CHAPTER ONE: ZERO DAY
Riley
My alarm went off at 5:47 AM.
Not 5:45. Not 6:00. Just 5:47. I'd set it that way three years ago to see if anyone would notice. No one ever did.
I killed the sound before the first chime even finished. The house was dead quiet, like always. Helena—my adoptive mom—had already left for the university. I heard her keys jingle at 5:12, the front door click at 5:14, and watched her headlights sweep across my ceiling at 5:16. I notice stuff like that. It's automatic.
I got dressed in the dark. Gray hoodie, black jeans. Same outfit I wear almost every day. It's not about style. It's about blending in. If you're not too loud, not too pretty, not too anything, people stop seeing you.
Down in the kitchen I poured cereal and ate it dry. No milk left. I hadn't bothered telling Helena. She'd notice eventually. We lived in the same house but moved like ghosts around each other.
The TV was murmuring on the wall. The news anchor looked exhausted.
"—unprecedented outbreak along the Eastern Seaboard. The CDC has classified it as a novel coronavirus with a high mortality rate, especially in adults. Officials are urging calm—"
I turned it down. I'd been tracking this longer than the news had. Seventy-three percent mortality in adults. Airborne. Spreads before symptoms show. Helena had muttered that it looked "designed" two weeks ago, then shut down when I asked what she meant.
I rinsed the bowl, grabbed my backpack—it was heavier than usual with the emergency stuff I'd packed: first aid kit, water, protein bars, multitool. Anyone who wasn't preparing was either clueless or lying to themselves.
Outside, the neighborhood felt wrong. Too quiet. No cars warming up, no voices, no nothing.
At the bus stop, Rachel Han was already there. She smiled. "Hey, Riley."
I gave her a small nod. That was all she ever got from me. She went back to her phone. The screen was full of screaming red headlines: STATE OF EMERGENCY. DEATH TOLL OVER 10,000.
The bus showed up twenty-four minutes late. The driver looked half-dead. Only six kids instead of the usual twenty.
I took my usual seat—third row, window side—and pulled out my notebook. I'd been logging everything for eleven days.
School attendance way down. Teachers missing. Gas shortages starting. Helena coming home super late and avoiding my eyes.
When the bus reached school, the parking lot was almost empty. The flag was at half-mast.
Right as I stepped inside, the intercom crackled to life.
"Students, report to the gymnasium immediately. This is not a drill."
I froze in the hallway. A trap. Packing hundreds of kids into one big room? No way.
I turned around and headed for the side exit near the cafeteria. No one stopped me. I was invisible. Just background noise, the way I liked it.
My phone buzzed.
Helena: Stay out of school.
Then another right after: I'm coming to get you. Wait where we walked the dog.
We never had a dog. But I knew exactly what she meant.
I slipped through the gap in the fence and into the woods behind the school. The old maintenance shed was right where she'd shown me two years ago.
Inside, an olive-green duffel bag sat on the workbench.
I unzipped it. Clothes in my size. A thick black coat. MREs. Water purification tablets. A map with a route marked in red Sharpie. And a note in Helena's neat handwriting.
Riley,
If you're reading this, I couldn't reach you in time. Don't go home. Don't go to the city. Follow the red line on the map. It leads somewhere safe—for now.
The virus wasn't an accident. People knew it was coming. Stay away from their plans.
A man named Cole will look for you. I don't know if you can trust him, but he knows more than I do.
I'm sorry I couldn't be the mother you deserved. You were the best thing that ever happened to me.
- H
I read it three times. My hands didn't shake.
So this was really happening. The world was falling apart, and I was on my own.
Funny thing? I'd been training for this my whole life without realizing it.
I slung the duffel over my shoulder, pulled my hood up, and stepped back into the trees. Somewhere far behind me, a siren started wailing.
I didn't look back.