Two months ter, somewhere in southern China…

  A Beijing Jeep Cherokee, caked in so much dirt that its original color was impossible to discern, roared down an empty interstate highway. At ninety kilometers per hour, it kicked up a massive cloud of dust in its wake. Inside, a young man with short hair and bck sungsses casually drummed his fingers against the steering wheel in rhythm with the bring music. Beside him, in the passenger seat, sat a massive red dog—wearing an oversized pair of aviator sungsses just like its owner. With its head poking out of the window, the dog curiously observed the desote world outside.

  “Damn it. Since when did China’s traffic get this bad?” the young man grumbled, yanking the steering wheel as his eyes nded on the wreckage ahead—a massive pileup that had turned the road into an impassable mountain of twisted metal.

  “Oh, come on, boss. How many times has this happened today? Seven? Eight?” The red dog spoke, its voice carrying the same exasperation reflected in its distinctly human-like expression.

  “I don’t care if it happens a hundred times—you’re still getting out there to clear the mess.” The young man let out a sigh as he slowly pressed the brake. The neglected Cherokee screeched in protest before lurching to a stop. Reaching into the back seat, he grabbed a bck shotgun, swiftly checked the rounds, and cocked it with a practiced ease. He pushed open the door and jumped out, only to notice the dog still lounging inside. His patience snapped.

  “If you wanna walk all the way back on your own two legs, be my guest. Otherwise, get your ass moving and clear out the trash around here!”

  “For crying out loud, I have four legs, you know!” the red dog muttered, but one gnce at its owner's darkened expression made it think twice. Begrudgingly, it pushed open the door and leapt down onto the sun-scorched asphalt. Squinting up at the blinding midday sun, the dog let out a long, miserable sigh. “God, it’s hot. And you seriously expect me to do hard bor in this weather? Ever heard of dog rights?”

  The young man ignored the compint. Slinging the shotgun over his shoulder, he made his way toward a small roadside shop. Once an open-front convenience store, the entrance was now completely barricaded by the remains of abandoned vehicles—stacked haphazardly on top of each other, rusting under yers of thick, undisturbed dust.

  This wasn’t a scrapyard.

  It was a graveyard.

  Thousands of cars, wrecked and entangled, stretched out for kilometers. No one had come to clean up the mess. No one ever would. The wind occasionally stirred the dust, revealing glimpses of skeletal remains inside the shattered windshields—some missing limbs, others missing entire heads. Dried blood, now a dark, cracked brown, painted gruesome murals on the broken gss.

  It had been a full year since the end of the world, yet time itself seemed to have frozen on that final, catastrophic moment.

  That day, doomsday arrived.

  Panic-stricken people fled, stealing or hijacking any vehicle they could find, careening through the streets like headless flies. Governments colpsed. Armies disbanded. Friends and family turned into mindless, flesh-eating monsters before each other's eyes. In the chaos, cars crashed into one another, bodies were torn apart mid-air, and the streets ran red with human gore.

  For over a month, the world echoed with screams of agony, cries of despair, and roars of fury—sounds once reserved for horror films now pyed out in reality, across every continent. Then, as if the universe itself had exhausted its wrath, everything fell eerily silent.

  Humanity was all but extinct.

  Now, the only movement left was that of the undead.

  The young man gnced at the store’s interior, his expression unreadable as he took in the scene. The floor was coated in dried bck stains, the remains of what once were human bodies scattered like broken porcein—pieces too incomplete to ever be put back together. The shelves, once stocked with goods, y toppled and covered in dust, blending into the eerie silence that had swallowed the world whole.

  Reaching into a miraculously intact gss dispy case, he pulled out a few packs of cigarettes. He ripped open a pack of 95 Supreme, stuck one between his lips, and lit it with satisfaction.

  Good.

  Ever since the apocalypse, rain had become a rare event—two or three feeble showers a year at most. The air was dry enough that many perishable goods had been preserved longer than they should have. Just like this cigarette.

  Without hesitation, he emptied the dispy case, stuffing every st pack into his backpack before once again checking his shotgun. Then, his gaze shifted toward the back room.

  Lifting the grimy curtain, he nudged the wooden door open with the shotgun’s barrel. But he didn’t step inside just yet.

  The thick yer of dust on the floor had been disturbed. Footprints—erratic and restless—looped around in chaotic circles, as if their owner had been pacing frantically, unable to stay still.

  A low, raspy growl.

  Then—

  A small figure lunged from the corner, moving with unnatural speed.

  Gray-white hair. Bloodshot eyes. A mouth full of jagged, bckened teeth.

  Its shriveled skin stretched tightly over its bones, but there was no mistaking what it was—one of the countless undead that now ruled the earth.

  A ghoul.

  The young man raised his shotgun, pressing the barrel against the creature’s bony chest. It thrashed, snapping its fanged jaws, but the gun held it firmly in pce.

  He didn’t fire immediately.

  Tilting his head, he studied the creature with mild curiosity. It had once been a child—no older than seven or eight. The tattered yellow vest it wore, featuring a faded cartoon wolf, clung to its emaciated frame. What should have been a round, innocent face was now grotesque, its mouth cttering with rows of sharp, bckened teeth.

  His hesitation wasn’t mercy. In this world, kindness was a death sentence.

  It was just… rare to see child ghouls.

  Most of them had been the first to die—easy prey, incapable of defending themselves.

  But curiosity only went so far.

  With a swift motion, he swung the shotgun’s stock upward, snapping the ghoul’s frail neck.

  Its head lolled backward at an unnatural angle. Then, without another sound, it colpsed onto the dusty wooden floor.

  The twisted snarl disappeared from its face. In its pce—an eerie, almost peaceful relief.

  The storeroom was, indeed, meant for storage. But the ghoul that had cimed it had torn everything to shreds in a mindless rage. Nothing was left intact.

  Losing interest, the young man turned and stepped back into the relentless heat of the outside world.

  The sun was merciless, stretching daylight to over eighteen hours. Nightfall was a luxury that came too rarely.

  Still, even in the face of worsening conditions, the survivors would endure.

  Humans, when pushed to the brink, had a way of adapting—much like cockroaches.

  A blur of red shot out from the street corner at breakneck speed. The impact sent dirt flying as it skidded to a halt, leaving a long trail in the dust. The red dog, panting excitedly, bounded toward the young man.

  “Boss! I found a fully intact Land Rover up ahead! Let’s take it!”

  “No.” The young man shut down the idea without hesitation, walking past. “That thing guzzles fuel like crazy. We need something with an efficiency under ten liters per hundred kilometers.”

  “Oh, come on!” The red dog groaned. “We’ll probably swap cars again soon anyway! Can’t we drive something decent for once? At this rate, we might as well use a tractor!”

  To punctuate its frustration, the dog smmed a paw down on a concrete block.

  The twenty-centimeter-thick sb shattered into powder.

  A nearby ghoul, drawn by the noise, staggered out of a dipidated restaurant. Catching sight of the dog, its empty gaze flickered with instinctual hunger. With a guttural growl, it doubled its pace.

  The red dog shot it an irritated gnce.

  “Get lost.”

  The ghoul groaned and kept moving forward.

  Annoyed, the dog shed out with its cws. A fsh of red—

  And the ghoul’s upper body slid clean off its lower half.

  As its bckened innards spilled onto the ground, the dog wrinkled its nose.

  “Ugh. Disgusting. I’m so done pying with you.”

  Without another gnce, it trotted off after its owner.