Chapter 1
TWO YEARS LATER
The world was white and screaming.
Snow muffled the trees, clung to her boots, burned her lungs with every breath, but still, Rose ran. Each step was agony through the crust of ice, the snow pulling at her legs like hands from below. Branches tore at her coat, the forest crowding in, but she didn’t dare stop. Behind her, the Hollow shrieks pierced the quiet like knives, animal, mindless, too close.
She didn’t know how many there were.
Her breath hitched, coming in clouds that vanished before her eyes. The cold was a living thing now, clawing at her face, her fingers, the space behind her ribs where warmth used to live. She glanced back once, just long enough to see shadows between the trees, dark figures jerking forward, faces slack, eyes wild. The lead one had a torn parka, the kind she remembered seeing on a gas station clerk two days ago. It moved fast. Faster than it should.
She pushed harder.
Her boots found a deer path, narrow but clearer, and she followed it, heart hammering in her ears. The world narrowed to the crunch of ice beneath her and the pounding of blood in her head. She didn’t think of where she was going. Only away.
A branch snapped to her right. Not from her. Too close.
She veered left, nearly slipping, and felt the air change, the trees thinning. Light. A clearing.
She burst through a wall of frost-covered pine and stumbled into the open. The snow here was deeper, untouched, glittering under the weak sun like powdered glass. Her legs buckled. She caught herself with her hands, felt the sting of the cold bite through her gloves.
And then, silence.
No howls. No footsteps.
Just the wind, threading through the trees behind her like a whisper.
Rose turned slowly, hand on the hilt of her knife, and scanned the tree line.
Nothing.
Her breath slowed. Her chest still heaved, but the scream in her mind began to fade. Her cheeks burned from the cold, wet with sweat that was already freezing. She took one careful step back, then another, keeping her eyes on the forest.
Still nothing.
She exhaled, and this time the cloud of breath lingered. The quiet wasn’t safe, but it was something.
But she was alive. For now.
She sank to her knees in the snow, her breath coming in shallow puffs. The silence still didn’t feel safe, but it didn’t feel immediate, either. Her muscles trembled from the cold and the run, but she forced herself to sit, drawing her knees in close.
She cupped her hands in front of her mouth and blew into them, the warmth pitiful, fleeting. Her fingers stung as feeling returned, first tingling, then burning. She flexed them once, twice. The gloves were thin. Stupid mistake. She’d packed light to move fast, but hadn’t counted on the weather turning this quickly. That was another mistake.
Gingerly, she tugged off her right glove and began unwrapping the bandage just below her elbow. The fabric, stiff with dried blood and melted snow, peeled away reluctantly. Underneath, the wound pulsed an angry red.
Three long gashes ran from wrist to mid-forearm, crusted at the edges but raw in the center. The skin had split open days ago, when she’d gone through a broken window on a supply run west of the highway. The cut was deep, glass or metal, maybe both, but she hadn’t had time to clean it properly. Just pressure. Just wrap and move.
Now, the flesh around it looked darker than it should. Not infected, not yet. But not good.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back, breathing through her nose. The pain grounded her. So did the memories.
The Campgrounds. That’s what they called it now. Just “Campgrounds.” Like something out of a summer brochure, not the hollowed-out ruins of a roadside camping site. Cabins half-rotted and overgrown. A main lodge with a collapsed roof. Scattered tents, canvas moldy but salvageable. Someone had even found an old map with cartoon bears and fishing icons. Tyler had hung it in the mess hall, “for morale.”
They’d made it home.
After the fall of Camp, after Rachel’s final madness and the chaos that followed, they’d run until their lungs bled. The Campgrounds had been the first place they stopped that didn’t feel cursed. Sam rebuilt the main structure with scavenged wood and old tools. Emma organized sleeping quarters in the remaining cabins. Caleb made snares. Even Alice, silent, withdrawn Alice, had started collecting dried herbs like someone twice her age.
And Rose… Rose had led the supply runs.
She hadn’t told anyone about the cut at first. It wasn’t serious, not really. Not compared to the things they’d seen. But then the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Then the fever came. Just for a night, but enough to rattle her. Still, she’d insisted on going out again.
It was supposed to be a quick grab: fuel, canned goods, maybe something from the abandoned pharmacy on Route 17.
But something had gone wrong.
She’d been spotted. Not by Hollows, not at first. By people. Three of them, masked, half-starved, carrying rusted weapons and that look, the look of those who didn’t ask questions anymore. She’d fled. Hid in a liquor store. Busted through a rear window to escape.
