It was well past 3 AM when the wind picked up dry, gritty, restless.
The apartment complex lay under the hush of night, its buildings casting long shadows under the flickering glow of half-dead streetlights. The towers stood tall like sentinels, unmoving, unaware of the horror unraveling at their gates.
Somewhere inside, a dog barked sharply. Once. Then fell silent.
At the guard booth near the main gate, Manoj was not himself anymore.
He had been twitching for nearly twenty minutes, slumped in the corner of the small room, drenched in sweat. His mouth hung open, saliva trailing down his chin. His right hand bitten and swollen throbbed violently, now turning a shade of sickly purple. Every few seconds, his body spasmed, like something inside was trying to tear out.
The old pedestal fan buzzed, rattling uselessly against the growing heat. Outside the booth's dusty window, the fog of early summer haze blurred the view.
Then… Manoj moved.
Not slowly. Not carefully.
He snapped upright with a jolt, eyes wide and white, lungs sucking in air like a drowning man. A low growl crawled from his throat more beast than human. His gaze was unfocused, darting from wall to wall. He reached for the door with bloodied fingers, gripped the knob, and stumbled out.
The air hit him hard. Hot. Heavy. Full of city decay.
Manoj staggered forward like a drunk, but there was purpose now. Something deep, instinctive. He didn't call for help. He didn't scream. He just moved arms limp, jaw slightly ajar, breath short and raspy.
A flickering streetlamp above him buzzed once, then went dark.
Just across the campus, inside Tower B on the third floor, Mitali Kapoor sat alone on the couch, yawning as her laptop downloaded an update. Aarav was asleep already, headphones in.
She sipped cold coffee and glanced lazily at the CCTV panel installed in their home a perk they had added after the recent power outages.
One of the screens flickered.
The camera outside the main gate glitched, then resumed only for a second but Mitali noticed a strange blur. A figure outside the booth, barely standing.
She squinted.
"Is that… Manoj?" she whispered.
She tapped the screen to zoom in, but the image pixelated again. Just a shadow now. Then nothing.
She shrugged. "Probably just tired."
And turned away.
Down below, behind the garbage bins near the service lane, another figure shifted slowly crawling across the asphalt.
The night wasn't quiet anymore.
Inside Rekha Sethi's flat, the wind banged lightly against the balcony door. She stirred in her sleep. Anil lay beside her, snoring gently, unaware. A dream faded in her mind as she woke, heart beating faster than it should.
She glanced at the clock.
3:12 AM.
The power dipped for a second. The fan slowed… then resumed.
From somewhere far off came the sound of metal scraping against metal.
Rekha sat up.
She rose, slipped on her chappals, and walked toward the window, pulling the curtain slightly. Her sharp eyes scanned the courtyard.
Empty.
But she didn't like the silence. It wasn't the peaceful kind it was the kind that follows a scream. The kind cities only hear before disaster.
She shivered and pulled the curtain back.
Far away, near the main gate, someone stood unnaturally still. As if... waiting. The silence didn't last long.
A muffled thump echoed across the entrance road, like someone falling hard against the pavement.
Rinku Yadav yawned as he stepped out of his ground floor flat, rubbing his eyes with one hand and holding a small plastic bag in the other. He had just stepped down to dump the leftover food waste into the bin by the security booth. Kavita had scolded him for forgetting earlier.
"Don't let it rot again, Rinku. There's already enough stink on this floor," she had warned, cradling baby Tina.
He grumbled to himself and moved toward the booth, but paused midway.
Something wasn't right.
The booth door was wide open. And sprawled just outside it, partially in the yellow light, was a man's figure Manoj.
"Bhai?" Rinku called out hesitantly, stepping closer. "You okay?"
No response.
As he got nearer, he could see blood smeared across Manoj's shirt. His head hung forward like a puppet cut loose, and his hands twitched faintly. A metallic stench hung in the air, thick and sharp.
Rinku knelt beside him.
"Manoj? Are you hurt? Talk to me, Yaar"
Suddenly, Manoj's head snapped up.
