…she was always the one who welcomed Ashad and Saad with open arms whenever they visited. She was the one who made them tea and laughed at their stupid jokes. Hearing those cold, venomous words drop from her mouth, Hasnain was completely paralyzed.
"A pest?" Hasnain's voice cracked, tears of pure betrayal stinging his hazel eyes. "You're talking about humans! My friends! Ashad, Saad, everyone we know—they are the people you are calling pests?!"
His father stepped forward, his expression hardening into a cold, aristocratic mask. "They are consumers who contribute nothing to the future of the human race, Hasnain. The resources of this planet are drying up. 'The Group' is simply doing what must be done to ensure that the elite, the finest minds, and the true leaders survive. Tonight, we leave for the sanctuary island. And you are coming with us whether you like it or not."
"I would rather die with the 'pests' than live with monsters like you," Hasnain spat, backing away toward the bedroom door.
Before he could turn to run, his father slammed his hand onto a panic button on the wall. Within seconds, two of the family's private security guards—men dressed in tactical gear with subtle yellow bands tied around their arms—shattered the glass of the patio door and barged into the room.
"Lock him in the basement structure," his father ordered coldly, not even looking at his son. "When 'The Group' arrives with the transport tonight, we will throw him in the back. He will thank us once the world is cleansed."
Hasnain fought like a wild animal, kicking and throwing punches, but the grown, armored men easily overpowered him. They dragged him down the cold concrete steps into the basement, slamming the heavy reinforced door shut and locking it from the outside.
He spent hours in the pitch-black room, listening to the muffled chaos that erupted over Karachi just hours later. The sounds of distant sirens, frantic screaming, and explosions echoed through the small basement vents. But "The Group's" extraction team never came for his parents. Instead, the virus spread too fast, turning the very perimeter guards into ravenous, bloodthirsty monsters.
The next morning, the basement door was violently kicked open—not by his parents, but by a rogue faction of the yellow-and-red-painted street gang who had raided his house, slaughtered what was left of his family, and dragged Hasnain to the supermarket as a high-value hostage, knowing his father was a core asset to "The Group."
On the quiet balcony of the safe house, the heavy silence that followed Hasnain's story was suffocating. The morning sun was now high in the sky, baking the concrete terrace, but Ashad felt entirely cold.
Saad's jaw dropped, his hand tightening unconsciously against the railing. Anees stood perfectly still, his martial-arts training keeping his body calm, but his eyes burning with a dangerous fire.
"A planned eradication..." Ashad whispered, his hands trembling as he processed the sheer scale of the horror. "The chaos, the zombies, my car being stolen, Mamo getting shot... all of this was carefully engineered by a bunch of rich sociopaths sitting on an island?"
Hasnain nodded weakly, staring down at his bruised hands. "Yes. And the people holding me in that mart were trying to torture the coordinates of the sanctuary island out of me. But I didn't know them. My dad took those secrets to his grave."
Anees stepped forward, his deep voice cutting through the heavy dread. "If what your parents said is true, Hasnain... then this isn't just a survival situation anymore. There is an expiration date on these monsters below us. 'The Group' plans to wipe out the dead with a chemical and reclaim the earth once the rest of us are gone."
"Which means," Saad said, his voice dropping into that new, chillingly serious tone he had found in the supermarket, "we don't just have to survive the dead. We have to survive the people who created them."
Ashad looked back toward the closed drawing-room doors where Ahmed Mamo was recovering. The stakes had completely changed. They weren't just a family hiding in Karachi anymore—they were witnesses to the greatest crime in human history.
Ashad turned back to Hasnain, his eyes hardening. "You're safe here now, homie. We got you. But from this second on, we stop playing defense."
The heavy silence on the balcony was suddenly shattered by a sharp, vibrating buzz from Ashad's pocket.
Ashad flinched. The cell networks had been practically dead since the morning, dropping in and out like a fading pulse. He pulled out his phone, staring in disbelief at the cracked screen. The caller ID flashed a name he hadn't expected to see: Asad Asim.
"Hello?!" Ashad answered frantically, pressing the phone hard against his ear. "Asad? Are you alive?"
