Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 8:51 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 65 Hours, 50 Minutes Remaining
Kenzie waited until the bank settled into a sick, uneasy rhythm.
It wasn't peaceful. It was the heavy, suffocating sound of twenty-two people holding their breath at the same time. There were soft, frantic murmurs bleeding from the corners of the room. The occasional sharp, startling clink of a plastic water bottle hitting the tile. The low, ragged crying of a stranger that swelled and faded like dark waves on a shoreline. The building smelled like industrial carpet cleaner, stale breakroom coffee, and the sharp, undeniable copper tang of human fear.
Daylight slanted through the tall glass windows at the front, weak and grey, filtered by hastily taped cardboard signs begging for help that was never going to arrive. Outside, the dead continued to slap their wet hands against the reinforced panes, leaving greasy smears of blood and tissue on the glass.
Kenzie shifted her weight, feeling the comforting lump of the canvas dog carrier resting against her ribs. She reached out and gently wrapped her fingers around Lila's wrist, pulling her away from the barricaded doors.
"Hey," Kenzie whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. "Come here. Please."
Lila followed her into the dim side hallway near the manager's offices, but her posture was defensive. Her shoulders were hiked up to her ears, her jaw tight. She already knew something was wrong. Kenzie could see it in the older girl's dark eyes, searching Kenzie's face like she was bracing for a physical blow.
They stopped near a closed office door. The bank's logo was still stenciled in pristine gold lettering on the frosted glass. Everything in this tiny corridor looked so painfully, horribly normal. That was the worst part. The world was ending, but the corporate font hadn't chipped.
Kenzie took a slow, shuddering breath.
"I think," she started, the words tasting like ash in her mouth. "I think I'm going to join the group heading toward the military base."
Lila just stared at her.
For a long, agonizing second, the college student didn't react at all. She just blinked, staring at the younger girl like her brain refused to translate the words.
Then, her face crumbled.
"What?" Lila whispered, the word sharp and wounded. "Kenzie—what are you talking about?"
Kenzie swallowed the burning lump in her throat, forcing herself not to look away.
"The sisters. Monica and Jade," Kenzie explained, her voice trembling. "They're leaving. They're going south toward the base to find their brother. I think… I have to go with them."
Lila shook her head, a quick, angry, defensive motion. "No. No, you're not. You just got left behind. We barely made it into this building alive. Why would you walk back out into that slaughterhouse if you don't have a vehicle?"
Kenzie flinched, the memory of the heavy Jeep pulling away burning like acid behind her eyes.
"I have to find Tally," Kenzie said quickly. "Justin was taking them to the base. I know that's where they're heading. I have to catch up to them before they leave the city."
"Are you insane?" Lila demanded, her voice rising before she ruthlessly forced it back down into a harsh whisper. "They abandoned you! They left you standing on the street to die!"
"Ethan left me!" Kenzie fired back, hot tears finally spilling over her lashes. "Ethan made a tactical call because of the men in the alley with the shotguns! If he hadn't driven away, they all would have been executed! Tally didn't want to leave me. Tally would never leave me!"
Lila's anger faltered, raw confusion bleeding through her adrenaline.
"You barely know me," Lila said, her voice cracking. "I grabbed your hand at the gas station. I pulled you in here. Why would you risk your life for people who are already gone?"
"Because she's all I have left!" Kenzie choked out, the admission tearing her throat apart.
That stopped Lila cold.
Kenzie pressed on, desperately needing the older girl to understand before she lost her nerve and begged to stay.
"I care about you, Lila," Kenzie said, swiping aggressively at her wet cheeks. "I really do. I don't even know when it happened, but it did. Maybe it's just the trauma, or the fear, or the simple fact that you were kind to me when the rest of the world was falling apart. But I am seventeen years old. Yesterday morning, my biggest problem was figuring out what dress I was going to wear to graduation."
She let out a shaky, broken laugh that didn't hold a single ounce of humor.
