Justin's salt-stained hoodie smelled like stale Wawa coffee and cold Pennsylvania turnpike air—a sharp, offensive contrast to the vanilla-scented candles Tally's mom usually kept lit. The reality of him being here, standing in the dim light of their foyer at eleven in the morning instead of a library in State College, felt like a glitch in the simulation. Tally's brain kept trying to reboot, trying to find a logical reason for her brother to be standing on their rug looking like he'd crawled out of a storm drain.
Her body reacted before her pride could stop it. She stepped into him hard, burying her face in the rough, pilled fabric of his sweatshirt. For a split second, the world outside—the bleeding kids in the school hallway, the girl walking in circles in the woods, the relentless, overlapping sirens—faded. Justin was the anchor. He was the one who had taught her how to throw a spiral, how to spot a lie, and how to survive their father's silent, military-grade expectations.
But when he didn't wrap his arms back around her with his usual crushing bear hug, she pulled away, her cheeks flushing.
"You owe me," she snapped, scrubbing her face with the heel of her hand and stepping toward the kitchen island. Her voice was too high, too brittle. "For the emotional damage. I almost stabbed you with a chef's knife, Justin. Why aren't you in Pennsylvania? It's 11:00 AM on a Tuesday. You're supposed to be failing Organic Chemistry, not sneaking around the house like a serial killer."
Justin didn't answer. He didn't even look at her. He moved past her into the kitchen with a frantic, focused energy that made the hair on her arms stand up. He began opening the lower cabinets, his movements jerky and loud, pulling out every empty Tupperware container, every Nalgene bottle, and the oversized glass pitchers their mom used for sweet tea.
"I left the dorms three days ago," he said, his voice flat and robotic. "I didn't even pack. I just grabbed my keys and started the car."
"Three days ago? Justin, you haven't even had your winter formal yet." Tally watched him line the bottles up under the faucet. The sound of the water rushing into the sink was abnormally loud in the silent house. "You're acting like a freak. Turn the water off. You're going to splash the counters, and Mom will lose it when she gets home."
"I saw things on the way down, Tal. On the I-95." He finally looked at her, and the sight stopped her breath. His eyes weren't just tired; they were bloodshot, rimmed with a deep, hollow exhaustion. "It started in Philly. Just… glitches. The power would drop for an hour, then snap back. But the people didn't snap back. They started getting this flu. Not a normal flu. They'd just stop. I saw a girl in the middle of a crosswalk, just standing there while a bus honked. She was staring at nothing, sweating through her coat in thirty-degree weather. And then she started screaming. Not because she was scared. Because she was… leaking."
Tally scoffed, a sharp, defensive sound. "It's a virus, Justin. It's 2025; we've lived through this. Kenzie's mom is an ER nurse; she said people are panicking because the news is blowing it out of proportion. It's just a bad strain. A mutation."
"It's not a mutation," Justin snapped, the water splashing over the rim of a gallon jug. "I passed a pile-up near D.C. A twelve-car wreck in the middle of a clear day. No police. No ambulances. Just people sitting in their smashed cars, staring at the dashboards while the engines smoked. I saw a guy… he was trying to climb over a concrete highway divider, but his hands were shredded, and he didn't even seem to notice the pain. He was just trying to get to the other side. Like he'd forgotten how to be a person."
Tally's mind flashed back to the girl at the edge of the school woods. The way her head had been tilted—wrong.
"You're being dramatic," Tally said, her voice rising. "You've been drinking too much Red Bull. You drove fifteen hours on a whim."
"I saw the towers go dark in North Carolina, Tally! One by one, the horizon just vanished. That's why I'm here. I had to get south of the line before the grid went completely."
A sound drifted from the hallway—the soft rustle of fabric, followed by a cough that was quickly muffled.
Tally's body went rigid. "Justin. Who else is in this house?"
Justin sighed, a long, ragged sound. He glanced toward the darkened living room. "I couldn't leave her. Her car ran out of gas near the border. The stations were already being looted."
A woman stepped into the kitchen doorway. She was wrapped in a thick wool coat, her hands tucked deep into the sleeves. Her blonde hair was pulled back, and her green eyes were sharp, tracking Tally's reaction with a mix of apology and caution.
"Hi," she said gently. "I'm Mari. I promise I'm not a squatter. I was a T.A. in Justin's psych department."
Tally blinked. "You brought a TA? Mom is going to lose her absolute mind. We don't even let the neighbors in without an RSVP."
"Mom isn't here, Tally," Justin said, his voice dropping an octave. "And neither is Dad. And they aren't answering their phones."
"Because the towers are down!" Tally shouted. "You're acting like the world ended because the 5G cut out. It's Savannah. A light breeze knocks the power out."
