The crackling fire, the distant chatter of the group, the cool night air—it all faded into the background. My brain short-circuited. This was it.
I just had to say it.
I just...
I—
My heart pounded so hard I swore Elliot could hear it. My fingers clenched the fabric of my jeans, steadying myself. I took a deep breath, ready to push the words past the lump in my throat.
This was the moment.
No going back now.
I opened my mouth—
"Wait," Elliot suddenly said, his brows furrowing like he’d just stumbled upon the most pressing question of all time. "Do zombies pee?"
I blinked.
What?
The entire group froze. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the distance, a lone zombie let out a groan, as if even the undead themselves were offended by the sheer stupidity of the question.
Clara choked on her drink, sputtering loudly. Max nearly dropped his can, his face turning a shade of red that could rival a stop sign.
Lila’s face twisted like she’d just witnessed a war crime. Even Roarke, who was usually as expressive as a brick wall, twitched.
Elliot, completely oblivious to the emotional carnage he’d just unleashed, pressed on. "I mean, think about it. They eat, right? We’ve all seen them eating. So if food goes in... where does it go?"
I stared at him, my confession dying a slow, painful death in my throat.
Lila groaned, rubbing her temples like she was trying to physically erase the last thirty seconds from her memory. "Oh my god. Elliot. Why."
"No, no, listen, this is important," Elliot insisted, his voice deadly serious. "If their digestive systems don’t work, then do they just... fill up? Like a balloon? Or do they, you know..." He made an ambiguous downward motion with his hand.
Max, already red-faced from secondhand embarrassment, muttered, "Elliot. Please."
Clara buried her face in her hands. "And here I was, actually enjoying myself."
Lila, apparently deciding to embrace the chaos, crossed her arms and leaned back. "I mean... technically, that’s a valid question. We should’ve seen some, I don’t know, signs by now?"
Elliot nodded, looking genuinely thoughtful. "Right? Like, if they don’t—"
"STOP," I finally snapped, smacking his arm. "Oh my god. Why did you have to ask that right now?!"
Elliot blinked at me like he’d just remembered I existed.
My eye twitched.
I had been this close to saying something meaningful, something real. And now the entire group was staring at us, not just him, not just me, us, because Elliot had singlehandedly derailed the conversation from the edge of an emotional breakthrough to undead bodily functions.
I wanted to scream.
Elliot finally seemed to realize what he’d done, his eyes widening slightly. His gaze flicked to Clara and Max, who were both actively avoiding eye contact, as if pretending the awkwardness didn’t exist would make it disappear.
Lila, however, had no such mercy. She smirked, glancing between the two of us. "Mira, you were saying something?"
I clenched my jaw. "No. I was not."
Elliot cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. "Right. Uh. Sorry."
Lila snickered. "You sure? You looked pretty intense over here."
I could feel the heat crawling up my neck. Absolutely not. Not after that. Not in front of everyone.
"Nope," I said quickly, standing up. "Not important. Nothing to say."
Elliot exhaled, running a hand through his hair. He looked like he wanted to say something else, maybe even steer the conversation back, but at this point, the damage was irreversible.
Lila just chuckled and leaned back. "Guess that mystery’s unsolved, then. Shame."
Clara shot Elliot a glare. but didn’t say anything.
Elliot sighed.
I huffed, crossing my arms. Maybe... maybe later.
When zombies weren’t the topic of discussion.
****
I was sleeping so deeply and peacefully, it felt like the world had finally decided to cut me slack.
The kind of sleep where you’re floating in a warm, dark void, completely untethered from reality.
No zombies, no awkward confessions, no Elliot asking if undead creatures had functional bladders. Just sweet, uninterrupted bliss.
And then, like a sledgehammer to a porcelain vase, the world shattered.
"WAKE UP, SLACKERS! IT’S TIME FOR THE MORNING JOG!"
The voice boomed through the room, sharp and unrelenting. My eyes snapped open, and for a split second, I thought I was being attacked.
But no. It was just Roarke, standing in the doorway like a drill sergeant, his arms crossed and his expression as stern as ever.
I groaned, burying my face into my pillow. "Sir Roarke, it’s still dark outside. What part of this is morning?"
