Chapter Text
"The scariest part wasn't the monsters outside. It was realizing no one was coming to help."
I remember the exact second the world ended.
It was when the glass shattered.
But it started a little earlier, when the babysitter dropped the phone. She was talking to Mom, laughing at something I didn’t hear. Clem and I were arguing upstairs about who would get the top bunk that night. We still took turns, even though we were almost too big for the beds now. She said it was her turn, but I was sure I had the last top night. I threatened to sleep in the treehouse, and she rolled her eyes like she always did. That was our last real fight. We didn’t know it yet, but everything after that would be survival.
The babysitter—Sandra, I think—never made it upstairs. The call ended halfway through a sentence, and then she started making these... noises. Wet, choking sounds. I didn’t think much of it. Maybe she was crying. I was used to people crying lately. Dad hadn’t been around much. Mom and Dad had been fighting for weeks before they left for Savannah.
“We’ll be back before Monday,” Mom had said, crouching down to zip Clem’s hoodie. “Be good for Sandra, okay? Both of you.”
We promised.
We lied.
I was the first to hear it. A low thud. Then another. Something heavy bumping against the front door. I got up and looked out the upstairs window. That’s when I saw the man. He was slamming himself against the glass, headfirst, arms swinging like a drunk at a concert. But it was his face that made my stomach turn. Pale, sagging, bloodied. He didn’t look alive. He didn’t even look human. He looked hungry.
I froze. Clem came up behind me and asked what I was looking at. I didn’t answer. I just pointed.
She stared, then whispered, “What’s wrong with his mouth?”
I didn’t have an answer.
Downstairs, we heard Sandra scream.
Then the glass broke.
The man wasn’t alone. There were more behind him. Groaning, snarling. One of them shoved Sandra into the coffee table. I saw it from the stairs. She hit the wood hard, her arm bending the wrong way. She was screaming, but they didn’t stop. One grabbed her leg. Another bit her arm. Blood sprayed across the floor like someone had popped a paint balloon.
Clem screamed. I grabbed her hand.
“Treehouse. Now.”
We ran.
We didn’t even grab shoes. My feet slapped against the grass, dirt stinging my soles. Behind us, we heard the door swing open again. Someone—or something—had seen us.
I shoved Clem up the ladder first. “Go! Go!”
She climbed fast. She always did when we were playing. But this wasn’t a game.
The scream behind me turned into a growl. I glanced back and saw Sandra. Or what used to be Sandra. Her eyes were white. Her face was smeared with blood—some hers, some not. Her jaw hung open as she limped toward me, dragging her broken arm.
I scrambled up the ladder and pulled it up behind me. Clem huddled in the corner of the treehouse, arms wrapped around her knees, shaking. I sat down next to her and pulled her close.
“I—I don’t think they’re people,” she whispered. “Not anymore.”
I didn’t say anything. I just held her tighter.
Day One
We spent the night in the treehouse. I think we both knew that no one was coming back. Not Mom. Not Dad. Not even the cops. The walkie-talkies were the only reason we didn’t fall apart. Clem had hers, and I found the other one in the kitchen before we ran. We used them to talk even though we were sitting right next to each other.
Some part of us needed to pretend everything was still okay.
I barely slept. Every noise made my heart jump. The growls. The screams in the distance. Even the silence between them.
In the morning, there were birds. Like nothing had changed.
Except everything had.
Clem was the first to speak. “What do we do now?”
I didn’t know. I was eleven, just like her. My idea of a bad day was missing Saturday morning cartoons. Now I had to figure out how to keep us alive.
“We wait,” I said. “Someone will come. Maybe the cops. Maybe Mom and Dad.”
Clem just nodded. But I saw the doubt in her eyes.
She was smarter than most kids I knew. Smarter than me, even.
And she was already preparing for the truth: that we were alone.
Day Two
The second day was worse.
We ran out of juice boxes. The granola bars were gone. And the smell from the house—the smell of blood and rotting meat—started to drift up to the treehouse.
I told Clem not to look. She didn’t listen. She peeked through the slats.
Then she stopped eating altogether.
I tried to stay strong. I told stories. I made jokes. I promised her everything would be okay.
But when the sun went down and no one came, I stopped believing it.
We heard a crash in the distance. Then a shout.
Clem’s eyes lit up. “Did you hear that?”
I did. And this time, it wasn’t a walker.
It was a voice. A man’s voice. Hurt, maybe confused.
We crawled to the edge of the treehouse and peeked down.
A man limped across the backyard, clutching his side. There was blood on his shirt and dirt on his face, but he looked alive. Real. And he didn’t groan like the others.
He stumbled toward the house. I recognized the limp, the wince, the panic in his eyes.
Whoever he was, he needed help.
But more importantly... maybe we did too.