The world was gray when they stepped into it.
Morning hadn't broken yet, not fully. The air smelled of burnt leaves, iron, and engine oil. From the terrace, Samarjeet's eyes tracked the horizon through his cracked binoculars, noting every shift in shadow. Imran knelt nearby, counting bullets in near-silence. The streets outside were invisible through the rusted barricades and crushed cars blocking the main gate but they could be felt. A weight pressing on every breath.
Two cars sat idling in the courtyard one a beat-up white Alto, the other a pale blue WagonR with a cracked windshield and one headlight missing. Somehow, both had survived the chaos. Aarav had worked all night with Mukul and Tanmay to jump-start them using wires from ceiling fans and a half-broken inverter battery. The engines coughed, sputtered, then roared like beasts stirred from hibernation.
This was it.
Shivansh stood beside the first car, dressed in layers of old clothes, forearms wrapped in elbow pads, his cricket bat slung across his back like a sword. His eyes scanned the ground like he was memorizing every brick, every crack in the pavement. Like if he didn't come back, this was what he wanted to remember.
Niharika adjusted the straps on her backpack, face calm but firm. She had insisted on joining. No one argued anymore not after they'd seen her standing over a corpse, she'd killed herself. She caught Shivansh's glance, nodded once. He nodded back.
Aalia carried a torn medical pouch across her shoulder; inventory scribbled in pen on her wrist. Her hands didn't shake but her eyes darted too often toward the flats above, as if she were counting windows. As if she were counting goodbyes.
Mukul sat shotgun, drone case resting on his lap like a fragile relic. He didn't speak. Just kept glancing at the sky, waiting for the moment the city would reveal itself again.
Behind them, the others gathered quiet as shadows. Ankita hugged Shivansh tightly, refusing to let go even after he whispered, "I'll be back Ma. I promise."
"You better be," she whispered back, clutching his shirt like it could hold off fate.
Parth patted his shoulder and handed him a packet of glucose biscuits. "Just in case. Don't eat them all at once, hero."
Kavita approached, her eyes hollow but dry. She handed Aalia a piece of paper a hand-scrawled list, the corners smudged with milk stains. "If you find diapers. Wipes. Anything." Her voice cracked. "Tina's only getting lighter."
Zoya handed Niharika a cloth-wrapped idol small, chipped, Lakshmi. "Keep her in the dashboard. Cause Hope is all we need right now.
Shivansh stepped to the front gate. Dinesh and Aarav worked together to pull the car barricade aside just enough to open a path. The chains groaned. The tin scraped. Dust billowed like a warning.
"Radio check," Imran said from above.
"Copy," Mukul replied from the passenger seat.
Samarjeet loaded one last shell. "If you're not back in three hours, we come looking."
"No," Shivansh said, voice steady. "You guys stay here. Protect them. We'll come back, for sure."
The gates creaked open slow, reluctant. The cars rolled out. The city waited. And the campus behind them fell silent once more. The city didn't welcome them. It didn't threaten them either. It simply watched.
The two cars rolled slowly through the shattered outer gate, wheels crunching over gravel, glass, and the skeletons of a normal life long abandoned. The road outside their society had once been packed with honking scooters, vegetable vendors shouting prices, the constant buzz of everyday Delhi life. Now, it was a graveyard of stillness.
To their left, an overturned fruit cart had collapsed against a charred tree. Bananas blackened with age lay beside broken lassi bottles and a child's pink sandal, half-melted. A bus stood frozen near a divider, its windows broken, blood sprayed across the front like finger-painted horror. There were no passengers inside. Just silence.
Aarav drove the lead car carefully, both hands gripping the wheel, eyes flicking from side mirror to street. Shivansh sat beside him, bat resting against his leg, breathing slow but heavy. Aalia and Niharika were cramped in the back seat, their heads turning with every alley they passed. Mukul followed behind in the second car, drone balanced on the dashboard and his fingers twitching over the remote.
"Still no infected," Mukul's voice crackled over the walkie.
"They're here," Shivansh replied. "Just hiding."
They reached a main intersection where the signal lights had gone dead. There, in thick black paint across the walls of an abandoned Metro pillar, someone had scrawled words that made the entire group go still.
"NO CURE / NO GOD / JUST HUNGER."
Below it, a stick-figure sketch of a family. All with Xs across their eyes.
Shivansh didn't speak. Neither did anyone else.
