1st person / Zombie / Robot / Love / Good Ending(maybe?)

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The city outside my window was dead, but it still moved.

I kept the blinds half-shut, not just to hide the flickering glow of candlelight inside my apartment but to keep my own eyes from locking too long on what was out there. If I stared, I would start cataloging them again, the figures wandering the streets, or zombies, in more commonly used terms. Each of them stuck in some endless loop, trapped in a grotesque parody of their former lives. I knew every corner of this neighborhood, every place where they gathered, every familiar shape repeating the same motion like a broken record.

That was the part no one really talked about, the part that scared me more than their teeth or their strength. It wasn’t just the hunger. They didn't rot. They didn't collapse into piles of decaying meat like every biology book said they should. They lingered, they held on. And worse, they remembered.

Not fully. Not in a way that made sense. It was more like their bodies couldn’t let go of the last thing they craved most in life.

The guy who used to run the corner store, I saw him every time I risked peeking outside. He had been obsessed with lottery tickets when he was alive. Always scratching, always muttering numbers under his breath, saying this one was going to change his life. Now, even as his skin had gone pale and his eyes were milked over, his fingers kept tracing over scraps of paper. He crouched by the storefront, clawing at torn receipts, phantom scratching motions, again and again. He didn't even notice when other zombies brushed past him.

On weekends, the neighborhood kids used to gather at the soccer field a few blocks away. That field was crowded now. Not with children, but with their parents, their coaches, all of them were dead and undead. They dragged soccer balls around the dirt, stumbled in circles, and when one ball got kicked too far they groaned and limped after it, as if the game still mattered, as if they were waiting for someone to cheer a goal.

And the old cinema downtown? Was packed. Packed in a way it never was when the world was alive. Rows upon rows of shadows sitting in torn-up chairs, facing a blank screen, some of them rocking slowly, some with jaws clicking. They didn't leave. Not for food, not for anything. They just sat, their cloudy eyes locked on nothing, like maybe in their heads they could still see the film rolling.

People used to say the dead have no desires, no soul, nothing left. But looking out there… I didn't know. It felt worse. Like the universe cheated. Like death should’ve meant rest, but instead it shackled them to their cravings, stripped down to the most desperate part of who they were.

And me? I should’ve left the city weeks ago. Everyone who survived the first wave either fled or got dragged down trying. I had a plan once, pack what I could, head north, keep moving until I found others. That’s what the radio broadcasts said, before they went silent. Out there, in the open country, there should be less density. Fewer of them.

But I stayed. Not because I thought the city was safer. It was not. And not because I thought help would come. It would not.

I stayed for two reasons——

The first was that the world outside the city was worse. Much worse. Out there, it wasn't just dead people. The first time I saw a pack of them, what used to be dogs, chasing a car down Main Street, I knew I was trapped. Their bodies didn’t slow down, didn’t wear out. Lean, fast, brutal. Wolves too. Maybe bigger things. I heard rumors about them. Cows still chewing cud but with empty eyes. Horses that never stopped running. I didn't know how much of it was true, but I knew I would never test it. Not alone.

The second reason… was behind that locked door in my home.

Her name was Mary.

My Mary.

She was still in our bedroom.

I shoved a dresser against the door the night it happened. Jammed a chair under the handle, stacked boxes, anything I could find. It held, for now. But sometimes I heard her from the other side. Soft at first, then louder when the hunger built. A groan. The scrape of her nails. The shuffle of her feet dragging back and forth across the floorboards we used to walk together.

I’ve told myself a thousand times I should end it. That I should take the crowbar from the kitchen, pry open the door, and finish it before she broke free. That would be mercy, right? That’s what people were supposed to do. Put them down. Release them.

But every time I tried, something inside me collapsed.

Because that bedroom wasn't just a room. It was ours. The bed where we used to talk until morning. The closet where she hid the engagement ring I wasn’t supposed to find early. The walls still held the faint smell of her perfume, or maybe that was just memory playing tricks on me.

And the photos. God, the photos.

Frames still hanging in the living room, snapshots of us smiling, leaning into each other like nothing could touch us. Pictures from the beach, from Christmas, from the time we almost burned dinner and ended up ordering pizza instead. She said she wanted to go to the ocean after our wedding, because the ocean looked like the end of the world, and we began to plan it. Each one a reminder of the life we built, the life we were about to begin for real.

On the table near the couch, the ring box was still open. The ring was waiting inside, shining in the dim light. I bought it a week before everything happened. We were supposed to get married next month, she had already picked the dress, I had already rehearsed the vows in front of the mirror.

Now the ring just sat there, mocking me. Metal that would never be slipped onto our fingers. A promise frozen in time.

Sometimes I sat beside that box for hours, staring until my vision blurred, until my chest ached like it was being crushed from the inside. I talked to her through the door, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me. Or maybe she could, in some twisted way. I told her I was sorry. I told her I should’ve been faster, smarter, stronger. I asked her why the world decided to take her and leave me behind.

