The transition was not like falling asleep. It was like stepping through a door he could not see, one moment lying in his bed with the golden warmth humming in his ribs, and the next standing upright with his fingers curled around the edges of a leather-bound notebook.
Jack blinked. He was in his father's study.
The room looked the same as it always had — bookshelves lining two walls, a narrow window with venetian blinds half drawn, the old wooden desk that smelled of pine and furniture polish. Except the light filtering through the blinds was gray and flat, and dust motes hung in the air thick as pollen, and the photograph of the family on the corner of the desk was face down.
He looked at the desk. The top drawer was pulled open, and beneath the usual clutter of pens and rubber bands and old receipts, a section of the drawer's bottom had been pried up and set aside. A false bottom. Beneath it lay a shallow compartment lined with felt, and it was empty now because whatever had been hidden inside was already in Jack's hands.
The journal was small, barely larger than a paperback, its cover soft brown leather worn smooth at the corners. His father's handwriting filled the pages — the same cramped, slanting script Jack remembered from grocery lists and birthday cards. He turned to the first page and read.
'March 14. If you're reading this, then it's started for you. I'm sorry I wasn't there to explain it in person. I always planned to sit you down when the signs appeared — the dreams that leave marks, the shimmering edges where one world bleeds into another. I wanted to be the one to tell you what you are.'
'You are a Dream Traverser.'
'It passes from parent to child, carried in the blood like eye color or the shape of a jaw. Not every generation awakens. I hoped you might be spared, but if you're holding this journal, you weren't.'
Jack's throat tightened. He turned the page.
'Dream Traversers are pulled into alternate worlds — not by accident, not by chance, but because each world has a purpose for us. A wound that needs closing. A battle that tips toward loss without someone to push back. The worlds choose us because we can carry pieces of them home. Abilities. Strength. Knowledge. Everything you earn in the dreaming, you keep.'
'I traveled to seven worlds before you were born. A frozen wasteland where the sun never rose. An ocean planet with cities built on the backs of living coral. A world of perpetual lightning storms where people lived underground and communicated through vibrations in stone. Each one gave me something. Speed. Endurance. The ability to read patterns in chaos.'
'The last world I entered was a fantastical realm — castles, forests older than memory, creatures out of legend. It was beautiful. And it was dying. The undead swept across it like a tide, turning everything they touched. I found an abandoned fortress on a plateau and turned it into a safe zone. Held it for forty-three days with a handful of survivors before the dreaming released me.'
Jack turned another page, his fingers trembling.
'If this world is the one you've been pulled into, know this: I kept supplies in the garage. Behind the tool cabinet, bottom shelf, in the green duffel bags. Headlamps. A portable radio. Long-range walkie-talkies. Duct tape. Salt — more than you'd think you need. A water filtration kit. Bleach for sanitation. Spray paint for signaling. A small solar panel that still holds a charge. Patch kits, oils for maintenance, everything I could think of that might keep someone alive when the world stops providing.'
'I stored them because I knew the dreams might come for my children, and I wanted you to have every advantage I could give you even if I couldn't—'
"Jack!"
His mother's voice cut through the study door, sharp and immediate. Jack flinched, snapped the journal shut, and slid it back into the false compartment. He pressed the false bottom into place, closed the drawer, and stepped out of the study.
The hallway stopped him cold.
The last time he had stood here — a week ago, apparently, though it had been only a single night for him — the house had been freshly boarded and dim but intact. Now the air smelled stale, sour, like laundry left too long in the machine. Dishes were piled in the kitchen sink. A trash bag sat bloated and knotted near the back door. Blankets and pillows were scattered across the living room as if someone had been sleeping on the floor instead of the bedrooms. The tape holding the blankets over the boarded windows had started peeling at the corners, and thin blades of gray light cut through the gaps.
Elena stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed. She wore the same clothes Jack remembered from the night he had fallen asleep on the couch — a flannel shirt over a tank top, jeans, her hair pulled back tight — but she looked thinner, the angles of her cheeks more pronounced. Behind her, Lily sat on the kitchen counter swinging her legs, her hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands.
