Apocalypse: After Reanimation, I Became The Queen-Chapter 61: _ They Left?!

I don’t need to breathe, but the habit of it still clings to me like a stubborn echo of the girl I used to be.

The apartment is too quiet when I arrive. The kind of quiet that screams danger—not with volume, but with absence. My steps are silent as I move over the blood-smeared tiles, the rubber soles of my boots making no sound against the broken glass and crusty filth. The flickering light overhead casts jittery shadows on the walls.

I pause.

They aren’t here.

The couch is flipped, like it had been used as a barricade and then abandoned. The zombies on the floor have been stepped over, their insides smeared across the tiles with all the dead black worms.

Black worms can’t survive without a living host for more than a few minutes before drying. Some can’t even make it a full minute—some not even a handful of seconds. Depends on the mutation, mostly.

I scan the space.

There’s no fresh blood. No trails. But something has passed through.

Then I hear it. That wet, awful squelching. A low, rattling moan. Zombies.

But they’re not coming for me.

They never do.

Still, that doesn’t mean I can just let them hang around. They’re the equivalent of leaving a loaded gun on the floor of a preschool. Just because I won’t get bitten doesn’t mean Yara, Leon, or Bea won’t. And I’ll be damned if I lose more people because I was lazy.

A subtle ping echoes in the back of my mind.

[System Update: Zombie Elimination Task – Progress: 65/100]

[Kill Count Timer Activated: 35]

Right. The Task.

It doesn’t matter that they ignore me. The System wants them dead. So they die.

I step into the main room and immediately spot three of them lurking near the window. One has something wet and furry dangling from its mouth. The other two chew on the edge of a throw pillow, their teeth working like metronomes of idiocy.

"No taste. No class," I mutter.

The first one turns toward me. Its eyes don’t focus. It doesn’t see me. But something about my presence must bother it... or maybe not.

They’re just dumb enough to chase every bit of noise.

It lets out a garbled snarl.

I crack my neck. "You wanna dance? Let’s go, ugly."

The first one comes at me slowly, clumsily. I won’t waste the weapons I scavenged from those bastards—or request one from the System.

Three zombies against the Zombie Queen? Not even fair.

I grab a shattered table leg from the floor and swing it upward with a satisfying crunch into its chin. The jaw dislocates, swinging to the side like a door on a bad hinge. Before it can recover, I drive the jagged end into its temple.

It drops like a deflated bouncy house.

[Kill Confirmed. Countdown: 34]

The other two stumble forward at the sound. I step to the side, hook my foot under a cracked helmet we used as decoration, and fling it at the second zombie’s face. It bounces off its head, confusing it just long enough for me to sweep in and stab it in the eye with a fork I find on the coffee table.

"Recycling matters," I mutter.

[Kill Confirmed. Countdown: 33]

The last one lets out a low gurgle.

"Please," I groan. "Don’t make me run. I’ve had a long day."

It doesn’t listen. None of them ever do. Like toddlers with rage issues.

I rush forward, grab its head, and slam it into the wall—twice. The drywall cracks. So does the skull.

[Kill Confirmed. Countdown: 32]

Blood trickles down the wall in slow rivulets. It smells sharp and old, like iron and vinegar soaked into sunbaked meat.

I exhale out of habit and look around again. The room’s clear.

But my friends aren’t here.

"Bea? Yara? Leon?" I call out.

Nothing.

My gut twists. Or maybe it’s just leftover hunger. I still haven’t figured out if zombies get hungry or if it’s some sick mimicry of instinct.

I turn toward the hallway, stepping over a headless corpse, when I hear it.

Thud.

It’s soft. Muffled. It comes from the bathroom.

Right. Why didn’t I think of that?

My senses sharpen, teeth clenching. I move toward the door, dropping the bags and things I scavenged—just in case it’s not them in there.

"Hello?" I call, but there’s no answer.

Then, a weak, wheezy breath sounds.

I open the door slowly, half-expecting a zombie—or one of Hugh and Robbie’s crew, maybe even a trap.

Instead, I find Pretty Boy curled like a dying plant in the tub.

His skin glistens with sweat, and his eyes are red-rimmed. He looks like he’s aged ten years in a single afternoon.

I make a tsk sound. "You look like hell."

"I feel like a grilled pancake," he croaks, trying to sit up.

"Is that... a thing?"

"It is now."

I move to help him out of the tub. His leg is wrapped in a blood-soaked sheet that used to be Yara’s favorite scarf. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"I hope she didn’t see you do this," I mutter, hoisting him upright.

He winces but chuckles. "If I’d waited for her permission, I’d be dead."

Once he’s leaning against the wall, catching his breath, I ask the question gnawing at my bones.

"Where are Bea and Yara?"

His face falls.

My chest tightens. Not from fear. It’s that dull, hollow pull I only feel when something matters. The part of me that refuses to die, even when everything else already has.

Could the girls be dead already? Is it just me and him now?

"They left," he says finally. "They waited for you, but when you didn’t come back by sundown..."

"They thought I was dead?"

"They thought you weren’t coming back. They didn’t say it, but... yeah."

My jaw clenches. "So they just abandoned you?"

"They asked me to come with them. I told them I’d wait for you. I figured if you came back and found all of us gone, you’d..."

"Explode?"

He offers a wobbly grin. "Yeah."

He couldn’t be more right.