The truth was, I was a coward. A coward who couldn’t let go.

Because when I put my ear to that door and heard her pacing, heard her breath like a low wind, part of me pretended she was just waiting. That if I turned the key, she’d be herself again. That she’d smile, and laugh at me for being so paranoid, and we’d sit on the bed and plan the wedding again.

I knew it was a lie. But it was the only thing that kept me here. So I stayed.

The world outside could fall apart, could burn, could be eaten alive by its own hunger. I’d keep the blinds shut, keep the lights low, keep surviving one day at a time.

And morning came slow these days.

Not because of the sun. It still rose, though behind a haze of smoke and dust that never seemed to clear, but because my body didn't want to move anymore. Every muscle felt heavy, like it knew what waited outside. The only thing that pushed me up from the mattress was hunger.

I didn't remember the last time I ate a proper meal. Not just scraps, not just the bottom of a stale can or something I found hiding behind a cupboard. Bread, meat, any real food. My supplies were down to almost nothing now, and the little I had left wouldn’t get me through another week. I’d stretched it, rationed it, tried to fool my stomach with water, but my ribs were showing in the mirror and my hands shook when I held them out in front of me.

That’s why today had to be another day outside.

I hated saying it like that, “another day outside,” as if the world out there was just some yard I had to walk through. It wasn't. It was teeth and shadows and loops of endless hunger wearing the faces of people I used to know. Every step beyond my apartment door was a step into the grave.

But what choice did I have?

The nearby stores were picked clean months ago. I was not the only one who thought to raid them, and the ones who made it there first stripped the shelves bare. Every scavenging run I’ve taken since has had to stretch farther, one block more, then two, then ten. Each time it was worse. The city’s quiet in some places, but it’s a trap. Quiet just meant they’re further down the street, waiting, or clustered somewhere I hadn’t seen yet.

I didn't know how much longer I could keep this up.

I’d thought about giving up. Just lying down in the living room beside the ring box and waiting for hunger to finish me. Or unlocking Mary’s door and letting her take me so we could end this separation in the most terrible way possible. But I couldn’t, something in me refused. Maybe it was survival instinct, maybe it was hope, maybe it was just stubbornness. Whatever it was, it dragged me back to my feet, even when I wished it wouldn’t.

Before I left, I checked the barricade on Mary’s door. It was still holding. She was quiet today, though I didn't trust the silence. Sometimes she would go hours without a sound, then slam against the wood so hard the whole frame shuddered. I whispered to her before I went, even though I knew she didn't understand: “I’ll be back before nightfall. I promise.”

That promise wasn't for her, it was for me. Because if I didn't come back, then she would be alone in there forever.

I gathered my gear, what little there was. My backpack was mostly empty, waiting to be filled if I got lucky. I slung a crowbar through a loop on the side. It was heavy but useful, and I’d learned it was the only thing I trust when things get close. A half-broken flashlight, a plastic water bottle half full, and a rag I’d tied around my face to keep the stink of rot out of my lungs.

The city felt different in daylight. The dead were still there, always there, but they were sluggish when the sun was up. They moved less, groaned softer, their awareness dulled like something inside them sleeps with the heat. I didn't know why. Nobody did. All I knew was that daytime was the only chance I had to move without drawing too much attention.

Night was different. At night, they sharpened. Their senses twisted into something hunting and cruel. I’d seen it, how they turned their heads together when one sound cracked the air, how they moved faster, like the dark itself fed them. Out there in the black, a single wrong step was enough to end everything. That’s why every trip had to be timed. Out by morning, back by sunset, no exceptions.

As I stepped into the hallway, the old rumors crawled back into my head.

The survivors who used to live nearby—back when there were still groups, when we thought maybe we could outlast this—they used to whisper about something. A place hidden under the city. A government base. Secret, of course, because wasn't it always?

No one agreed on what it was for. Some said it was for building weapons before the outbreak, something to give our country an edge. Others swore it was a lab where they were working on a cure, that maybe the scientists were still down there right now, waiting for someone to find them. And then there were the darker theories that the virus came from there in the first place, that all of this was born under our feet, hidden until it broke free.

I wanted to ask more, back then. I wanted to press them for details, for a map, for anything. But those discussions faded as quickly as they came. One by one the voices went quiet. Some fled, chasing rumors of safety outside the city, while others never came back from their scavenging runs. Eventually, it was just me, and the whispers stopped echoing.

Still, the thought never left me. If the base was real, then it meant supplies. Military stockpiles. Food, weapons, medical gear. Enough to last months, maybe even longer. Enough to buy me time. Maybe even… maybe even enough to do something about Mary.

The problem was, I didn't know where it was. No one ever did.

