Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 4:57 PM
Countdown to Extraction: 57 Hours, 44 Minutes Remaining
For a long, suffocating second after Cherry's finger locked onto Mari, the club stopped breathing.
No one moved. No one spoke.
Then the room shifted. It happened like a school of fish sensing a predator in the water—smooth, silent, and all at once.
Mari felt it in the air before she actually tracked the movements. Bodies angled toward her. The empty space around the bar tightened. The red neon light bleeding from the ceiling fixtures made everyone look sharp and hollowed out. The silver body glitter caked on the dancers' skin looked like grit. False eyelashes cast long, jagged shadows that looked like knives.
A dancer in a silk robe stepped sideways, deliberately cutting off the narrow aisle leading back to the VIP couches where Ethan was bleeding.
Another girl drifted silently behind Mari, blocking the dark hallway that led to the back delivery door. She didn't touch Mari. She just stood there, effectively taking away the only clean exit.
Near the edge of the main stage, a girl in fishnets wrapped her hands tight around a heavy chrome stripper pole. She twisted her wrists and lifted it off its base. The metal let out a soft, scraping squeal.
Behind the mahogany counter, a heavy glass tequila bottle tipped and rolled. A large, masculine hand clamped down on the neck. The hand didn't let go.
Mari took a slow half-step backward until her spine hit the corner where the bar met a wall of mirrored glass. The mirror threw her own reflection back at her. Her eyes looked too wide. Her jaw was set too tight. Her shoulders were squared up, bracing for an impact she knew she couldn't stop. She looked like a cornered animal trying to bluff its way out of a locked cage.
Maya was standing right next to her at the bar, still holding the unopened bottle of water she had just grabbed for Mari. The nursing student froze, caught directly in the crossfire, her dark eyes darting between Cherry's pointing finger and the women closing in around them.
Mari's heart didn't pound with panic.
It burned with a hot, exhausting anger.
Not at the girls. At the universe. At the brutal math of the new world, and how fast a safe room could turn into a hunting ground.
Cherry's manicured finger was still aimed at her chest, shaking. Tears spilled over the blonde's heavy lashes, streaking her makeup. Her chest heaved with frantic, shallow breaths.
"She killed him," Cherry choked out. Her voice had a thin, desperate edge to it. It was the sound of someone trying to lock a narrative in place before the crowd could question it. "Darius is dead because of her."
A low, ugly murmur rolled through the dancers.
"Darius was one of ours," a bartender muttered from the shadows near the taps. The words weren't laced with grief. They were territorial.
Mari didn't raise her hands to surrender. She didn't try to explain herself. She didn't beg for them to listen. She had learned out on Abercorn Street that begging never bought you anything but a faster death.
She just watched the nearest dancer's stance. She evaluated the threat the exact same way she watched the infected out in the ash. She checked where the girl's weight was distributed. Balls of the feet. Shoulders rolled forward. Ready to lunge the second the gap closed.
Mari's right hand slid slowly down her coat, her fingers finding the heavy rubber grip of the hunting knife strapped to her hip.
She didn't draw the steel. She wasn't dramatic. She didn't make a threat.
She was just ready.
Maya took a slow step backward, putting an inch of distance between herself and Mari, her face pale. "Hold on," Maya started, looking at the girls. "She just brought a wounded guy in—"
"You come in here," a girl in a silver bikini interrupted, taking a step toward Mari. Her chin was lifted, her eyes hard. "Bleeding all over our couches. Tracking the dead to our back door."
"I didn't pick your door," Mari said. Her voice was flat, hollowed out by exhaustion. "We were trapped against the brick. We were completely boxed in. I closed my eyes because I thought we were about to be eaten alive. Somebody opened that steel door and dragged us inside. I didn't even know this place was here."
That didn't put the fire out.
Cherry pointed again, her hand trembling so hard it looked like a spasm. "She didn't even look scared," the blonde blurted out. It sounded like an accusation. Like that was the true crime. "She just… did it."
Mari felt the crowd lean into the words.
Fear was normal. Panic was forgivable. But a college girl standing calm and numb after a man got torn to shreds in an alley? That was deeply suspicious.
Mari's knuckles turned white around the handle of her knife.
She knew exactly how this sequence played out. She had run the math. Someone would lunge. She would have to swing. Somebody would bleed on the floor. The panic would spiral into a riot. The screaming would start. The heavy front windows would shake from the bodies slamming against them. The dead swarming outside would hear the dinner bell. And this entire velvet bunker would get cracked open.
Not again.
She was not going to let another place turn into a feeding ground because people couldn't control their fear.
The dancer holding the chrome pole raised it an inch higher off the floor.
Mari shifted her weight onto her back foot, planting her heel.
And then a voice exploded from the left side of the room.
