Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 2:32 PM
Countdown to Extraction: 60 Hours, 09 Minutes Remaining
The sliding glass door clicked into its cheap metal latch.
The sound was tiny. Pathetic. But the absolute second it locked, the fragile, suffocating silence inside the apartment immediately collapsed.
Tally stood entirely frozen in the center of the cramped living room for a full minute after the glass door shut. She stared at the yellowed vertical plastic blinds like she expected them to violently rip open. Like this was just some sick, twisted joke, and Mari was going to pop her head back in, smile, and say they were just kidding. They wouldn't really leave them behind in the dark.
But the door didn't open. The two most lethal people in the room were gone.
And Tally broke.
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Tally shrieked, her voice instantly climbing an octave, the pitch tight and frantic. She backed away from the barricaded front door, her boots making a disgusting, sticky sound against the carpet. "They actually left! They just left us in here!"
Renee turned on her fast. She didn't yell. She didn't scream. Her voice was sharp, heavy, and focused—the exact kind of brutal, commanding tone designed to violently cut through a panic attack before it became contagious.
"Tally. Stop."
Tally flinched, physically startled by the harsh command, but the sheer, unyielding authority in the older woman's voice didn't snap her out of it entirely. The bitchy, defensive armor she wore like a second skin flared up immediately.
"Don't tell me to stop!" Tally snapped, crossing her arms tightly over her chest, shrinking away from the walls like they might infect her. "They're going to die out there. Everyone who leaves dies. And now we're stuck in this disgusting shithole until we starve to death."
Renee closed her eyes for a brief, agonizing second and counted to three in the dark. When she opened them again, she crossed the trash-strewn room and stood directly in front of the teenager.
"Listen to me," Renee said quietly, her face a mask of absolute iron. "You spiraling right now does not help them. It doesn't help Dot. And it sure as hell doesn't help you stay alive. So you are going to lock it down and sit down."
Tally looked down at the sagging mattress on the floor, her upper lip curling in pure, unadulterated revulsion. "I am absolutely not sitting on that. Look at it. It looks like someone died on it."
It didn't even have a bed frame. The bare mattress was tossed directly onto the filthy carpet. The sheets were a mismatched, tangled mess, ringed with dried, brown fluid stains and dotted with black cigarette burns.
"Suit yourself," Renee said coldly, turning her back on the teenager.
A sound like tearing wet paper drifted up from the carpet near the kitchenette.
Renee dropped to her knees immediately. Dot was lying on her back, her face a terrifying, sickly shade of grey. Her skin was radiating a dry, dangerous heat. Her lips were cracked and peeling, her breathing shallow, erratic, and incredibly uneven.
Renee leaned closer, and a chill went straight down her spine. The air escaping Dot's chapped lips smelled distinctly like acetone—a harsh, chemical stench exactly like cheap nail polish remover. Renee had worked enough double shifts in truck-stop diners around sick people to recognize the smell of diabetic ketoacidosis. Dot's body was literally turning toxic, actively eating its own fat and muscle because it had no insulin to process sugar. The coma was beginning to rapidly shut down her internal organs.
"Hey," Renee murmured softly, brushing a strand of sweat-soaked hair off Dot's forehead. "Stay with us, Dot. Just hold on. They're getting the medicine. You just have to hold the line."
Dot didn't respond. Her eyes remained rolled back beneath fluttery eyelids.
Renee stood up, her jaw tight, and walked into the tiny kitchenette. She grabbed a stiff, filthy dish towel off the counter and turned the rusted faucet. A thin, sputtering stream of brown water coughed out of the tap before clearing into a low-pressure trickle. She soaked the rag, wrung it out, and went back to press it gently against Dot's burning neck.
Tally watched her, her frantic eyes finally taking in the full horror of the room around them.
The apartment was vile.
It was infinitely worse than the teenager had expected. Tally had grown up in the affluent, manicured suburbs of Savannah. She was used to pristine granite countertops, matching leather furniture, and pantries stocked with organic snacks. She was used to floors clean enough to walk on barefoot.
This place was a claustrophobic nightmare.
Tally looked down in disgust. A half-crushed palmetto bug was bleeding yellow sludge into the carpet near the baseboard. The entire apartment smelled faintly of stale cigarette smoke, cheap weed, rotting garbage from the overflowing bin under the sink, and something deeply sour—like old sweat, vomit, and unwashed bodies.
