1
The city was quieter now. Three humans and a dog moved through the ruined streets, each step a reminder that life demanded payment.
Jake’s eyes caught a dark smear of dried blood on the cracked pavement. Echo sniffed the air, ears twitching, tail low. Karlynn’s hand drifted to her knife.
“Someone passed through here,” she murmured. Her gaze cut to the alley shadows. “Recently.”
A faint, hollow hum carried from somewhere above, almost like a voice, almost like a warning. Paloma froze, daggers raised, and Jake swallowed.
“Maybe we should keep moving,” he whispered.
Karlynn shook her head. “No. We watch. We know. Hesitation will cost more than we can pay.”
Then they rounded the corner and found the family, the warning realized too late.
It was an elderly couple and a teenage girl, huddled in a crumbling apartment. Hunger and desperation made their eyes wild. The girl’s hand trembled around a rusted knife.
“Not today,” Jake panted softly. “We… we can let them go. Maybe today. Once.”
Karlynn stiffened, knife poised. “You’re mad. One day. That’s how long we have to live. Stall, and we all die.”
Paloma’s daggers glinted in the light, her gaze sharp. “Do it. Or we die.”
Jake shook his head. “No. Not this one. Not them.”
Karlynn’s stomach churned. Echo growled.
And then it came. Down from the blackness above, a hollowed figure plummeted, shrieking. The teen girl screamed. The pair tried to run, but the creature was faster, more powerful. Its hands tore through flesh and broke bone like twigs. Blood spattered onto the street. The iron tang pungent.
Jake’s eyes widened in horror. The creature struck the old man. Karlynn moved, knife flashing, but Jake shouted, “Stop!” and shoved her aside. Hesitation again.
Paloma flung herself at the girl, trying to strike before the hollowed could reach her. But the creature pivoted, slicing Paloma’s arm. Pain and blood exploded, her scream echoing.
Echo leapt, teeth snapping at the hollowed, but the creature was too strong. It sank claws into the dog’s side. Black and white fur matted with blood, Echo yelped, collapsing.
Karlynn’s chest tightened with rage and panic. She hacked the hollowed down, its belly open with a vicious stroke, blood sprouting across her arms, face, and the dead street.
Jake crouched, looking at the bodies. “I didn’t mean…”
“You hesitated,” Karlynn spat, fury burning her eyes. “You paid with blood that isn’t even yours. Do you see what hesitation costs?”
Paloma slumped, blood dripping from her severed arm, grimacing in pain. Echo whimpered from the rubble. The girl and her parents were gone, torn apart by hunger and inaction.
Jake’s tears fell freely now. “I thought… maybe, maybe we could survive without killing this time.”
Karlynn’s blade pressed to his chest. “Survive without paying? There is no survival. Only payment. Only sacrifice. One day. That’s all life is.”
He nodded weakly, seeing she was right, but knowing the cost had been too high.
They went on, none whole in spirit, all broken. Hesitation had destroyed Echo and the innocents they might have saved.
And yet… the world demanded payment again. Tomorrow, hunger would grow. Tomorrow, life would demand a price.
Because in this ruined humanity, to live was to sacrifice, and hesitation was a death sentence.
The whimpering was the only noise for miles. Echo hopped along on his hind leg, a broken stride that made each step a gasp of pain. He left a pattern of dark paw prints that slowly wore away to nothing on the dust. No one spoke.
Paloma held her arm tight. She fashioned a makeshift bandage from a piece of cloth torn from her shirt, but it was useless. The oozing, dark blood had already soaked through. Her pale face contorted, eyes fixed on something distant, never Jake.
They found a tiny, empty laundromat on a side street in old Brooklyn. The smell of rot and bleach was almost a blessing. It gave them shelter from the blinding sun. Jake walked Paloma to the floor, not even being brave enough to put his hands on her arm. She shrugged him off anyway, her silent rejection more vocal than any scream.
“I’ll check on him,” Jake said, nodding toward Echo. He felt useless. At least this he could do.
“Don’t,” Karlynn said, her voice low and hard. She was cleaning her own blade, the motion precise and deliberate. “You’ve done enough. You almost got us killed. You almost got the dog killed.”
Jake’s head dropped. “I know.”
“You don’t,” she snapped, at last gazing at him. Her eyes were unforgiving and cold. “If you did, you wouldn’t have hesitated. That’s not a mistake you make and live out here. We can’t carry your conscience and our lives at the same time.”
Paloma let out a small, guttural sob of pain, her arm trembling. It was getting worse, the poison from the hollowed’s claws spreading. Jake’s stomach knotted. He had to help her. He had to.
“We need to find something,” Jake said, his voice low but determined. “Medicine. Food. Anything.”
“Find it then,” Karlynn said, not looking at him. “But if it costs us, if you hesitate again, the fee is on you.”
Echo whimpered miserably. He laid his head against the cold tile, breathing shallow. Jake crouched beside him, running a hand over the black and white fur, finding the gash that was deep and bloody. He knew Karlynn was right. But he couldn’t let them die, not because of him. Not like the others.
He stood up and walked to the back of the laundromat, past the rows of broken washing machines. In a small supply closet, he found a sealed first-aid kit, a miracle in this empty, broken world. Inside were bandages, an antiseptic, and a small bottle of pills. He grabbed them, his heart pounding with sudden, desperate hope.
And there it was. A small grey box on a top shelf. It had taken him standing on a broken machine to reach it. He opened the box. Inside, on a bed of rags, lay a small black handgun, a Glock 19. It wasn’t the find that took him aback, but the note lying next to it.
“This is the last gift,” it scrawled. “Let your last payment be swift.”
Jake’s stomach fell. He knew that. In this world, the last gift was the one you gave yourself, a useless last action before you died. The payment. It was always hiding, waiting for you.