"So fucking what!"
The sound was loud and harsh enough to slice clean through the building tension. Half the room physically jerked.
The voice belonged to a woman older than the rest of the dancers. Thirties, maybe pushing forty. Her body looked strong but visibly exhausted. Her face was set in a permanent, deeply etched line of someone who had stopped taking shit a decade ago. She had a silk robe half-tied over dark lingerie, her hair scraped back into a messy knot.
She shoved her way through two younger girls and planted herself firmly between Mari and the weapons.
"So fucking what," the older dancer repeated. She turned on the crowd, glaring at them like they were the real problem. "Darius was an asshole. He probably tried to rape her."
Mari blinked, her grip slipping slightly on the knife.
The word hit the hot room like a bucket of ice water.
Not because Mari hadn't thought it. But because nobody ever said the quiet part out loud.
The room stuttered.
A few girls exchanged rapid, uncomfortable looks. Faces twisted. They didn't look angry at the accusation. They looked like they recognized the truth of it.
Maya frowned, turning her head to look directly at Mari. The nursing student was still holding the water bottle, her knuckles white. "Is that what happened?" Maya asked, her voice cutting through the heavy silence. "What did he actually do out there?"
Mari didn't look at Maya. She kept her eyes locked dead on Cherry's pale, tear-streaked face.
"He was beating Ethan to death," Mari said. Her voice carried easily across the red-lit room. "He broke Ethan's jaw. He pinned him to the asphalt with his boot. And then he looked right at Cherry."
Cherry flinched. She took a step back, her back hitting the edge of the bar.
"He told her to grab me," Mari continued, her tone completely devoid of emotion. "He told her to tie my hands, so he could finish the soldier and take his time dealing with me."
The club went dead silent.
The only sound was the muffled, rhythmic thumping of the broken bassline and the faint scratching of the dead against the tinted glass outside.
Then, the crowd snapped.
"Like, really bitch?" a dancer in torn fishnets scoffed, glaring daggers at Cherry. She dropped her arms, the hostility completely leaving her posture.
"Y'all know that hoe be lying," someone muttered from the other end of the bar, shaking her head in disgust. "She's been lying since her first shift here."
"You stood there and pointed at her like she was a murderer when you were gonna help him tie her up?" Maya asked, her voice dripping with absolute revulsion.
Cherry shrank back against the mahogany. "I didn't! I didn't do it!"
"But you didn't stop him either," the older dancer spat. "You just stood there and watched."
The dancer who had picked up the chrome pole dropped it back to the sticky floor with a loud clang. The bartender behind the counter let go of the tequila bottle and crossed his arms.
The momentum in the room flipped completely. It felt exactly like a chair being kicked out from under the fragile narrative Cherry had tried to build. The girls weren't looking at Mari like a threat anymore. They were looking at Cherry like a liability.
"I didn't want to be out there!" Cherry cried, her voice cracking as the room turned on her. She aggressively wiped her face, smearing her makeup further. "I just wanted to get to my car! But he told me he had drugs in his truck. I just wanted the bag!"
The room paused.
Then, someone at the far end of the bar blurted out, "Of course he did."
Cherry sniffled, looking deeply humiliated. "Weed. Mushrooms. Stuff like that."
A dancer leaned forward, her terrified eyes suddenly bright with desperate, exhausted interest. "Did you get it?"
Cherry's mouth twitched. It was a bizarre mix of deep grief and spiteful victory. She reached down behind the velvet booth where she'd been sitting, grabbed a heavy black canvas backpack, and hoisted it up onto the bar.
The room erupted.
It wasn't screaming. It was a massive burst of wild, exhausted noise. Cheers, dark laughter, and whoops that sounded completely obscene given the nightmare happening just on the other side of the tinted glass.
"YES!"
"Hell yeah!"
"Darius finally paid up!"
"Open it!"
Cherry unzipped the heavy canvas bag and started pulling things out. Vacuum-sealed baggies of weed. A couple of tightly wrapped bundles of dried mushrooms. A few small baggies of white powder tucked meticulously into a side pocket.
"Dealer," someone said, shaking their head in disbelief.
"No shit," Vince muttered behind the bar.
Maya stared at the stash, her jaw dropping slightly. She looked from the drugs to Ethan bleeding on the couch, and then back to Mari, a flash of pure disbelief crossing her face that anyone could care about weed right now.
It was ugly. It was ridiculous. But it was violently human. It was exactly the kind of dark, gallows humor people needed to keep their minds from snapping under the crushing weight of the apocalypse.
Outside, something slammed heavily into the tinted front window. The impact made the reinforced glass vibrate. The red neon light above them flickered.
A few girls startled. The nervous laughter died down instantly, snuffed out like a candle.