"We need to talk about food," Elena said. Her voice was calm in the way that meant she was working very hard to keep it that way.
Jack leaned against the wall. "How bad?"
"Bad." She moved to the pantry and opened it. The shelves that a week ago had held canned soup, pasta boxes, cereal, and rice now showed mostly bare wood. A few cans of green beans. A box of crackers. Half a bag of rice. Two bottles of water. "This is what's left. Maybe two days if we stretch it."
"That's what happens when you don't leave the house for a week," Lily said from the counter. Her tone was light but her eyes were not. "The zombies really put a damper on grocery shopping."
A week. Jack let that settle. He had been gone for a single night in the waking world, and seven days had passed here. His father's journal clicked into focus — 'the dreams that leave marks, the shimmering edges' — and with it the realization that time did not obey the same rules across the threshold.
"We need to make a run," Jack said.
Elena's jaw tightened. "I know. I've been putting it off because the last time I looked out the upstairs window, there were four of those things at the end of the street. But we're past the point of waiting."
Jack thought of the journal. The garage.
"Give me five minutes," he said. He crossed the kitchen, unlocked the garage door, and stepped into the dim concrete space. The truck sat where he had left it. Along the far wall, his father's tool cabinet squatted heavy and familiar, its red paint chipped, its drawers full of wrenches and socket sets. Jack crouched and reached behind the bottom shelf.
His fingers found canvas. He dragged out two green duffel bags, heavy and clinking, and unzipped the first one on the garage floor.
Headlamps, three of them, still sealed in plastic. A portable radio the size of a brick. Two long-range walkie-talkies in hard cases. Rolls of silver duct tape. Bags of salt, four of them, sealed tight. Bleach in a sturdy plastic bottle. Spray paint cans in orange and yellow. A folded solar panel with cables.
The second bag held a water filtration kit, bicycle patch kits, and three different types of oil — food grade, metal maintenance, gear lubricant — each labeled in his father's handwriting.
Jack stared at the supplies spread across the concrete, and something in his chest shifted. His father had been dead for two years, and yet here he was — still providing, still protecting, still reaching forward through time to place his hand on his son's shoulder and say 'I thought of this so you wouldn't have to.'
He carried the bags inside. Elena and Lily looked at the contents spread across the kitchen table with identical expressions of stunned relief.
"Where did these come from?" Elena asked quietly.
"Dad," Jack said. "He kept them behind the tool cabinet. He — planned ahead."
Something passed across Elena's face that Jack couldn't read. She picked up one of the headlamps and turned it over in her hands, and then she pressed her lips together and nodded once, decisively, the way she did when she was done feeling and ready to act.
They made a list. Weapons — anything they could swing or stab with. Food — canned goods, nonperishables, anything with calories. Water — as much as the truck could carry. Medicine — antibiotics, painkillers, bandages. Batteries. Gas for the truck. Jack distributed the headlamps and clipped a walkie-talkie to Elena's belt and one to his own.
"Stay close," he said as they loaded into the truck. "Engine stays running. If things go sideways, we leave. No heroics."
"Since when do you give the orders?" Lily asked from the back seat.
"Since I'm the one with the bat."
The drive into town took eight minutes and felt like thirty. The streets were emptier than the last time Jack had seen them — no abandoned cars in motion, no fresh wreckage, just the settled stillness of a place that had finished dying. Storefronts stood dark. A traffic light blinked yellow in a slow, pointless rhythm. Newspaper pages curled along the gutters.
Too quiet. Jack's hands tightened on the wheel. The absence of sound was worse than the moaning had been, because moaning at least told you where they were.
They parked outside Murphy's Convenience on Elm Street. The front window was shattered inward, glass scattered across the tile floor. Inside, the shelves had been stripped almost bare — empty racks where chips and candy had hung, barren coolers with their doors hanging open. The place smelled like spoiled milk and something sharper underneath it.
"Someone beat us to it," Lily muttered, sweeping her headlamp across the wreckage.
