Lucy thrust her gray, sinewy arm through the splintered gap and tore the rest of the door apart.

  I could barely breathe. Someone clung to me—gripping, clutching in blind panic. Only when I raised my gun and threatened her did she finally let go.

  “Open the door!” I shouted at the man blocking the back exit.

  He flinched violently, shaking his head. “No… no… There are zombies out there.”

  “The zombies we can handle! Those monsters—we can’t!” I snapped.

  But fear had swallowed him whole. He planted himself in front of the handle, and I had the distinct sense he would fight me before letting me touch it.

  Crash.

  Plates stacked against the barricaded shelves shattered as Lucy and the others forced their way forward. The survivors rushed to hold the shelves in place—but human strength meant nothing against them. Inch by inch, the barricade slid back. Through the widening gap, Lucy climbed, her body contorting with a fluid, unnatural grace.

  “I’ll ask you one last time,” I hissed, pressing the barrel to the man’s forehead. “Are you opening that door?”

  “I… I…” Sweat poured down his gleaming scalp, running over his cracked, weathered face.

  Bang.

  The gunshot deafened the room. He collapsed in terror as the bullet tore past his head and buried itself in the wall. A warning. Nothing more. I shoved him aside and lunged for the lock. But before I could turn it, something seized my collar and hurled me into the kitchen wall. I hit the cold tiled floor hard enough to see sparks.

  Lucy had made it inside.

  She crouched low, feral, blood streaking her body where she had clawed at herself mid-transformation. Her eyes were empty, cold, and fixed on me. She wanted my flesh. I scrambled backward, my spine colliding with the wall. My hand searched wildly for the gun—but it had skidded too far away when I fell.

  And so it came down to this. A moment in the half-light. A monster before me. Lucy’s fingers scraped across the floor as she tensed to spring. Death was never new. Even when you’ve faced it before, it feels the same—raw, animal fear.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Iberia flashed before me: ruined streets, savage laughter, Kael’s final kiss as he pulled away forever—all of it in a single second. Then her jaws were there. Bloody. Close enough to smell.

  “No!”

  I dropped my head. My forehead slammed into her face with a sickening crack. She shrieked and reeled back, her nose broken, her transformation unfinished, her pain still human. I didn’t hesitate. I kicked her hard, sending her sprawling, and scrambled to my feet.

  “Back door! Everyone, now!”

  The man I had threatened did something I never expected—he opened it. A zombie stumbled inside, losing its balance. The crowd trampled over it in a blind escape. Before it could rise, I did something only Kael had ever dared to do.

  I snapped its neck.

  The sensation—wet, resistant—clung to me for seconds before I forced myself to let go. Someone grabbed my sleeve and pulled me along.

  We ran. Along the canal, beneath an unripe moon, we stumbled forward in search of something that might resemble safety. The air grew less bitter the deeper we moved into the city, though it never truly warmed. Ethar’s climate had turned grotesque—the weather shifting without reason, twisted by months of viral corruption.

  “Does anyone… know… somewhere safe?” I gasped, bent over my knees.

  “My house… is close,” an old man replied, astonishingly steady. “But we’d have to cross the road above. And we have no guns.”

  A low groan froze us. We pressed ourselves flat against the canal wall as a zombie wandered above, peering down. The man beside me trembled violently, his fingers digging into the moss between the stones.

  “Calm down,” I whispered. “It can’t see us. Don’t panic.”

  He shook his head, weeping. “No… it ate my brother like this… dragged him from under a canal bank just like this…”

  “Shhh—” I gripped his shoulder.

  But before I could finish, a body dropped from above. The zombie slammed into him and tore into his throat. The scream cut through the night. I didn’t look back. I ran.

  The creature didn’t follow; it was too busy feeding. But the noise drew others. Heavy footsteps thundered above us.

  “Can they swim?” I shouted.

  “No! But they can walk underwater—slowly!”

  “That’s enough! Into the canal!”

  We plunged into the freezing water. It wasn’t frozen solid, but it cut like knives. Behind us, bodies tumbled in. Twenty—maybe thirty—zombies splashed into the canal and waded toward us.

  “Faster!”

  We reached the opposite bank just as they gained ground. Crawling up, we didn’t stop. We ran until the last of us climbed the stairway to the road. Below, the dead dragged themselves from the water, red-eyed and ravenous. We answered with stones—blind and desperate.

  “Move!” I shouted. “Run!”

  But before panic could decide for us, something moved in the shadows of a narrow alley. Two green eyes ignited in the dark, streaked with red light like burning phosphorus.

  A Monster.

  Its breath rolled toward us, foul and heavy. It growled—a low, dominant sound. Stronger than Lucy. Stronger than anything I had seen. Too much terror for one night. Too much horror for one street.

  Could I still run? Sometimes the choice isn’t about where to go. It’s about whether you move at all. I wasn't brave. I was just a girl who refused to die.

  I tore a length of broken railing free from the roadside fence and charged. At the same moment, the monster lunged.