But it was the coffee table that made Tally's stomach actually turn.
The small, scarred wooden table in the center of the room was completely buried. It was an overflowing graveyard of crushed beer cans, heavy glass ashtrays piled high with grey ash, final-notice eviction letters printed on bright pink paper, and dozens of empty, translucent orange prescription bottles.
Tally scoffed, a harsh, ugly sound in the quiet room. "This is where your pregnant sister lives? Seriously?"
Renee stiffened. She stopped wiping Dot's forehead.
"Yes."
Tally didn't back down. The fear was making her vicious. "It's a biohazard, Renee. How do adults live like this? There is literally no food in the fridge, but they managed to hoard all of that?" Tally pointed a trembling, accusatory finger at the mountain of empty Oxycontin bottles on the coffee table. "She's having a baby, and she lives in a literal trap house. That's pathetic. It's a choice."
Renee stood up slowly. She wiped her wet hands on her jeans, her eyes turning distant and dangerously dark in the gloom.
"You think this is what she wanted?" Renee asked, her voice dropping the sharp command and replacing it with a heavy, dangerous calm. "You think she looked at a catalog when she was a little girl and picked this out?"
Tally shifted uncomfortably, but she raised her chin. "She chose him. She chose to stay here."
"Her husband," Renee continued, her voice hardening into steel. "Troy was a pro golfer. He was twenty-two, had a real shot at the PGA. Sponsors. Minor tours. The whole American dream wrapped up in a crisp polo shirt. He was charming, he had money, and he treated her like a princess."
Tally rolled her eyes slightly. "Right. The tragic hero."
"Until he blew out his rotator cuff," Renee said, ignoring the teenager's sarcasm, staring blankly at the empty Oxycontin bottles. "Tore it clean off the bone. Which is deeply ironic, because rehabilitating injuries like that is exactly what I do for a living."
Tally frowned, confused. "What?"
"I'm a physical therapist," Renee stated flatly. "I fix broken bodies. But Troy didn't want to do the agonizing physical therapy it takes to heal. He wanted the easy way out. The doctors gave him heavy pain meds. When the physical therapy failed and the sponsors dropped him, he started buying them on the street. Then he added the booze to make the pills hit harder when his tolerance went up."
Renee's hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. "He got mean. He isolated her from everyone until she thought she actually deserved to sleep on a mattress covered in stains. He pushed her around. He broke plates near her head. He broke her down piece by piece."
"So she should have left," Tally stated coldly, like it was the simplest math in the world. "If you stay with a loser, you get a loser's life. You said you're a physical therapist. You have a good job. Why didn't you just take her out of here?"
Renee let out a dark, bitter laugh that held absolutely zero humor. "You are so incredibly blind, Tally. Because when you grow up with absolutely nothing but violence and chaos in your life, you cling to whatever you've got. Even if it actively destroys you. I offered her my spare bedroom a hundred times. I bought her groceries. But you cannot save someone who has been conditioned to believe they deserve to be abused."
Renee turned fully to face the teenager, taking a slow step forward. The sheer grit and misery etched into her features made Tally involuntarily take a step back.
"You grew up in a massive house with two parents who bought you whatever you wanted," Renee said, her voice dropping to a harsh, visceral whisper. "Our mom was a junkie. She didn't just do drugs. She cooked meth in the bathtub of our single-wide trailer. She traded our food stamps for heroin. Strange men were in and out of that trailer every single week."
Tally's throat tightened. A cold, jagged knot of genuine empathy formed in her stomach, but she crossed her arms harder, refusing to let the armor slip.
"When Kimmie was a baby, she would scream from the hunger because there was no formula," Renee stated, recounting the brutal facts of her life like she was reading an autopsy report. "Mom used to blow cigarette smoke directly into her face until she coughed herself to sleep just to shut her up."
Tally blinked, a flicker of raw horror breaking through the bitchy facade.
"When I was twelve years old," Renee continued, stepping closer, forcing Tally to look at her, "one of mom's 'uncles' decided I was old enough to pay off her debts. I broke his fucking jaw with a tire iron in the kitchen. I grabbed Kimmie, and I dragged her out the bedroom window in the middle of January with no shoes on. We slept in a rusted-out Buick for three days."
Tally swallowed hard, her eyes darting toward the floor.
