APOCALYPSE: THE SPATIAL AWAKENING

Chapter 2

The first zombie lurched up the stairs with jerking, uncoordinated movements. Its skin hung loose and blackened. Where its mouth should have been, there was exposed muscle and bone.

The three of them froze.

Asher’s mind was still processing Sia’s words when survival instinct overrode everything else.

“The door,” he said. “Barricade it.”

Sia’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm. “Wait. Listen.”

The zombie sniffed the air like a hunting dog. Its head swiveled toward the master bedroom.

“We need to go,” Orion whispered. He was already moving toward the window, abandoning any pretense of protection or unity. “The tree. We can climb down.”

“The front door’s blocked,” Sia said.

“Then we go out the window,” Orion shot back.

The zombie took another step. Then another.

“Asher,” Sia said urgently. “You need to block the door. Keep it out.”

The zombie was twenty feet away now. Shambling. Inevitable.

“There’s a back staircase,” Orion said. “KitCole, garage. We need supplies,”

“It’s already in the house,” Asher said numbly. “There might be others. The back might not be clear.”

Sia’s grip on his arm tightened. For just a moment, he felt it, felt like she actually needed him. Like they were becoming a team again.

“Stay here,” she said. “Block the door. We’ll get supplies and weapons. When it’s clear, we’ll come back for you.”

It made logical sense. Except it didn’t.

“We should stay together,” Asher said.

“There’s no time!” Orion was halfway out the window. “Just do what she says. Come on, Sia.”

The zombie was ten feet away. Asher could see the diseased tissue pulsing beneath its skin.

Sia let go of his arm and kissed him. Quick. Soft. Like a goodbye.

Then she was climbing out onto the tree branch, her feet finding purchase with the desperation of pure survival. Orion dropped first, hitting the ground with a grunt.

Asher stood alone in the bedroom.

The zombie was five feet away.

He grabbed the door and began to swing it closed. That was when understanding hit him with absolute clarity: this wasn’t protection. This was a sacrifice. This was removing himself from the equation so they could escape.

The zombie’s arm shot through the gap, fingers grasping.

Asher threw his entire weight against the door. For a moment, they held balanced, he against death pressing from the other side. He shoved harder.

The zombie’s arm snapped back. The pressure eased.

Asher slammed the door and pressed his back against it. His entire body shook. Below, he heard the garage door open. An engine started. They drove away with the kind of finality that no amount of sapphire could ever repair.

The bedroom had a lock. Asher twisted it and surveyed his options.

The window meant exposure. The bathroom offered only delay. The decorative katana on his desk offered a possibility.

He’d bought it three years ago, back when he imagined himself as interesting. Back when owning a samurai sword meant something other than being a middle-management accountant with a failing marriage.

He picked it up. The blade was dull but functional enough.

The zombie was destroying the door now. Wood splinters flew. He could see bits of diseased flesh through the gaps.

Asher positioned himself beside the door frame, holding the sword with both hands, the way movies had taught him. He had maybe one second.

The door burst inward.

The zombie lurched through, jerking and fast. Asher swung. The blade caught its shoulder, cutting deep. The zombie didn’t seem to care about pain. It turned faster than something that is broken should move.

Asher stepped back. The zombie lunged. He swung again, this time for the head. It caught the temple. The zombie stumbled.

He used that moment to retreat into the bathroom. The zombie came after him, relentless, a thing that had stopped being alive and hadn’t finished dying.

It was faster than him. Stronger than him. But not intelligent. Asher had desperation on his side.

He swung again. Connected. Again. Connected. The zombie’s arm came up, and its teeth caught the meat of his shoulder. Not deep. Not fatal. But enough.

Something dark seeped into his bloodstream. Asher felt it immediately, a burning. A wrongness spreading through his chest like ice water through veins.

He stepped back and brought the sword down, and kept bringing it down, until the twitching stopped and there was only meat and bone.

Then he sat on the bathroom tiles and waited to die.

He could feel it happening. The burning spread from his shoulder through his chest. His vision swam. He looked at his skin, expecting the blackening, the infection that would turn him into one of them.

It didn’t come.

Hours passed. Maybe minutes. Time had become meaningless. The sun moved across the tiles. His shoulder throbbed. His skin felt like it was being rewired from the inside.

Then something shifted.

It wasn’t painful. It was profound. Like a third eye opening in the center of his consciousness. Somewhere deeper than his brain. Somewhere that had nothing to do with biology and everything to do with something new.

He could feel space differently now. Could sense the dimensions of the bathroom the way a blind man might feel an object with his hands, except his hands were everywhere, touching every corner simultaneously.

He reached out mentally and felt something in response. A stretching sensation. A space opening.

He pulled his backpack into that space.

The backpack didn’t move physically. It was there, then it was also in that impossible dimension. Asher understood that he’d created something impossible. A pocket. A storage dimension. A space that existed nowhere and everywhere.

He was crying now. Not from pain, but from understanding that he was no longer human. Whatever this infection was, it wasn’t creating zombies. It was creating something else.

He pulled himself up using the sink. His reflection showed someone he barely recognized. Eyes too bright. Skin too pale. Something moving beneath the surface like electricity.

In the backpack, there was a camping knife. He practiced. Reached into that space and pulled the knife from it, felt it manifest in his palm like it was materializing from nothing.

He could do more than store. He could summon.

He imagined a blade made of that space itself, made of that impossible dimension given shape and edge. He imagined it with precision and intention.

A blade of crystallized space appeared in his hand, hovering between his fingers.

It was beautiful. And it was deadly.

Asher Cole smiled for the first time since coming home.