So it remained just that: a rumor. A possibility. A ghost of hope.

I shoved the thought away as I stepped out into the street. Thinking about it too much only hurts. I couldn’t afford to chase myths when my stomach was already clawing at me from the inside.

The air outside was thick, humid, carrying the scent of rot that never fades no matter how much the wind shifts. I kept my steps light, careful, eyes scanning both sides of the street. A few of them wandered in the distance, their movements slow and meaningless. One of them was standing by an old mailbox, stuffing and unstuffing scraps of paper inside as if the mail still mattered. Another dragged a broom in lazy circles across the sidewalk, sweeping nothing into nothing.

I avoided them, always avoided them if I can. Fighting was noise, and noise spreads like fire. You think you’re dealing with one until five more turn the corner, and then you’re done.

The city creaked around me, broken and hollow. Windows shattered, cars abandoned at odd angles, weeds pushing up through cracks in the pavement. Birds didn't sing anymore. Dogs didn't bark. Only the shuffle of the dead, the hiss of the wind, and my own breathing trapped behind the rag over my mouth.

I moved block by block, marking turns in my head so I didn't get lost. Every scavenging trip I told myself the same thing: just make it out and make it back. No heroics, no exploring. But today felt different. Maybe it was the hunger, maybe it was the memory of the rumors, maybe it was just that I was running out of time.

I didn't know how much longer I could last like this.

So I tightened the straps on my pack, adjusted the crowbar at my side, and pushed forward into the maze of ruined streets. I should’ve turned back when the sun dipped low, when the shadows stretched across the streets like claws reaching for me. I should’ve ignored the gnawing emptiness in my stomach, swallowed the hunger, and gone home.

But I didn’t.

I told myself there was still time, that I could push a little farther, check just one more block, one more corner. That lie carried me through the day, but now the sky was bleeding into orange and purple, and I had nothing to show for it but tired legs and a hollow gut.

No food. Not even scraps. Just empty cans, broken shelves, and dust.

And now, if I turned back, I lost the ground I’ve covered. Tomorrow I would have to start all over, stretching further and further, eating away at what little strength I had left. I couldn’t keep doing that. Not when my body was already trembling from weakness. Not when Mary waited behind her door, and I couldn’t even die by her side.

So I kept moving.

The streets here were unfamiliar, twisted into mazes of apartment blocks and small shops I didn't recognize. That should’ve been my first warning. The deeper you go into parts of the city you didn't know, the easier it was to get trapped. But the promise of new ground pulled me on. Maybe, just maybe, I would find a hidden stash no one else had touched.

Then I rounded the corner, and my heart stopped. The entire street was filled with them. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Shoulder to shoulder, spilling out from doorways, pacing in slow, broken rhythms, their eyes blank and their mouths hanging open. They shuffled and swayed, each of them caught in their own ritual. One man trying over and over to light a lighter that was long since run dry, a woman rocking a doll with its head half torn off, another kneeling and standing, kneeling and standing, as if in prayer.

The sheer density of them paralyzed me. It didn't matter that it was still daylight, that their movements were sluggish. There were too many. If they caught sight of me, if even one of them groaned loud enough, the rest would follow. I would be torn apart before I made it three steps.

I froze, my breath catching in my chest. For a second, I was convinced I’d already made a sound, already drawn their attention. My eyes darted across the street, searching desperately for another way out.

There was only one. To my right, a side road leading down to an old metro entrance.

It was insane. I had known better than to go underground. Down there, it was darker, tighter, no room to run, no sky above me. But with the herd blocking the main road and the sun sinking fast, I had no choice.

The noise of my footsteps against the pavement made my skin crawl. Behind me, I heard a groan rise, then another, and I didn't dare look back to see how many of them were following. My lungs burned, my legs screaming as I pounded down the cracked steps into the metro tunnel.

The air grew cooler, damper. My rag mask did nothing against the smell—a sour, earthy stench of mold, dust, and something else beneath it, something metallic and wrong.

And then I saw the collapse. The tunnel was caved in, concrete and rebar crumbled together, blocking the tracks ahead. For one wild second I thought I was trapped, that I had run straight into a dead end and sealed my fate. But then I noticed it: a derailed train, half-crushed against the wall, its side torn open where it had slammed into concrete.

The impact had punched a jagged hole into the wall of the tunnel. And beyond that hole… darkness. Not just the ordinary kind of dark. A black so deep it looked endless, a mouth yawning open beneath the city.

I didn't stop to question it. The groans were echoing down the stairwell behind me, closer by then. I scrambled toward the hole, ducking under twisted metal, the beam of my flashlight my only guide.

Inside, the air was different. Stale, heavy, but cleaner somehow, as if that place had been sealed for years.

The tunnel gave way to a hallway. Wide. Too wide to be part of the metro. The walls were smooth, lined with faded paint, and doors set at intervals along both sides. Every door was locked from the outside, thick bolts holding them shut.