They turned toward Rohini Sector 37. The road narrowed. Shops once alive with the din of bargaining were now sealed tight shutters dented inward, glass doors webbed with cracks. A salon's rotating light still blinked red-blue-red, eerie in the morning haze. Outside a broken medical dispensary, a trail of blood led from the footpath into the bushes. No body. Just the trail.
Niharika leaned forward slightly. "There's no sound," she whispered. "No birds. No honking. Just… nothing."
The moment she said it, a loud clang echoed behind them a broken door in the wind. All four flinched, hands going for weapons. It was just metal. Or wind. But still.
Further ahead, a bike lay under a traffic pole, crushed flat. Shivansh saw something hanging from the rearview mirror Rakhi threads and a faded photo of a mother and child.
"We're not the first ones to pass through here," Aalia said, barely above a whisper.
As they entered a roundabout, Mukul's voice returned. "Drone picked up movement. Fifteen bodies… maybe twenty, near an abandoned mall parking lot. They're not moving."
"Sleeping?" Aarav asked. "Waiting," Shivansh answered. Then, suddenly thud.
A body slammed against the side of Mukul's car. Its face was pale, eyes wild, mouth open in a silent scream. Everyone jolted.
"Go!" Shivansh barked.
They accelerated, tires screeching. Behind them, the infected man chased briefly then stopped. A pack emerged behind him. Limbs twisted, heads twitching, drawn by the noise. At least ten. Maybe more.
"Abandon the main road," Aarav said. "Shortcut through the back alleys. We can't lead them to the hospital."
As they turned hard into a side lane, the smell changed sour, chemical, burnt flesh. They passed a school where the windows were shattered. A uniform still hung from a second-floor ledge, waving gently in the breeze.
And there, etched onto the school's blackboard visible through the hole in the wall were the words:
"We prayed. No one answered."
No one spoke again for a while. The road narrowed again as the convoy slipped into the outer blocks of Sector 37. The buildings here were lower, older brown concrete with peeling paint and locked shutters. A hospital stood ahead, half-hidden behind a mesh of banyan branches that had grown wild over its gate. The red cross sign had fallen, cracked on the sidewalk. Its letters, faded and smeared, read "H__LTH CENT_E."
The cars slowed to a crawl.
"We're close," Mukul said over the walkie. "Back entrance of the Kirana shop should be to the left. Hospital's main doors are blocked, but there might be a side path through the alley."
No one replied right away. For a moment, all they heard was the hum of the engine and the crunch of dust beneath the tires.
Then Niharika spoke softly, almost like she was thinking aloud. "I saw you. At the temple. Back at the campus."
Shivansh blinked, caught off-guard. "You did?"
"You were praying," she said. "It wasn't just words. It was like… you were breaking apart."
He didn't answer for a while. He just kept his eyes ahead, but there was no threat in his silence.
"I was," he finally said. "I had to let it out somewhere. Somewhere where I didn't have to pretend, I'm in control."
"You don't have to pretend with us," she said, gently. "You're already doing more than most could."
Aalia, sitting in the back seat, spoke next. "Before all this, I was preparing for my final MBBS exam. I was going to intern at Safdarjung. I thought I'd be dealing with fevers and fractures, not bite wounds and burned lungs."
"I was at home," Niharika said. "Wasn't even in Delhi until a week before the outbreak. Came to visit Nani and Nanu, thought I'd stay the summer."
"You picked the worst summer of your life," Aarav said from the driver's seat, his voice flat but tinged with that Delhi-boy sarcasm they hadn't heard in days.
Aalia gave a faint smile. "What about you, Shivansh?"
He stared out the window, watching a torn Flex banner flutter from a shopfront "Flat 10% off on Freedom Day Specials!" it read. "I had just flunked my third exam," he said finally. "And I was supposed to help Vedant with his school project the next day. He wanted to make a model volcano out of papier-mâché."
Niharika looked over, face soft. "Still think about it?" "Every hour."
The car turned into a narrow lane lined with shuttered stores and a dry fountain filled with broken mannequins. The drone buzzed ahead Mukul guiding it toward a side window of the Kirana store.
"Looks clear inside," he radioed. "Back door has a crack. We can breach with the crowbar."
Aalia checked the medicine list in her lap. "Focus on baby formula, antiseptics, protein bars, ORS. If there's insulin or antibiotics, grab them all."
"Split teams?" Aarav asked.
"Three of us hit the grocery store," Shivansh said. "Aalia and Niharika go with me to the hospital. Mukul keeps overwatch with the drone and engine running. Aarav guards the exit route."
They pulled into the parking strip behind the store. Broken crates of onions and spoiled flour bags littered the back lot.
