Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 9:00 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 65 Hours, 41 Minutes Remaining
The sky violently tore open.
The first bomb hit the southside highway interchange miles behind them. There was no sound at first, just an apocalyptic flash of white-hot light that instantly bleached the grey morning into agonizing daylight. The shadows of the dead oak trees vanished, washed out by the glare of a man-made sun.
For a fraction of a second, the world simply paused.
Then the shockwave hit.
The pressure wave ripped through the dense city blocks like a physical wall of force, moving faster than the speed of sound. It blasted down the residential street, stealing the oxygen straight out of their lungs. The windows of the surrounding houses shattered inward in a simultaneous, glittering cascade of glass. The heavy Wrangler heaved on its suspension, rocked hard by the sheer force of the blast.
And then, cutting through the deafening, bone-rattling roar of the detonation, the woods answered.
Tally's shrieking, unhinged outburst just moments before—her piercing screams that Justin wasn't dead—had acted as a dinner bell. Her voice had sliced through the quiet morning, drawing every predatory thing in the subdivision straight to the shoulder of the road.
They burst from the tree line, a frenzied tide of grey flesh. Several of them wore dark blue mechanic coveralls, infected from a nearby auto shop, whipped into a starving frenzy by Tally's voice and the concussive force of the bomb.
One of the mechanics lunged with terrifying speed. His jaw opened too wide, the skin splitting at the corners like wet paper, a vile hiss tearing from his throat as he pitched forward toward Mari's exposed neck.
Mari didn't scream. She couldn't move. Trapped on her knees in the frosted grass, retching and paralyzed by the flash of the bomb, her brain simply refused to send the signal to her legs.
Dot shouted her name.
Too late.
Something slammed into the mechanic from the blind side.
Marcus had thrown himself into the gap. He tackled the infected man shoulder-first, trying to knock him to the pavement. But the momentum, combined with the brutal shove of the bomb's shockwave, sent them both barreling sideways.
They went over the lip of the deep drainage ditch lining the road.
Marcus disappeared over the edge, tumbling down the steep, frosted incline in a tangle of limbs and grease-stained coveralls. He hit the muddy bottom hard, the wind knocked out of him as the mechanic landed square on his chest.
Marcus fought. He shoved the thing's snapping jaws away from his face, trying to throw the weight off. "MOVE!" he roared up toward the road. "GET UP!"
But there was no room to maneuver in the narrow trench. The mechanic twisted its neck unnaturally fast, its jaw snapping shut.
The teeth sank into Marcus's right forearm.
Deep.
It was a wet, muffled crunch.
Marcus screamed—a raw, unfiltered sound of pure agony that cut right through the ringing in their ears.
He wrenched his arm free with a furious roar, kicking the mechanic off his chest. Marcus scrambled wildly up the steep incline, his boots slipping on the frost. He dragged himself over the lip of the ditch and collapsed onto the asphalt, clutching his torn arm.
Hot, arterial blood poured down his skin in fast rivulets, pooling instantly on the road.
The first mechanic was still thrashing at the bottom of the ditch, but Ethan stepped forward, his combat knife drawn, eyes scanning the tree line.
For a terrible heartbeat, no one moved. The world held its breath beneath the massive, churning mushroom cloud rising in the southern sky.
Marcus looked down at the ruined meat of his arm. He looked at the bite mark.
Then, he looked up at the group.
And somehow—somehow—he laughed.
It was a sharp, breathless, broken bark of a laugh. The kind of sound that came from pure disbelief rather than humor.
"Well, damn," Marcus panted. His voice was violently shaking, but loud enough to be heard over the distant rumble of the bombs. "Since when does the white guy die in the movie before the Black lady?"
He laughed again, wild and cracked, blood dripping from his fingers.
Dot snapped out of her paralysis like she'd been slapped.
"Oh, shut up," she said fiercely, stepping right up to him and smacking his good shoulder. "Don't say that. Don't you dare say that."