"If you’re spending the night in the house, you gotta live by the house’s rules," he barked, completely unfazed by my protests. "Up. Now."
I hated him in that moment. Not with real anger, just that fleeting, sleep-deprived annoyance that makes you want to throw a pillow at someone’s head.
But then I caught a glimpse of Elliot, who was already sitting up, rubbing his eyes and looking like a disheveled puppy.
Today, I thought, my resolve hardening. Today, I’ll talk to him. No distractions, no zombie biology debates. Just... talk.
But before I could even fully process the thought, Roarke was herding us all outside like we were a bunch of unruly sheep.
The cold morning air hit me like a slap, and I immediately regretted not grabbing a thicker jacket.
"This isn’t a jog, Sir Roarke!" I yelled as he started pacing ahead of us, his strides unnervingly brisk. "This is a full-on sprint! What part of this is jogging?!"
"Stop complaining and move your legs," he shot back, not even glancing over his shoulder.
I screamed internally. My lungs were already burning, my legs felt like they were made of lead, and my brain was still half-asleep. This wasn’t jogging. This was torture.
Elliot, of course, seemed completely unfazed. He was jogging, no, running, beside me, his breathing steady and his face annoyingly cheerful.
"You good?" he asked, glancing at me with a grin.
"No, I’m not good!" I snapped, my voice coming out in ragged gasps. "I was having the best sleep of my life, and now I’m being forced to run a marathon at the crack of dawn. How are you even alive right now?"
He chuckled, which only made me want to trip him. "It’s not so bad. Gets the blood flowing, you know?"
"My blood is flowing just fine, thank you," I muttered, glaring at the back of Roarke’s head. "It’s flowing straight to my hatred center."
"Behind us, Clara and Max were... well, they were fine. Of course they were. Being smart zombies with their weird metabolism meant they didn’t tire as quickly as the rest of us. They jogged along calmly, their movements smooth and unhurried, as though they were out for a leisurely stroll rather than a forced death march, like their stamina was endless. But even they had limits. Nothing in the world was infinite, except maybe the world itself. Or was it?"
Think about it. If you keep stepping out of one system, it’s like leaving a room and entering a hallway, then stepping outside into a city, then beyond that into a country, then a continent, then the whole planet.
But it doesn’t stop there. Earth is just part of the solar system, which itself is just a tiny speck in the vast galaxy.
And our galaxy? Just one among billions in the universe.
But what happens when you reach the edge? Is there an edge? Is there some invisible barrier where everything just stops, like the border of a map in an old video game?
And if there is a wall, what’s on the other side? Another universe stretching into infinity? A void of absolute nothingness? A cosmic "Do Not Enter" sign put there by something, or someone, that doesn’t want us peeking beyond?
And if the universe truly is endless, does that mean we’re just forever expanding into something even bigger? An infinite multiverse stacked on top of itself like a never-ending Russian nesting doll?
Or is it all an illusion, just space looping back on itself, so no matter how far you go, you always end up back where you started?
The more I thought about it, the more my brain tied itself in knots. But maybe that was the point. Maybe some questions were meant to stay unanswered. Or maybe, just maybe, we were never meant to ask them at all.
By the time Roarke finally called for a break, I was drenched in sweat, my legs felt like jelly, and my resolve to talk to Elliot had been replaced by a desperate need for water and a nap.
As we all collapsed onto the grass, panting and groaning, I caught Elliot’s eye. He was grinning at me, his hair sticking up in every direction, and for a moment, I forgot how much I hated mornings.
Maybe later, I thought, as Roarke started barking orders about hydration and stretching. Maybe when I can feel my legs again.
****
After the jog, I was a sweaty, disgusting mess. My clothes clung to me like a second skin, and my hair was a tangled disaster. I needed a shower, badly.
Luckily, Jax and Cole had a luxurious bathroom just a few meters away from Fort Caffeine’s boring, utilitarian one. They’d shown us the way earlier, and now it was our turn to take advantage of it.
One by one, we took turns showering. When it was finally my turn, I stepped into the bathroom and let out a low whistle.
