboard. Ethan moved the boxes aside and tried the handle. Locked.
Celeste looked towards the front.
"We can just go."
"We came all this way."
"But we already found some things."
"...Not enough."
He took the utility knife from his pocket and wedged it against the latch.
Celeste watched him work at it.
A few hard pulls loosened the frame. Ethan kicked once near the handle.
The door opened with a crack.
Something fell inside.
Both of them stopped.
A cardboard box had toppled from a shelf.
Nothing else moved.
Ethan exhaled.
"See? Nothing to worry about."
Celeste didn't answer.
The storeroom was small, but this one hadn't been cleared properly.
A carton of bottled tea sat beneath the bottom shelf. Beside it were instant noodles, crackers and several tins stacked inside an opened delivery box. Ethan crouched immediately.
"Finally."
Celeste came closer. There was more than they could carry.
For a moment, neither of them complained.
They filled their bags. Tuna. Corn. Beans. Whatever they recognised. Ethan found another box behind the first and tore it open.
More noodles.
"Linda's going to complain about these."
Ethan gave a tired smile as he packed another bundle of noodles into his bag.
"Probably."
Celeste kept sorting through the tins.
After a while, he spoke again.
"Hey... about earlier."
She looked over.
"Sorry."
"For what?"
"I don't know. I've just been on edge lately." He rubbed the back of his neck. "All of us have, I guess. I should've stepped in earlier."
Celeste looked back down at the food.
"It's fine."
"See? That's what she means."
She frowned at him.
Ethan laughed quietly. "You always say that even when you're pissed off."
"I'm not pissed off."
"Sure."
He moved closer while reaching for one of the tins beside her. Their shoulders brushed, and instead of immediately moving away, Ethan stayed there.
"You know I don't actually think you're useless, right?"
Celeste's hands slowed.
"...Okay."
"Celeste."
"What?"
He reached over and caught her hand before she could put another tin into the bag.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
His thumb shifted slightly against her knuckles.
Then Celeste looked at him properly.
Ethan looked exhausted.
Not the sleepy kind from school. There were dark circles beneath his eyes now, his hair had grown out messily, and the bandage around his wrist was already grey at the edges.
"I'm trying," he said.
Celeste's irritation faded a little.
"I know."
His grip loosened, though he didn't let go immediately.
"We should probably—"
Something shifted deeper inside the unit.
Ethan released her hand and looked towards the back.
Celeste did the same. For several seconds, nothing moved.
Then came a scrape. Slow. Uneven.
Ethan stood.
"Stay here."
Celeste almost told him not to go.
He was already moving.
The sound had come from beyond the storeroom, where another metal door sat partly hidden behind stacked cartons. Ethan approached it carefully, utility knife held low in one hand.
Celeste followed anyway.
The door was shut.
Another scrape came from the other side.
Ethan glanced at her.
"Could be something falling."
"Then leave it."
"There might be another room."
"We have enough."
He looked at the bags.
Then back at the door.
"Ethan."
"Just checking."
The handle wouldn't turn.
He put the knife away and pushed against it instead.
Nothing.
"Leave it."
"Wait."
He shoved harder.
The frame creaked.
Celeste stepped back.
"Ethan."
The third shove broke something loose.
The door flew inward and struck metal on the other side.
A stack of trays crashed across the floor.
The noise rolled through the adjoining loading area.
Both of them froze.
"...Shit."
Something moved in the darkness beyond.
Not one thing.
Several.
Ethan grabbed Celeste by the wrist.
"Go...!"
They ran.
The first infected appeared behind them before they reached the storeroom. Ethan kicked a carton into its path, sending tins rolling across the floor. Celeste snatched her bag.
"Leave it!"
"We need the food!"
"Fine. Move!"
They squeezed through the shop and dropped beneath the bent shutter.
Celeste's bag caught. She yanked once. It didn't budge.
"Ethan!"
He grabbed the strap and yanked the bag free hard enough to tear it loose at one end and split the side open.
A tin rolled onto the pavement.
Neither stopped for it.
They ran down the row.
Behind them, the shutter rattled as something forced itself underneath.
Then another.
Celeste could hear the loose cans inside her bag striking against one another with every step.
"Faster!"
"I-I'm trying!"
They reached the junction.
Two infected wandered between a line of abandoned vans ahead.
Ethan changed direction immediately.
"This way."
They cut towards the service road.
Celeste followed until the torn strap of her bag snagged on a bent strip of metal jutting from the broken pavement.
