For the first time in days, there were no screams, no echo of moaning outside the gate. Only hammers, voices, and the sharp clang of metal on metal as the survivors turned to the only thing left rebuilding.
By late morning, the society compound had become a buzzing patchwork of labor. Tin sheets screeched as they were dragged from collapsed roofs and unused parking shades. Window grills from abandoned flats were twisted off, re-shaped into jagged fences. Old pipes became reinforcement beams. What was once trash was now their defense.
Parth led the outer team. He moved like a machine shirt drenched in sweat, eyes narrowed, voice clipped. "We raise the outer wall five more feet today. By the weekend, twenty feet minimum."
Deepak hauled twisted steel rods, surprisingly focused despite still smelling faintly of yesterday's alcohol. Dinesh worked beside him with practiced ease, bending wire with pliers and stomping it into place with the flat of his boot. "I have done this work before," he muttered. This wasn't war for him. It was just labor only now with survival on the line.
Aarav and Tanmay formed a team to strip a nearby collapsed balcony of usable panels. Even Vedant helped by dragging empty water cans to fill gaps near the main gate small hands doing quiet work.
And then, there was Ashok Tripathi.
"I told you I should've been posted on night watch!" he shouted from near the stairs, holding a single brick like it was sacred. "Instead, I'm here lifting garbage. Is this how you treat the elderly?"
Parth didn't even look up. "You want to do night watch? Learn to shut up for one hour first."
Ashok opened his mouth, about to protest again, but Shradha passed him with a bucket of nails and murmured, "You're louder than the infected."
Everyone laughed quietly. Ashok didn't say anything for the next ten minutes.
Imran walked the perimeter, inspecting every corner of the wall with a soldier's eye. "These gaps between sheets need sealing. Don't just stack anchor them." He handed Aarav a salvaged drill. "Weld what you can. And reinforce the gate entrance with furniture, not cloth."
A few floors above, Rekha and Ankita directed others from balconies. "Any loose rods? Send them down," Rekha called out. "Even bed frames. They're strong." Nakul and Roshni collected what they could, handing items to people below by rope.
In a corner of the courtyard, Shradha sorted broken bricks with Shahida's help, setting aside those strong enough for makeshift barriers. Gurleen Kaur called out from the tower lobby, "Lunch in one hour. Anyone not working come knead the dough!"
No one responded. Everyone was working.
Even Kavita, with Tina tied to her back in a makeshift cloth harness, helped arrange kitchen stores. "I can't swing a bat," she'd said earlier. "But I can make sure those who do are fed."
By the time the sun reached its peak, half the campus, The front and the side walls had already grown by four feet. There was no speech. No music. Just the sound of survival being built brick by broken brick.
The afternoon sun filtered in through broken grills and dusty glass panes as Samarjeet Rana laid the old double-barrel shotgun on the hallway floor of Tower C's basement lobby. Beside it sat a rusted revolver, a small pile of mismatched ammo, and a torn cloth with basic cleaning tools. It wasn't much, but to the eyes watching it in silence, it looked like power maybe even salvation.
"Gather around," Samarjeet said, his voice hoarse but commanding. "Today you learn how to hold something that can save your life… or take someone else's."
Shivansh sat cross-legged near the edge of the carpet, posture stiff and eyes locked on the shotgun. Beside him, Niharika watched calmly, her expression unreadable. Zoya looked tense, blinking too often, while Mukul kept adjusting his glasses and shifting his legs as if itching to swap the weapon for a controller. They were young, some barely adults but the world had stopped caring about that.
Imran stood off to the side, arms folded across his chest. The no-nonsense soldier radiated an air of old-school grit less teacher, more judge. He wasn't here to comfort them. He was here to make sure they didn't get themselves or others killed.
Samarjeet stepped forward, picking up the shotgun and holding it out like a sacred relic. "First rule this isn't for show. No warning shots, no Hollywood theatrics. If you lift this, you better be ready to kill. You aim for the head, and you squeeze the trigger like it's your last breath."
Zoya swallowed hard, but stayed put. Mukul raised a hesitant hand.
"Why not shoot the arms? Or legs?" he asked.
Imran's response was immediate. "Because they don't stop. They don't feel pain. You hesitate for one second, and it's over for you, or someone you care about."
Niharika raised her hand quietly. "What if it's someone we knew?"
For a moment, silence. Even the light from the window seemed to pause. Shivansh didn't look up. His mind went back to Rinku. His red shirt. That blank stare. The way Parth had swung his bat without flinching.
