The morning came slowly and gray, a layer of mist clinging low across the fields and crumbling roads. The weak sunlight barely broke through the overcast sky, casting the world in hues of ash and silver. Inside his steel sanctuary beneath the overpass, Aiden stirred awake. The warmth of the sleeping bag no longer comforted him—it was a new day, and with it came new dangers and new chances.
He rose quietly, muscles stiff from yesterday's exertions. Stretching with a soft groan, Aiden reached for his gear and began the daily ritual of preparation. One by one, he strapped on his layers of survival: compression underlayers for mobility, followed by his reinforced tactical pants and jacket. His ballistic vest came next, now worn but still serviceable, fitted tightly against his chest. Over that, the modular tactical harness held his weapons, spare mags, and utility gear.
His fingers worked methodically as he equipped his gloves, wrapped his wrists with compression bands, and adjusted the quiver on his back. His composite longbow was strung and ready, checked for tension and wear. The M9 slid into its holster with a familiar weight at his thigh. The helmet went on last, the ballistic face shield flipped up as he finished gearing up. Only then did Aiden begin what he considered the most unpleasant, yet necessary step—applying the walker guts.
From a sealed bag near the entrance of the truck, he pulled out a gutted walker's innards he had collected and preserved. The stench was immediate—nauseating, rotting, sour—but he'd grown used to it. His face showed no flinch as he dipped a rag and smeared it across his jacket, his pants, and carefully along his boots. He avoided any open wounds, of course, and made sure not to touch his eyes or mouth. The disguise wasn't perfect, but it helped mask his scent from the undead. They things couldn't see well, but they could smell.
Once finished, Aiden locked down the truck from the inside, secured all points, and exited through the rear. With his map in hand, he plotted his course toward his next target: the wrecked military convoy just east of his current location, not more than a mile or so out. He had spotted it days ago—charred APCs, transport trucks, and Humvees scattered across a ruined stretch of highway. Smoke-blackened metal glinted under the morning light, and Aiden knew that where there were failed evacuations, there were often abandoned supplies.
Keeping low and hugging the treelines, Aiden began his trek.
The world was still except for the distant groans and the occasional crow call. Ruined cars lined the roads like metal corpses, overgrown with vines and rust. A few walkers wandered here and there, but they didn't notice him—his disguise was working.
Within thirty minutes, Aiden crested a small hill overlooking the convoy. From his vantage point, he could see the full scope of the wreck: a jackknifed tanker, two burned-out troop transports, and four humvees—two flipped on their sides, the others riddled with bullet holes. Sandbags and makeshift barricades littered the area, along with shattered crates and shredded canvas tents. A scorched American flag hung limply from a pole near a central command truck.
The smell of gunpowder, ash, and rot still clung to the air. Aiden crouched low, pulling out his binoculars, scanning the wreck for movement. Several walkers roamed the site—former soldiers in ragged uniforms and half-melted body armor. They staggered near the convoy, their forms twitching with that jerky, unnatural motion.
Aiden counted a dozen, maybe more, but they were scattered. He could work through them one at a time.
And so, with a deep breath, he descended toward the convoy like a shadow. The hunt was on.
Aiden crept through the underbrush like a whisper on the wind, his breath low, heartbeat steady. The burned remains of the military convoy loomed ahead, shrouded in mist and silence save for the occasional rustle of restless walkers. His boots moved over cracked asphalt and dry earth with deliberate grace, never stepping on glass or debris that might betray his position.
The first phase of his approach was observation. He took cover behind a rusted-out sedan, eyes darting between the still-moving bodies of former soldiers and unlucky civilians. The military walkers were his priority—they wore the gear he sought: tactical vests, helmet-mounted lights, combat medkits, and perhaps the most valuable of all, encrypted radios and keycards. But military walkers also meant Kevlar and reinforced clothing, making them harder to put down quickly without alerting others.
He needed precision.
Aiden picked up a loose rock nearby and lobbed it across the lot, letting it clatter against a steel barrier on the far side. Instantly, three of the walkers turned toward the noise—a pair of civilians in torn clothes, and one soldier whose fatigues were half-burned but still bore the mark of the National Guard.