Mari stepped forward. "The power didn't just go out, Tally. We passed a Walmart in Florence. The doors were off the hinges, but people weren't taking TVs. They were just… standing in the aisles. Some of them were fighting, but it wasn't over food. I saw a man trying to bite the neck of a security guard. It wasn't a robbery. It was a feeding."
Tally looked from Mari to Justin. They looked like two people who had seen a ghost and were waiting for her to stop pretending she hadn't seen the smoke on the horizon.
"House rules," Tally said, her voice trembling. "Don't touch Mom's mugs. Don't go in my room. And stop talking like we're in a movie. It's embarrassing. Everything is fine."
Despite her words, the house didn't feel fine. It felt like a fortress under siege in the middle of a bright, sunny Tuesday.
Justin didn't stop. He moved with a grim efficiency he'd clearly inherited from their father. He made Tally help him fill the bathtubs—an old hurricane trick.
"Why are we doing this?" Tally asked, watching the water swirl into the master bath. "It's 11:30 in the morning. We should be calling the electric company."
"The city water pressure is already dropping," Justin said, not looking up. "If the pumps at the station fail, this is all we have. Fill the guest tub next."
Mari helped Tally move the heavy teak porch furniture into the mudroom. It felt like a fever dream—moving expensive outdoor chairs into a hallway because her brother was convinced the world was breaking. They worked while a backup generator hummed in the backyard—a steady, artificial heartbeat.
Tally's mind kept drifting back to the school. She thought about Kenzie. Had Kenzie's mom made it home? Was Kenzie sitting in her own dark house, staring at a dead phone?
At 11:45 AM, the sun was high, casting bright, cruel light across the cul-de-sac. It should have been the time of day when the neighborhood was quiet for the "workday" lull, but the air felt heavy.
"See?" Tally said, standing at the living room window. "It's a beautiful day. Everyone is just... laying low."
"Then why are all their cars in the driveways?" Justin asked, appearing behind her. "Mrs. Harland should be at her bridge club. The Miller kids should be at school with you. Look at the Henderson house."
Tally looked. The Hendersons were obsessed with their lawn. The house was dark. The front door was wide open, swinging back and forth in the light breeze.
"They probably left," Tally whispered.
"Without closing the door?" Justin asked softly.
Suddenly, the dogs stopped.
It wasn't a gradual quieting. It was a synchronized, total cessation of noise. One second, the neighborhood was a wall of frantic howling; the next, it was a vacuum.
The silence that followed was heavy—thick and unnatural, like a physical weight pressing against the windowpanes in the midday sun.
"They finally tired themselves out," Tally said.
Justin didn't respond. He reached out and slowly, deliberately, pulled the heavy velvet curtains shut, overlapping them so not a single sliver of the Georgia sunlight could leak in.
"While the lights still work," he said, "we stay away from the glass. We stay in the interior rooms."
"You're scaring me, Justin," Tally said, her lip trembling. "Stop it. Call Dad. Use your satellite emergency thing on your watch."
"I tried," Justin said. "It can't find a signal. Whatever this is… it's high up, Tally."
They retreated to the kitchen, the only room with a sense of "normal" left, thanks to the generator-powered light over the island. Mari was sitting at the table, staring at a map of Georgia.
"The bases will be the first to close their gates," Mari said. "If your dad is at Fort Stewart, he's locked in. They won't let him leave until they know what the contagion vector is."
"Contagion?" Tally snapped. "It's a flu!"
"Maybe it is," Mari said. Her green eyes were wide. "The world ends all the time, Tally. For someone, somewhere, the world ended today. We just have to make sure it's not ours."
Far off, toward the city center, there was a series of low, rhythmic thuds. It sounded like something heavy, something massive, hitting the earth.
And then, much closer—maybe only three houses down—a single human scream tore through the 11:00 AM air.
It wasn't a scream of panic. It was a jagged, visceral sound—the sound of something being torn apart. It cut off so abruptly that the silence afterward felt like a physical blow.
Tally sank onto the sofa, her hands shaking. She reached for her phone one last time. She wanted to see a notification. A TikTok. A text from her mom saying, 'Sorry, I'm picking up lunch.'
The screen stayed black. A $1,200 piece of glass and metal that told her absolutely nothing.
"Tally," Justin said, sitting on the coffee table in front of her. "Look at me."
"I want Mom," she whispered.
"I know," Justin said. "But we have the generator. We have the house. We just have to wait for Dad to get back from the base."
"He'll be here," Tally whispered, clinging to the image of her father in his uniform. "He's probably the one fixing it right now."
Justin didn't contradict her. He just looked toward the front door.
The generator hummed in the backyard. The lights stayed on.
While they still could.