It yanked her backwards and she went down hard, the bag twisting around her ankle as she fell.
"Ethan!"
He turned. For a second, he came back. He caught her arm and pulled.
"Get up!"
"My foot—"
"Leave the bag!"
"It's stuck!"
Something rounded the corner behind her. Ethan's grip loosened. Celeste looked up. He was staring past her.
Three infected had made it into the road. Another followed behind them.
"Ethan..."
He took a step backwards.
"Get up."
"I can't!"
Another step.
"Celeste, get up!"
She pulled at her foot again.
Ethan looked towards the open road behind him.
Then back at her.
The infected were close enough now that Celeste could hear their shoes scraping against the pavement.
Ethan's hand fell away.
"I'm sorry."
Celeste stared at him.
He turned.
And ran.
"...Eh?"
For a few seconds, she couldn't move in disbelief.
She could only watch his back getting farther away.
The nearest infected staggered into the space he had just left behind.
She pulled desperately at her trapped foot, twisting against whatever had caught around her ankle, but it refused to come free.
It was close enough now that she could hear its ragged breathing and the uneven slap of its shoes against the road.
Celeste pulled again. Nothing.
Her hands started shaking. For one stupid second, she looked towards Ethan's back disappearing farther down the street, as if he might still turn around. He didn't.
The infected came closer.
Celeste squeezed her eyes shut. She didn't want to see it. Her shoulders drew in on themselves as she waited for the hands, the teeth, whatever came next— Mr Han flashed through her mind. She didn't want to see herself on the ground beneath something like that, screaming while it tore into her.
"W-What the hell?!"
Ethan's voice came from farther down the road.
Celeste's eyes snapped open.
For one confused second, she thought he was shouting at her. Then something dark swept past him so closely that Ethan stumbled sideways, twisting around to stare after it.
A motorbike swept into the junction.
She hadn't heard it coming.
There was no engine roar, only a deep electric whirr that climbed into a clean, satisfying whine as the bike accelerated, quiet enough that the hiss of tyres against the road still carried as the rider cut across the junction, leaving Ethan behind and heading straight towards her.
Straight towards the infected.
Celeste stared.
The nearest one was only a few steps away now.
The motorbike didn't slow until the last moment.
Up close, Celeste finally saw what had passed Ethan.
It was black from front to rear, most of the bodywork wrapped in exposed carbon fibre broken by sleek metallic panels shaped tightly around the frame. A long, stepped saddle ran towards a reinforced rear section. The whole machine looked too clean, too deliberate for anything she'd ever seen on Eden's roads, with a low aerodynamic body and a blocky adventure-style windshield rising over the front, its glass tinted almost completely black. Beneath it, a narrow red lightbar burned across the nose.
The rider looked just as out of place.
A black helmet enclosed the rider's entire head, angular around the jaw and visor in a way that reminded Celeste vaguely of something between an old sci-fi film and one of those powered suits from superhero movies. A black windbreaker snapped behind them as the bike swung across the road.
The rider braked hard.
The rear wheel slid.
The motorbike turned almost sideways between Celeste and the infected before settling upright again with barely more than the scrape of rubber against asphalt. The rider planted one boot on the ground.
One hand disappeared beneath the windbreaker, and a pistol came out.
Celeste flinched at the first shot. The report was painfully loud at that distance.
The nearest infected dropped.
The rider adjusted their aim and fired again. The second stumbled sideways before collapsing against the bonnet of an abandoned car.
A third came around it.
Another shot. It fell too.
There was nothing frantic about the rider's shooting. No screaming, no wasted movement. The rider aimed, fired, shifted to the next one and fired again.
Celeste stared.
"Can you stand?"
The voice came slightly distorted through the helmet, enough that Celeste couldn't quite place it.
She almost didn't realise the stranger was speaking to her.
"My foot—"
The helmeted figure looked down.
The strap of her bag had twisted around her ankle beneath a bent piece of metal.
The rider holstered the pistol, crouched and pulled the strap loose with one hard tug.
"Up."
Celeste tried, but her leg buckled immediately.
The helmeted figure caught her before she hit the ground.
Another groan came from the road behind them. Then another. The shots had drawn more of them. Movement appeared between the parked cars and along the mouths of the adjoining units. More infected were turning towards the sound, some stumbling, others already breaking into an uneven run.
The rider looked once over their shoulder.
"We're leaving."
Before Celeste could answer, the stranger slipped an arm beneath her knees and lifted her properly.
