Silence arrived first.
Not the peaceful kind. Not the kind people prayed for when the world was still loud and alive. This silence was sharp, brittle — like glass waiting to crack under the smallest pressure.
Takashi noticed it before anyone else said a word.
The streets stretched ahead of them, sunlit and empty, abandoned cars frozen mid-escape, doors hanging open as if their owners had stepped out for just a moment and never returned. No sirens. No screaming. No gunfire in the distance. Even the groans — the constant, nauseating chorus that had followed them since the beginning — were faint now, scattered, almost shy.
Too quiet.
"Did… did we miss them?" Rei asked, her voice low, unsure whether she wanted an answer.
Takashi didn't respond immediately. He tightened his grip on the bat resting against his shoulder and scanned the windows lining the street. Curtains fluttered behind cracked glass. A movement here or there. Someone watching. Someone always watching.
"We didn't miss them," Saya said, adjusting her glasses. "They're just… fewer."
Kohta laughed under his breath, sharp and humorless. "Yeah. That's usually what happens when the world ends."
They moved carefully, boots crunching over debris and dried blood. Not much of it anymore. That, too, felt wrong. Early on, blood had been everywhere — splashed across walls, pooled in intersections, smeared along escape routes. Now it appeared in stains, old and dark, like scars the city refused to heal.
Zombies still wandered. A few staggered out from alleyways, slow and uncoordinated, dispatched quickly by Saeko without ceremony. She moved with practiced efficiency, her blade clean, her face unreadable.
What unsettled Takashi wasn't the undead.
It was the living.
They passed survivors — if they could even call them that. People huddled inside shops behind barricaded doors. Eyes peering through cracks. Faces thin, hollow, stripped of curiosity. No one waved. No one called out for help. When the group made eye contact, heads turned away instantly, like guilt had been exposed.
A man sat against a bus stop, knees pulled to his chest, muttering to himself. When Shizuka approached, offering water, he flinched as if she'd raised a weapon.
"Don't," he whispered. "Don't come closer."
"We're not infected," Shizuka said gently. "We just—"
"Doesn't matter," the man snapped, crawling backward. His eyes darted between them, calculating, terrified. "You're people. That's worse."
Takashi felt something tighten in his chest.
They left him there.
Not because they didn't care — but because caring had started to feel dangerous.
Further down the road, they encountered a small refugee group camped inside a looted convenience store. The shelves were bare. The windows boarded up. A hand-painted sign hung crookedly over the entrance: NO ENTRY.
Saya scoffed. "Friendly."
Kohta raised his rifle just slightly. Not aiming. Just ready.
A woman emerged, maybe in her forties, her clothes layered and mismatched. She didn't smile. She didn't threaten them either. She simply stared.
"We're just passing through," Takashi said. "We won't take anything."
The woman studied them carefully, eyes lingering on their weapons, their supplies, their numbers. Then she shook her head.
"Passing through is smart," she said. "Staying gets you killed."
Rei frowned. "Killed by what? There aren't many zombies left around here."
The woman let out a dry laugh. "Yeah. Funny how that worked out."
Silence stretched between them.
Then she said it — quietly, like a warning she didn't want to remember giving.
"You're better off not trusting anyone anymore."
Takashi opened his mouth to ask what she meant.
But the woman had already turned away.
They walked on.
No one spoke for several minutes.
The sky above them was painfully blue. Birds chirped from somewhere distant, unaware or uncaring of what humanity had become. The world looked almost normal — and that terrified Takashi more than the chaos ever had.
"How long do you think this lasts?" Rei finally asked. "This… calm."
Saya snorted. "Calm is just what happens between disasters."
Saeko glanced back at the road they'd come from. "It's not calm," she said softly. "It's exhaustion."
Takashi understood what she meant.
The dead were still dangerous. But they were predictable. They wanted only one thing. They didn't pretend. They didn't lie. They didn't hesitate.
People did.
As they approached a residential block, Takashi noticed subtle signs of life — tripwires made from extension cords, cans strung together as noise traps, windows reinforced from the inside. Survivors had adapted. But adaptation had a cost.
At one house, a teenage boy stood guard with a kitchen knife, hands shaking. When he saw Takashi's group, his fear hardened into something colder.
"Don't come any closer," he shouted.
"We're not here to hurt you," Takashi replied.
"That's what they all say!"
A woman dragged the boy back inside, slamming the door shut, locking it three times.
Shizuka swallowed hard. "They're just scared."
Takashi nodded. But he wasn't sure fear explained everything anymore.
They stopped at an intersection where traffic lights blinked uselessly. A corpse lay slumped against a lamppost — not eaten, not bitten. Just… dead. A gun rested loosely in its hand.
Kohta knelt, checking quickly. "Suicide," he said quietly.
No one commented.
Takashi felt the weight of it all pressing down on him. This wasn't the relief he'd imagined when the immediate chaos faded. This wasn't safety. It was something worse — a world where survival had stripped away trust, compassion, and the fragile social lies that once held people together.
They kept walking because stopping meant thinking.
And thinking meant realizing the truth.
Surviving hadn't saved them.
It had only shown them what people became when no one was watching.
As the sun dipped lower, shadows stretched long across the street. Somewhere behind them, a distant groan echoed — lonely, almost forgotten.
Takashi didn't look back.
He was too busy wondering whether the real danger was finally beginning.