On the other end of the line, the audio was a nightmare. Ashad could hear heavy, panicked breathing, the muffled sound of a little girl sobbing, and the terrifying, rhythmic cracking of splintering wood.
"Ashad... Ashad, listen to me!" Asad's voice was completely broken, bordering on hysteria. He was a man who usually carried himself with a calm, athletic confidence, but now, his voice was tight with a desperate, frantic energy. His sharp, alert eyes were scanning the room, his usually neat short-cut hair now a tangled mess, and his high-quality button-down shirt was torn at the shoulder and stained with the grime of a dying world. "They're dead. Everyone is dead, man. The whole family... it was supposed to be a party..."
While Ashad stood frozen on the safe house balcony, Asad was living out his own hell a few miles away. Just an hour prior, his family had gathered to celebrate, packing the house with laughter and food. But the infection had breached their walls without warning. The celebration turned into a slaughterhouse in minutes. Now, Asad was backed into a corner of a first-floor bedroom. The only other survivors in the room were his niece, Arisha Ahmed—a petite seven-year-old whose wide, expressive dark eyes were currently glassy and hollowed out by trauma—and his elderly uncle, Mamo Ubaid.
Outside the locked wooden door, the monstrous groans of their own infected relatives echoed through the hallway. Blood-soaked fists bashed relentlessly against the wood. The doorframe was buckling.
"We can't stop them," Asad cried into the phone. "They're going to break through!"
Mamo Ubaid, his face pale but his eyes burning with a fierce, absolute resolve, stepped in front of the door. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a heavy ring of keys, and shoved them into Asad's trembling hand.
"The coaster bus we booked for the farmhouse trip," Mamo Ubaid ordered, his voice cutting through the panic. "It's parked right below this window in the back alley."
"No, Mamo, no! We can all jump!" Asad pleaded, tears streaming down his face.
CRACK! A decayed hand punched straight through the center panel of the door, grasping blindly at the air.
"Look at my legs, Asad! If I jump, I will shatter my knees and they will catch us all!" Mamo Ubaid grabbed Asad by the collar, pulling him close. "Take Arisha! Jump and drive! Do not let my niece die in this room!"
Knowing his uncle was right, Asad lifted the phone back to his mouth, his voice hardening with a desperate, heavy determination. "Get your family ready, Ashad. I'm coming to pick you all up, and we are getting the hell out of this city. We're going to the farmhouse."
Without waiting for a reply, Asad hung up the call and shoved the phone deep into his pocket.
With no time left, he fell to his knees and wrapped his arms tightly around little Arisha, whose dark, disheveled hair caught the light as she clung to him in pure, paralyzing terror. He grabbed her securely against his chest, climbed onto the window ledge, and took a blind, terrifying leap from the first floor.
He hit the dirt of the alleyway hard, rolling to absorb the heavy impact, but he landed safely, keeping Arisha completely shielded from the fall.
However, the loud, heavy thud of their landing instantly echoed through the narrow alley. The sound immediately alerted a group of the infected roaming just down the street. Their heads snapped toward the noise, and they began to shamble and sprint toward them with terrifying speed.
"Run!" Asad gasped, pulling Arisha to her feet. They sprinted frantically toward the parked bus.
As they ran, a chilling, powerful voice boomed from the open first-floor window above them. It was Mamo Ubaid's final, defiant battle cry as the bedroom door finally caved in completely.
"You will take me, but not them!"
His roar was instantly followed by agonizing shouts and the chaotic sounds of a brutal struggle. The horrific reality of her uncle's sacrifice echoed in the alley, scaring little Arisha down to her very soul. She let out a silent, breathless sob, her eyes wide with shock as she ran blindly beside Asad.
They reached the bus just as the undead in the alley began to close the distance. Asad threw Arisha through the open doors, jumped into the driver's seat, and jammed Mamo Ubaid's key into the ignition. The heavy diesel engine roared to life. He slammed it into gear and floored the accelerator, the massive vehicle lunging forward. They got away just in time, the back bumper of the bus narrowly clipping the reaching hands of the infected as they sped out of the alley toward Ashad's coordinates.