Chapter Text
The first thing he knew was the taste of copper and stale air.
It coated his tongue, thick and metallic, like he had been sucking on a penny for days. The second thing was the light. It wasn’t the warm, golden spill of morning sun through a bedroom window, nor the harsh, sterile fluorescence of a functioning institution. It was a sickly, intermittent flicker, a dying pulse of yellow that buzzed with the erratic rhythm of a failing heart. *Bzzt. Click. Darkness. Bzzt. Click.*
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was stained with water damage, brown rings spreading outward like ripples in a muddy pond. Plaster hung in jagged strips, revealing the gray concrete skeleton beneath. He blinked, trying to clear the fog from his vision, but the world remained tilted, wrong.
He tried to sit up. His body rebelled. Muscles felt packed with wet sand, joints stiff as rusted hinges. A groan escaped his lips, dry and raspy, as if his throat hadn’t been used in weeks. He fell back against the pillow, his breath coming in shallow, panicked hitches.
A dull ache radiated from his ribs, his thighs, the back of his skull. He blinked, waiting for the fog to lift. It didn’t.
Nothing came.
There was only a vast, terrifying void. A white noise where his life should have been.
Panic, cold and slick, began to coil in his stomach. He lifted a hand to his face, trembling. The skin was pale, almost translucent under the flickering light, dotted with IV bruises on the back of his wrist. He touched his cheek, his jaw, his nose. They felt familiar in the way any human face feels familiar—symmetrical, solid—but they held no emotional resonance. He didn’t know if the scar above his left eyebrow was from a childhood fall or a recent accident. He didn’t know if he liked coffee or tea. He didn’t know if he had anyone waiting for him.
Time might have passed by minutes or hours as he lay there before his mind finally conjured up something.
Sabo.
The word surfaced from the depths of the void, unbidden. It floated there, isolated and fragile.
Sabo.
Was that his name? It felt right. It fit the shape of his mouth. But beyond those two syllables, there was nothing. No last name. No age, though his body felt young, lean, perhaps in his early twenties. No history. Just Sabo, floating in the dark.
He looked around the room. It was small, cramped. The walls were painted a peeling shade of institutional green, now chipped away to reveal layers of older, darker paint beneath. The equipment surrounding his bed was ancient. The heart monitor to his left was silent, its screen black, a thin layer of dust coating the plastic casing. The IV drip stand beside him held a bag of fluid that was nearly empty, the tube kinked and dry.
How long had he been here?
Days? Weeks? Months?
The silence of the hospital was heavier than the pain in his head. It wasn’t the quiet of a library or a sleeping house. It was the silence of a tomb. There were no distant pages turning, no squeak of rubber soles on linoleum, no, no hum of ventilation systems. Just the *bzzt-click* of the dying light and the sound of his own heartbeat, hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"Hello?" he called out. His voice cracked, barely a whisper.
No answer.
He tried again, louder this time, forcing air through his parched throat. "Is anyone there?"
The silence stretched, taut and suffocating.
Sabo’s mind raced, scrambling for logic, for explanation. *Accident,* he thought. *I must have been in an accident. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I can’t remember. Traumatic brain injury. Concussion. Amnesia.* It was a plausible narrative, one he had likely seen in movies or read in books, though he couldn’t recall which ones. But people involved in accidents were taken to hospitals that were open. Hospitals with nurses who checked vitals, with doctors who prescribed painkillers, with families who visited.
This place felt abandoned.
He looked at the door. It was slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness beyond it.
Fear told him to stay in bed. Fear told him to pull the sheets up, to close his eyes, to wait for rescue. But the void in his mind was more terrifying than the unknown outside. He needed answers. He needed to know who he was. And more importantly he needed water. His throat felt like sandpaper.
"Fuck it," he whispered.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His feet hit the floor, and the cold seeped through his thin hospital gown, raising goosebumps on his arms. He stood up, and the world tilted violently.
His knees buckled. He grabbed the edge of the mattress, his fingers digging into the stiff sheets, breathing hard as waves of dizziness washed over him. His muscles felt weak, atrophied, as if he hadn’t used them in a long time. He leaned against the bed frame, waiting for the nausea to pass, staring at the scuffed tiles beneath his feet. They were cracked, stained with something dark and dried.
Just walk, he told himself. One step. Then another.
He pushed off the bed, his legs shaking beneath him. He took a step. Then another. Each movement was a negotiation with gravity. He felt like a newborn foal, clumsy and uncoordinated. He shuffled toward the door, leaving the IV line snapping off the bag with a wet tear. A bead of blood welled as the needle shifted underneath his skin with every movement, dark and slow, tracing a thin line down his wrist. He didn’t look at it. He reached for the door handle. Turned it. Pushed.