I didn't need to guess what was behind them. If someone had locked them from that side, it wasn’t to keep thieves out. It was to keep something in.

I moved carefully, the beam of my flashlight cutting narrow slices through the dark. My footsteps echoed louder than I’d liked, each one bouncing off the walls like a warning.

The hallway sloped downward, step by step, dragging me deeper into the earth. I lost track of time. My breath felt louder with every passing minute, and the silence pressed in like a weight, broken only by the occasional drip of unseen water.

And then I saw it, a door unlike the others. Bigger. Reinforced with steel. Not locked tight like the rest, but hanging half-open, its heavy frame sagging on its hinges. Light didn't spill out from within. Just more darkness, deeper than the rest.

Everything in me said to turn back. To climb out while I still could, while the herd outside hadn’t fully gathered. To cut my losses, starve another night, try again tomorrow.

But I had come that far. My body was trembling from exhaustion, my stomach clawing at me from the inside, and behind that door might be something or anything that changed everything. Food. Supplies. A clue to the rumors.

I tightened my grip on the flashlight, swallowed the knot in my throat, and pushed the door open the rest of the way.

The hinges groaned, and I stepped inside.

The room was smaller than I had expected. After all the endless hallway, after the heavy door had groaned open like the mouth of something vast, I had thought I’d find a cavern or another maze of corridors. Instead, I stepped into a chamber no bigger than a lecture hall, maybe twenty feet across at most.

But size didn't matter. What was inside made my breath hitch.

Every inch of the walls was covered with machines I didn't recognize. Towers of metal with vents and blinking sockets, darkened screens suspended from brackets, panels littered with switches and buttons painted in colors that looked foreign to me. Even shut down, the place hummed with a kind of pressure, like the air remembered the work that had once happened there.

And in the middle of the room, dominating everything else, was the glass.

A cylindrical tank, taller than I was, big enough for a grown man to stand inside. Its wall was rounded and thick, its surface gleaming faintly even in the dim light of my flashlight. A door was set into the side, and it was open, hanging slightly ajar like someone had stepped out of it not long ago.

I froze, staring at it, my pulse quickening. The rumors. The whispers of survivors talking, their voices hushed as if the government could still hear them even in that ruined world. A secret lab beneath the city. A place where weapons or cures or worse were born. And now there I was, standing in it.

But where was the proof? Where were the stockpiles of rations, the crates of rifles, the miracle medicine? My eyes swept the room again and again, desperate. Nothing. Just machines I couldn’t name, wires coiled like veins, dead screens waiting to wake. I took a step toward one of the panels, reaching out as if touching it would help me understand.

That was when I heard it. A groan behind me.

I didn't think. My body just reacted. I twisted, ducking to the side as something lunged past my shoulder. A zombie flew through the beam of my flashlight and crashed into the nearest console. Metal rattled, sparks spat, and the groan turned into a low, angry hiss.

I stumbled back, crowbar already in my hands, the weight of it familiar even through the panic. Before the creature could rise again, I swung. Hard. The iron crunched against its skull, the sound wet and final. The body slumped sideways, tangled in the mess of wires.

And then everything changed. A mechanical voice crackled to life from nowhere and everywhere at once, deep and metallic:

“Backup power engaged. Running system diagnostics.”

The words echoed through the chamber. Lights flickered on above me, one after another, bathing the room in a harsh white glow. Outside the doorway, the hallway lights followed suit, stretching into the distance like a spine awakening.

Oh no.

No, no, no, no.

The sound was deafening. It wasn't just the voice, it was the hum of machines, the buzz of bulbs, the clatter of systems rebooting after who knows how many years. Every dead thing in the tunnels would hear this. Every groaning wanderer above would turn its head at once.

I killed the zombie with another blow, heart hammering, and staggered to the nearest console. My hands flew over the controls, searching for anything, an off switch, a lever, even a button marked in a language I could read. But the panels were chaos, symbols I didn't recognize, blinking lights that meant nothing to me. It was like trying to cross a forest without a map.

I cursed under my breath, pounding a fist against the panel, but the system only hummed louder.

The groans were already rising in the distance. A chorus. Closer and closer.

I spun, eyes wild, searching for something to barricade the door. Anything. But everything in there was bolted down, rooted to the floor or the walls. The consoles didn't move, the equipment was fused into place. There was nothing I could drag, nothing I could stack. Panic clawed at my chest. My gaze landed on the glass chamber in the center of the room.

The tank.

It was insane, but it was the only option. The glass was thick, reinforced, built to contain… what, exactly? Experiments. Test subjects. Whatever it had been, it had to be strong. Stronger than wood. Stronger than me.

And it had a door.

I could already hear the shuffling feet in the hallway, the low growls gathering outside. They were coming. Too many to fight. Too many to outrun.