As the trio shambled toward the sound, Aiden darted forward to intercept the soldier. Moving low and fast, he closed the distance and slammed the walker into the side of a Humvee with a muffled thud. Before the undead could groan, his combat knife slipped up and under the chin, pushing straight into the skull with practiced force. The soldier twitched once and went limp.
Aiden eased the body down, quickly rummaging through the gear: a working flashlight clipped to the shoulder strap, a field dressing kit, and a name tag: Sgt. H. Warren. He carefully unbuckled the tactical vest, folding it into his duffel, then dragged the body out of sight behind a stack of sandbags.
One down. Dozens to go.
He continued his grim dance through the convoy, using everything around him as tools. A smashed side-view mirror became a sound lure. A cracked walkie-talkie played a low hiss of static to draw two more walkers away. For each kill, Aiden used his knife—swift, clean, precise. He went for soft spots, the base of the skull or just beneath the jaw, minimizing mess and preserving gear.
One soldier had a partially melted helmet, but Aiden noticed the intact NVG mount and salvaged it. Another had a full mag of 5.56 rounds in a pouch strapped to a webbing harness. Yet another corpse yielded a working wristwatch and a GPS device, cracked but still blinking. Every piece mattered.
Civilian walkers he dealt with a little more liberally—he used a metal pipe for one, and his bow for others when he could afford the distance. Each kill rewarded him a quiet [Ding!] in his mind, the EXP counter steadily rising.
[+2 EXP][+2 EXP][+2 EXP][+3 EXP] — (Stealth kill on armored walker)
Hours passed like minutes, the convoy slowly falling silent as Aiden worked his way from the outer edges to the heart. The sun began to dip lower in the sky, casting long shadows across the highway. The final walker—a lieutenant judging by the tattered insignia on his sleeve—was pacing near a large, sealed supply crate. Aiden waited until it turned, then moved fast and low, springing up to deliver the final blow.
The corpse slumped to the ground. Another [Ding!] echoed.
Aiden took a deep breath, wiping his blade clean with a strip of ruined fatigues. The wreck was his now. He had earned this.
The rest of the afternoon was spent scouring the wreckage. Inside the command truck, he found locked storage drawers containing military-grade MREs, encrypted data drives, and a dusty case of signal flares. He pulled several unopened crates into a hidden ditch nearby and stashed them in his system inventory, one by one—ammo, painkillers, antiseptics, gun oil, and even a disassembled marksman rifle in foam padding.
By the time he returned to his hidden truck under the overpass, the last light of day had given way to creeping twilight.
Dirty, bloodstained, but alive and victorious, Aiden took one last look back at the convoy, now cleansed of walkers and stripped of every useful item. He slipped into the shadows with silent satisfaction.
Tomorrow, he'd plan his next move. Tonight, he would eat, clean his blade, and sleep beneath the stars, surrounded by the spoils of his quiet war.
Aiden continued with relentless efficiency, sweeping through the last remnants of the walker-infested convoy site. His movements had become an unbroken rhythm—sound, lure, strike, silence. Every kill was methodical, controlled, born of discipline and necessity rather than rage. He didn't waste energy, nor did he indulge in unnecessary brutality. It was survival in its purest form.
The final walkers were few, scattered among the husks of burned-out vehicles and overturned supply crates. Some were trapped—one caught beneath the twisted remains of a collapsed guard tower, another pinned in the cab of a semi-truck. They snarled and writhed, but Aiden approached each with careful deliberation, delivering the necessary kill with a quick puncture to the skull.
[Ding!][+2 EXP][+2 EXP][+2 EXP]
The system quietly acknowledged his work as the last groans of the dead gave way to total silence. The air around the convoy was still, thick with the faint stench of blood, rust, and fuel. Aiden straightened, scanning the clearing. No movement. No sound save for the low whisper of wind passing through the husks of destroyed military hardware.
He took a moment to breathe.
Standing atop a pile of debris near the convoy's command vehicle, Aiden surveyed his surroundings. The area had once been chaotic, swarming with threats. Now, it was his domain—cleared, stripped, secured. He had turned it from danger to opportunity.