Samarjeet's voice softened, just slightly. "Then you remember who they were and kill what they've become."
They began one by one. Shivansh went first. The shotgun was heavier than he'd expected. He held it steady, aimed at an overturned wooden chair ten feet away. Samarjeet corrected his grip, nudged his elbow. "Breathe before you pull."
Shivansh exhaled and squeezed. Click. No shell, just dry fire. Still, his arms shook from the tension alone.
Niharika followed. Her stance was firm, posture natural. She held the revolver like she'd seen in a movie, but she adjusted quickly when Imran intervened.
"You have balance," he observed.
She gave a faint smile. "I danced in college. Bharatanatyam."
Imran nodded once. "Same control. Same core. Just deadlier rhythm."
Zoya was next. Her fingers trembled as she picked up the revolver. She loaded a dummy round with Samarjeet's help and muttered, "I've never even lit a Diwali cracker this close to my face."
"You'll be okay," Niharika whispered, offering a nod of support.
Mukul took his turn last. Awkward but focused, he fumbled the grip once but learned quickly. "What about sound suppression?" he asked. "Shouldn't we have silencers?"
"This isn't a stealth mission," Imran snapped. "Every bullet is noise. That's why we don't use these unless it's a last resort."
By the end of the hour, they had all practiced basic stances, dry reloads, and trigger discipline. No real bullets were fired but a lot had changed. Something invisible but heavy now lingered in the room.
Before dismissing them, Samarjeet reached into a pouch and handed each of them a single live bullet. "Keep it in your pocket," he said. "Not as a weapon. As a reminder. When you pull that trigger, there's no going back."
The group stood slowly. Some tucked the bullet away in silence. Others stared at it a few seconds longer. As they filed out, Shivansh walked a little slower than the rest, turning the brass round over in his palm. Niharika matched his pace.
"You were good," she said, gently. He gave a half-smile, eyes tired. "I was scared." "That's good," she replied. "Means you're still human." Shivansh walked beside Niharika in silence, still turning the bullet between his fingers. The sound of it cold brass brushing against his palm was the only reminder he needed that this world was far from normal. They emerged from Tower C's dim corridor into the brightness of early evening, where the noise of drills, clanging utensils, and muffled voices signaled life trying to rebuild itself.
Back in the courtyard, the mood had shifted from survival to structure. Routines were forming. Duties were being accepted, if not welcomed. Ankita stood near the tower entrance with a clipboard in hand an old school notebook turned ration ledger. She, Rekha Sethi, and Gurleen Kaur had spent the entire day sorting inventory from the supply run. Everything from broken glucose bottles to canned chickpeas was now labeled, stored, and scheduled.
"No more than three meals a day," Ankita was saying firmly to Zoya, who had come to ask for extra biscuits for Shahida. "We have to stretch this for two weeks. That's if we don't lose anything."
"We're not losing anything," Gurleen cut in, drying her hands on her apron. "Not if I can help it."
Shradha moved quietly between them, bringing cloth pouches filled with rice and pulses. She didn't speak unless asked, but her sharp eyes counted every packet twice.
Inside the tower lobby, Kavita sat cross-legged on the floor, rocking baby Tina against her shoulder. Despite her fatigue, she helped Mitali Kapoor fold napkins and organize diapers by size. "I don't care what the men bring back," she muttered. "We're going to need more than bullets to raise a child in this mess."
Near the stairwell, the children had been assigned small tasks Vedant, Nakul, Roshni, and Shahida cleaned corridors with ragged brooms and wipes soaked in diluted sanitizer. Shahida hummed a tune from a cartoon she once loved; Vedant didn't join in, but he didn't tell her to stop either.
Upstairs, Rekha had converted an empty flat balcony into a makeshift reading corner. Every evening, she sat cross-legged with an open diary and a rotation of children or adults listening to short stories, bhajans, or translated poems. "They must hear words that aren't about death," she told Ankita earlier. "Even if they don't believe them yet."
Tanmay Mehra passed the kitchen with a quiet nod, carrying a rusted kettle he'd found in an empty flat. "Water filters need fixing," he said to no one in particular. "But I've got an idea."
Ashok Tripathi, on the other hand, hadn't changed one bit.
"I still don't understand why I'm not part of the gate watch," he grumbled to Aarav, who was carrying a box of nails. "I was a security consultant for five years!"
"Weren't you also in charge of parking stickers?" Aarav replied, not even looking at him. "Just let the aunties ration your food and try not to die of a paper cut."