The hallway was a cavern of shadows.
The flickering light from his room spilled out, casting long, distorted shapes against the opposite wall. The corridor stretched out in both directions, endless and oppressive. Doors lined both sides, most of them closed, some hanging off their hinges. Papers were scattered across the floor—charts, forms, magazines—crunching underfoot when the wind from a broken window somewhere down the hall stirred them.
The air smelled of rot. Not just the sterile scent of antiseptic, which was faint and fading, but something underneath it. Something sweet and cloying, like meat left out in the sun too long. Sabo wrinkled his nose, a wave of nausea rolling through him.
He started walking.
His bare feet slapped softly against the cold tiles. The sound echoed, too loud in the stillness. He kept his eyes moving, scanning the shadows, looking for a nurse’s station, a sign, a person. Anything.
Left or right?
He chose left. It felt arbitrary, but staying still felt worse.
As he moved, his mind continued its frantic, circular search for memories. He tried to picture a face. A mother? A father? A friend? He conjured images of smiling people, but they were generic, stock-photo faces with no features, no voices. He tried to remember a place. A house? An apartment? He saw walls, but they were blank. He saw a sky, but it was gray and featureless.
It was like trying to grasp smoke. Every time he thought he had a hold on something—a color, a sound, a feeling—it slipped through his fingers, leaving only frustration and a growing sense of dread.
Who am I?
The question pounded in time with his footsteps. Who am I? Who am I?
He passed a room with the door wide open. Inside, a bed was overturned, sheets tangled on the floor. A wheelchair lay on its side, one wheel spinning slowly, creaking with each rotation. *Creak. Creak. Creak.*
Sabo stopped, staring at the chair. Why was it overturned? Had someone fallen? Had they been pushed?
A chill crawled up his spine. He hugged his arms around himself, the thin gown offering no protection against the draft. He noticed then that the windows along the hallway were boarded up or shattered, covered in grime. Outside, the sky was a bruised purple, twilight or dawn, he couldn’t tell. The city beyond was silent, a skyline of jagged teeth against the gloom.
He kept walking.
The further he went, the worse the state of the hospital became. The walls were scored with deep scratches, as if something large and clawed had dragged itself along them. There were smears of dark, dried blood on the doors, on the walls, on the ceiling. Some of it was old, brown and flaky. Some of it looked fresher, sticky and red.
Sabo’s breath came faster. His heart hammered against his ribs. This wasn’t just abandonment. There were traces of violence.
What happened here?
He wanted to run back to the room, to hide under the covers and pretend none of this was real. But the void in his mind pushed him forward. If he could just find a doctor, a nurse, anyone… they could tell him. They could tell him his name. They could tell him why he was alone and maybe just maybe they could tell him what was going on in this godforsaken place.
He turned a corner, and the hallway widened into a junction. To his right, a sign pointed toward *Emergency*. To his left, *Administration*.
He hesitated. The Emergency wing felt dangerous, chaotic. Administration felt… orderly. Maybe there were records there. Files. Names. If not that maybe there were at least people.
He turned left.
The administration corridor was darker, the lights here completely dead. He had to feel his way along the wall, his fingers brushing against peeling paint and dusty frames. The silence here was different. It felt watchful.
He heard a sound.
A shuffle. A drag.
Sabo froze, his breath catching in his throat. He pressed himself against the wall, straining his ears.
*Drag. Shuffle. Drag.*
It was coming from ahead, around the next bend.
"Hello?" he called out, his voice trembling. "Is someone there?"
The shuffling stopped.
For a moment, there was only silence. Then, a low, wet gurgle echoed down the hall. It sounded like air bubbling through liquid, like a drain backing up.
Sabo’s instinct screamed at him to run, but his legs felt rooted to the spot. Curiosity, or perhaps desperation, pulled him forward. He took a tentative step, then another, moving cautiously around the corner.
At the end of the hall, near a set of double doors, a figure was hunched over something on the floor.
It was wearing a white coat. A doctor’s coat.
Relief, bright and sudden, flooded Sabo’s chest. A doctor. Someone who could help. Someone who could explain.
"Doctor?" Sabo called out, taking a few more steps forward. His voice was stronger now, hopeful. "Please, I need help. I don’t… I don’t remember anything."
The figure didn’t move. It remained hunched, its shoulders shaking slightly.
Sabo approached slowly, his bare feet silent on the carpeted section of the floor. As he got closer, he saw that the doctor was kneeling over a body. Or what was left of one. The scene was gruesome, obscured by shadows, but the smell hit him first—that sweet, cloying rot, intensified tenfold.