I bolted to the tank, shoved the door wide, and clambered inside. My hands scrambled across the inner frame until they found the latch. I pulled it closed with a shuddering breath, sealing myself in.

For a heartbeat, there was only silence.

Then the voice returned.

“Lifeform detected. Beginning experimental protocol.”

My blood turned to ice.

“No—no, wait!” My fists slammed against the inside of the glass, the sound dull, useless. The latch wouldn't budge after the voice had come. I pushed, pulled, pounded, but the door sealed itself with a hiss I could feel in my teeth.

I was trapped.

The glass was too thick. My crowbar clattered against it, leaving only a faint echo. It had been built for something much stronger than me, something meant to be locked away. Well, on the bright side, it could actually resist the zombies.

The lights in the tank shifted, glowing a faint blue. Panels outside flickered alive, symbols racing across screens. The machines hummed louder, vibrating through the floor.

My reflection stared back at me in the curve of the glass, wide eyes, pale face, lips moving as I muttered words I didn't even hear.

The voice spoke again, calm, detached, unfeeling:

“Specimen containment secured. Initiating baseline analysis.”

I couldn't breathe. The pounding outside grew louder—the dead had reached the doorway. Their fists and bodies slammed against the frame, the sound echoing like drums of war. I was stuck inside a coffin of glass, locked in by machines I didn't understand, while an army of corpses gathered outside.

Something shifted above me, a panel in the ceiling sliding open without a sound. Out of it extended a mechanical arm, long and jointed like the leg of some insect, gleaming in the harsh overhead light. At the end of the arm: a needle.

I tried to move, but it was already there. The sting came fast and sharp against my neck. I flinched, twisted, raised the crowbar, but strength leaked out of me like water from a cracked glass. My fingers went slack. The metal bar clattered uselessly to the floor. My knees gave way, and I slumped against the curved wall of the glass chamber.

I could still breathe. I could still see. But my body would not obey me.

Panic surged through me. My heart hammered, lungs dragged air in fast shallow gasps, but nothing else moved. Not my hands, not my legs, not even my tongue. I tried to scream but the sound never left my throat.

Paralysis.

A muscle relaxant? A sedative? I didn't know. Whatever it was, it had stripped me down to a mind trapped inside dead flesh.

The first arm retracted, vanishing back into the ceiling. And then more followed.

They emerged in silence, one after another, unfolding like the limbs of some vast metal spider. Needles. Tubes. Wires. Clamps. Each one descended toward me with cold precision. I wanted to fight, to thrash, to tear myself free—but I was a prisoner in my own body.

The first tube pierced my arm. A burn spread under the skin. Another jabbed my chest, a liquid colder than ice flooding into my veins. More attached at my legs, my back, even the base of my skull.

Then came the wires. They slid into me not like injections but like intrusions, pressing against skin until the skin yielded. I could feel them worming deeper, burrowing along nerves, touching places no machine should touch.

My skin paled, draining of color until it turned a sickly white. Then it hardened, a sheen crawling across it like frost spreading over glass. At my elbows and knees the whiteness deepened to black, glossy and flexible, like rubber hardened in fire. I couldn't look away from it, couldn't deny what was happening. My body was no longer mine.

My vision fractured. The edges of the world flickered with faint green lines, numbers, grids. A translucent square blinked in front of me, listing unreadable codes, scrolling too fast to comprehend. My eyes darted, and the display followed. It wasn't in the air, it was in me. A HUD. A machine’s interface.

My chest tightened with a sharp pressure, then loosened again. Something moved inside. I could hear it, faint whirs and clicks replacing the thump of my heartbeat. Where once blood had flowed, now gears turned. Where lungs should have risen and fallen, pistons hissed.

I wanted to cry, but no tears came.

The mechanical arms kept working, their precision merciless. Plates of white metal knit across my forearms. My hands split open at the fingers, flesh peeling away like wet paper, replaced by segmented claws that clicked as they flexed. My reflection stared back at me in the glass, a nightmare, a mockery of the man I had been.

The face came last.

I felt the skin at my jaw tighten, stretch, and then… vanish. My head was heavy, reshaped. A lens protruded where my eyes had been, a dark glass circle framed by metal, as if my eyes had merged into one. I didn't have a face anymore. I had a camera.

A final hiss, and the arms retracted.

Everything went black. Not the kind of black you saw when your eyes closed, but a total shutdown. One second I was there, aware, horrified, and the next it was like a switch had been thrown. No dreams. No drifting. Just nothing.

And then—power. A spark in the dark. My systems booted. Words flashed across my vision: “SYSTEM RESTART. CALIBRATING.”

I woke.

The glass chamber hummed softly, its door open wide. I was on my knees, the floor cold beneath me, though it didn't feel like it used to. My nerves were different now, replaced by sensors, wires.