"I didn't become a statistic," Renee said, her voice raw and shaking with long-buried rage. "I scrubbed toilets in office buildings at night so I could take classes during the day. I worked three jobs. I put myself through school. I became a physical therapist so Kimmie would never have to see the inside of a trailer park again. I fought tooth and nail to be better. To do better."
Renee gestured to the stained walls and the empty fridge. "Mom overdosed three years ago. I found her choking on her own vomit on the bathroom floor with a needle still in her arm. I had to pry the crumpled twenty-dollar bills out of her dead, stiff hands just so Kimmie and I could eat that week. And after all of that... Kimmie still married a man who treats her like trash."
Silence settled between them again. It wasn't the frantic silence of the apocalypse outside. It was a thick, heavy, deeply uncomfortable human silence.
Tally shifted her weight. She looked at the peeling wallpaper. She looked at the empty pill bottles. She looked at the exhausted, hardened woman standing in front of her.
Deep down, the arrogant, suburban entitlement was suffocating. Tally actually felt sick to her stomach hearing what Renee had endured. She felt a profound, heavy guilt for passing judgment on a life she couldn't even begin to comprehend.
But Tally didn't apologize. She didn't offer a tearful hug. The defense mechanism was drilled entirely too deep. Giving an inch meant acknowledging she was wrong, and Tally couldn't afford to be vulnerable right now.
"Well," Tally muttered, looking away, her voice defensive and brittle. "She still should've left him. It smells like a corpse in here."
Renee stared at the teenager for a long moment, realizing she couldn't reach her. The girl was too insulated, too terrified to let any actual grace in. Renee just shook her head, turning her back on Tally, and knelt back down beside Dot.
Suddenly, a horrific sound drifted in through the thin walls from the courtyard below—a distant, high-pitched scream that was violently, abruptly cut short by a wet crunch and the sickening sound of tearing meat.
Tally flinched hard, her hands flying up to cover her ears.
"I need to pee," Tally blurted suddenly, her voice spiking high with raw nerves. "I—I think the bathroom works?"
Renee didn't even look at her. She just pointed to the narrow, chipped door near the closet. "Jiggle the handle. Pull hard."
Tally practically ran into the tiny bathroom, pulling the door shut behind her. Renee listened as the toilet flushed successfully a minute later, the mechanical sound of running water almost shocking in the oppressive quiet of the dead city.
Renee went back to Dot. She re-wet the rag, smoothing it over the older woman's burning forehead with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
The tough, hardened exterior Renee wore like armor finally cracked. She was sitting in a rotting apartment, her seven-and-a-half-month pregnant sister was missing in a hospital full of mechanics, and the woman slipping into a toxic coma in front of her was fading fast.
"Please," Renee whispered under her breath, a broken, desperate plea to a universe that had never once listened to her. "Please don't die on me. Just give us a break. Just one fucking break."
She didn't realize she was crying until a hot tear dropped from her chin and splashed onto Dot's heavy sleeve.
Behind her, the bathroom door violently creaked open, sticking against the carpet before popping free.
Tally stepped out into the living room. Her face was twisted in a mixture of profound terror, absolute defeat, and sheer disbelief. She was hyperventilating, her hands clamped over her mouth.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Tally gasped, her voice vibrating with hysterical tears.
Renee turned around, wiping her eyes fast. "What? What's wrong?"
Tally stared down at her hands, and then at the crotch of her thin, black leggings in absolute horror. The dark fabric offered zero protection, and the damp, sticky heat was already blooming.
"My period," Tally whispered, her voice dropping into a terrified, breathless rasp. "I just got my period, Renee."
Renee closed her eyes, resting her head against the cabinets, and exhaled a long, slow, exhausted breath. The timing was a miserable, cosmic joke.
But Tally wasn't just annoyed by the inconvenience. She was petrified.
"Renee," Tally choked out, her eyes blowing wide with an entirely new, apocalyptic level of panic. She pointed a shaking finger toward the barricaded front door. "They hunt by smell, don't they? That's what Ethan said. That's why he wouldn't let us roll the windows down in the Jeep. They smell blood."
The silence in the room suddenly felt incredibly heavy.
"Renee," Tally wept, her voice cracking as the horrific realization fully set in. "They can smell blood. And I'm bleeding."
Wednesday, December 10, 2025, 3:15 PM
Countdown to Extraction: 59 Hours, 26 Minutes Remaining