Chapter Text
She surfaced slowly, like something heavy was dragging her up from the bottom of a dark lake. Consciousness came in thin, stuttering breaths. Her eyelids felt glued shut. Her tongue was thick and dry in her mouth, and every part of her body ached in a way that felt like neglect.
When she finally pried her eyes open, the world was dim. Not quite nighttime dim, but blinds shut and the emergency‑lights‑failed‑hours‑ago dim. The kind of dim that meant something had gone wrong and no one had been able to fix it.
Her throat burned when she sucked in air, the dry air stuttering painfully across her cracked lips. She tried to swallow and felt nothing but sandpaper.
She lifted her hand slowly, shaking the whole way, and saw the IV needle still taped to her skin. The bag hanging beside her was empty, the plastic crinkled and collapsed. Although from the look of it, her skin didn’t look much better, if her pale pallor was any indication. She followed the line with her eyes, blinking hard, trying to make sense of it.
How long had she been here? Where was everyone? Why was the hospital dark?
She tried to sit up and the world tilted violently as her vision went white at the edges, a sharp ringing filled her ears. She almost fell back onto the bed, but she gritted her teeth and forced herself upright, gripping the metal railing until her knuckles went paler than they already were.
“Okay,” she rasped, voice barely a whisper. “Okay. Get up. Move.”
Her legs trembled as she swung them over the side of the bed. The floor was cold against her bare feet. Too cold. Hospitals should never be this cold. And cold. And…empty
Hospitals were never this silent. That was the first thing that truly scared her.
No beeping monitors. No footsteps. No distant chatter. No rolling carts.No nurses.
The building permeated with a thick, suffocating nothing.
She pushed herself to her feet, wobbling, and steadied herself on the IV pole. It screeched faintly as she dragged it forward, taking a tentative step. The sound echoed in the empty room, too loud, too sharp, especially in the eerie quiet.
Her eyes adjusted slowly to the dimness, blinking a few times to remove the last blurry remnants of sleep from her eyes.
And then she saw the window.
The glass was cracked, the blinds barely in tact and smeared with something dark, something she didn’t want to identify yet. A chair lay overturned beside it and the curtain had been ripped down, half‑hanging from its rod like someone had grabbed it in a panic.
Her chart lay on the floor, pages scattered like someone had rifled through them and dropped them in a hurry.
She crouched, though she was barely able to, her back protesting the movement, and picked up the top page.
The date at the top made her stomach drop.
Weeks. She had been unconscious for weeks, and god only knew how long she had been asleep and also alone.
Her breath hitched a she tried to remember the last thing before the darkness swallowed her.
Her cousin texting her something stupid and funny.
Her parents calling to say they’d visit next week.
Her therapist worried at her mounting stress.
A headache that wouldn’t go away followed by a dizzy spell and a collapse.
Then, nothing.
Her fingers tightened around the chart, crinkling thew already wrinkled page.
“Mom?” she whispered. “Dad?”
Only the silence of the room answered her overly hoarse voice. Not that she really wanted a response, that would honestly be downright creepy.
She swallowed hard, forcing down the rising panic. She couldn’t afford to fall apart right now. Not when she didn’t even know what she was dealing with.
She let the chart fall to the ground and moved towards the door. When she finally managed to wrench the door open she took in the scene before her.
As bad as her room looked, the hallway beyond was worse.
Much worse.
She stepped out barefoot, dragging the IV pole like a makeshift weapon. The corridor stretched ahead, dim and ruined. A dark stain that was undeniably blood smeared along the wall in long, desperate streaks. A gurney lay flipped on its side while papers littered the floor. A single shoe sat abandoned in the middle of the hall, as if someone had run out of it.
Her breath fogged in the cold air, coming out in ragged pants.
She kept moving because stopping felt worse. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant spiraling.
A distant thud echoed somewhere down the hall, and she froze, not expecting anyone in the quiet of this desolate place.
Her heart hammered against her ribs as she held her breath, listening.
Another thud echoed, closer this time.
She tightened her grip on the IV pole and forced herself forward, step by shaky step.
She turned a corner and saw someone, just a figure hunched over a body on the floor.
Relief hit her first, sharp and overwhelming. Someone else was alive. Followed by the sharp relaization that that was in fact a body, a dead body. She didn’t let that stop her because there was another person and they were alive!
“Hey,” she croaked, voice cracking. “Hey—are you—”
The figure jerked, as its head snapped toward her at an angle no human neck should bend.
Her blood ran cold at the sight.
The face was slack, skin grey, eyes cloudy and unfocused.
Its mouth, smeared with dark blood stoof hanging open in a wet, hungry gape.
It lurch‑stumbled toward her, dragging a seeming broken leg behind it.