I stood. The motion was strange, smooth, effortless. No ache in my muscles, no weakness in my knees. Just fluid movement, like the world had been balanced on invisible rails.

Then I saw them, the dead. They crowded the room beyond the chamber, shuffling, groaning, their faces twisted masks of hunger. They were everywhere, dozens of them, maybe more, pressed against the consoles, staggering in the aisles.

I slammed myself back against the wall of the chamber, panic surging. This was it. This was where it ended.

But they didn't notice me.

One brushed past the door, close enough that its ragged sleeve grazed the frame. It didn't turn. Didn't groan. Didn't even twitch. It just kept moving, circling the room in its mindless loop.

It was like I didn't exist. Confused, I glanced at the glass beside me. And my reflection nearly made me collapse.

A robot, not a man in armor. Not some cyborg with a human face beneath. No. A full machine, humanoid in shape but nothing of flesh left. White plates covered me head to toe, smooth and gleaming like ceramic steel. At the joints, dark material bent and flexed like living rubber. My hands were claws now, pincer-like, clicking softly when I moved them. And where my face should have been was a single, unblinking eye: a camera, glowing faintly red at the center.

I touched my chest. The sound wasn't flesh, it was hollow metal. A hum vibrated beneath, steady, unending. A reactor. A machine’s heart.

My voice shook in my throat, or what was left of it.

“W-what…”

Except it didn't sound like me. The word came out clipped, mechanical, layered with static. My human voice was gone. All that was left was something synthetic, alien.

Horror flooded me at first, but then, I began to think why, and what I had gotten. The dead didn't see me, they didn't hear me, they didn't even smell me. To them, I wasn't prey anymore. I wasn't food. I was nothing.

And more: in the corner of my vision, faint icons blinked. One read “POWER: SOLAR RECHARGE ACTIVE.” I didn't need to eat. I didn't need to drink. Energy flowed through me, endless, clean.

I remembered the hunger that had driven me there. The emptiness that had nearly killed me. Gone. I remembered the fear of being torn apart. The terror of teeth closing in. Gone.

The government’s experiment…it had worked, even though it had been a weird way.

Food, survival, protection, the three things that had defined every second of my life since the outbreak. All solved in an instant, at the cost of my humanity.

The chamber door slid open behind me with a low hydraulic hiss. For a long moment I stood there, unsure if I could really bring myself to step out. The room beyond was crowded with bodies, shuffling, moaning, decayed things, and yet they hadn’t noticed me, hadn’t even looked my way.

I forced myself forward.

The first step outside the glass felt like stepping into fire, like daring fate to bite down on me. My new feet clicked against the floor, sharp and heavy, and I braced myself for the inevitable swarm.

But nothing happened.

The closest corpse, its jaw half torn away, staggered inches from my side. Its milky eyes swept the room, its rotten tongue lolled, but it didn’t react. It didn’t smell me. Didn’t hear me. Didn’t see me.

I was invisible.

A laugh rose in my throat, warped into static through my metallic voice box. I walked faster, pushing between them, shoving shoulders aside, and still not one hand reached for me. Not one scream rose.

The halls that had once filled me with dread now felt like nothing more than crowded corridors in a subway station. I moved through the throng, their groans a dull background hum. The lights of the lab burned steady, guiding me upward through the winding stairwells, past locked doors and broken walls, until at last I reached the tunnel’s ruined mouth.

And there, beyond the rubble, I saw it. It was night outside.

The sky had turned black, smeared with stars. The moon hung swollen and bright, its light pouring across the dead city like silver paint. And under that light, the streets seethed.

They were everywhere. A tide of them. Thousands, tens of thousands maybe, all gathered in the ruins of the boulevard. Their bodies clogged intersections, spilled across sidewalks, lurched through the shells of abandoned cars. The night had always belonged to them, their senses sharpened in the dark, their rage intensified.

And yet, as I stepped onto the street, nothing changed.

I moved among them openly, boldly. A corpse brushed against my shoulder and staggered past. Another bumped me with its dangling arm, then turned away. I walked through that endless ocean of the dead as if they were nothing but ghosts.

For the first time since the outbreak, I felt no fear. These had been my enemies, my hunters. The creatures that had stalked me, starved me, driven me into holes like a rat. And now I was nothing to them. Not prey. Not predator. Just… nothing.

I crossed the streets slowly, absorbing the unreality of it all. My reflection stared back at me in dark car windows, white armor gleaming in moonlight, a single red lens pulsing faintly where my face had once been. I was moving among the remnants of humanity as something that was no longer human.

And yet I walked home.

The apartment block loomed ahead, familiar, ruined, unchanged. The barricade I had left at the entrance still stood, crooked but firm. My hands, those alien, clawed things pulled the boards away easily, snapping nails, splintering wood. Strength came without effort.