Her hands were shaking as she grabbed his jacket, gripping the fabric like she could hold his life together through sheer force of will. "You're not—no. This is nonsense. Do you hear me, Marcus? Nonsense."
Marcus winced, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth.
"I'm just saying," he panted, his eyes turning glassy, "this ain't exactly how I saw my odds playin' out."
He looked past Dot. He looked right at Mari, who was still frozen on the grass.
"You okay?" he asked, his voice softening.
Mari's mouth opened, but no sound came out.
And then, a new growl rose from the ditch.
Low. Guttural.
And they weren't alone.
The rest of the pack, drawn by Tally's screams, poured out of the woods. Three more infected mechanics burst from the brush, charging the road.
"Marcus—" Ethan shouted.
It happened too fast to process.
Two of them tackled Marcus from behind. The sheer force of the impact swept his legs out from under him, sending him toppling backward.
Dot screamed as Marcus was dragged right back down into the ditch.
He hit the bottom again, but this time there was no scrambling up. The infected swarmed him. Teeth sank into his shoulder. Then his thigh. Then his side.
Marcus screamed.
They weren't words anymore. Just sound. Pure terror and pain ripped from the deepest part of his chest as he fought like hell under the pile of rotting bodies.
"BACK!" Ethan roared, grabbing Renee by the arm. "GET IN THE JEEP! NOW!"
Dot tried to rush forward to the edge of the ditch.
Renee caught her, wrapping both arms tight around the older woman's waist from behind. "DOT! DOT, NO!"
"He needs help!" Dot sobbed hysterically, fighting violently against Renee's grip. "He needs us!"
"GO!" Ethan yelled, shoving Mari toward the open passenger door. "THIS IS WHAT HE DID IT FOR! DO NOT MAKE IT FOR NOTHING!"
Mari sobbed as Renee hauled Dot backward, her boots skidding across the pavement.
In the ditch, Marcus's screams changed. They turned hoarse, then ragged, and finally degraded into something wet and bubbling as blood filled his throat.
Ethan shoved Mari into the front seat. Renee practically threw Dot into the back before scrambling in right behind her. They moved in a blind panic, hands shaking, bodies colliding as they piled into the heavy Wrangler.
Renee grabbed the heavy steel door and pulled it shut with a violent slam just as a blood-slicked hand slapped the glass.
The diesel engine roared, Ethan slamming his foot on the accelerator. The tires screamed against the asphalt as the Jeep lurched forward down the street, putting distance between them and the feeding ground.
Through the rear ballistic glass, Marcus was no longer visible. A solid wall of grey coveralls and torn clothes was piled high in the ditch, a frantic, writhing mound that had completely swallowed him.
No one spoke.
The Jeep sped down the ruined residential road, weaving around abandoned cars. The sky outside was a suffocating, unnatural orange, the smoke from the bombing run blotting out the morning sun.
Mari curled forward in the front seat, burying her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.
Dot rocked back and forth in the back seat, staring at her bloodstained hands, whispering Marcus's name over and over like a broken prayer.
Renee leaned her head back against the cold window, her chest heaving as she fought to catch her breath. She squeezed her eyes shut, a silent stream of tears cutting through the soot and dirt on her face, mourning the man who had just saved them all.
Ethan gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were bone-white, refusing to look in the rearview mirror.
Tally sat perfectly still in the middle of the backseat, wedged between a weeping Dot and an exhausted Renee.
She wasn't crying. Her eyes were fixed on the distance, her expression cold and brittle. She didn't look at Dot grieving beside her. She didn't offer a single word of comfort to Mari.
She was horrified, yes—by the bombs, by the noise, by the brutal reality of the ditch. But her heart was absolute ice. She didn't feel the loss. She only felt the survival.
Marcus had been loud. Marcus had annoying, terrible jokes. And now Marcus was dead because he had been stupid enough to jump out of a running vehicle.
Tally adjusted her backpack, a single, selfish thought echoing in her head as the Jeep drove away from the fire.
At least the back seat has more legroom now.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 9:11 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 65 Hours, 30 Minutes Remaining