She stumbled back, panic clawing up her throat. The IV pole clattered uselessly against the floor, when she tripped over-oh god another body- and she grabbed the nearest thing she could find,a metal tray from a fallen cart, and swung it with everything she had as the thing neared her.
The tray slammed into the thing’s head with a sickening crack.
It reeled, and she hit it again. And again. And again.
Each hit threatened tears to fall from her eyes, but in her clearly dehydrated state none came. The empty hallways was punctuated by her frightened screams instead.
Her response was messy and desperate and purely instinctual despite the panic.
When it finally collapsed, she stood over it, chest heaving, arms shaking violently, threatening to collapse herself.
“What the hell…” she whispered, staring at the unmoving body. “What the hell happened while I was asleep?”
Her legs really did threatened to give out, but she forced herself to keep moving. She needed supplies, she needed answers, and she needed to get out of this goddamn hospital.
She shoved open the door to a room labelled ‘supply’ and slipped inside, the door closing behind ehr with a thud, causing her to jump in alarm.
The air smelled like antiseptic and dust among the ever existing rot.
She rifled through drawers with trembling hands, her vision dancing with black dots all the way.
She closed her eyes, breathing through her mouth to block out the smells, as she laid her head against the wall, stopping her rifling as she collected herself.
When she’d calmed down enough, her heart rate back down under 100, she found at least some useful items, including a half‑charged walkie radio, a scalpel, and a nurse’s abandoned backpack with an unopened water bottle, a granola bar, and an ID badge.
She unscrewed the water bottle and drank too fast. The cold liquid hit her empty stomach like a punch. She gagged, coughing, throwing up what shed greedily consumed.
She forced herself to take smaller sips after that.
“If the world ended,” she muttered, “I’m not going down in a hospital gown.” She said to the world, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
She found a locker, pried it open, and changed into the dark blue scrubs and sneakers inside. The fabric felt stiff and unfamiliar, but it was better than the flimsy gown that practically exposed her to the world.
She slung the backpack over her shoulder and stepped back into the hall.
That was when she heard it.
Shuffling, slow and uneven.
She spun around as a man limped toward her, clutching his side. His face was pale, eyes wide with terror, but alive. Actually alive.
She rushed to him. “Hey! hey, are you okay? What’s going on?”
He shook his head violently. “You need to leave. Now.”
“What happened? Seriously, what’s going on?”
“The sickness,” he gasped. “It spread fast. People turned violent. The government collapsed. Seoul fell in days. Survivors fled or barricaded themselves.”
Her heart pounded. “My family—”
He grabbed her arm, desperate. “You can’t stay here. They will find you.”
“Who—”
A groan echoed down the hall, then another.
Figures appeared at the far end, three, four, then five of them, shambling toward them in varying states of decay.
The man shoved her toward the stairwell.
“Go!”
She stumbled, caught herself, and ran.
She didn’t see what happened to him. To her shame, in her terror, she didn’t even look back.
The stairwell door slammed behind her, and the echo chased her down the concrete steps like something alive. Or unalive, if she had to put it to a guess. She gripped the railing with both hands, knuckles white, legs trembling so badly she nearly missed the last step. Her breath came in sharp, uneven bursts. Every muscle in her body felt like it had been asleep for years and was only now remembering how to work. Or realistically, weeks.
By the time she reached the bottom, her lungs burned worse than before. She shoved through the exit door and stumbled into the open air.
The silence hit her first, then the smell.
Smoke mixed with rot and something metallic and sour that clung to the back of her throat.
She gagged again, doubling over, one hand braced on her knee as he world spun. She squeezed her eyes shut until the dizziness passed.
When she opened them again, she wished she hadn’t.
The hospital parking lot looked like a battlefield. Cars sat abandoned at odd angles, doors hanging open. A stroller lay overturned near the entrance. A suitcase had burst open, clothes scattered across the asphalt like someone had run until the last possible second before deciding to abandon their possesions.
Her heart pounded harder as she took one shaky step forward, then another.
She felt guilty stealing more items, but the scrubs were already bothering her. She hastily scooped up a pair of jeans and tshirt from the dropped cloths, along with a faded jacket. It was colder outside than she expected.
Her legs felt like wet noodles, but she forced them to move after she stuffed the items hastily into her bag, drawing the jacket over her sagged shoulders. She needed to get away from the hospital, and away from the bodies.
Away from the thing she’d killed.
She didn’t know where she was going, just that she couldn’t stay.
She crossed the parking lot, weaving between cars. Her breath fogged in the cold air. Every sound made her flinch: the creak of a sign in the wind, the rattle of loose metal, the distant thump of something she didn’t want to identify.
She reached the main street and froze.
A hunched figure stood at the far end of the block.
It hadn’t seen her yet, but its head twitched in small, jerky movements, like it was sniffing the air. Its clothes hung in tatters. One shoe was missing, akin to the abandoned one she’d seen in the hallway only minutes before. Its skin was gray like the other, stretched too tight over its bones.
