Sweet Romance11 min read
I Was Going to Slack Off — Then the World Collapsed
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I never planned to be a hero. I planned to hide, eat, and sleep—do nothing more than keep living comfortably in a building I had just inherited.
"I am not going outside," I told the air, and then I opened another bag of instant noodles.
"It's a good plan," Edison Robertson said from the doorway. "For now."
I am Jemma Kristensen. I owned a big old building with an eight-floor layout: store on the ground floor, my home on the seventh, and empty floors in between. I had spent a small fortune strengthening locks, adding triple-layer doors, and making the walls thick enough to block noise. I did it to stop thieves. I did not expect it would be the thing that kept me alive.
The day the first scream rose, I was counting inventory. Trucks had just left. I heard the sound like a ripped curtain.
"What's that?" I asked without meaning to.
"Run inside," the driver said. "Lock the doors!"
I pressed my palm to the steel shutter keypad and watched the screen. People fell. People bit people. Blood painted the pavement. A man—his neck ripped open—ran like a wind and launched himself toward me.
"Zombies," I breathed. "They're real."
"Don't scream," Edison said into my phone.
"You could have told me not to come," I replied, but inside I was thankful for the calm voice I had known for years.
Edison was always the person who answered like this: short words, steady sound. He had been my boyfriend years ago—cool, controlled, the sort who buttoned his shirt to the top even on hot days. We had broken up. I had moved on. Then the world ended, and he was standing outside my reinforced doors like a statue that could move.
"Are you okay?" he asked when he got in.
"I am safe. Thanks to my fortress," I said, half proud.
"Good." He put a duffel down and checked the shutter. "You stayed."
"I accessorized my survival." I smiled because survival could be a joke.
That first night we closed the shutters and listened to the pounding outside. We watched screens and waited for the noise to die. I found myself talking to him more than I expected.
"Did you really come alone?" I demanded at one point, half teasing.
"Yes," he said, and it was like a hand on the middle of my chest. "I couldn't leave town. I came back."
I had built a life of small comforts in the quiet fortress. I had Wi‑Fi, a small generator for the fridge, and the whole store's goods ten steps away. I decided to slack off. I decided—truly—that I would allow myself a simple life: sleep late, pick new candies from the shelf, and avoid people.
Then the power died.
When my phone buzzed, I answered without checking. It was Edison.
"Don't go out," he told me like he always did.
"Okay," I said. "Thanks."
"Where are you?" he asked.
"In my store."
He didn't say anything for a long time. Then: "I'll be there."
By the time he showed up, a red light had sliced across my window like a warning. He came at a sprint, knee-skidding in front of the shutter, and crouched to meet my eyes. He had blood on his sleeve.
"How bad?" I shouted.
"I can handle it," he said, the words short and clean.
I banged the remote and pushed the button to lower the shutter while the noise outside grew. We watched three men slip into the alley like rats looking for bread.
"Those were the ones from the other day," I whispered.
"Let them go." Edison lifted his chin. "Avoid them."
"You're so cold," I muttered. "Why are you so calm?"
"Because I planned for this." He offered me a small, dry smile.
When the men knocked on the shutter, begging, we heard the world in the scrape of their hands. They promised food, trinkets. They promised to die for us. They promised their children. The last man screamed that he had a son.
"Don't open," Edison said.
The terrified man pushed and begged. The shutter creaked, and for a moment, I wanted to open it. My old optimism wanted to believe in a small miracle, an honest man. I stepped forward.
"Don't," Edison warned. "Back up."
I saw the man's tears. I felt something between pity and disdain—an old blade inside me wanting to cut. On the other side of the seam, the man was pulled through, and they devoured him like wind on dry grass. I closed my eyes. I shut the shutter all the way.
Later, when the dust settled and the shaking stopped, I realized I had been saved by the thing I had done to be petty: I had traded the building for decades of lazy comfort and ridiculous safety.
We lived small, careful days. Edison and I learned a new rhythm. We scavenged by pairs. He taught me to move quietly. I taught him how to laugh at the smallest things. Our faces changed in the reflection of broken glass.
"I will protect you," Edison said once in an empty hallway.
"I don't need a bodyguard," I answered.
"You don't have a choice. I will protect you."
I wanted to roll my eyes. Instead I felt my heart give a small skip. He never used that voice with friends. He used it with me.
