Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 8:35 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 66 Hours, 6 Minutes Remaining
The bank wasn't quiet.
It just felt like it because nobody was screaming anymore.
Kenzie sat on the cold tile, the adrenaline draining out of her legs and leaving a sickening, hollow ache in her bones. The silence underneath the quiet was awful. Shallow, ragged breathing. A kid hiccuping in the corner. The sterile hum of the fluorescent lights still burning overhead. Outside, the dead were pressing their ruined faces against the reinforced glass, their teeth clicking against the pane like hail.
A desk phone rang in one of the manager's offices. Once. Twice. Then it stopped, like whoever was calling realized the people on the other end were probably already dead.
A man stepped away from the wall. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week, his dress shirt untucked and smeared with something dark and dried. He kept a little girl tucked tightly against his side.
"We... we should probably know who's in here," he said. His voice was rough, scraping against the quiet. "In case."
In case what? In case someone had to write the names down for the cops? There were no cops coming.
"I'm Daniel Cruz," he said. "My wife, Rebecca. Sofia and Lucas."
The boy, Lucas, peeked out from behind his mom's coat. He had dirt smeared across his forehead and a thousand-yard stare that no seven-year-old should ever have. But his eyes snagged on Kenzie's duffel bag.
"Is there a dog in there?" he whispered.
Kenzie swallowed hard. The question was so normal it physically hurt. She reached down and unzipped the canvas carrier.
Barbie poked her head out, her ears pinned back. She let out a tiny, pathetic whine.
Lucas dropped to his knees on the tile. He didn't laugh. He didn't smile. He just reached out, his small, dirty hand trembling, and touched the Yorkie's head. Barbie licked his knuckles, desperate for the comfort.
Sofia pulled away from her dad and sat next to her brother. Another kid, a little boy named Mateo, shuffled over from the loan desks. They didn't giggle like they were at a playground. They just crowded around the four-pound dog like she was a campfire in the dead of winter, petting her in absolute, desperate silence. Barbie gave them something to look at that wasn't covered in blood.
Rebecca Cruz clamped a hand over her mouth and let out a broken sob. "They haven't spoken since we left our apartment," she wept, her shoulders shaking. "They watched my sister..."
She couldn't finish. Daniel pulled her into his chest, burying her face in his dirty shirt.
The introductions bled out into the lobby, a pathetic roster of the left-behind.
Four tellers huddled by the counter. Marissa had a splash of arterial blood drying across her white collar. She introduced Tanya, June, and Rochelle. They stood close together, looking completely lost, like they were just waiting for a shift manager to tell them they could go home.
Three loan officers. A man named Harold, the branch manager, who kept checking his gold Rolex like time still mattered.
An elderly couple, Eleanor and Frank, sat on the velvet waiting chairs.
"We were just waiting for a cab," Frank said, his voice paper-thin, holding his wife's frail hand. "The power went out on the block. The cab never came."
Twenty-two people. Trapped in a glass box.
Caleb walked over from the front doors, a heavy brass fire extinguisher gripped tight in his fist. He looked different than he had in the Jeep. The hollow, dead-eyed stare was gone, replaced by a frantic, manic need to fix things. To barricade. To survive. If he stopped moving for even a second, the reality of his murdered wife would catch up to him and drag him under.
"We came from Abercorn," Caleb told the room, his jaw tight. "The gas station. It's... it's a slaughterhouse out there."
No one asked for details. They didn't need to.
Somebody dragged a cardboard box out of the breakroom. It had three crushed protein bars, a half-eaten bag of chips, and six bottles of water. Ten minutes ago, Kenzie had been fighting for space in an armored vehicle, surrounded by people she trusted. Now she was staring at a pile of garbage on a bank floor like it was a feast.
"Look," Kevin, one of the loan officers, said. He adjusted his glasses, his eyes darting nervously around the room. "We need to talk about bites."
The air in the bank instantly froze.
"The people out there," Kevin pointed a shaking finger toward the glass doors. "If they bite you, the fever takes you. It's fast. But some people... some people hide it. They get scratched, or bit on the arm, and they cover it up because they're terrified of being thrown out."
Daniel Cruz stepped forward, his posture hardening into something cold and absolute. "If you are bitten, you are a threat to my kids. If anyone in here is hiding a wound, you need to say it right now."
Silence.
Toxic paranoia flooded the lobby like carbon monoxide. Kenzie caught herself doing it—looking at Alyssa's arms, checking Aaron's neck, staring at the old couple in the chairs. Everyone in the room was suddenly a suspect. The guy sitting next to you wasn't a fellow survivor anymore; he was a ticking bomb.
Lila shifted on the floor and bumped her shoulder deliberately against Kenzie's.
Kenzie didn't pull away. She leaned into the pressure, needing the weight. Lila smelled like cheap soap, sweat, and smoke, but she was solid. She was real. In a room full of strangers sizing each other up for an execution, that small, anchoring touch was the only thing Kenzie had left.
She watched the shell-shocked kids silently stroke Barbie's fur. She watched the dead smear their grey faces against the glass, their milky eyes rolling in their sockets.
It had only been ten minutes since Ethan drove the Jeep away.
Ten minutes, and this bank already felt less like a sanctuary, and more like a waiting room for hell.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 8:45 AM
Countdown to Extraction: 65 Hours, 56 Minutes Remaining