The zombie had been a big man once...farmer-big, with forearms like the stump of a tree. Now, his entire body looked like it was half-collapsed, jaw slack with that uncanny slackness that meant the muscles no longer belonged to any plan.

Or to any brain.

It was clear that he had heard when Zubair, Sera, and other others had entered his home.

He turned in a stiff, late motion, his body clearly not responding to any type of command more than just hunger.

But before he could lurch toward the five people in front of him, Sera beat him across the room. Pulling back her arm, she put him down with a straight punch behind the ear.

Fist met skull, and the zombie folded in an almost gentle way.

"Threat neutralized," smirked Lachlan, lowering his machete just slightly. "Good job."

Sera wrinkled her nose and shook the body matter off her hand. "It seemed better in my head," she shrugged.

"Plus one rule," grunted Alexei, his knifes twirling around in his hand. "If there is one zombie, we need to find the second on."

Luckily, the second one wasn’t that hard to find either.

The second zombie was in the stairwell, blocking the narrow rise.

This one had definitely been female, almost a fraction of a size of the first zombie.

She wore a cardigan hanging by one sleeve, her teeth ground down to flat chips from a habit that had outlasted speech. Her greyish skin was practically hanging off of her bones, falling off in large chunks from her face.

Her eyes were as white as her husband... were as white as every other type of stupid zombie, with her lips blue with the slightest tint of dried blood on them.

She crawled down the stairs on her hands and feet like a child who had never learned how to stand.

Alexei met her with two quick steps and the knife—the precise angle Zubair knew he’d use before he took it.

The second zombie slumped forward, caught for a second on the banister spindle, then slid to the bottom of the stairs.

"Target neutralized," Alexei grunted, staring down at the dead creature for a second. "Plus one."

Zubair nodded in agreement and KAS swept the upstairs thoroughly.

It was done more out of habit than hope. After all, the whole purpose of coming to the farm was to get sleep and get back on some type of schedule.

The last thing they needed was a zombie waking them up in the middle of the night.

Bedrooms were stripped down to mattresses, closets with hangers still holding the everyday clothes of the couple like it was waiting for their owners to come back and wear them.

There was a nursery that had never been used, its wallpaper with a pattern of moons that stared back without judgement.

Zubair popped the attic access and lifted the heavy wood board just enough to look inside. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Empty—only insulation and the long hush of a house that had held, then surrendered.

"Down," he called, and the wood returned his tone.

They regrouped in the kitchen where Elias had already checked the taps (dry), the stove (dead), and the back door (latched).

Luci nosed every corner, found an empty bowl under the table, and lay with a sigh like he blamed it for being empty.

Sera spread food across the scarred oak kitchen table. Bear steaks from her space, a sack of rice, packets of instant coffee, salt, milk, sugar. Everything that they needed for a filling dinner.

There were even chocolate bars stacked in the middle like a tyrant’s tax.

She worked without really thinking about it. She was hungry. They hadn’t eaten anything that they didn’t bring in Perdition, and even then, they couldn’t relax long enough to do anything more than simply filling their stomach.

Lachlan leaned against the doorframe, watching her hands as things just appeared in them. "You always make apocalypse look like a picnic."

"Apocalypse is just a long camping trip if you brought enough supplies," she returned, her eyes bright as she set out tin plates she shouldn’t have had, because of course she had them.

Alexei cracked a rare smile. "Next you’ll lay cutlery by the fork rule."

"Don’t be ridiculous." Sera set knives on the right and moved the forks to spite him. "Who needs forks when you have knives?"

Zubair took the raw bear and cooked it fast. The bear seared hard in a skillet that lived only in Sera’s pocket of space, rice boiling in a dented pot, coffee brewed in a battered press that wheezed like an old man and produced miracles all the same.

The smell filled the small house, drove out the dry, layered ghosts of chemicals and age.

Elias watched steam lift from the pot and, for once, didn’t count a thing.

He rested a palm against Sera’s back as he passed her the salt, light contact like he was verifying that she existed and that she was with him.

"Thank you," he murmured, and the words hit warmer than the coffee.

They ate leaning on the counters and sitting on the porch steps with their boots off.

Luci took his portion with a thump of tail gratitude, then posted himself with his nose against the front gap of the door to taste any trouble before it wore shoes.

Zubair chewed, swallowed, felt his shoulders loosen one click he hadn’t authorized.

The world out there had rules he didn’t respect. But in here, he could make his own.

He could protect his team and the woman they all seemed attracted to.

He could feed her, make sure she slept, make sure that she was safe. He needed that more than he needed his next meal.

"Stack beds," he decided quickly. "Sleeping bags on top of the mattresses. Make sure that you are ready to go in an emergency, but we are trying for real sleep. We’ll do rotations every three hours, but there is nothing around us. It should be fine."

"It should be fine," snorted Lachlan with a shake of his head. "And yet, in the same sentence, you tell us to be ready to leave at the drop of a hat. So... which one are we planning for?"