"Doctor?" Sabo said, stopping a few feet away. He felt a prickle of unease, a warning bell ringing in the back of his mind. "Sir? Are you okay?"
The doctor’s head snapped up.
Sabo recoiled, a gasp tearing from his throat.
The face was… wrong. The skin was gray, slack and peeling away from the bone in large, wet strips. One eye was missing, the socket a hollow, black pit. The other eye was clouded over with a milky film, blind and unseeing. The mouth hung open, jaws distended, lips pulled back to reveal teeth stained black with blood.
And it was looking directly at him.
Not with recognition. Not with concern. But with hunger.
The doctor let out a shriek—a high, ragged sound that had no humanity in it—and lunged.
Sabo didn’t think. He didn’t process. His body moved before his mind could catch up, adrenaline flooding his system, sharpening his senses, overriding the weakness in his legs.
He threw himself to the side, crashing into a metal cart filled with medical supplies. The cart tipped over, spilling trays of instruments, bottles of pills, and rolls of gauze onto the floor.
The zombie doctor slammed into the wall where Sabo had been standing a second before, its claws scraping against the plaster, leaving deep gouges. It turned, snapping its jaws, drool dripping from its chin in thick, ropy strands.
Sabo scrambled backward, his hands slipping on the scattered supplies. He grabbed the first thing his fingers touched—a heavy, stainless steel IV pole base. It was clumsy, unwieldy, but it was weight. It was a weapon.
The zombie lurched toward him, its movements jerky and unnatural, yet terrifyingly fast. It reached for him, fingers curled like talons.
Sabo swung the base with all his strength.
*Crack.*
The metal connected with the side of the doctor’s head with a sickening crunch. The zombie staggered, its head lolling to the side, but it didn’t fall. It didn’t even seem to feel pain. It just turned its good eye toward him, the milky film swirling, and let out another guttural growl.
Panic, pure and electric, seized Sabo’s chest. It’s not stopping. It’s not stopping.
He backed away, his eyes darting around the hallway. Doors. He needed a door.
To his right, an office door stood slightly ajar. He sprinted toward it, his legs pumping, ignoring the pain in his muscles, ignoring the dizziness. He could hear the zombie behind him, the slap-slap-slap of its feet on the floor, the wet rasp of its breathing.
He reached the door, shoved it open, and threw himself inside.
He slammed the door shut and twisted the lock just as a heavy body collided with the other side.
*Thud.*
The door shuddered in its frame. Dust rained down from the ceiling.
*Thud.*
Sabo backed away from the door, his chest heaving, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold the IV base. He stared at the door, waiting for it to break, waiting for those gray hands to reach through.
But after a few moments, the pounding stopped. The scratching faded. The wet breathing moved away, dragging down the hall.
Sabo slid down the wall, collapsing onto the floor. He wrapped his arms around his knees, burying his face in them, trying to control his breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
His heart was beating so hard it hurt. His entire body trembled, adrenaline crash leaving him weak and nauseous.
What was that?
The question echoed in his mind, louder than before. What was that?
It wasn’t human. It couldn’t be. Humans didn’t have gray skin. Humans didn’t eat… whatever that doctor had been eating. Humans didn’t keep coming after you hit them in the head with a metal pole.
Zombie.
The word popped into his head, unbidden. It felt absurd, ridiculous. Like something from a comic book or a bad movie. But the image of that gray, rotting face, the hunger in that blind eye… it fit.
I’m in a zombie apocalypse.
The thought was so surreal, so impossible, that Sabo almost laughed. But the laughter died in his throat, choked off by the sheer terror of the reality. He was alone. He was injured. He had no memories. And the world outside that door was possibly filled with things that wanted to eat him.
He sat there for a long time, listening to the silence. Eventually, the shaking subsided enough for him to look around.
He was in an office. Small, cluttered. A desk sat in the center, covered in papers and debris. A computer monitor sat dark and dead in the corner. Bookshelves lined the walls, some toppled over, spilling their contents onto the floor.
Sabo pushed himself up, his legs still wobbly. He needed to secure the room. He scanned the area for anything else he could use to barricade the door. A heavy filing cabinet? A chair?
His eyes landed on a desk phone.
It was an old model, wired, with a cord that trailed off the edge of the desk. It was dusty, but intact.
Hope, fragile and desperate, sparked in his chest. A phone. He could call for help. He could call the police. The army. Anyone.
He stumbled toward the desk, his hands reaching for the receiver. He lifted it to his ear.
Silence. No dial tone. Just the dead, hollow sound of a disconnected line.
He slammed it back down, frustration bubbling up. Of course. The lines were probably down.