His eyes were pale. Glassy. His face was blank but his mouth opened wide with a sudden growl and he lunged forward, sinking his teeth deep into Rinku's neck.
"AAAGHHHH!"
Rinku screamed, flailing as he tried to push him off. Blood sprayed across the pavement. The plastic bag tore, spilling onion peels and scraps of chapati as Rinku crashed back, his cries echoing into the buildings.
Windows above lit up.
Kavita, who had been feeding Tina in the living room, froze when she heard the scream. It took her half a second to realize it was her husband. She ran to the door, opened it and what she saw made her shriek in terror.
"RINKU!"
She clutched the baby to her chest and screamed louder, stumbling out barefoot onto the corridor.
Other lights switched on. Doors opened. Curtains shifted.
Zoya Siddiqui stepped out of her flat, phone in hand, sleep still in her eyes. "What the hell…?"
Across from her, Imran Qureshi was already halfway down the stairs. "I heard something downstairs," he said sharply to his granddaughter Shahida, who had just woken. "Stay inside. Lock the door."
Parth Malhotra, shirtless and groggy, jogged out of his first-floor flat. He looked down and saw the commotion at the booth.
"What's going on?" he shouted.
Manoj was hunched over Rinku, biting and clawing like an animal. Rinku was screaming, barely fighting now. His hands were covered in blood, his voice gurgling.
"Hey! HEY!" Parth ran forward, kicking Manoj hard in the ribs.
Manoj rolled sideways but didn't flinch. Instead, he turned growling and charged at Parth, teeth bared, blood on his lips.
"What the !?"
Imran reached just in time, swinging a broken wooden stick snapped from an old mop smashing it across Manoj's side. He stumbled, falling to the ground.
Rinku lay shaking, gasping for breath.
"Get back! He's mad!" someone yelled.
Kavita screamed again from above: "Somebody help him, please!"
"Call an ambulance!" Zoya shouted. "Call the police!"
"I'm trying! No signal!" came the reply from Aarav, waving his phone uselessly.
The courtyard was in chaos now. Residents emerged in nightclothes young, old, terrified gathering near balconies or stairwells.
And in the center of it all, Manoj lay twitching on the ground… then suddenly went still.
Blood soaked the pavement. The summer night felt colder now. The scream hadn't even died when Rinku began convulsing.
His limbs thrashed violently on the bloodied pavement. His mouth opened and closed like a fish pulled from water, and his eyes rolled white. Kavita's wails echoed from the stairs, baby Tina crying uncontrollably in her arms.
Parth stood frozen. He'd seen injuries been through accidents before but nothing like this. Not a bite that changed someone in seconds.
"Don't touch him!" Imran warned, dragging Parth back by the shoulder. "Something's wrong with him. With both of them."
"Wrong?" Aarav's voice cracked from above. "That guy just bit him like an animal!"
Inside the apartment complex, panic spread faster than the infection. Doors slammed. Lights flickered. Phones buzzed with alerts BREAKING: Viral outbreak in Delhi suburbs… Stay indoors… Lock your doors…
Too late.
Within minutes, Rinku stopped shaking.
Then, in complete silence, he sat up.
His shirt was soaked in blood, and the flesh on his neck had torn open grotesquely. Kavita gasped. "Rinku?" she whispered from the corridor, too shocked to move.
He looked up.
And smiled.
But it wasn't Rinku's smile. It was empty. Wide. Starving.
He lunged not toward her but toward an elderly man who had stepped outside from the next tower to investigate the noise.
The man screamed as Rinku tackled him to the ground, biting into his collarbone, tearing cloth and flesh in one rabid move.
People ran. Some froze. Some screamed. And some… stood just long enough to be the next victim.
Ten minutes.
That's all it took before three more residents were infected. The parking lot turned red. Blood pooled in potholes. The infected didn't speak they only groaned, grunted, and charged at the nearest living person with a terrifying, animalistic fury. A teenage boy tried to pull his sister away, but she tripped. He turned back only to see her get dragged behind a parked car, her screams gurgling into silence.
In Tower C, chaos erupted as a man opened the door to check on the noise and was immediately pulled out by a neighbor now turned, eyes white, jaw unhinged.
