The outskirts of Rongdu still seemed ’normal’. A zombie wandered between abandoned cars, plants swallowed entire storefronts, small fires burning somewhere in the distance.

But the closer we got to the downtown core... the more I couldn’t shake the feeling that I really, really should have stayed home today.

Cars still sat abandoned across intersections, but there were no bodies around them. No zombies wandered through the streets. Several buildings still burned farther ahead, dark smoke rising into the sky in slow twisting columns, but there were no emergency vehicles trying to put them out.

No people.

No movement.

Nothing.

A police cruiser sat half sideways against a traffic light pole with every window shattered outward onto the pavement.

Not inward.

Outward.

Like someone was trying to get out. Not in.

An ambulance farther down the road had both back doors hanging open while medical gauze fluttered through the street in the wind.

No blood.

No bodies.

No paramedics.

Just empty streets and dead buildings.

The radio crackled softly behind me.

"...downtown quarantine zones remain active. Military response teams are currently attempting extraction operations near Rongdu Financial Plaza. Citizens are advised to remain calm and await—"

Static swallowed the rest.

I looked out the windshield again.

There were no barricades.

No military checkpoints.

No quarantine zones.

Nothing.

Just silence.

Even Chenghai looked unsettled now.

Good.

Maybe we could finally turn around and go home where civilization belonged.

Then Zhenlan leaned slightly forward in his seat.

"Keep going."

Of course he did.

I closed my eyes briefly and rested my head against the window.

Not to sound redundant... but I was beginning to feel a lot like a frog in a pot of cold water.

And fucking Chenghai and Zhenlan were slowly turning up the fire.

I turned around so that I could look at both men. "You know we are all in the same pot, right?" I asked, my voice, like my face was completely blank.

"I don’t know what you mean," replied Zhenlan, staring me down like I was the problem.

"Sure you don’t," I agreed. But it didn’t matter. Just because he was willing to die for one more box of corn pops didn’t mean that I was. The only difference was that I had complete confidence in who I was and what I could do.

In this world, it didn’t matter who laughed last. What mattered was who was standing when everything collapsed around you.

I turned around and stared out the front window as the SUV rolled deeper into downtown Rongdu.

The roads got wider.

The buildings got taller.

And yet, everything felt like a horror movie where you wanted to scream at the main characters to turn around and leave.

Nobody spoke anymore. Whatever we had just three days ago was completely gone with this single decision. Hell, even Lingyun had stopped making jokes and that was how you really knew that the world had come to an end.

That honestly worried me more than the empty streets did.

A city like Rongdu shouldn’t have been this quiet.

Even before the apocalypse, downtown never really slept. There were always people somewhere. Cars. Music. Sirens. Construction. Someone screaming into a phone because their life was falling apart over paperwork or cheating or money.

Now?

Nothing.

No engines.

No footsteps.

No zombie moans.

No wind moving through the buildings.

Nothing.

The SUV sounded too loud against the pavement.

The tires rolling over loose debris echoed between the buildings hard enough that I found myself flinching every few seconds whenever we hit broken glass or chunks of concrete.

A traffic light swung slowly overhead, back and forth, the light changing from green to yellow to red like there were still people who would obey their silent commands.

The farther inward we drove, the more destroyed the city looked. Not like there had been a bomb or a war so much as like everyone had been in the middle of doing something before they suddenly just weren’t there anymore.

A city bus sat sideways across three lanes with every window shattered outward. Several suitcases still rested beside the open doors while clothing had been scattered across the road like someone dumped an entire life onto the pavement and then vanished.

But there wasn’t even a single body on the street.

A delivery truck farther down the street had both rear doors hanging open.

Boxes still sat inside untouched.

One had split open across the pavement nearby, hundreds of small plastic bottles rolling through the intersection every time the SUV disturbed the air around them.

The creepiest part was that no one had taken them. Not the small plastic bottles or any of the packages in the truck.

I mean, I was going to change that... but the fact that no one had gotten to them before me?

Yeah, that was giving me goosebumps.

The moment Yuche drove past it, I quickly took everything into my space.

When that was done, I continued to look around.

The next thing to catch my eyes was a firetruck that sat abandoned outside a shattered office tower.

The ladder was still extended halfway up the building while one of the hoses snaked across the road disappearing through broken glass doors.

The driver’s side door hung open and it was easy to see that there wasn’t a single man in uniform anywhere to be seen.

What I could see was a black smear that streaked down the side of the truck.

I wasn’t blood, it seemed to be too thick for that. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be.

The radio in Chenghai’s hand crackled again. "...civilians are advised to avoid contact with infected individuals and proceed to the nearest evacuation shelter..."

I stared out the windshield.

And exactly where was this evacuation shelter?

There wasn’t a single living thing anywhere around us.

No zombies wandered through the intersections.

No plants climbed the buildings.

Even the greenery stopped near downtown like nature itself had taken one look at this place and decided absolutely fucking not.

That bothered me more than the rats did.

At least the rats made sense.

Rats spread.

Plants grew.

Zombies wandered.

But this?

This felt deliberate somehow.

Like the city had been cleaned out.

My fingers tightened slightly against the door.

No.

Not cleaned.

Emptied.

A police barricade suddenly appeared farther ahead.

Or what was left of one.

Several military vehicles sat jackknifed across the road while portable fencing had been crushed flat beneath them. One armored truck had a hole punched through the side large enough that I could see straight through the vehicle.

And yet... not one of the geniuses in the back seat commented on it.

But I noticed the way Yuche’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

The way Chenghai sat straighter.

The way Zhenlan’s eyes kept moving across the buildings instead of the streets.

Good.

At least I wasn’t the only one thinking we should leave.

The SUV rolled past the ruined barricade slowly.

Nobody stopped us.

Nobody challenged us.

One of the military jeeps still idled quietly near the curb.

The headlights were on.

The driver’s seat was empty.

I could see dried blood smeared across the inside of the windshield.

No body.

No weapon.

Nothing.

Just another abandoned vehicle sitting in the middle of a dead city.

A low buzzing sound drifted somewhere through the buildings overhead.

Looking up, I could see a whole swarm of flies. The only other living thing but us in this city that used to have almost a million people in it.

But if there were that many people here six months ago, then where the hell did they go?

My stomach twisted uncomfortably.

I didn’t like this.

I didn’t like any of this.

Costco had been horrifying, but at least it made sense.

Rats.

Food.

Nest.

Simple.

This city just felt wrong... like it was trying to be the setting of a horror movie that I didn’t know I was staring in.

The SUV passed another intersection.

Another abandoned line of vehicles.

Another burning building.

Still no bodies.

Still no zombies.

Still nothing alive.

The radio crackled one final time. "...survivors currently sheltering in the downtown core are advised to remain where they are. Rescue operations are ongoing..."

I stared out at the empty streets stretching endlessly between dead skyscrapers.

Then at the overturned military vehicles.

Then at the dark windows towering above us.

"See?" I muttered quietly. "Told you that we should have gone home."