"I miss my mom," Kenzie confessed, her voice dropping to a devastated whisper. "I miss my grandmother. I miss my stupid house and my boring street and my predictable routines."
Her lips trembled violently.
"And I miss my little brother," she added quietly.
Lila inhaled sharply, taking a step back as the immense weight of Kenzie's grief hit her in the chest.
Kenzie laughed again, a hollow, dead sound. "He died. I watched my own mother and grandmother eat him alive in our hallway. And I didn't even scream. I locked myself in the bathroom and I didn't fall apart. I didn't even cry. I just sat in the bathtub and listened to his bones snap."
Her eyes burned with a fierce, terrifying clarity.
"I don't have time to grieve for them," Kenzie said, staring hard at the older girl. "Not now. Not ever. Not if I want to survive this. But Tally—Tally is a bitch. She's mean, she's selfish, and she scares the hell out of me sometimes—but I have known her since we were learning how to read. She is the very last piece of my history that is still breathing. I have to find her."
She looked down at the canvas bag strapped to her chest, feeling Barbie shivering against her ribs.
"I have Barbie to take care of," she said. "And I have to find my best friend. You just came into my life yesterday, Lila. And as much as I care about you… I can't build my survival around a stranger."
The words were a brutal, necessary amputation. They hurt them both.
Neither of them spoke for a long moment. The heavy silence between them was filled only by the muffled sounds of the terrified people hiding in the lobby.
Then, heavy footsteps approached the frosted glass.
"She's not wrong," Aaron said quietly.
Kenzie and Lila both turned.
Aaron stood at the edge of the hallway with Alyssa tucked closely by his side. They hadn't meant to eavesdrop—but in a glass box packed with twenty-two traumatized people, privacy was a joke.
Alyssa crossed her arms tightly over her hoodie. Her mascara was smeared down her pale cheeks, but her eyes were steady. "We heard enough," she said gently to Kenzie. "And you're right to trust your gut."
Lila looked between the three of them, stunned. "You're taking her side?"
"We were already whispering about heading toward the base anyway," Aaron added, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. He kept his steel crowbar gripped casually in his right hand. "My uncle has a fortified place out toward Richmond Hill, which is in the same direction. If the military is holding anything together, that's where the heavy weapons and the medical supplies are going to be. Not up here in downtown Savannah."
Alyssa nodded, stepping forward into the dim light. "We'll go with you, Kenzie. To the base. We can help you get there, and then maybe you can help us get to my aunt's place afterward. It's a hell of a lot better than sitting in this lobby waiting for the glass to break."
Kenzie stared at the college couple, her heart hammering against her ribs. "You'd really do that?"
Aaron offered a grim, exhausted shrug. "At this point? Numbers matter. A group of four has a better chance out on the highway than a girl and a Yorkie."
For the very first time in what felt like a lifetime, Kenzie felt something dangerously close to relief bloom in her chest.
They huddled closer together in the shadows of the hallway, quickly whispering through logistics. Aaron mentioned a heavy delivery box truck he'd seen parked in the alleyway behind the bank. Alyssa pulled a blue ballpoint pen from the manager's desk and began hastily sketching a rough map of the southern highway routes on the back of a crumpled deposit slip. Monica and Jade would probably want to join them. Maybe Caleb too, if he didn't break down first.
Hope—fragile, reckless, and incredibly dangerous—began to creep into the dark corridor.
Then, it shattered.
A scream ripped through the bank lobby.
It wasn't a yell of surprise. It was high, piercing, and pure animal. It was the specific, horrifying sound a human being makes when they are being torn apart.
Kenzie spun toward the noise just as one of the bank tellers—Marissa—came stumbling wildly backward from the hallway near the public restrooms.
Something was on her back.
Marissa was shrieking so hard she couldn't form actual words, her vocal cords tearing with the force of her panic.
"Help me!" she shrieked, her hands desperately clawing blindly over her own shoulders. "Please—get it off—help me—!"
