The city was a skeleton, its skyscrapers clawing at a sky bruised with ash and venom.
Ten years had passed since the outbreak tore the world apart, and what remained was a graveyard of steel, concrete, and forgotten lives.
Ethan Kane moved like a ghost through the ruins of a pharmacy, his boots grinding glass into dust with every cautious step.
The air was heavy, thick with the sour reek of decay and the chemical tang of a world poisoned beyond repair.
At thirty-two, Ethan was wiry from a decade of scavenging, his hands steady despite the weight of guilt that clung to him like a second skin.
Once a paramedic, now a survivor, he navigated the wreckage with the precision of a man who'd learned to cheat death daily.
The pharmacy was a husk, its shelves gutted by looters long before Ethan arrived.
His flashlight's beam danced across the debris—shattered vials, crumpled boxes, a child's stuffed bear half-buried under a collapsed display, its button eyes staring blankly.
The sight twisted something in Ethan's chest, a memory of his daughter, Lily, clutching a similar toy as the world unraveled.
He shoved the thought down, hard.
Memories were traps, and he couldn't afford to stumble.
Not here, not now.
Outside, the wind howled through the city's broken arteries, carrying the electric buzz of a toxic storm.
Ethan glanced through the pharmacy's cracked window, where green-black clouds churned on the horizon like a living thing, spitting flashes of sickly lightning.
The storms were a curse of the post-apocalypse, their rain laced with chemicals that could burn through cloth, skin, bone.
He'd seen survivors caught in the open, their screams fading as the acid ate them alive.
Shelter was his only option, and time was running out.
He adjusted the patched jacket that hung loose on his frame, its pockets stuffed with scavenged odds and ends: a half-empty lighter, a coil of wire, a rusted multi-tool.
His pack held a day's worth of food—stale protein bars and a can of beans he'd traded a battery for two weeks ago.
Hunger was a constant companion, gnawing at his ribs, but Ethan had learned to ignore it.
Survival demanded focus, and his paramedic training still guided him: assess, prioritize, act.
He knelt beside a toppled cabinet, sifting through the wreckage.
A half-crushed tube of antiseptic cream caught his eye, its cap cracked but the seal intact.
Not food, but it could mean the difference between a scratch and sepsis.
He slipped it into his pack, the faint clink of metal against his crowbar reassuring in the silence.
The silence didn't last.
A low, guttural moan drifted from the street, followed by a second, closer, like a chorus of the damned.
Ethan's pulse spiked.
He killed the flashlight and dropped behind the counter, his breath shallow.
Zombies.
Through the window's jagged edge, he counted five shapes in the gloom—shambling husks, their flesh gray and peeling, hanging in strips from bones that should've collapsed years ago.
Their eyes were milky voids, unseeing yet drawn by some primal instinct.
Ethan's hand found the crowbar at his belt, its cold weight grounding him.
He wasn't a fighter, not like the raiders who carved out territories with blades and bullets, or the soldiers he'd seen in the early days, before the world fully broke.
His strength was his mind—quick, adaptive, trained to save lives under pressure.
That's what had kept him alive when so many others fell.
He studied the zombies, their jerky movements homing in on the pharmacy.
Something had stirred them—his scent, a sound, or just the cruel randomness of their hunger.
Fighting was a last resort; five against one was a death sentence, even with the crowbar.
Ethan's eyes darted around the pharmacy, searching for an edge.
A shelf of chemicals glinted in the dim light: isopropyl alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, a bottle of ammonia tipped on its side.
Flammable, volatile.
An idea sparked.
Moving with practiced silence, he grabbed the alcohol and peroxide, their plastic bottles slick with dust.
He tore a strip from a rotting curtain hanging near the counter, the fabric crumbling but usable.
His hands worked fast, pouring the liquids into a dented metal tray he found under a pile of debris.
He stuffed the rag into the mixture, letting it soak, and fished the lighter from his pocket.
The zombies were closer now, their moans rising into a guttural chorus, claws scraping pavement.
Ethan's heart pounded, but his hands were steady—years of stitching wounds in ambulances had burned calm into his nerves.
He crept to the back door, where a pile of broken shelves and plaster blocked the exit.
Perfect.
He set the tray against the debris, flicked the lighter, and touched flame to rag.
The fire roared to life, a bright, hungry blaze that cast flickering shadows across the pharmacy's walls.
Ethan kicked the tray hard, sending it skidding into the debris with a clatter.
The flames leapt higher, licking at the wood and plastic, and the zombies' moans shifted, drawn to the noise and light like moths to a bulb.
Ethan didn't wait to watch.
He slipped out the front, keeping low, and sprinted across the street, the first drops of toxic rain hissing against his jacket.
The alley ahead was narrow, choked with overturned trash cans and rusted bicycles, but it led to shelter—a collapsed parking garage he'd scouted days ago.
He ducked inside, the darkness swallowing him as he slid behind a rusted sedan, its tires long gone.
The concrete ramps above sagged like the spine of some ancient beast, dripping with stagnant water that pooled in cracks.
Ethan crouched, catching his breath, the crowbar still in hand.
The storm's roar grew louder, rain hammering the city like gunfire.
Ethan's mind betrayed him, slipping to the past despite his efforts to stay sharp.
His wife, Sarah, laughing over coffee in their tiny apartment.
Lily, barely four, tugging at his sleeve to show him a drawing of a flower.
They'd been at home when the outbreak hit, when the news screamed about a bio-experiment gone wrong, when the first infected tore through their neighborhood.
Ethan had been on shift, racing to save strangers while his family waited for him.
He'd been too late.
The guilt was a blade, twisting deeper with every quiet moment, every reminder of what he'd lost.
He clenched his jaw, forcing the memories back into the cage he'd built for them.
Survive.
That's all that mattered now.
A scream shattered the silence—not the mindless wail of a zombie, but human, raw with desperation.
It came from a block away, maybe two, followed by gunfire, sharp and deliberate.
Three shots, then a pause, then two more.
Someone was fighting, and they weren't just spraying bullets—they were trained, controlled.
Ethan's grip tightened on the crowbar.
Helping meant risk, exposure, maybe death.
He'd survived ten years by staying solo, keeping his head down, avoiding the heroics that got others killed.
The raiders, the cults, the warlords—he'd outlasted them all by being nobody, just a scavenger slipping through the cracks.
But the scream came again, a woman's voice now, barking an order: "Flank left, now!"
The gunfire resumed, closer, punctuated by the unmistakable snarl of zombies.
Ethan's stomach twisted.
Whoever was out there was holding their own, but against a horde, even skill had limits.
He thought of Lily, of the neighbors he couldn't save, of the countless faces he'd failed.
The paramedic in him—the part that had once sworn an oath to help—stirred, refusing to stay buried.
"Damn it," he muttered, rising to his feet.
He peered into the rain-slicked street, the toxic drops stinging his exposed skin.
The gunfire was a beacon, drawing him toward danger he knew he should avoid.
But something else tugged at him, too—a flicker, almost like a memory, though it felt foreign, disjointed.
A lab, white walls, a voice warning him about "trackers."
It was gone as quickly as it came, leaving a chill that had nothing to do with the storm.
Ethan shook it off, blaming exhaustion, hunger, anything but the truth he wasn't ready to face.
He stepped into the rain, the crowbar heavy in his hand, and moved toward the sound.
The city watched, its broken windows like eyes, as Ethan Kane walked into the unknown, chasing a fight he wasn't sure he could win.