He doubled back through the wreck, ensuring he'd missed nothing. The last sweep was focused and purposeful—checking between seats, under bodies, inside crushed compartments. He found a few more useful items: a blood-spattered duffel with unopened MREs, a sealed box of iodine tablets, a broken but salvageable hand-crank radio, and a fire-retardant blanket still folded in its plastic wrap.
Once everything of value had been gathered, Aiden returned to the central point of the convoy, now a staging area for his operation. There, under the fading light of dusk, he opened his system inventory and began transferring the last of his scavenged materials. The storage space accepted it all without complaint—tools, medical supplies, backup clothing, spare ammo, even a mounted LMG he'd disassembled from a scorched Humvee turret.
No inventory cap. No spoilage. No weight issues. This was Aiden's greatest asset—and his best-kept secret.
When the final items were stowed away, Aiden pulled his hood up and made his way back toward his truck, still hidden under the highway overpass. Along the way, he marked new landmarks on his hand-drawn map—routes cleared, areas worth rechecking, potential ambush points or rest spots.
By the time the stars were high above the broken world, Aiden had slipped back into his mobile fortress. The door sealed behind him with a heavy clang. Inside, he flicked on the red emergency light, giving the interior a dim, eerie glow.
His gear was dirty but intact. His hands bore the grime of battle, and his face—partially obscured by his new ballistic face shield—showed the kind of exhaustion that ran deeper than muscle and bone. He set his bow down gently and cleaned the combat knife with a practiced motion, then stripped off his outer layers and began tending to small cuts and bruises.
Dinner was quiet. A single MRE pack, heated and rationed carefully, while he reviewed the day's entries in his mental log. He updated the walker movement patterns, recorded the weapons cache locations, and reviewed the behavior of infected soldiers—how their armor shifted, where the vulnerabilities lay, how quickly they turned. These details mattered.
Then, as the night deepened, he climbed into the bolted-down bed at the back of the truck, locking the cabin once more. Outside, the apocalypse slumbered uneasily beneath the broken sky.
Inside, Aiden—silent, methodical, calculating—slept with one hand on his M9 and dreams full of maps, blood, and fire.
He had cleared the convoy.
The wrecked military convoy lay in eerie silence under the gray morning light, the torn flags and scorched metal skeletons standing as grim reminders of the chaos that had passed. Aiden, sweat slick on his brow and fatigue weighing heavy in his limbs, surveyed the area once more. The last of the infected—both military and civilian—had been silently taken down with calculated strikes. The air still stank of burnt rubber, oil, blood, and death, but at least now it was silent.
His stamina was nearly drained. Every swing of his blade, every stealthy maneuver, every kill had eaten away at his reserves. He couldn't afford to push further—not yet. He needed rest. Not just to recover SP, but to reset, to remain sharp.
Rather than risk the long trek back to his truck, he climbed into the nearest humvee that seemed structurally intact. Its reinforced doors groaned slightly but gave way as he pried one open. Inside, the stale air was thick, but manageable. The seats were rough canvas, and the interior bore the marks of frantic use—blood smeared along the dash, scattered shell casings on the floor, and an old helmet rolling to a stop beneath the passenger seat.
Aiden pulled the door shut behind him with a soft thud and immediately began securing the space. He reached into his system inventory and pulled out a roll of duct tape, using it to black out what was left of the cracked windows. He stuffed the smallest crevices with torn cloth to ensure no sliver of light could escape and draw attention. Then, taking no chances, he set up a rudimentary alarm system using some empty tin cans, fishing line, and a few small bells he'd looted days ago. One false move outside, and he'd hear it.
When that was done, he sat back in the driver's seat and exhaled deeply. He reached into the system once more and pulled out a canteen of water and a ration bar—dry, tasteless, but packed with calories. He bit into it mechanically, staring at the cracked windshield as if it were a window into some other life. The silence allowed his mind to drift.
How long had it been since the outbreak? Weeks? Months? The days blurred together now. The world before was a distant echo—one Aiden didn't mourn. He had never felt like he belonged in that world. Too loud. Too fake. Too full of lies and wasted time.