Dark, arterial blood was spraying across the white collar of her uniform blouse, soaking the fabric in seconds. It hit the floor in thick, heavy droplets.
Raúl burst out of the restroom directly behind her, his face contorted into a mask of unadulterated horror.
"No—NO—!" Raúl bellowed, throwing his hands out.
Marissa stumbled over her own heels, crashing hard into the sharp corner of a mahogany desk. She collapsed against the drywall, sliding to the floor, frantically batting at the thing clinging to her spine.
It was Mateo.
The little boy's small, winter-coated body clung to the teller like a vicious parasite. His arms were wrapped tight around her neck.
His teeth were buried deep in the meat of her shoulder.
And he was chewing.
He wasn't just biting and pulling away. He had locked his jaw, his small head shaking violently back and forth like a rabid dog tearing meat from a bone.
Hot blood sprayed across the cheerful mortgage posters on the wall as Marissa violently thrashed. Her piercing screams quickly bubbled into wet, choking, agonizing sobs as the infected child ripped her jugular vein open.
"Mateo!" Raúl screamed, rushing forward without a weapon, operating purely on a father's broken instinct. "¡Suéltala! ¡Por favor!"
He grabbed his infected son around the waist and yanked him backward off the dying woman. But Mateo didn't let go cleanly. He tore a massive chunk of flesh away with his teeth. The boy hit the floor and immediately snarled—a wet, clicking, horrific sound that no human child should ever be capable of making.
Raúl threw himself between the boy and Marissa as the teller slid flat against the floor. Her hands weakly clutched her ruined throat, drowning in her own blood as her eyes rolled back into her head.
Mateo didn't hesitate. He turned instantly on his father.
The boy's dark eyes were wrong now. The humanity had been hollowed out, leaving behind a milky, empty, ravenous void.
Mateo lunged forward and latched his teeth directly into Raúl's forearm.
Raúl screamed—a deep, agonizing, soul-shattering roar of physical pain and ultimate heartbreak. He fell to his knees on the marble tile, trying to pry his own son's jaws open without hurting him, sacrificing his own flesh to the monster wearing his child's face.
The lobby erupted into absolute chaos.
People lost their minds. The fragile illusion of safety evaporated in a millisecond. The elderly couple, Eleanor and Frank, huddled screaming in the corner. Daniel Cruz hoisted his daughter into his arms, shoving his wife toward the vault, screaming at people to get out of his way. The other tellers scrambled over desks, slipping wildly in Marissa's expanding pool of blood.
Aaron raised his crowbar, stepping in front of Alyssa, his hands shaking violently as he looked at the little boy tearing his father apart.
Kenzie stood rooted to the floor, her boots cemented to the tile. Bile rose burning in her throat as she watched a father wrestle his undead child on the ground, sobbing, begging the boy to stop, and bleeding all at once.
The threat hadn't just breached the walls. It had been sitting on a chair inside the vault the entire time.
And then, cutting through the horrific shrieks inside the bank, a new sound began to build from the outside.
It started as a low, bone-rattling vibration traveling straight up through the concrete foundation of the building.
SCREEECH.
The deafening, unmistakable roar of military fighter jets tore through the sky directly above the bank's roof. The sheer force of the sound wave shook the glass windows so violently a massive spiderweb crack spread across the main pane.
Before anyone in the bloody lobby could even react to the jets, a high-pitched, metallic whine pierced the air.
It was a terrifying, descending whistle that seemed to slice perfectly through the winter morning, cutting straight through the screams of the dying father on the floor. It grew louder, sharper, and incredibly heavy by the millisecond, drowning out the infected horde hammering at the doors outside.
Kenzie looked up at the ceiling, her heart freezing in her chest as the whistle reached a deafening, earth-shattering pitch.
She had no idea what that sound was.
But she knew they were out of time.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 8:59 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 65 Hours, 42 Minutes Remaining