"W-Wait—"
The figure turned and set her onto the motorbike behind them.
"Hold on to me."
Celeste barely had time to find her balance before the rider was back in the saddle.
She wrapped both arms around their waist. There was more muscle beneath the windbreaker than she'd expected, the body broader and more solid than she'd imagined. For the first time, Celeste wondered if the rider might be a man.
The nearest infected had already reached the bodies the rider had shot. Another came around the bonnet of a parked van, followed by two more farther back.
The rider glanced towards Ethan.
Then the bike moved.
The low electric whirr rose smoothly beneath them as the motorbike accelerated, tyres hissing against the road while it slipped past the first infected and cut towards Ethan's side of the street.
Celeste looked back once. There were more of them now.
Several had spilled out from between the units, drawn by the gunshots and the crash from inside the shop. They spread across the road behind them in an uneven line, some faster than the others, but all moving in the same direction.
Ethan was still running ahead.
He glanced over his shoulder when the bike came up beside him, confusion flashing across his face before he recognised Celeste on the back.
"Celeste?!"
The rider eased off slightly, matching Ethan's pace. Ethan looked between the bike and the infected behind them.
A small display beneath the tinted windshield changed.
Celeste only caught it because she was looking over the rider's shoulder.
RIDER ASSIST: ON
The handlebars steadied by themselves as the rider took both hands off them.
Celeste tightened her arms around their waist.
"W-Wait—"
The bike continued forward without wavering, making small corrections on its own as the road shifted beneath the tyres.
The rider twisted around, both hands already reaching for him.
Ethan glanced back at the infected.
That was enough. He reached out.
The rider caught both his forearms.
For several steps, Ethan ran beside the bike, shoes striking the road awkwardly as he tried to keep pace.
Then he pushed off.
The rider pulled at the same moment, and Ethan's feet left the ground.
"Whoa—!" Celeste shifted forward on instinct as Ethan was hauled towards the rear seat. His knee struck the side panel before he managed to hook one leg over, half falling into the narrow space behind her.
The suspension dipped beneath the extra weight.
For one uncomfortable second, all three of them leaned the wrong way.
The bike corrected itself.
Ethan grabbed Celeste's shoulder.
"Move up, give me some space!"
"There's nowhere to go!"
She pressed herself closer to the rider until there was barely any room left between them.
The rider stiffened for half a second at the sudden contact. Their helmet turned slightly, visor angling back towards her as if only then registering just how tightly she had been forced against them.
Celeste caught the movement.
"Sorry."
Their visor shifted forward again before Celeste could read anything from the reaction.
"Just hold on."
Ethan finally managed to settle onto the very end of the seat, one hand gripping the rear frame while the other stayed on Celeste for balance.
Both hands returned to the bars.
RIDER ASSIST: OFF
The motorbike surged.
"W-What the fuck?! Slow down!" Ethan swore behind her as the sudden acceleration pulled all three of them backwards against the seat.
The rider ignored him.
They cut through another junction, the bike leaning smoothly around an abandoned car before straightening again. Celeste had barely relaxed her grip when something lurched out from between two parked vans ahead.
"Look out!"
It stepped directly into their path.
The rider shifted the bike aside, but there wasn't enough room. The infected twisted towards them as they passed, one arm reaching close enough that Celeste could see the blood dried beneath its fingernails.
One hand left the handlebar.
RIDER ASSIST: ON
Celeste saw the pistol come up beside the tinted windshield.
So did Ethan.
One shot cracked through the street.
Celeste's ears rang from the blast. Ethan flinched behind her as the infected's head snapped back, its reaching arm dropping just short of them while the bike swept past.
The rider returned the pistol beneath the windbreaker and put their hand back on the handlebar without slowing.
RIDER ASSIST: OFF
The gun had been hard to miss. Black, long-barrelled and angular, it looked more like a compact hand cannon than an ordinary sidearm, with the same distinctly futuristic design as the bike.
Ethan went quiet. Celeste did too.
The commercial row was already falling away behind them, the infected spilling into the junction too late to follow.
Celeste looked down at her empty hands.
"...We lost the food."
"Not all of it," Ethan muttered.
She looked back. His school bag was still strapped to his shoulders, swollen with tins and packets from the storeroom.
Somehow, he'd managed to keep that. Celeste turned back towards the stranger.
Whoever had picked them up wasn't just another survivor.
And for the first time in weeks, Ethan wasn't the one leading them.
Celeste found herself strangely relieved.