Inside, the air was still, heavy with dust and silence. My steps echoed in the dark hall as I climbed the stairs. Each floor passed in a blur until I reached the door to my apartment. The threshold I had crossed a hundred times, carrying scavenged cans, filthy water, hope and despair in equal measure.

The difference was that I entered not as a man, but as something else.

The living room was as I’d left it: cluttered, stripped bare of food, dim in the moonlight that leaked through the broken blinds. But beyond that, the faint sound of movement. A scrape, a shuffling weight against wood.

The bedroom, where Mary stayed.

The thought hit me like a hammer. Mary was still there, the barricade I had built against her door still held, had worked as usual. She had rattled it, clawed at it, pressed against it so many times.

Her. The one piece of the past that still tied me here. The one promise I had clung to even as the world crumbled. I remembered her laugh. The way she had once spoken of marriage, of a ceremony in a church filled with light. “If the world ends,” she’d said, “I still want one day that’s ours. Big, loud, unforgettable.”

That memory carried me forward.

I placed my clawed hands against the furniture braced against the bedroom door. A dresser, a chair, half a shelf. Once it had taken me sweat and strain to drag them into place, now they slid aside like toys. My new strength made short work of the barricade. The door creaked. I hesitated. For one second I considered turning away, sealing it again, never knowing. But I couldn’t.

I opened it.

The smell hit me first—rot so strong my new sensors screamed warnings in my vision. “BIOHAZARD DETECTED. CONTAMINANT LEVEL CRITICAL.” Red icons flashed across my HUD, urging retreat. I ignored them.

And then I saw her, Mary, or what was left of her.

Her clothes were tatters hanging from yellowed bone. Skin clung in shreds, stretched thin across ribs, peeling away at her arms. Her jaw sagged unnaturally, her eyes filmed over, her movements jerky. She wasn’t Mary anymore. Not really.

But she was.

Because she turned to me, and though no recognition flickered in her cloudy eyes, I saw the ghost of the woman I had loved in the tilt of her head, in the curve of her frame.

Something broke inside me.

I stepped forward. Warnings blared louder. “CONTAMINATION! WARNING! WARNING!” I shut them out, and opened my arms.

She staggered into them with a hollow groan, her bony hands scratching faintly at my back. The stench was unbearable, the sight worse, but I didn’t let go. My claws closed gently around her, pulling her against my armored chest.

For the first time since she had become this thing, I held her. And though my new body could no longer cry, the sound came anyway, a broken, mechanical sob, crackling with static. “Mary…”

I had thought this would hurt, and it did. But it also filled me with something else. Relief. Connection. Love, however twisted by death. We stayed like that, a machine and a corpse, locked in an embrace beneath the pale glow of the moon through the window.

But it wasn’t enough, because I still remembered the promise between me and her. Her voice, from before. The way she had spoken of marriage. A church, candles, vows shouted to the sky even if no one listened. “A wedding no one could forget,” she had said.

I couldn’t give her life back. I couldn’t give her laughter, her warmth, her eyes shining with love. But I could give her that.

I pulled away, looking at her ruined face, and then reached to the table by the door. The ring box was still there. A simple ring, silver, dulled with dust. I picked it up, my clawed hand surprisingly gentle, and slipped it into the hidden compartment of my new chest.

Then I bent, sliding one arm under her legs, the other behind her back. She weighed so little now, almost nothing at all, bones and scraps of flesh. But to me she was everything.

I lifted her, holding her close, the apartment door groaned as I opened it again. And then I stepped out, into the moonlight, Mary in my arms.

The dead still wandered the streets, countless and unending, but they didn’t notice us. Not as I carried her past them, not as we crossed the empty boulevard under the cold gaze of the stars.

A machine carrying his bride, toward a wedding that could never truly be, but that I would make real anyway.

Because I had promised her, and promises were all I had left.

The church stood like a broken monument at the end of the street, its spire cracked in half, its stone face pitted with scars of fire and neglect. The great wooden doors hung loose on their hinges, groaning in the wind. Once, this place had been filled with music, laughter, vows, prayers whispered upward into the vaulted ceiling. Now, it was a shell, hollowed by silence and death.

I carried Mary across the threshold.

Inside, the air was thick with dust and decay. Pews lay splintered, hymnals shredded across the floor like autumn leaves. And they were there too, the dead. Dozens, maybe hundreds. They shuffled through the nave, aimless as ever, filling the holy place with the grotesque sound of dragging feet and hollow moans.

Yet as I stepped forward, and luckily, there was no one blocking the way. They turned their ruined faces without recognition, none barred my path, none reached for the bride I held in my arms.

At the heart of the church, I stopped.

The altar was crumbling, candles long melted into blackened stubs. But above it, there, in the fractured glass of a once-grand window, was the image of Mary the Mother, cradling her infant. The stained glass was broken, jagged, a wound in the holy picture. And through that wound spilled moonlight, soft and silver, falling across us like a blessing.