Jake knelt, hands trembling. Shadows in the corners of the laundromat shifted, taking shapes that weren’t there. Faces stared at him from the dark, past victims’ eyes wide and accusing. He blinked. They vanished.
“Jake,” Paloma whispered, her voice thin, “are you okay?”
He shook his head. “I… I thought I saw them. All the people we lost. Watching me.”
Karlynn didn’t flinch. “They’re watching. Every hesitation is marked.”
He pressed his palms to his eyes, trying to push the visions away. The shadows crawled along the walls, whispers echoing in his mind. He had to focus. He had to act. Hesitation had already claimed too much.
He looked over at Paloma, white face, and Echo, struggling to breathe. And he looked at Karlynn, eyes as hard and unforgiving as the universe. He held the gun, the weight of the final payment in his palm. He wasn’t sure he was ready.
He brought the first aid kit to Paloma. She rested back against a pile of soiled laundry, her face dripping with sweat. He wrestled with a bottle of vile vodka he’d found somewhere. They had nothing else, a crude, painful means of healing.
“This is gonna hurt,” he warned her, his voice little more than a whisper.
Paloma nodded, clenching her teeth. Jake poured alcohol on the wound. She screamed, a short, raw cry. The skin around the injury was turning grey, the muscle rotting from the inside out. He could see black veins traversing her skin, spreading up her arm like a web of toxin. It was the mark of the hollowed, a rotting disease that killed the host before it infected, leaving a husk.
He wrapped it quickly, helplessly. The cloth and blood and pus‑soaked grey cloth soaked instantly. He knew it was a matter of time. The pills in the package, generic painkiller, were just a sad joke. He returned them to the package. They would do no good. He did have something. And now he understood the note’s meaning… the payoff.
He watched Echo. The animal trembled, his back curved in greasy, savage spasms. Black, foamy froth bubbled at his lips. His fur fell away in clumps, revealing raw, purple flesh. His bright, keen eyes, shining with steadfast light, were now obscured, a milk‑white film seeping across the irises. His joints twisted and snapped into unhealthful angles, the creak of his bones dry reeds.
“Echo,” Jake breathed, his voice trembling.
Karlynn sat beside him, her face unflinching. Paloma remained, a dazed, inaccessible expression. They all understood. The dog was not just dying. He was becoming one of them, the last vestige of real life, sullied.
Jake brought the gun up, his hands shaking. His finger travelled for the trigger. He couldn’t. Not he. Not his best friend. Karlynn did not say a word, but her silence was a command. She wanted him to pay. She wanted him to stop before it started. The whine swelled into a growl. Then it stopped. Echo lay in a twisted, ghastly sculpture. Jake lowered the gun, knowing what delay cost.
Just then, a sound drifted in from the street. A familiar, almost forgotten sound. Singing. A lullaby, a soft, fragile tune. It was a woman’s voice, coming from a few blocks over. They froze, listening.
A little girl’s voice said, “Mommy, I’m scared.
“It’s okay, sweetie, just sing with me.”
“Fools,” Karlynn hissed. “They’re out in the open. They’re making noise.”
The humming grew louder, calling to them like bait. Karlynn approached the door, looking over the shattered glass. Jake knew what was on her mind. They could get there before anyone else. They could grab the supplies and go. That wasn’t the plan of the world, though. The fee was theirs, a new one.
The singing stopped. It was replaced by the ringing scream of a hollowed. A scraping cry that promised an eternity of suffering. Another, and another, sang in harmony. A choir of madness. Shattering glass and wood came next, then screams. A man’s roar. A woman’s shriek of fear. The gruesome, agonizing scream of a child. It continued on and on, a deathly orchestra of terror.
Karlynn turned back to them, chalk‑white face. “They’re eating,” she breathed, and her voice was filled with a fear he never heard before. “There are more than one.”
They heard bones break and skin tear behind the cover they crouched behind. It was swift, efficient, inhuman. The screams stopped, replaced by the soft, satisfied whine of the hollowed.
“We have to leave,” Paloma whispered, shaking. “Now.”
They left Echo’s corpse behind, another reminder of the cost of hesitation. The three of them ran, not caring in which direction, only that they got away from that sound. They ran past smashed storefronts and overturned cars, footfalls pounding the cracked pavement.
The hollowed were closing in. Their humming louder, closer. Jake dared to look over his shoulder. Three of them, long arms and pale, hollowed‑out eyes, running on all fours. They moved too fast. He looked at Paloma, her white face a mask of pain, her arm hanging limply. He looked at Karlynn, her jaw set, her eyes wide with fright. They couldn’t outrun them.
They came to a standstill, a tall, red brick wall ahead.
Jake pulled the gun out of his jeans’ pocket, the Glock hard as a rock in his palm. He looked at the two of them. There was no other option. They were the ransom.
The first of the hollowed was a whirl of movement, leaping at them, its claws extended. Jake’s hand flashed up. He fired the gun. The shot was a cruel jolt in the quiet air. The hollowed fell, its chest torn open, its humming ended in a death rattle.
The rest stopped in their tracks, their heads cocked. They were staring at Jake but not at Jake. They were looking at Paloma and Karlynn. They were famished, and they knew who to eat.
Jake’s eyes darted back and forth, the gun still held on the creature on the ground. His heart thudded against his chest. The other two hollowed crept forward to surround them, their low, menacing snarls trembling in their throats. Two bullets. One each, maybe. But which? For Karlynn, who would send him gladly to his death to save herself? For Paloma, who was already dead from the poison running through her veins? Or for him? The last payoff. The gun was a brand in his hand, a final, horrifying choice.
He looked at Paloma. He looked at Karlynn. And he raised the gun, knowing what he had to do. The first fee was another family’s blood. The next, their dog. The final payment would be his own life.