Here, in the aftermath, there was clarity.
He finished the ration and washed it down with a gulp of lukewarm water. Then he pulled a folded blanket from his system, laid it over himself, and reclined as best he could in the seat. He laid the M9 across his chest, safety off, finger resting on the edge of the trigger guard. His bow and a few arrows remained close by, just in reach.
The Humvee groaned quietly with the wind. Outside, the corpses lay still. The birds were long gone from this place. The distant thrum of the undead could be heard, but faintly—far enough for now.
Aiden closed his eyes, the exhaustion finally pulling him down into a shallow, alert sleep. Not peaceful. Never peaceful. But enough.
He would need the strength. Because soon, he'd press deeper into Atlanta. The remaining Safe Zones were ahead, and where there were Safe Zones, there was loot.
And where there was loot… There were possibly others.
As the last light of day slipped beneath the scarred horizon, Aiden stirred within the humvee. The rest had done its job—his stamina points slowly regenerated, the lingering aches in his arms and legs fading into the background. He rose with calculated purpose, pushing open the door of the humvee as the cool dusk air washed over him. The ruined military convoy lay before him, a graveyard of steel and bone illuminated faintly by the silver cast of the rising moon.
It was time to loot.
Methodically, he moved from vehicle to vehicle, checking doors, prying open compartments, and carefully cataloging everything of value. He found a few semi-functional radios—likely useless for communication now, but worth something for parts. In the back of one transport truck, he came across a cache of rations long forgotten: vacuum-sealed meal packs, purified water, and small bags of trail mix that had miraculously survived. All of it went into his system inventory.
The corpses were another matter. The stench was foul, but Aiden had long learned to stomach it. He wore a black tactical mask beneath his ballistic face shield—both to hide his scent and to spare himself from the overwhelming rot. Each body was looted with efficiency and detached pragmatism. He found worn military tags, small amounts of cash, dog-eared photographs, and the occasional sidearm with a few precious rounds still intact. A few intact utility knives and combat gloves. Ammunition. Mag pouches. Even a pair of night vision goggles, this time with both lenses functional—finally.
In one of the larger troop transports, he uncovered a half-empty crate of medical supplies: gauze, antiseptic wipes, morphine syrettes, even a surgical kit with tools still wrapped in sterile cloth. He loaded it all into the system, his mind already picturing how it could save his life later.
The dead had little use for their belongings now. Aiden, on the other hand, needed everything he could get.
By the time he finished, the stars had fully blanketed the sky. The convoy was now just a skeleton of what it had once been, its secrets stripped bare, its contents absorbed into Aiden's endless inventory. With a quiet nod to himself, he adjusted the sling of his bow over his shoulder and made his way back through the darkness.
Navigating the deserted outskirts of Atlanta by moonlight and memory, Aiden finally returned to the hidden overpass where he had stashed his customized apocalypse truck. The hulking beast of steel and bolted armor lay nestled beneath the concrete like a predator at rest. He approached cautiously, as he always did, checking for signs of tampering or nearby movement. All clear.
He climbed inside, locking the reinforced back entrance behind him with a satisfying click of multiple latches. The air inside smelled faintly of oil, leather, and iron—a scent he'd grown oddly accustomed to. Like home, in a way.
Without wasting time, Aiden removed his gear piece by piece, stacking it in an organized corner by his bolted-down weapon rack. He peeled away the ballistic mask, then cleaned his hands thoroughly with disinfectant wipes before preparing a quick meal: protein bar, some preserved meat, and a handful of nuts. Simple. Efficient. Just enough.
After eating, he cleaned his weapons—rifle, bow, and blade—and double-checked the condition of his scavenged loot. Finally, he lay back on the sturdy, sheet-metal-framed bed he had secured to the floor, adjusting the thin sleeping pad and tugging a thermal blanket over himself.
His last thoughts before sleep were of tomorrow.
The Safe Zones marked on his map were next.
What had once been bastions of hope were now nothing more than husks—but husks often held the most valuable remains. Guns. Armor. Intel. Maybe even working tech.
Aiden's eyes slipped closed.
Clean. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
This was the rhythm now.