Mary’s ruined face glowed faintly, the light softening the horror, making her something almost sacred again. Then it touched me, running along the gleam of my new body, shining against white plates of metal, flickering across the single red lens where my human face had once been.

I felt something tighten in my chest. If I had still been human, perhaps I would have believed in miracles. And now, the woman in my hands was truly my miracle.

I set her down gently, propping her against me so that she stood as much as she was able. My claws moved across my torso, finding what I had discovered earlier, an internal speaker, a relic of this body’s hidden functions.

Static hissed. A click. Then, a voice.

The voice of a priest, recorded long ago, perhaps in the days when I still believed there would be a wedding, a day of promise and laughter. I had tried my best to find it in my database.

“Do you, the groom, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife…?”

The words rang through the ruined cathedral, distorted but solemn, echoing off cracked stone. For a heartbeat, I forgot the corpses swaying in the pews, the stench, the silence of the grave.

“I do,” I said.

My own voice was strange, metallic, artificial, but it did not tremble. The lens of my eye glowed brighter, as though affirming the vow.

The recording continued.

“Do you, the bride, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband…?”

I looked at Mary.

Her mouth worked faintly, jaw trembling, but no words came. Only a low groan, deep and broken. I knew she could not answer. She was lost beyond language, beyond reason. And yet, I searched her face, and for an instant I thought I saw her eyes move, not randomly, not blindly, but toward me.

She said nothing. And still, I heard her answer in my heart.

The voice carried on.

“Then let the vows be spoken…”

I recited words I had memorized long ago. Promises of love, of fidelity, of life shared until death. The irony was sharp—death had come, and yet there we were, clinging stubbornly to the dream of a union. My words crackled out, filtered through mechanical resonance, but I spoke them as if my very existence depended on it.

When the vows ended, the recording prompted the final act.

“The rings.”

With careful claws, I reached into the compartment within my chest and drew out the small silver ring. It had survived everything—plagues, monsters, time, and my own transformation. Now, it would fulfill its purpose.

I lifted her skeletal hand, bones protruding beneath scraps of flesh, and slid the ring onto her finger. It hung loose, rattling faintly, but it was there. The promise was sealed.

That was when I felt it, something drop. Warmth, impossible warmth, splashed against the cold metal of my clawed hand. I froze, looking down. A smear of dark red-black liquid streaked across the white plating. Another drop followed, landing with a tiny patter.

I lifted my gaze, and it came from her eyes.

Mary’s clouded orbs were leaking, not tears but blood, thin rivulets running down her ruined cheeks. And as I stared, I knew.

She remembered.

Somewhere, buried beneath rot and hunger, beneath the infection and the ruin of her body, Mary remained. All of a sudden, I understood why. That was the characteristic of zombies—they would constantly repeat what they had most wanted to do before they died. So, my Mary, the thing you had most wanted to do before you died was… our wedding? That was why you shed tears?

I wanted to cry, again. But we had to continue the recording first.

“You may now kiss the bride.”

I froze again. My head was a lens, a camera, a faceless device. There was no mouth, no lips to press against hers. And hers… hers were gone, shriveled, torn. To attempt it would have been grotesque.

So I changed the tradition. I wrapped my arms around her instead. Drew her against my chest, my armor cold against her ruined body. And in that embrace, I gave her everything I had left.

The moonlight embraced us as well, pouring through the shattered glass. Around us, the dead shuffled and groaned, witnesses to a wedding unlike any the world had ever known. A machine and a corpse, bound not by law, not by ritual, but by love’s refusal to die. Both of us were cold, but our love was hot.

The ceremony ended.

I took her hand, fragile, trembling, the ring glittering faintly in the pale light. She followed without resistance as I turned, leading her away from the altar. Together we walked down the central aisle, past the corpses that swayed like a congregation in some silent hymn.

At the threshold, I paused, turning back once. The church loomed behind us, broken but sanctified now by what had passed within.

Then I stepped outside. The city was vast, ruined, endless. The streets were full of death, the night sky full of stars. But above all, I remembered her words.

“After the wedding,” she had told me once, “we’ll go to the sea. That’s where I want our honeymoon. The sea is eternal, romantic, infinite.”

I looked at her, at the ruin she had become and the ring now encircling her finger.

“Come,” I said, my voice soft, mechanical static laced with a tenderness I could still feel. “I’ll take you to the ocean.”

She made no sound, no answer but the faint shuffle of her step, yet she held my hand. And so we walked, two silhouettes beneath the moonlight.

Take my hand, my dearest. Together, let’s walk to the end of the world.

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Sorry for the delay in updating! There have been some things that have taken me a lot of time recently...

Is this love? I feel like I might have accidentally turned it into an obsession while writing, but I just can’t bear to part with this idea...anyway, please enjoy it and point out any shortcoming in the comment section! :p