The scratching on the door was relentless, a jagged sound that set her teeth on edge.
The low, guttural growling of the things on the other side made Lin Yue's body go completely rigid.
She was still human, after all.
She could feel the cold prickle of sweat on her neck and the sharp, stinging reality of fear. She didn't want to die here, pinned against a wardrobe in the dark.
"Stay quiet. Don't even breathe," she thought, her grip tightening on the gun until her knuckles turned white.
Thankfully, after what felt like an eternity, the scratching stopped.
Lin Yue didn't know how long she stayed in that position.
Time seemed to liquefy in the gloom.
She didn't eat, and she didn't dare sleep. She simply sat there, a shadow among shadows, readying her gun for any intruder who managed to breach her wall of furniture.
When she finally opened her eyes again, the noise had completely stopped.
The silence was heavy and oppressive.
She looked at the timer on her wrist.
It was 8 am.
The 12-hour mark for the zombies had ended.
"When did I fall asleep?"
She stood up, her joints popping from the hours of stillness, and slowly, silently walked to the window.
She moved a sliver of the curtain aside, peeping out into the street.
It was a massacre.
Bodies were thrown all over the pavement like discarded trash. Lin Yue stared at the carnage, her brow furrowing.
These zombies were agile, moving with a speed that suggested they were trained or evolved, but the aftermath didn't make sense.
"I thought they would all turn into those things," she thought, watching the flies begin to circle. "But they're just dead. They were just killed and left there."
Suddenly, the announcement boomed through the district again, the mechanical voice echoing off the buildings.
[ATTENTION CITIZENS OF SECTOR 4. THE TWELVE-HOUR PURGE WINDOW HAS CONCLUDED. ALL BIO-THREATS HAVE BEEN SECURED IN SUB-LEVEL CONTAINMENT. THE STREETS ARE OPEN FOR RESOURCE ACQUISITION. REMINDER: THE CLEANERS HAVE BEEN DISPATCHED TO REMOVE WASTE, PUNISH DEFAULTERS AND ENFORCE COMPLIANCE. GLORY TO THE SYSTEM.]
Lin Yue felt a spark of curiosity through her exhaustion. She wanted to see who these Cleaners were and what "taking care" of people actually looked like in this new world.
She didn't waste time. She quickly warmed up a can of beef stew, the steam rising in the cold kitchen.
She drank an entire bottle of water in one go, feeling the liquid hit her empty stomach.
Then, she began the grueling task of moving the furniture back, clearing a path to the exit.
Once the door was free, she checked her 9mm one last time and tucked it into her waistband. She reached for the handle and cautiously stepped outside into the hallway.
The air in the corridor smelled of copper and stagnant dust.
She kept her back to the wall, her hand hovering near the grip of the 9mm. Every shadow looked like a crouching predator. She reached the ground floor lobby.
The glass front doors were smeared with dark, thick streaks, but the "lockdown" bar had been retracted.
She pushed through and stepped onto the pavement.
The smell hit her first…the overwhelming stench of iron and decay.
She looked at the bodies scattered across the concrete.
They weren't just killed; they were mangled, bodies thrown into all sorts of impossible positions.
She walked closer to one, a man who looked like he had been trying to climb a lamp post. His throat had been torn out with a precision that didn't look like mindless biting.
"I thought they'd be zombies after this. But it looks like they were just hunted and killed for fun."
In the distance, the sound of heavy, rhythmic footsteps began to grow louder. It wasn't the chaotic stumbling of the zombies. It was the synchronized march of boots hitting the asphalt.
A group of figures turned the corner at the end of the block.
They were dressed in sleek, charcoal-gray tactical gear with helmets that completely obscured their faces.
On their chests, a bright white emblem of a trash can with a slash through it stood out against the dark fabric.
They carried long, specialized poles and heavy-duty incinerator units on their backs.
She didn't need the announcer to announce who these people were.
Anyone with common sense, could see that these were the Cleaners.
A group of men jumped from the back of the first truck.
They worked with a terrifying, synchronized efficiency.
These were the pick-up crews.
They didn't speak; they just moved.
They used long, metallic pincers to grab the mangled corpses by the limbs, tossing them into the back of the trucks like they were nothing more than bags of household trash.
"They're not even treating them like people." she thought, her gaze steady.
She watched as a Cleaner in a sleek, charcoal suit stepped over a severed arm to grab a torso.
Their movements were fluid and powerful, their gear high-tech and spotless despite the carnage surrounding them.
"Cool." she murmured to herself.
There was a brutal beauty in their efficiency.
In a world that had turned into a chaotic, bloody mess in a matter of hours, these people were the only ones who seemed to have any control.
They were the ones who decided what was "waste" and what wasn't.
Further down the block, she saw a different set of Cleaners.
These didn't have pincers.
They carried specialized rifles and wore helmets with glowing red visors.
They were the ones looking for the defaulters, the people who hadn't followed the rules during the food window.
Behind them, yet another crew was unloading crates from a separate transport, restocking a nearby automated vending kiosk with clinical precision.
Lin Yue shifted her weight, her hand still near her gun.
She wasn't afraid of them; she was envious.
They had the resources, the armor, and the clear-cut mission.
"I need that kind of security." she thought, her eyes tracking the movement of a pick-up crew member. "Being a 'nobody' in an 'Average' apartment is just waiting for the trash collector to decide I'm a waste too."
She turned her head as one of the heavy trucks screeched to a halt just a few meters away from her.
A Cleaner looked in her direction, the sunlight glinting off his dark visor.
The supermarket was surrounded by a heavy silence, broken only by the mechanical hum of the Cleaners' equipment.