Chapter 1401: Story 1401: The Night We Let Love In (Series HS: ZE15)
It started with a knock on the door.
Not the frantic pounding of the infected, not the desperate scratching that had beco a familiar soundtrack to survival — but a soft, uncertain knock. The kind that belonged to soone unsure if they were welco.
Mira froze, fingers still on the knife she’d just cleaned. The power had gone out hours ago, leaving the apartnt cloaked in shadows, lit only by the fading candlelight on the kitchen counter. She glanced toward the door, heart climbing into her throat.
Another knock. Then silence.
She moved slowly, the knife firm in her grip. The city had fallen five days ago — or maybe six. Ti no longer obeyed the clock. She hadn’t heard a human voice in days, only screams in the distance, the moaning of the undead, and the sickening squelch of flesh being torn apart. Whoever was knocking now… they were either lost or lying.
“Who is it?” her voice trembled, but held.
“It’s ,” ca the answer. And the world stopped.
It couldn’t be. But it was.
Aidan.
The man who had vanished without a word three months ago — when the outbreak was still a whisper and trust hadn’t yet beco a luxury. The man she had loved with a fire that still burned behind her ribs. She opened the door a crack.
He stood soaked in rain, hoodie clinging to his fra, eyes wide and desperate. There was blood on his hands, sared across his shirt — but not enough to say he’d turned. Not yet.
“Mira, please. I’ve nowhere else to go.”
Her mind scread to close the door. Lock it. Run. But her heart — the traitor — opened it instead.
Inside, he collapsed into the corner of the couch. He told her he’d been trying to reach her, that he’d been attacked, that he’d watched friends turn into monsters. He swore he hadn’t been bitten.
But as the night wore on, Mira watched the way his hands trembled. The way sweat blood across his forehead. The way his eyes flicked to her neck more than once.
She wanted to believe him. She needed to. But truth had beco as unreliable as the dying batteries in her flashlight.
At 3:17 a.m., she awoke to the sound of her bedroom door creaking open. He stood there, shirt off, skin pale and fevered, whispering her na in a voice that no longer sounded human.
And that’s when she saw it — the faint black veins climbing up his torso from his ribcage. The infection had already begun. He had known it when he knocked.
He hadn’t co for shelter.
He’d co to die… in her arms.
Or worse — to take her with him.
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