Chapter 1 - End of the world. Also, Tuesday

The world should end on a Monday.

There’s something honest about that. Brutal, yes, but clean. A Monday already has the emotional texture of damp socks and unpaid bills, so adding zombies feels less like a cosmic betrayal and more like management escalating a complaint.

Unfortunately, the world chooses Thursday at 6:17 p.m., while Maya Rodriguez is standing barefoot in her kitchen, trying to decide whether expired sour cream is a negotiable concept.

“It smells fine,” Dex says from behind her.

Maya looks at him over her shoulder.

Dex Hartley is twenty-nine, handsome in the irritating way of men who don’t know where the plunger lives, and currently holding a spoon like he’s about to conduct a scientific trial on dairy products from the back of the fridge.

“That’s not a defence,” Maya says. “That’s what people say before poisoning guests.”

“We don’t have guests.”

“Exactly. It would just be us. A murder-suicide via nachos.”

On the television, a news anchor says, “—reports of violent incidents across multiple districts—”

Maya turns.

Not because of the words. Words like violent incidents have been on the news forever, furniture in the corner while people keep eating dinner. But because of the anchor's face. He is smiling wrong.

Not happy. Not calm. Just professionally welded together while something behind his eyes kicks at the door.

Dex lowers the spoon.

The screen cuts to a phone video, shaky and vertical, because even at the end of civilisation, humanity refuses to turn the camera sideways. A man in a torn suit runs into traffic. Behind him, a woman with blood down her blouse tackles him so hard they disappear under the hood of a taxi. The camera drops. The sound keeps going.

Maya’s stomach goes cold.

Not fear yet. Fear has imagination. This is simpler. This is the body looking at something before the brain has agreed to name it.

She is, in most emergencies, insufferably prepared. She reads evacuation maps in hotel rooms. She owns batteries. She has opinions about duct tape brands. For this, she has exactly one half-bag of tortilla chips, expired sour cream, and a boyfriend asking questions like she's the customer support line for Armageddon.

Outside, sirens begin. Not one. Not two.

All of them.

Overlapping and frantic, a mechanical choir of absolutely not fine.

“Shoes,” she says. “Now.”

“What?”

“Shoes. Bags. Water. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving? Maya, they said stay indoors.”

“They also said violent incidents, Dex. That is news-anchor code for ‘we lost Steve in the parking lot and nobody wants to say bitten.’”

She yanks open the pantry and starts triage. Cans. Protein bars. Peanut butter. The good knife from the block, because if she dies holding the cheap bendy one, she is haunting herself first.

Seven floors down, the street has come apart. Cars sit crooked in the intersection. One is on fire, because of course one is. Mrs. Alvarez from 6B is on the sidewalk in her pink housecoat, swinging a grocery bag at a man trying to grab her arm.

The man lifts his head. His mouth is red. Mrs. Alvarez hits him with what appears to be a frozen chicken.

Maya has never admired another woman more in her life.

Then he lunges, and Maya is already moving. The armour snaps on.

***

The apartment door gives way behind them as they hit the fire escape. Hot air, smoke, the city burning in ugly patches. Nothing so cinematic as a grand blaze, just orange blooming block by block while sirens scream until they sound less like rescue and more like grief with a battery pack.

"Where are we going?" Dex pants somewhere below her.

"Away from here."

"Where's away?"

"Traditionally, not here."

His voice goes small. Scared in a way that punches through her irritation and finds the soft place she keeps locked in a box labelled Later, Maybe, After Coffee.

Dex is not built for fast collapse. He is built for asking what everyone wants on pizza and remembering her mother's birthday. He is kind, in an inconsistent way. Funny when nobody needs him to be brave.

And Maya loves him. God help her, she loves him enough to be annoyed that he is making her feel it during a municipal emergency.

“We get to the stairwell,” she says, gentler. “We avoid crowds. We get to my car if we can. If not, we head east on foot. Your brother’s cabin is two hours out.”

“Three with traffic.”

She glances toward the street, where a car horn begins blaring and does not stop. "I'm going to be optimistic and assume traffic law has resigned."

They make the fire escape. Then the alley. Then the street. Behind them, the apartment does what apartments do at the end of the world — it stops being theirs.

Dex keeps asking where they're going. Maya keeps moving. At some point she grabs his face with both hands, forces his eyes to hers.

"I need you with me. Questions later. Running now."

For half a second he is the man she loves. Present. Frightened. Trying.

He nods.

Maya lets go and runs.

"Thursday," she mutters, as smoke rolls over the skyline.

Dex looks at her. "What?"

"The world ends on a Thursday."

Something screams from inside the building above them.

Maya starts climbing down.