Reality stepped heavily back into the room. The drugs were a distraction, but they didn't change the fact that they were all still trapped in a cage.
One of the bartenders, leaning against the back counter, looked back at Mari. The territorial fear was completely gone, replaced by genuine curiosity.
"So why were you out there?" the bartender asked. "Not with him. You and your guy. Why were you out in the street like that? Everyone else was hiding inside."
Mari's throat tightened so fast it physically hurt.
Dot.
The name sat like a cold stone behind her ribs.
Mari could vividly see the older woman in her mind. Lying on the stained carpet back at Troy's apartment. Dot passing out had felt like mercy at first, just sheer exhaustion, until they realized she wasn't waking up. Mari remembered finding the blue medical bracelet under Dot's heavy sleeve.
Mari's voice came out incredibly low. "We weren't out there looking for trouble."
Cherry looked at her, wary and quiet now, her hands resting on the open backpack.
Mari swallowed hard, forcing herself to speak through the deep ache in her chest. "Our friend… Dot. She passed out in an apartment a few blocks from here. We couldn't wake her up."
Maya's posture changed instantly next to her at the bar. The nursing student turned fully toward Mari, her eyes wide.
"She had a medical bracelet," Mari continued. Her words were heavy and exact. She couldn't afford to fall apart in front of a room full of strangers. She needed to hold it together. "Diabetic. Insulin-dependent. She didn't have her kit on her. No sugar tabs. No pen. Nothing. Ethan said she was crashing. That if her blood sugar dropped completely, she would slip into a coma and her organs would start shutting down."
Maya's face tightened. The medical understanding snapped violently into place for the nursing student. She knew exactly what systemic shock meant without immediate access to a pharmacy.
Mari's hands trembled. She curled them tightly into fists against her thighs to hide the shaking. "Someone at the apartment told us there was a CVS near here. A block away, right by this place. It was our only chance to get the insulin before she went under completely."
The older dancer's face softened. "So you went." Her voice was quiet. Respectful.
Mari nodded once. "Ethan said he was going. I went with him to watch his back."
A girl standing near the main stage whispered, "That's insane. Walking out there right now."
"It was that," Mari said, her voice cracking just a fraction of an inch before she forcefully leveled it out, "or sit in that living room and let her die."
Silence held the room.
Then, from somewhere deep in the shadows near the VIP couches, a dancer spoke softly. She was talking almost entirely to herself. "I would've gone too."
Another girl beside her nodded in silent agreement.
Vince exhaled a long, heavy breath, like he'd been holding it for ten agonizing minutes. "Alright," the owner said. His voice was rough, carrying absolute finality. "No one's touching her. You hear me? Nobody. Not in my building."
Nobody argued.
The older dancer turned back and looked Mari up and down. She took in the bruises forming on Mari's jaw, the dried blood flaking on her coat, and the way Mari's shoulders still hadn't fully relaxed. "What's your name?" she asked.
"Mari," she said quietly.
The woman nodded once. "Mari. You did what you had to do."
Mari didn't answer.
Because *had to* didn't erase the terrifying, wet sound of Darius screaming when the dead pulled him down to the asphalt. It didn't erase the awful, sticky feel of his blood coating her hands when she drove the knife into his leg. And it absolutely didn't erase the image of Dot lying motionless on that carpet, her time running out with every passing second.
Cherry hugged her arms around her stomach. She looked at Mari, her chin trembling. "I didn't mean—" she started, her voice breaking.
Mari cut her off gently. She was entirely exhausted by the conflict. "I know."
The room finally began to loosen.
It wasn't safe. It wasn't comfortable. But they were no longer poised to tear Mari apart.
Somebody shoved the bags of drugs back into the backpack like they were high-value military ration packs. A bartender started wiping down the mahogany counter purely out of nervous habit. He stopped abruptly, staring blankly at his own hands like he didn't know what normal was supposed to look like anymore.
Maya looked at Mari, gave her a small nod, and then walked back across the room to check Ethan's bandages.
Mari stayed exactly where she was for a moment longer. She leaned her back against the mirrored glass, letting the heavy adrenaline drain from her system in slow, sick waves. She uncapped the plastic bottle Maya had handed her earlier and took a long, desperate swallow of water.
Outside, the dead pressed their rotting faces against the glass they couldn't see through, smearing the tint with ash and gore.
Inside, velvet, glitter, and sheer terror were held tenuously together by the absolute thinnest thread of truth.
Mari stared at the red lights, realizing something incredibly cold and entirely permanent about the new world.
Out there, the dead just wanted to rip her apart.
In here, people wanted a story.
Either way, she was going to have to fight to survive.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 5:12 PM
Countdown to Extraction: 57 Hours, 29 Minutes Remaining