Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 3:18 PM
Countdown to Extraction: 59 Hours, 23 Minutes Remaining
The chipped wooden door shut with a hollow, pathetic click.
Tally immediately reached for the lock, her trembling fingers fumbling with the cheap brass turn-button. It engaged with a weak, grinding snap that offered absolutely zero real security. If one of the infected got into the apartment, a stiff breeze would blow this door off its rusted hinges, let alone a hundred-and-eighty-pound monster sprinting at full speed.
But right now, it was the only barrier she had.
Tally took a staggered step backward, her shoulder blades hitting the cold, peeling wallpaper. The bathroom was the size of a tomb. A suffocating, five-by-five box of absolute rot.
The air in here was stagnant and heavy, thick with the overpowering stench of mildew, backed-up plumbing, and the harsh, chemical sting of cheap bleach that had long since failed to kill whatever was growing in the corners. A single, yellowed fluorescent bulb flickered violently above the sink, buzzing with a low, electrical hum that drilled straight into the base of her skull.
Tally couldn't breathe.
The panic attack wasn't receding; it was mutating into a bitter, toxic resentment. Out in the living room, surrounded by Renee's frantic pacing and Dot's dying, ragged breaths, the fear had been loud. In here, locked in the claustrophobic silence, the fear turned completely inward, feeding her anger.
She looked at her reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink.
She barely recognized the girl staring back at her.
Tally was used to a very specific version of herself. The affluent, untouchable suburban teenager. The girl with the flawless blowout, the perfect skincare routine, and the expensive clothes that silently broadcasted her place at the absolute top of the high school food chain.
The girl in the mirror looked like a casualty.
Her light brown skin was pale, ashen, and stretched taut over her cheekbones. Smudges of dark grey ash, dried sweat, and someone else's blood were smeared across her forehead and jawline. Her thick, sandy blonde curls were tangled and wild, completely ruined by the sheer, unadulterated terror of the last forty-eight hours.
Her eyes were bloodshot, the pupils blown wide with pure, sustained adrenaline.
They smell blood, Tally thought, her mind violently latching onto the worst-case scenario. Ethan had insisted the mechanics tracked by sound and movement, but the group had debated the smell theory in hushed, terrified whispers. Standing in the dark, her panicked, self-centered brain bypassed logic entirely, cementing the rumor into absolute, undeniable fact. Like sharks.
Tally's breath hitched violently in her throat. Her hands flew up to her hair. She gathered the heavy, sandy blonde curls, twisting them with brutal force into a messy, frantic knot on the very top of her head. She pulled a spare hair tie off her wrist and snapped it into place, wrapping it three times so it wouldn't budge. She wasn't washing it. She absolutely refused to let the water in this biohazard of a room touch her head.
With her hair secured, Tally looked down at her clothes.
She was wearing a thin, expensive black athletic jacket and a pair of high-end, seamless black leggings. They were designed for hot yoga in a pristine, climate-controlled studio, not for wading through the collapse of human civilization.
Her hands shook uncontrollably as she unzipped the jacket, peeling it off her shoulders and letting it drop to the disgusting, yellowed linoleum floor. She didn't care. She was never wearing it again anyway.
Then, she reached for the waistband of her leggings.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, bird-like flutter that made her chest ache physically. She peeled the spandex down her hips, kicking her boots off and stepping out of the fabric entirely.
The absolute, undeniable reality of her biology hit her like a punch to the gut.
The dark fabric of the leggings had masked the visual stain, but the heavy, distinct scent of copper instantly bloomed in the tiny, enclosed space of the bathroom. It was warm. It was metallic. And to a human nose, it was barely noticeable.
But out there in the burning city, the apex predators had their olfactory nerves completely rewritten by a synthetic parasite. To them, it wasn't just a scent. It was a dinner bell ringing through the smoke.
Tally backed away from her own clothes, pressing her bare spine against the wall. A quiet, furious sob broke out of her chest. She clamped both hands over her mouth, biting down hard on the fleshy part of her palm.
She felt completely, utterly defenseless, and she hated them all for it.
Renee had her medical training. Ethan had his military background. Mari had her psycho bravery, or whatever it was that kept her moving. But Tally shouldn't even be here. She was a seventeen-year-old girl. She was supposed to be touring colleges next week, not standing naked in a moldy bathroom, bleeding out a biological homing beacon. It wasn't fair. If the mechanics broke down that door today, it wouldn't be her fault—it would be theirs for dragging her into this mess, for making her run, and for abandoning her in a literal trap house with a dying woman.
Wash it off, her brain screamed, the thought sharp and desperate. Just wash it off.
Tally turned toward the shower.
It was a nightmare. The porcelain tub was severely stained, ringed with dark brown hard-water lines and jagged streaks of rust. The grout between the cheap white tiles was completely black with thick, fuzzy mold. The shower curtain was a cheap, translucent plastic liner, covered in soapy scum and dark, questionable smears.
In any other life, Tally wouldn't have stepped foot in this room wearing a hazmat suit. The sheer indignity of having to clean herself in a junkie's bathtub made her want to scream.
She reached into the tub, keeping her arm fully extended so the rest of her bare body remained as far away from the walls as possible, and grabbed the rusted metal knob. It squealed in protest, the metal grinding loudly before it finally gave way.
The pipes deep inside the apartment walls groaned—a loud, hollow, vibrating shudder that made Tally flinch.
The showerhead sputtered violently. It coughed out a harsh, dry burst of air before spitting a thick stream of dark, rust-colored sludge directly onto the fiberglass floor.
Tally gagged, physically recoiling as the brown sludge splattered against the porcelain. "Oh my god," she whispered into her hands, her stomach turning. She was going to kill Ethan for bringing them here.
