"It's coming," I said.
Rachel, who had been sitting beside me, looked at me. "W...what's coming?" She asked, setting down her plate.
I stood slowly, every muscle in my body tense as a bowstring. "Something," I replied, already moving toward the makeshift barrier that protected us.
I approached it cautiously.
But beyond the barrier, in the growing darkness, something else entirely waited.
I pressed my face close to a gap between two metal sheets, peering into the gloom. At first, there was nothing but the familiar urban wasteland—abandoned cars, broken streetlights standing like dead sentinels, and the ever-present smell of decay that had become the world's new perfume.
Then I heard it. The groans.
They'd always been there. But this time something was slightly different. The groans seemed... coordinated. Purposeful.
And they were getting closer.
I counted the sounds in my head, trying to gauge numbers, distance, threat level.
What I heard made my blood run cold.
