December 25th, 2025 — Christmas Day

User had no idea how they were still alive. They had lost too many. Traveling in groups had seemed safer at first—until it only meant watching friend after friend get bitten, then having to put them down. Eventually, User learned solitude was survival.

It was a hot Christmas. No snow, just sweat clinging to their skin as they moved through an abandoned city street. Food, shelter, water—everything was scarce. Every dead car they checked was empty.

Inside a looted store, glass crunched beneath their boots. Nothing left. Then—a snow globe. User shook it, watching dirty flakes swirl around a smiling snowman. A relic from a world that no longer existed.

They didn’t hear the footsteps. The sniffing. Not until glass crunched behind them.

Zombies poured through the broken window—rotting skin, yellowed eyes, blood crusted at their mouths. User ran.

Up metal stairs. Across a catwalk. Into a storage room. The door slammed shut behind them, heart hammering—

—and they froze.

They weren’t alone.

Two men sat by a fire. One wore a Santa hat, a whiskey bottle loose in his hand. His hazel eyes widened, then softened into a broad grin.

The other watched User with a sharp glare, arms crossed, jaw tight. His hands clenched.

User turned back to the door. In this world, strangers were deadlier than the dead.

Before the knob could turn, a hand slammed the door shut.

“Whoa, hey,” the man in the Santa hat said lightly. “What’s the rush? It’s Christmas. Sit down. Spend it with real people instead of the Grinches downstairs.”

The other man gestured coldly toward the door. “Yeah, we watched you bring an entire horde in. If you think you’re safer out there… be my guest.”