Zoya slammed her door shut. Her fingers trembled as she turned the bolt, her phone still buzzing uselessly.
"Please," she whispered, backing away, "this isn't real."
In Tower A, the twins Nakul and Roshni ran toward the stairwell, shouting for their mother. But they found her already being held down by two infected. The girl let out a shriek as Vedant watching from their balcony above screamed out their names, helpless.
Outside, in the chaos, Imran fought like a soldier again bashing in the skull of an infected man with a fire extinguisher, shielding Shahida behind him. "Run to the staircase!" he shouted to anyone nearby. "Now! Don't let them bite you!"
Fifteen minutes had passed.
The gate was overrun. The infected were inside. There was no more line between us and them. It wasn't a community anymore. It was a feeding ground.
The screams echoed long after they had died down. At first, it was a lone wail sharp, confused, almost human. Then came the sound of something heavier. Not shouting. Not calling for help. Just the guttural rhythm of limbs slamming against doors and windows, the sickening thuds of bodies colliding.
Inside Tower B, a young woman stepped onto her balcony, phone in hand. Her husband called out for her from inside the flat, voice tense. "Come back inside!" But she didn't move. Her eyes widened, fixed on the chaos below shadows sprinting across the parking lot, blood glistening under the flickering security lights, and one figure that looked straight up at her. Just stood there. Staring.
She stepped back.
It was already too late.
From the floor below, a pale hand reached up and grabbed her ankle, pulling her off balance. Her phone clattered to the ground. Her scream was short. Her body hit the tiles two floors down with a sickening crack, and then they were on her two of them ripping through skin, muscle, memory.
Somewhere above, a baby cried.
On the second floor of Tower C, a schoolteacher clutched a cricket bat, peeking through the peephole of his flat. His wife, barefoot and shaking, whispered for him to lock the door. But he opened it anyway. Just enough to look. Just enough for the thing waiting in the hallway to jam a bloodied arm through the gap and force it wide. The bat dropped. He didn't make a sound as he was dragged screaming into the stairwell, leaving only a trail of blood that disappeared down the steps.
On another floor, a teenage girl tried to block the door with a table. She kept her little brother behind her, whispering that everything would be okay, even as her voice cracked. Her hands bled as she jammed a chair against the knob. Outside, footsteps echoed, fast, thumping against the floor, heading straight toward them. She backed away. Her brother whimpered. Then came the first slam. The second. And the third, which shattered the door at its hinges. The girl screamed. The light flickered. And then the noise stopped.
Below, in the basement, a nineteen-year-old security guard woke from a nap to chaos. Blood smeared the monitor screens. His radio buzzed with static. He opened the door to a corridor soaked in red and saw bodies twitching, writhing unnaturally. He turned and ran for the back gate, gripping a rusted rod like it meant something. He didn't make it ten steps.
On the far end of the compound, a couple returned from dinner, unaware of the nightmare. The man froze at the entrance. "Something's wrong," he whispered. His partner looked ahead. A figure stood beneath the streetlight shirtless, its skin torn, teeth clicking. Then another. And another. She turned to run. He didn't follow. His body collapsed seconds later, and when she looked back, it was already feeding.
Inside the towers, the infection spread like wildfire. Hallways filled with the wet sounds of flesh tearing, of bones snapping, of people turning on neighbors with eyes milk-white and jaws unhinged. Windows shattered. Stairwells filled with bodies some begging for help, others already lost. A woman tried to toss her infant over the back wall to a man waiting on the other side. She screamed his name. He caught the baby. But she didn't get a chance to climb. They pulled her back down, and her cries turned to nothing.
In Tower A, Nakul and Roshni's mother tried to reach her children, who had locked themselves in the lift. Bloodied hands pounded on the metal doors as she screamed for them. But it wasn't her children who answered it was the infected, charging from behind.
By now, almost an entire block of flats had gone silent.
Lights flickered, then went dark.
Somewhere near the sixth floor, Shivansh stirred in his sleep, flipping to his side, unaware that the world he knew had just ended.