She waited, her chest heaving, watching the drain. After ten agonizing seconds, the water slowly began to clear. It went from dark brown to a cloudy, lukewarm yellowish-clear. The pressure was pathetic. It wasn't a spray; it was a weak, sad gravity trickle.
But it was water.
Tally took a shuddering, angry breath. She stepped over the edge of the tub.
She instantly went up on her tiptoes. She refused to let her bare soles touch the floor of the tub fully, balancing her weight awkwardly on the balls of her feet. The lukewarm water hit her shoulders. It felt greasy and heavy, smelling faintly of sulfur and dirt.
Tally squeezed her eyes shut.
The absolute second the water hit her face, an entirely new wave of psychological terror washed over her.
Taking a shower is the most vulnerable position a human being can put themselves in. The running water creates a constant, hissing wall of white noise that completely drowns out your surroundings. The steam fogs the glass. Your eyes are closed. You are naked, blind, and deaf.
In the suburbs, it was relaxing. In the apocalypse, it was pure, unadulterated torture.
Every time the water drummed against her ears, Tally's paranoid mind aggressively filled in the blanks. She imagined the heavy, wooden barricade Mari and Ethan had built before they left suddenly splintering apart. She imagined the wet, guttural snarl of a mechanic tearing through the apartment. She imagined the flimsy bathroom door violently caving inward, the shower curtain being ripped aside by bloody, ruined hands with missing fingernails.
Her eyes snapped open every three seconds, darting frantically around the tiny, mold-covered stall, her heart racing so fast her vision blurred at the edges.
Hurry, her brain screamed. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
She grabbed a cracked sliver of cheap, unscented bar soap resting on the rusted wire caddy. She didn't want to know who had used it last, or how long it had been sitting there in the damp dark. She just needed to scrub the scent of the blood off her skin so she could get the hell out of this biohazard.
She worked frantically, lathering the soap with the weak water pressure. She scrubbed her inner thighs, her legs, her stomach. Her manicured nails dug into her own skin, scratching hard enough to leave angry, raised red welts across her light brown flesh. She had to get it all. She had to completely erase the smell of the copper before it seeped under the bathroom door and out into the hallway and ruined everything.
The water pooling around her toes turned a faint, terrifying shade of pink before swirling down the slow, clogged drain.
Tally stared at the drain, the panic spiking into something utterly irrational and dark.
Where did the pipes go? Did they dump out into an open sewer line in the alleyway? Would the mechanics smell the diluted blood in the city drains and trace it right back up through the plumbing? Would they crawl through the dark?
"Stop it," Tally whispered out loud, her voice cracking over the sound of the water. "Stop it, stop it, stop it."
She was spiraling. The claustrophobia was crushing her lungs. She dropped the sliver of soap back onto the wire rack and reached up, violently twisting the rusted knob to the right.
The water shut off with a loud, protesting squeal from the pipes.
The white noise of the shower vanished instantly. The silence of the dead city rushed back in to fill the void, pressing against her eardrums like physical pressure.
Tally stood frozen in the center of the tub, still balancing on her toes, dirty water dripping from her shoulders and legs. Her sandy blonde hair remained perfectly dry in its frantic knot on top of her head.
The air in the bathroom was freezing. Without the lukewarm water, the ambient temperature of the unheated apartment immediately bit into her wet skin. Tally wrapped her arms tightly around her bare chest, violent shivers wracking her small frame. Her teeth began to chatter, a sharp, rhythmic clicking sound that felt dangerously loud in the quiet room.
She looked around for a towel.
The rusted towel rack on the wall was completely empty. There was nothing but peeling paint and water stains.
"Perfect," Tally whispered bitterly, her lower lip trembling with indignation. "Just fucking perfect."
She stepped out of the tub, her wet feet slapping against the peeling linoleum. She was freezing, naked, and completely exposed. She backed into the furthest corner of the bathroom, wedging herself into the dark, narrow gap between the cold porcelain of the toilet tank and the vanity, making herself as small as physically possible.
She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her shins. She buried her face in her wet knees, the cold seeping straight into her bones.
She strained her ears, listening through the cheap, hollow-core wood of the bathroom door.
She could hear Dot.
The older woman's breathing was bleeding through the drywall. It wasn't the shallow, erratic gasping from earlier. It was deeper now, wet and heavy, pulling with a horrific, mechanical rhythm. Huuuck. Huuuck. It sounded like a drowning victim desperately trying to pull oxygen into lungs that were rapidly filling with fluid.
Tally's upper lip curled in disgust. Why did she have to be so loud? Dot was practically ringing a dinner bell with that gross, wet hacking. It was so incredibly selfish. If the mechanics heard that noise, they were all going to die because an old woman couldn't quietly slip into a coma.
Tally clamped her wet hands over her ears, the tears finally spilling over her eyelashes, hot and fast.
She hated this. She hated all of it. She wanted her bedroom. She wanted her massive, plush white duvet. She wanted to sit in the air-conditioning and complain to her friends about how the barista at Starbucks always messed up her iced latte. She wanted the boring, predictable, infuriating life she had taken for granted just three days ago.
She didn't want to die in a moldy bathroom, naked and freezing, waiting for monsters to smell her because the people who were supposed to protect her had left her behind.
She squeezed her eyes shut, rocking slightly back and forth on the cold linoleum, trapped in the suffocating, furious dark of her own mind.
Then, the silence shattered.
Knock. Knock.
Tally flinched so violently she slammed her bare elbow against the porcelain toilet tank.
"Tally," Renee's voice came through the thin wood. It was muffled, flat, and completely devoid of warmth. "Open the door an inch. I've got your towel and your clothes."
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 3:30 PM
Countdown to Extraction: 59 Hours, 11 Minutes Remaining