It was like something out of a five-star hotel. The tiles were spotless, the water pressure was perfect, and there was an array of expensive-looking toiletries lined up on the shelf.
I picked up a bottle of shampoo, its label written in some fancy French script. Before the zombie apocalypse, I’d never even dreamed of using something this luxurious.
My budget had always been strictly drugstore-brand everything. But now? Hell, if the world was ending, I might as well smell like a million bucks.
I lathered the shampoo into my hair, the rich, floral scent filling the air. For a few minutes, I let myself forget about everything, Elliot, Roarke, the zombies, the existential dread of the universe’s potential wall.
It was just me, the warm water, and the faint hope that maybe, just maybe, things would be okay.
I stopped the shower and sank into the bathtub, the water sloshing gently as my body displaced its weight.
Bubbles floated around me, sparkling briefly before popping into nothing. How fitting, I thought. The salts dissolved in the water, crushed minerals from some far-off mountain, packaged and sold as "luxury", turned the bath into a shimmering pool, as if I were stewing in liquid stardust.
For a moment, I couldn’t help but marvel at the absurdity: here I was, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, enjoying a brief moment of luxury. Was this a life worth living? Or just another distraction, a golden pause in the chaos?
The heat seeped into my muscles, but my mind refused to quiet. The water’s warmth felt like a metaphor I couldn’t quite grasp, comfort as an illusion, perhaps, or humanity’s desperate cling to sensation in a world stripped of meaning.
I stared at my wrinkled fingertips, ghostly pale beneath the surface.
What are we even doing here?
Not just in this bathtub, in this borrowed sanctuary, but here, existing at all.
Before the world collapsed, I’d followed the script: school, work, the quiet tyranny of productivity.
Society’s rules were a ladder I climbed without questioning who’d built it, or why. Grow up, earn money, marry, reproduce, earn more money, wither. A cycle dressed up as purpose.
But what was the point of that endless grind?
To leave a mark? To pass something on? I thought of children, hypothetical, half-imagined, and wondered if they’d even want the legacy of a broken world.
Would they thank me for life, or resent me for forcing them into a game where the rules kept changing?
And what of the parents who came before us, now ash and memory? Did they lie awake too, haunted by the futility of their nine-to-five lives, their mortgages and retirement plans?
All those years of striving, just to fade into the same indifferent cosmos that gave us life.
The bubbles thinned, revealing the water’s clarity beneath. I trailed a hand through it, watching ripples distort my reflection.
We’re all just ripples, I realized. Brief disturbances in the universe’s fabric, smoothing out as quickly as we appear.
Even the zombies, with their grotesque parody of life, were part of the same joke: creatures cursed with endless hunger, yet no capacity to savor, to want beyond instinct. Were we so different? Chasing promotions, love, survival, all just variations of hunger.
I leaned back, the water reaching my collarbone.
The bath salts smelled like citrus and something deeper. Maybe the answer wasn’t in constantly doing things, but just in being.
Letting the universe happen without trying to explain it. But how? We’re built to look for stories, for reasons.
We try to make sense of randomness, like we’re trying to cover up the emptiness. If there’s a God, maybe they’re just laughing at us: giving us the ability to ask "Why?" but never giving us an answer.
Or maybe God doesn’t care. Maybe they’re like a kid with a magnifying glass, burning ants without realizing the damage.
The thought should have scared me, but instead, it felt freeing. If nothing matters, then maybe everything does, the bath salts, Elliot’s laugh, Clara hating coconut. These small things are our way of fighting back. Tiny sparks of light in the dark.
But the water cooled, and reality seeped back in. Stay with Jax and Cole, clinging to this fragile oasis? Or keep marching north, chasing a horizon that might not exist?
The old world’s maps were useless now. Maybe all directions were equally meaningless. Meaningless. The word should have weighed me down, but here, submerged, I felt lighter.
If life was a joke, I could at least choose how to laugh.
I dipped my head under, holding my breath until my lungs burned. When I surfaced, gasping, the air tasted sweeter. Alive. Maybe that was the only philosophy worth keeping: the raw, animal thrill of breath, of bubbles, of a heart that raced even when there was nowhere left to run.