Ashok scoffed, loudly but went back to his assigned job of folding spare bed linens for cold nights.
As the sun dipped behind Tower D, the compound felt, for a fleeting moment, like a functioning world again. The rhythm of activity. The clatter of dishes. Even the distant sound of Vedant explaining a Pokémon card to Roshni it all stitched the survivors into a new kind of fabric. The sun had dipped low, casting long shadows across the campus, turning every crack and corner into a question mark. Most residents were wrapping up their assigned work, rolling up tarps, counting ration sacks, and locking reinforced doors for the night. The air had turned cooler, calmer. It felt like a rare breath in a world that had forgotten how to breathe.
Dinesh Chauhan hadn't stopped moving since morning. He preferred the solitude of tasks others ignored the dark basements, clogged drains, half-flooded shafts no one wanted to clean. With an old torch clamped between his teeth and a crowbar in hand, he had spent the last hour clearing debris from the rear drainage corridor, tucked behind the generator room of Tower B.
He was planning to repurpose the drainage channels to carry used water into the garden again. But when his boot kicked a metal edge buried beneath rusted wires and soaked cardboard, he paused.
There was something there.
Dinesh bent down slowly, wiping away the grime. His torchlight caught it an old rusted manhole, nearly sealed shut by time, filth, and concrete edges. The cover was smeared with blackened grease and rat droppings. He looked around. No one else was in sight.
"Bhai sahab…" he muttered to himself. "Yeh toh society ke map mein tha hi nahi."
With effort, he wedged the crowbar under the edge and heaved. The lid groaned. Rust cracked. A plume of stale air hissed upward thick, warm, sour.
He coughed but kept pulling. With one final heave, the cover clanked aside, revealing a circular shaft barely wide enough to crawl through. The brick tunnel dipped into darkness, sloping downward.
Dinesh stared for a moment, heart thumping. The markings on the tunnel walls were old, municipal possibly sewage or maintenance. But no light. No ladder. Just pitch black, and the sound of slow water trickling far below.
He backed away and ran straight to Imran and Shivansh, who were finishing a final perimeter check at the gate.
Within minutes, the three of them returned with Parth and Aarav, torches in hand. Shivansh peered inside, eyebrows furrowed. "Where the hell does this lead?"
"Could be part of the old Delhi drain system," Imran said. "Maybe storm runoff, maybe sewer. Most likely ends in a canal or ravine."
Parth tossed a stone down. It clinked… clinked… then splashed.
"Depth's manageable," he said. "But narrow. We won't get a group through easily."
"But it's an exit," Aarav added. "If everything goes to hell, it could save us."
Shivansh knelt near the edge. He wasn't claustrophobic, but the black void radiated something ancient and unsettling. "Or get us trapped underground with no escape."
Imran grunted. "We keep it sealed. Covered. We don't tell the whole camp yet. This isn't a route it's a contingency. Only if we're surrounded, cut off. Only if we're desperate."
"And if someone else knows about it?" Dinesh asked.
That question hung there unspoken and unfinished. Because if the tunnel connected to the outside, it didn't just offer escape.
It offered entry.
A silence passed between them. Shivansh's eyes stayed locked on the darkness below, as if trying to imagine what could be crawling through that space infected, desperate looters, or worse, the kind of people who had enough cunning to lay traps like the one in Sector 37.
Imran finally stepped back and straightened. "No one uses this until we know more. Could be a blessing. Could be the backdoor to our own grave."
Parth nodded. "We'll mark it on the map and padlock the entry. Seal it with wood and iron, maybe even weld it shut temporarily. Make it look like nothing's there from above."
"I can find some scrap tin from the generator room," Aarav added. "We'll weld a fake panel over the top. Anyone glancing at it will think it's just a sealed outlet."
"Good," Imran said. "We keep it between us core team only. We plan further once we've mapped it and if we find a safe exit point. Until then, no one mentions this. Not even the others upstairs."
Shivansh exhaled slowly and stood up, brushing dust from his jeans. "If things go south… and I mean truly south… this may be our only way out."
Parth locked eyes with him. "Or theirs in."
They all looked back one last time at the tunnel. The darkness didn't move. Didn't breathe. And yet, it felt… aware.
Imran clamped the manhole shut again with a heavy clang, sealing the void beneath their feet. Aarav began dragging a discarded wooden cabinet over to obscure it.
The air was thick with dust and silence. One way in. One way out. And it would remain closed for now.