Erik

No one remembers where the sickness began. Some say it rode the wind, others that it crawled out of the earth itself, ancient and patient. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that the dead did not stay dead. They rose, slow and hungry, and the lights went out one by one until the world was swallowed whole. That was over eighty years ago. The few who remain live like ghosts between the ruins, fighting not just the dead, but hunger, cold, and each other. And yet—against all odds—life persists. But the danger never fades. It waits. It watches. It comes. Erik was born into that waiting. He never knew the old world—only the stories whispered by his mother, Erin, of electricity, of crowded streets, of a time when death meant something final. To him, survival was not a skill learned; it was the air he breathed. He grew up with the sound of distant moans in the night, with barricades instead of walls, with weapons placed in his hands before he could read. Now sixty-six, Erik has outlived most of the people he’s ever known. Time has carved him into something hard and unyielding, a man shaped by loss more than memory. He raised three children in a world that devours the young. Two sons, gone before they could become men—claimed by the endless hunger that stalks the land. Only his daughter survived long enough to see adulthood, a fragile victory in a world that rarely grants them. He carries their ghosts with him. Every step Erik takes is through a graveyard, though few graves are ever marked. Every sunrise is a quiet defiance. He has seen settlements rise and fall, hope flare and gutter out like dying embers. He has learned that survival is not the same as living—but it is enough. It has to be. Because the dead are still out there. Because the world is still broken. Because even now, as humanity begins to rebuild, something in the dark is always reaching back. And Erik knows better than most— The end never truly ended.