As Shivansh stepped out, he saw something flutter on the side wall a prayer flag. Red. Green. Yellow. For a moment, it reminded him of hope. Then, a sound cut through the moment. A car alarm. Blaring. Close.
Shivansh's head snapped toward the front. "That's not ours." And just like that, from the alleys and doorways they began to appear. Shambling. Sprinting. Twitching. One. Three. Seven. Ten. The moment the alarm went off, the world collapsed around them.
The sound was unbearable sharp, pulsing, bouncing off the narrow lanes like a scream that wouldn't die. The infected came fast, faster than before, pouring in from broken alleys and stairwells. Their footsteps slapped against the concrete like water bursting through a dam.
Shivansh didn't hesitate. He slammed the store door shut and turned to the others. "Fallback! Now!"
Aalia and Niharika burst out of the hospital back entrance just as three infected rounded the far end of the lane, their jaws hanging slack, eyes fixed like starving animals. One lunged toward Aalia, dragging her to the ground.
"No!" Niharika screamed, trying to reach her but Shivansh was already there. His bat swung once then again crushing bone and cartilage. Blood sprayed across the gravel. He yanked Aalia up by the elbow.
"You good?!" he barked.
"I I think so," she stammered, gasping. Her sleeve was torn. Blood pooled down her forearm. She stared at it, wide-eyed. "It didn't bite. Just scratched, I swear!"
Shivansh grabbed her wrist, inspected it with sharp eyes, then exhaled. "No teeth. You're fine. Let's move."
The first car revved in the corner. Aarav was already inside, shouting from the driver's seat. "Let's go, now!"
They ran. Behind them, the infected pack grew more than a dozen now, some crawling over broken vegetable carts, some shrieking with blind fury. One hurled itself against the side of Mukul's car. The door shook.
Mukul, calm in the chaos, launched his drone again. It rose above the mob like a ghostly eye in the sky. Through the walkie, his voice snapped through. "Activating sound standby."
A split second later, a deafening synthetic wail echoed from the drone speaker, loud enough to rattle windows. The herd turned. Like puppets pulled by a string, half the infected diverted toward the drone's path, drawn into a side alley.
It gave them just enough of a gap.
Shivansh shoved open the passenger door and climbed in beside Aarav. Aalia and Niharika dove into the back seat. Mukul's car followed close, weaving behind them as the engines roared to life.
The tires screamed on cracked pavement as they sped through the broken city. Past fallen lamp posts, through shattered red lights, across bodies long dried to bone. The streets of Delhi had never looked more alien.
One infected slammed against the windshield, snarling. Aarav swerved hard, smashing it against a rusted truck. Another came crawling out from under a divider too late. The car crushed it without slowing down.
They drove in silence, breaths heavy, eyes wide, adrenaline drowning out everything else. Mukul's drone finally dropped its battery dead but it had done its job.
Just before they left Sector 37, Shivansh glanced over his shoulder. That's when he saw him. A man stood beside the broken car that had triggered the alarm. Not infected. Not panicked. Just… watching.
His hair was long, unkempt. A dark, tattered jacket hung from his frame. His hand rested casually on the car roof, like a craftsman admiring his work. Then, slowly, he lifted his arm… and waved.
Not to greet. To mock. Shivansh didn't speak. He just stared, heart pounding harder now than it had in the middle of the swarm.
"Who the hell was that?" Aarav muttered, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror.
"I don't know," Shivansh said, low. "But I think he tried to trap us with that car horn." The rest of the drive was a blur barricades, burnt cars, silence.
When they finally reached the society gate, Mukul flashed the pre-arranged light signal. Samarjeet and Imran appeared on the roof and gave the all-clear. Dinesh and Deepak pulled the gate open just enough to let them through before sealing it shut again.
The moment they rolled in, the courtyard erupted. Ankita ran to Shivansh, arms around him before he even stood. Kavita clutched Tina to her chest, eyes flooding as Aalia handed over the small bag of formula. Rekha hugged Niharika tightly, whispering something only a grandmother could say.
"We got everything," Aalia told them. "Antibiotics. Bandages. Food supplies Even ORS and insulin." Parth slapped Aarav's shoulder. "You made it." "Barely," Aarav replied, breathless.
And yet, as the supplies were unloaded and the gates locked tight once again, Shivansh remained quiet. Standing near the same spot he had prayed days ago, he looked up at the towers, then back at the road they had come from.
Something had changed out there. Not just in the city but in the people still alive within it. Not all survivors were friends.