He looked at the computer. Dead.
He looked around the room, searching for anything else. A radio? A flashlight?
Then, he saw it.
Underneath the desk, tucked behind a fallen stack of files, was a smartphone. It was cracked, the screen spiderwebbed with fractures, but it was lying face up.
Sabo dropped to his knees, crawling under the desk. He reached for the phone, his fingers brushing against the cold glass. He picked it up.
The battery icon was red, blinking critically. 4%.
But it was unlocked. The home screen was visible, displaying a wallpaper of a golden retriever puppy. Sabo stared at it for a second, a pang of inexplicable sadness hitting him. Did he have a dog? Was this his phone?
Doubtful seeing as it was basically on the other side of the hospital from where he'd come from, but he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember.
He tapped the screen. It responded sluggishly, the touch sensitivity impaired by the cracks. He swiped through the apps. No signal bars. No Wi-Fi symbol.
No service.
He tried to open a browser. It loaded a blank page. Cannot connect to server.
He tried social media. No connection.
He tried messaging apps. Failed to send.
Despair began to creep in, cold and heavy. He was cut off. Completely isolated.
But then, he remembered something. Sometimes, phones cached pages. If someone had been browsing before… before whatever happened… maybe there was something saved.
He opened the browser again. Instead of typing a URL, he looked at the history. It was empty. Cleared.
He frowned. Who clears their history right before the end of the world?
Then he noticed a bookmark folder. *News.*
He tapped it.
There was only one link saved. *Global Health Alert – Live Updates.*
He tapped it.
The page loaded slowly, the text appearing line by line as the phone struggled to retrieve the cached data. The images didn’t load, just broken icons. But the text was there.
**BREAKING NEWS: CDC CONFIRMS OUTBREAK OF UNKNOWN PATHOGEN IN MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS.**
**SYMPTOMS INCLUDE: AGGRESSION, LOSS OF COGNITIVE FUNCTION, NECROTIC TISSUE DECAY.**
**AUTHORITIES ADVISE: SHELTER IN PLACE. AVOID CONTACT WITH INFECTED INDIVIDUALS. DO NOT APPROACH HOSPITALS OR EMERGENCY CENTERS.**
**DATE: OCTOBER 14, 20XX.**
Sabo stared at the screen. The words blurred, then sharpened.
*Infected individuals.*
*Necrotic tissue decay.*
*Do not approach hospitals.*
He was in a hospital.
He had walked the halls of a hospital.
He had been attacked by a doctor.
The pieces clicked together, forming a picture so horrifying he felt like he might vomit. The silence. The blood. The scratches on the walls. The gray skin. The hunger.
It wasn’t just an accident. It wasn’t just amnesia.
The world had ended. And he had slept through it.
He looked at the date again. October 14. He didn’t know what year it was now. He didn’t know how long he had been in that bed. Days? Weeks?
The battery icon flashed red. 3%.
The screen dimmed.
Sabo gripped the phone tighter, his knuckles white. He scrolled down, desperate for more information. For a cure. For a safe zone. For a name.
**UPDATE: COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS COLLAPSING. MILITARY DEPLOYMENT FAILED. CITIZENS ADVISED TO SEEK HIGH GROUND. AVOID WATER SOURCES.**
**UPDATE: QUARANTINE ZONES BREACHED. PANDEMIC DECLARED GLOBAL.**
**UPDATE: GOD HELP US ALL.**
The text ended there. The rest of the page was corrupted, a jumble of code and static.
Sabo sat on the floor, the phone glowing faintly in the dark office. The silence of the room pressed in on him, heavier than before. The void in his mind yawned wide, swallowing the little identity he had clung to.
Sabo.
Was that even his name? Or was it just a word he had grabbed from the ether? Was he going to die in a world he didn't remember with a name that possibly wasn't even his own?
He looked at the reflection in the black screen of the phone. A young man with blond hair, messy and unkempt. Blue eyes, wide with fear. A scar above his left eyebrow.
He didn’t recognize himself.
Outside the door, a distant scream echoed through the hospital corridors. Then another. Then the sound of running feet, many of them, slapping against the tiles.
Sabo turned off the phone to save the battery. The darkness rushed back in, absolute and suffocating.
He curled up in the corner of the office, pulling his knees to his chest, the IV line still trailing from his arm like a umbilical cord to a dead world. He closed his eyes, but he didn’t sleep. He listened. He waited.
And for the first time since waking up, he didn’t try to remember. He just tried to survive.
The headline burned in his mind, etched into the back of his eyelids.
OUTBREAK.
It was the only truth he had. And it was enough to terrify him more than the emptiness in his head ever could.