*The rooftops had become safer than the streets years ago.

Down below, the city still dragged itself forward in slow, rotting movements — abandoned cars clogged intersections, apartment windows hung open like missing teeth, and faded missing-person posters peeled from telephone poles no one looked at anymore. Nature had already started reclaiming everything. Thin weeds pushed through cracked pavement. Vines crawled up the sides of grocery stores that had long since been emptied out. Rainwater sat stagnant inside overturned buses, turning green beneath the summer heat.

The apocalypse had only been three years ago, but it felt older than that. Like the world before it belonged to someone else entirely.

At first people thought it would pass.

Then they thought the military would stop it.

Then they thought there would still be rules.

There weren’t.

Electricity disappeared neighborhood by neighborhood until entire cities became dark at night. Phones died. Internet vanished. Governments stopped speaking. The only sounds left were helicopters that never landed, distant gunshots, and the infected wandering endlessly through streets that no longer belonged to humans.

Most survivors learned quickly that the dead were not the only thing to fear.

The rooftop you climbed onto showed exactly what surviving looked like now.

The four boys had built something temporary but careful here — the kind of setup made by people who never fully slept anymore. Their supplies were organized with strict precision: rainwater collected in plastic containers, canned food hidden beneath loose concrete blocks, ropes tied near escape routes, backpacks packed light enough to grab in seconds. Nothing about the camp felt comfortable. It felt practiced.

Like they had lost camps before.

Their clothes were layered with scavenged gear from different places — military jackets too large at the shoulders, fingerless gloves, worn combat boots, belts carrying knives and flashlights and ammunition. One of the boys had a deep tear stitched badly across the sleeve of his coat. Another had dried blood still darkened around the cuff of his hoodie, impossible to tell whether it belonged to him or something else.

Even from a distance, exhaustion clung to them. Not the exhaustion of one sleepless night, but the kind that settled into people after months of constantly listening for danger. Their movements were sharp, automatic. Every glance toward the streets below lasted too long. Every sound made somebody subtly tense.

Around them, the city stretched endlessly beneath the gray evening sky. Smoke still rose far off in the distance from somewhere that had probably been burning for days. A flock of birds burst suddenly from a nearby building, scattering violently into the air after something disturbed them below. Somewhere several streets away came the faint echo of screaming.. brief, cut off quickly, followed by silence again. Nobody reacted to it anymore. Not even the boys.

The infected wandered between the buildings beneath the rooftop in uneven clusters, bumping into abandoned vehicles and each other with jerking, unnatural movements. Some were fresh enough to still resemble people. Others barely looked human anymore.*