Xenia woke up in the back of the van with her face pressed against someone's knee.
It was either Rafe's or a bag of rice. She wasn't sure which was worse.
Her neck cracked as she sat up—loud enough to make Marga side-eye her like she'd just cursed in church. The air inside the van was stale, hot, and tasted faintly of stress sweat and crushed canned peas.
She blinked. Once. Twice.
They were parked under an overpass, surrounded by trash, graffiti, and a suspicious number of shopping carts that seemed to have unionized.
Tenorio sat in the driver's seat, engine off, one hand resting on the wheel like he was posing for a post-apocalyptic cologne ad called Survivor: Eau de Burnt Gasoline.
Xenia stretched and winced. "Okay. Roll call. Who's still alive and hasn't murdered anyone in their sleep?"
"I came close," Marga muttered from her corner, holding a half-eaten protein bar like it had personally betrayed her.
Nestor groaned. "My leg's stiff. My back hurts. My soul is peeling like old wallpaper."
"You're lucky you still have a soul," Xenia said. "Mine evacuated around hour two of day one."
Rafe leaned forward, brushing sleep from his eyes with the kind of energy that screamed I used to run a CrossFit class before the world burned. "How long we been here?"
"Couple hours," Tenorio replied. "I needed the engine to cool. Also, I needed to not kill us driving with zero sleep."
"Relatable," Xenia muttered, grabbing her map and unfolding it like it was a secret scroll from the lost archives of Chaos.
They voted—because apparently democracy still had a pulse—and decided to make a supply stop at a nearby gas station.
It had bars on the windows, a collapsed roof, and a sign that optimistically still said OPEN 24/7 if you ignored the blood spatters and claw marks.
"Looks abandoned," Rafe whispered.
"Looks cursed," Xenia corrected. "Let's go shopping."
They moved as a group. Slow. Deliberate.
Inside, shelves were ransacked, but a few treasures remained: two cans of peaches, five bottles of flavored water, and a pregnancy test, which Marga pocketed "just in case we get bored enough to have dumb ideas."
Then it happened.
From the back room came a sound.
Not a growl.
Not a moan.
A shuffle.
Soft. Rhythmic. Like someone dragging a chair—or a limb.
Everyone froze.
Xenia's hand gripped her makeshift dumbbell-club like it was a diploma. "Please be a raccoon. Please be a raccoon. Please be—"
Something burst from the shadows.
Not a raccoon.
Definitely not a raccoon.
It was a former gas station clerk still wearing his name tag. "Carl." His lower jaw hung like it was on clearance. One eye missing. One hand dragging a wrench.
"Carl's seen better days," Nestor whispered.
"Carl is a nightmare wrapped in khakis," Xenia replied, then swung her club like she was in a rage room themed after high school group projects.
CLANG.
Carl went down. But not quietly.
His body slammed into a shelf that crashed into another, sending an entire row of expired corn chips tumbling.
Then they heard them.
Outside.
Moaning.
Multiple voices. Not human. Not happy.
Rafe peeked out the back. "Uh… Xenia? You said boats were the only safe place?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Then why is there a zombie driving a city bus?!"
Public Transit Is a Scam
The bus roared by the front window, crashing into a light post, undead passengers slamming against the glass like it was rush hour in hell.
"RUN," Tenorio barked.
They sprinted out the back. Xenia nearly tripped over a can of tuna, caught herself on a freezer door, and skidded out into the alley like a drunk figure skater.
The van was twenty meters away.
Twenty meters of open ground, hungry groans, and a slowly reversing undead transit vehicle.
They ran.
Nestor limped like he had one foot in the grave and the other on roller skates.
Marga clocked a zombie in the head with a gallon of windshield fluid.
Xenia screamed, "IF I DIE TO PUBLIC TRANSPORT I'M HAUNTING A SUBWAY!"
They reached the van.
Rafe threw open the doors. Bodies dove in like it was musical chairs and the music just exploded.
Tenorio peeled out backward, knocking a cone off a zombified crossing guard.
The bus crashed into the gas station with an explosion of fire and irony.
The Pause Before the Next Stupid Plan
Back under the overpass, breathing heavy, Xenia stared out the van window at the chaos-stained city.
No Wi-Fi.
No safety.
No coffee.
But they were alive.
Barely.
She pulled out the old photo of her mom again. Held it against her chest.
Then said softly, "I didn't think my post-grad resume would include 'punched Carl in the face while being chased by a zombie bus.'"
Rafe chuckled. "I'd hire you."
Marga snorted. "You'd regret it."
Nestor groaned. "My everything hurts."
Tenorio just drove, eyes steady.
And for one stupid, tiny second—they felt like a team.
A weird one. A loud one. A messy, undead-bus-surviving one.
But still a team.