Her pulse roared in her ears as she ducked behind a burned‑out sedan, crouching low. Her knees screamed in protest. She pressed a hand over her mouth to muffle her breathing.
The thing groaned a low, wet sound that made her stomach twist as it shuffled closer.
She squeezed her eyes shut, praying it would keep moving without noticing her.
A gust of wind rattled a street sign hanging by a single screw, The walker jerked toward the loud sound and stumbled away, disappearing behind a bus.
She didn’t move for a full minute, and when she finally stood, her legs nearly gave out again.
She kept walking, but every few steps, she had to stop and lean against something,a wall, a mailbox, a lamppost, just to keep from collapsing. Her body wasn’t ready for this. Her muscles shook violently, her head throbbed, her vision blurred at the edges, her stomach felt like an empty pit.
She passed a convenience store with shattered windows. A mannequin lay in the doorway, its plastic arm twisted off. For a moment she thought it was a person and nearly screamed.
She forced herself to breathe. “You’re okay,” she whispered. “You’re okay. Keep moving.”
But she wasn’t okay, she was terrified, she was alone, she was barely standing, and she was fucking starving.
While wallowing in her misery she turned a corner and froze again.
Two disgusting figures stood in the middle of the street, hunched over something she didn’t want to look at. Their backs were to her, but their shoulders rose and fell in frantic, rhythmic motions.
Feeding.
Her stomach lurched as she backed away slowly, careful not to make a sound.
Then, her heel hit a piece of broken glass, crunching it beneath her stolen sneakers.
Both snapped upright, as their heads turned toward her in perfect, horrifying unison.
She bolted, despite her entire body screaming at her in protest as she herself let out a small scream.
She sprinted down the street, weaving between abandoned cars. She heard them behind her, the dragging footsteps, the wet groans, the scrape of nails on asphalt.
She turned sharply into an alley only to be met with a dead end.
Her heart dropped into her stomach.
She spun around, searching for anything, a door, a ladder, a window, literally anything that could help her.
The walkers rounded the corner.
She pressed herself against the wall, gripping the scalpel so tightly her hand shook. She didn’t want to fight, not again.
A loud crash echoed from somewhere behind the buildings, the screeching of metal slamming against metal.
The walkers jerked toward the sound and shambled away.
She slid down the wall, shaking so hard she could barely breathe, her breath coming out is short gasps.
She stayed there until her heartbeat slowed enough that she could stand again.
When she finally stepped back onto the street, she felt hollow. Like her body was moving on autopilot while her mind lagged behind.
She didn’t know how long she wandered.
Minutes? Hours?
Time didn’t feel real anymore. Hell, she didn’t even know what day it was.
Her feet ached and her stomach twisted painfully with thirst and hunger. She stumbled more than she walked.
She passed a toppled street vendor cart, then playground with a single swing creaking in the wind. Then a row of apartments with doors hanging open.
Everywhere she looked, the world was wrong.
The world was simply…empty.
She turned another corner and saw a semi truck.
A massive vehicle parked sideways across the intersection, cab door open like an invitation.
She ran, unhesitating in her decision.
Her legs nearly buckled as she climbed into the cab. She slammed the door shut and locked it, chest heaving, vision swimming.
The cab was dark and smelled faintly of coffee and long-accumulated sweat. A blanket lay crumpled on the passenger seat. An empty thermos rolled under her foot.
She crawled into the back, curled up under the blanket, and let herself shake.
Her fear had driven her here, but her exhaustion kept her here.
Her body finally gave out, and she fell asleep to the distant groaning of the dead.
---
She didn’t know how long she slept, but she woke to a sound that ripped her from unconsciousness.
A thud, then another, then dozens.
The truck rocked violently and metal groaned under the weight of bodies slamming against it. Scraping. Clawing. Snarling.
Her eyes flew open and her heart pounded so hard she thought it might burst.
How did they even know she was in here?
She scrambled upright, hands shaking, breath coming in sharp gasps. The blanket tangled around her legs. She kicked it off, fumbling for the backpack.
Another slam rocked the cab.
She grabbed the walkie radio with trembling fingers, her last lifeline as static hissed through the speaker.
She pressed the button to talk.
“H‑hello?” she whispered, voice cracking.
Another slam, then nother scrape, followed by the horrible sound of teeth gnashing against metal.
She pressed the button again, harder.
“Please—someone—”
Static permeated the air again, then a crackling voice filtered through the radio.
“If you can hear this… answer.”
Her breath caught as she pressed the button so fast she nearly dropped the radio.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
The walkers slammed against the truck again, harder this time.
The radio crackled again.
“Hold tight,” the voice said. “We’re coming.”
Her pulse roared in her ears as she took in the fact that she wasn’t alone.
Not anymore.