But not everything was gone. Elena found batteries behind the counter — a full box of double-A and a smaller pack of D-cells that had fallen behind a display. Lily found a pack of lighters and a box of protein bars wedged under an overturned shelf. Jack grabbed two jugs of windshield wiper fluid — not drinkable, but useful — and a roll of garbage bags.
They loaded the haul into the truck bed. It wasn't enough. Not close.
Jack was closing the tailgate when he saw it.
A figure stood near the front of the truck, fifteen feet away, swaying slightly in the pale light. It wore the remnants of a postal uniform, the blue fabric darkened with old blood. Its head hung at an angle that said the neck was broken, and it moved with the jerky, stuttering gait that Jack's body now recognized before his brain did.
He gripped the bat. Behind him he heard Lily's sharp intake of breath and held up a hand — "stay" — without turning around.
The zombie hadn't noticed them yet. It was drifting, tracing some invisible path along the curb, its ruined mouth working soundlessly. Jack scanned the street in both directions. Nothing else moved. Just this one, alone, separated from whatever horde it had once belonged to.
He stepped forward. Sneakers silent on asphalt. Ten feet. Eight. The creature's head began to turn, some dead instinct catching his scent or his warmth, and Jack felt the pull ignite in his chest — the same force that had erupted in the forest, the invisible hand that bent the space between things.
He didn't throw the creature this time. He held it. The gravitational force locked around the zombie like a fist, pinning its arms to its sides, freezing its legs mid-step. It thrashed against the invisible grip, jaws snapping, a strangled groan bubbling from its throat, but it couldn't move. Couldn't advance. Couldn't reach him.
Jack closed the distance in three strides and swung the bat in a hard, clean arc. The aluminum connected with the side of the creature's skull, and the sound was like a melon dropped on concrete. The zombie went limp. The gravitational hold released, and the body crumpled to the asphalt.
Jack stood over it, breathing hard, the bat resting against his shoulder. The pulling sensation faded to a low hum. Easier this time. More controlled.
"Get in the truck," he said, scanning the storefronts and alleyways. "Both of you. Now."
They didn't argue. Doors slammed. Jack climbed behind the wheel and pulled away from the curb.
"The Safeway on Third," Elena said. "It's the biggest store in town. If there's nonperishables left anywhere—"
"On it."
But Third Street killed that plan before they reached the lot. Lily spotted them first, leaning forward between the front seats with her hand on Jack's shoulder.
"Stop. Stop the truck."
Jack braked. Through the windshield, the Safeway parking lot spread out in a tangle of overturned shopping carts, abandoned vehicles with doors hanging open, and at least two dozen figures moving between them. Some stood motionless, heads tilted as if listening. Others wandered in slow, aimless loops. A cluster of five or six pressed against the store's shattered entrance, shoving each other in the mindless crush of things that had forgotten how doors worked.
"That's not happening," Lily said flatly.
Elena leaned forward, studying the lot. "She's right. Too many. Even with your — whatever that was back there."
"There's a gas station," Jack said, already shifting into reverse. "Edge of town, past the overpass. Hank's Fill-Up. It's small, but they stock snacks and canned stuff. And we need gas anyway."
He swung the truck around and headed south, away from the dead congregation in the parking lot. The rearview mirror showed two of the figures turning to track the sound of the engine, but they didn't pursue. Too slow. Too far.
The overpass rose ahead, a concrete arch over a dry creek bed, and beyond it the squat shape of Hank's Fill-Up materialized out of the gray afternoon. Two pumps under a rusted canopy. A small building with barred windows and a hand-painted sign. No movement visible.
Jack pulled up beside the nearest pump and killed the engine. Silence flooded in. He sat for a ten count, scanning every angle, listening for the drag of feet or the wet sound of breathing that wasn't breathing.
Nothing.
"Walkie-talkies on," he said. "Mom, you and Lily take the store. Grab everything — cans, jerky, medicine if they have it, bottled water. I'll work the pump and keep watch."
Elena met his eyes and held them. Something complicated moved behind her expression, and Jack realized she was seeing his father in him again — the same calm, the same inventory of threats and resources, the same refusal to sit still while people he loved went hungry.
"Two minutes," she said. "In and out."
They moved.