Morning came slow, gray, and heavy.

  The sky sagged low with swollen clouds, like damp sheets draped over a city long forgotten. No wind stirred. No birds cried. Just the sound of his breath—white and shallow in the freezing air.

  Joel had set out before first light. No fire. No breakfast. Just footsteps.

  Always the footsteps.

  Lindenfeld was two days away, if he moved fast. But speed brought risk. And risk was a luxury only the living could afford—only the ones who still had something to lose.

  Joel didn’t.

  Not really.

  He didn’t think about the voice on the radio. Not about the shaking. Not about the sobbing. Just one word clung to his mind like frost to steel: Tunnel. And one name: Lindenfeld. Everything else was noise. Weight. Useless weight.

  The map pulled him through dead nds—old quarantine zones, gutted towns, pces where people once dared to live. Now it was just emptiness. Windless, lifeless, abandoned.

  The road cracked under his boots like torn flesh. Asphalt split into jagged veins. Vines burst through the cracks, curling around rusted poles and shattered signs. He still read them out of habit:

  DANGER – BIOHAZARD. DO NOT ENTER. RESTRICTED MILITARY ZONE.

  They didn’t mean anything anymore.

  About five kilometers in, he saw the first corpse.

  Human.

  Back propped against a tree. Colpsed, half-rotted. No blood left, just the shriveled echo of a man and what was left of his clothes. A weather-stained notebook rested on his p.

  Joel didn’t approach. Not his story. Not his war.

  Time passed like thick oil. At midday, he reached an old power station. Half-colpsed. Red with rust. Long dead. But beside it—an old bus. Tilted. Sunk halfway into the ground. Its door hung open like a mouth.

  Inside: shelter. Maybe. Maybe not.

  He climbed in. Slowly. Gun first. Then feet. Then silence.

  Nothing moved.

  Only remnants.

  A pair of small shoes, sun-bleached and brittle. A stuffed toy, gutted, its eyes torn out. And scratched into the wall with something sharp, deep and jagged:

  “I’m still here.”

  Joel stared at the words a long time.

  Then stepped back out. Pulled his coat tighter against the cold.

  No pce for children.

  He kept walking.

  By te afternoon, he reached what used to be a bridge. Now it stretched broken across a dry riverbed—just steel ribs and torn guardrails clinging to nothing.

  A wind cut through the beams like a voice with no mouth, whispering through the ruins.

  Joel adjusted the weight of his pack. Not much left. A few rounds. A bottle of water. A strip of antibiotics. No food. No room for mistakes.

  He stepped onto the first steel beam. Then the second. The whole structure groaned under his weight—but held.

  Halfway across, he paused.

  Below: rubble. Tires. Maybe bones.

  He didn’t look.

  He kept moving.

  Beyond the bridge, the forest began.

  Denser. Darker. The silence changed there. It wasn’t empty anymore.

  It was listening.

  Night had already fallen when he found the tunnel.

  Right where the map had guessed it would be. South-facing hill. Dug into the rock. Old concrete pipe, half buried, choked by trees. The sign above the entrance had long since rusted into nothing. The door—if there’d ever been one—was gone.

  Joel didn’t step inside. Not yet.

  He stood still.

  Listened.

  And then he heard it.

  A hum.

  Soft. Broken. A melody, maybe. Something a child might sing, if they’d forgotten the words. Out of tune. Crooked. But unmistakable.

  He drew his weapon.

  Took two steps forward. Then three. Slipped into the dark.

  Inside, it was damp. Cool. Narrow. Moss crawled down the walls, and the floor was littered with old debris—rotted paper, broken cans, the stink of time and wet earth. The tunnel wasn’t long. Twenty meters, maybe. Then a bend. Then a sliver of light.

  He moved slow.

  And then he saw her.

  Small.

  Wild hair.

  Dirt smudged across her face. Scraped knees. A knife clutched in one hand. The other held a radio.

  She looked at him.

  He stopped.

  Two meters between them.

  Silence.

  Then:

  “You’re not one of them,” she said.

  Joel didn’t answer.

  Her eyes—bright, alert—stayed fixed on his. Eyes that had seen too much and still hadn’t shut down.

  “You answered. Before. On the radio.”

  He nodded once.

  “You… Citadel?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  A pause.

  “Because I make shitty decisions,” he said.

  She studied him. Not afraid. Just… watching. Waiting. Maybe worse.

  Joel lowered the gun—just slightly.

  “You hurt?”

  She shrugged. “Just tired. And hungry.”

  “Name?”

  She said nothing.

  He nodded. “Fine.”

  Still watching him. Still measuring.

  “I only talk to people who don’t lie,” she said.

  “I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. Everyone does.”

  Joel didn’t reply.

  Then she stepped forward—just one step.

  “You’re old,” she observed.

  “You’re short,” he returned.

  A breath of silence. Then a snort. Maybe a smile. Maybe not.

  Joel looked around. The tunnel had no exits. No real shelter. No food. Just one torn backpack by the wall—hers, probably. Worn. Patched.

  “You can’t stay here,” he said.

  She lifted her chin. “I’m not stupid.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “But you thought it.”

  Joel sighed. Scratched at his beard.

  Then stepped toward the mouth of the tunnel. Looked into the dark trees.

  “Two days to the next maybe-safe zone. And even that’s not a sure thing.”

  She said nothing.

  “You coming? Or staying here, waiting for someone nicer to show up?”

  Silence.

  Then she stepped beside him. A small shadow, barely up to his side.

  Joel nodded.

  “Alright. Let’s go.”

  They walked.

  No names. No destination.

  Just footsteps.

  And far behind them, somewhere deep in the forest, the wind began to sing again.