That was when the Hollows came.
She didn’t remember how many. Just the sound of shattering glass, and the moment her boot slipped on ice. Then running. Always running.
She hadn’t stopped since yesterday morning.
And now she was here, wherever here was, with a wound that might turn bad, and no map, no food, and a half-frozen water bottle in her pack.
A sound broke the silence.
Crunch.
Soft. Measured. Deliberate.
Rose froze, heart slamming back into high alert. She pulled her knife from her belt, black-handled, notched along the spine, then rose silently to her feet. Her breath puffed out, caught in the still air, betraying her.
Crunch.
She turned slowly.
Between the trees stood a figure. Ragged coat. Pale face. Empty eyes.
A Hollow.
Alone.
It stared at her, unmoving. Snow drifted between them. Its lips were chapped, skin papery and windburnt, the flesh around its mouth dark with old blood. Its arms hung low, like a marionette whose strings had gone slack.
But it didn’t charge.
It didn’t shriek.
It took one slow step forward, the snow squealing faintly beneath its boot.
Rose tightened her grip on the knife, stepping to the side, putting distance between them. Her breath was too loud. Her heart too loud.
The Hollow turned its head, following her movement. Its gaze never wavered.
Then, it spoke.
“Rooose…”
Her name, dragged out on a breath like a dying wind.
She stopped moving.
Its voice was low, strained. Like dry leaves rubbing together. The sound barely belonged to a throat anymore. But it spoke again.
“Don’t run. I won’t… hurt you.”
Rose’s stomach flipped. The voice wasn’t a mindless echo. It had shape. Intention.
She circled to the right, carefully, feet finding shallow pockets in the snow. The Hollow mirrored her.
Its lips curled into what might have been a smile.
“You left them,” it said. “They’ll die without you.”
Her fingers twitched on the hilt. “You’re not real.”
It tilted its head. “I remember… fire. Screaming. Camp. Your mother’s blood.”
That was enough.
With a sudden roar, the thing leapt, not fast like before, not clumsy, but calculated. It moved like it had watched her, studied her.
Rose ducked low, slashing upward. The blade caught its neck just beneath the jaw, a hot spray of black-red hitting her cheek as it tumbled past her, twitching.
It didn’t rise.
She stood over it, chest heaving, knife slick with gore. The Hollow’s eyes stared at the sky, lips parted as if to say one last thing. But no sound came.
Only wind.
Only snow.
Rose stepped back, wiping the blade on her coat, trying to still the shaking in her hands.
That wasn’t normal.
That wasn’t right.
She looked down again. The Hollow was still.
But its last words twisted inside her like a thorn.
You left them.
She stood over the body, the knife still trembling slightly in her hand.
It wasn’t just what it said. It was how it said it.
Measured. Personal. Clever.
She stepped back, eyes scanning the treeline, listening for more. But the woods were quiet again. Too quiet. The wind had shifted, brushing along her collar like cold fingers. The snow at her feet slowly covered the blood.
Her breath slowed. Barely.
Smarter. Quieter. Waiting.
She knew what this was.
Tyler had a name for them. Of course he did.
“Thinkers.” Short for “Thinkerbites.”
He’d coined it one night back at Campgrounds, while Rose stitched a cut on his leg and he tried to distract everyone with one of his twisted brand-name jokes.
“Some of ’em are just runners, right? Like glitching NPCs,” he’d said, voice half-laughing, half-exhausted. “But these ones? These bastards watch you. They think. They’re like if a zombie and your ex had a baby, creepy, manipulative, and way too into your personal business.”
At the time, they’d laughed. Even Sam had cracked a smile.
But the name stuck.
Thinkers.
Hollows that didn’t just lunge. They waited. They hunted. They mimicked voices. One had once been seen opening a door. Another had set a trap.
And this one? This one had spoken her name.
She crouched next to the corpse, studying it again, eyes still open, glassy and distant. Just like the others. But the mouth, the posture… something about it felt too close to human. Like the virus had chewed through the mind but left something behind. Or built something new.
Rose stood, heart clenching in her chest.
If the Thinkers were out here now, this far north, this far from the main roads…
Then Campgrounds wasn’t safe.
And if she had led it back,
She turned, already moving. She had to get higher ground. Find a vantage point. Get her bearings.
And pray the others were still okay.