Days passed into an odd ritual of rationing and sticky notes. The city learned new rules: retreat when the scream rose, move when the light turned strange, be silent unless you had to be loud. Sometimes a radio clattered with voices begging. Once, an old woman and a boy sent a message. "If anyone hears us, please leave food near the tall sign of Micom Towers at noon."
Edison decided to go.
"You're not staying," I said.
"I can't stay. If people are asking, I will go," he said.
"Then I come too," I said, before thinking.
"You can't."
"Why not? I'm better at bartering than you."
"Because two is more visible than one," he said. "I will be quick."
"You're such a liar." I pouted.
"Because I cannot lose you," he said, and said it so softly I almost thought I had imagined the words.
He walked away with a small bag. I watched him place bottles at Micom Towers and hand them to the old woman and child. When the sunlight broke through a thin strip of cloud, a mass of twisted, long-limbed things appeared on an iron frame above the street.
"They noticed us," I whispered into the glass.
The thing on the frame looked like a person a little before all the skin came off. It leaned its head against the window and said my name in a voice full of the man's old hate: "I'm going to kill you."
The ground shook. I couldn't feel my hands at first. Then the building cracked. Concrete fell.
"Run," Edison screamed, returning through the smoke and rubble.
He grabbed me and pulled. We slid under smashed shelves and out an emergency exit. The building collapsed behind us in a roar that sounded like the sky breaking. I held his hand. He handed me the small fake arm I had found that carried a serum.
"Take it," he said. "Keep it."
We ran until we were swallowed by light. Then a shot sounded and someone in uniform walked toward us.
"Hold on!" a voice called.
We were rescued that day by soldiers who had cordoned off the neighborhood. We had been seen. We had been thrown into a world I had only read about in movies. We lay in the back of a truck breathing with soldiers watching us like we were small, strange animals.
At the survivors' camp, everything became louder. People were grouped by what they'd lost, and we were put with calm people who resembled us.
At night, by the lights of the tents, people lured anger out in small ways. We found humor in the simplest things. The base had rules: no open flame after curfew, trade at midday, no sharing rumors.
"Will we be safe here?" I asked Edison on our first night in a real bed.
"We have more safety than before," he said. "More people, more eyes."
"Is that better?" I asked.
"It is," he said.
We began to rebuild a life with smaller margins. The base had meetings. Leaders took turns. People who had been thieves before tried to be useful now. But there were people who did not change.
Marco Alvarez was one of them.
"Keep your hand on your goods," someone muttered the morning the camp market opened.
"Who are you talking about?" I asked.
"The man who sold out his family," Wilder Guzman said, a broad-shouldered man with a permanent frown.
"Marco Alvarez?" I asked. "He was here?"
"He was here, then not here," Wilder said. "Then he came back."
At first, Marco kept his head down and traded kindly. He made a show of remorse. He asked for food, for shelter. He spoke soft apologies in the market.
Then the radio put a message out: "Anyone linked to crimes during the early outbreak—abandoning people, selling others to gangs—stand by the east flag at dawn."
That message changed everything. People who had lost family leaned in like flowers to water. Emotions that had been small and private became a public heartbeat. Marco Alvarez had belonged to a group who had tried to break into a store during the first wave. One night, he had pushed his wife and child into a crowd and run. The rumor had been a whisper, but fear made people listen.
"It's time," Wilder said. "Public hearing."
We all walked to the east flag at dawn. Pebbles ground underfoot. Eyes watched. The wind had a tinny taste that day.
Marco stood at the center of the circle, clean in a borrowed jacket. He looked older and thinner. He looked ordinary, which made the circle colder.
"Marco Alvarez," the camp leader said. "People here allege crimes. How do you answer?"
"I answer that I did what I had to do," he said.
"What you had to do was to push your family away," Wilder shot back. "You left them to die."
"I didn't push anyone," Marco said. "They slipped. A mistake."
"Your shirt had blood," Wilder said. "Your hands had it. You took a child's arm and sold it for food. Is that a mistake?"
I saw Marco's jaw tighten. He shifted weight like an animal in a snare.
"I saved myself," he said quietly. "You don't understand the hunger."
"You didn't need to make them die," said a woman with callused hands. "You made a choice."
The audience hissed like wind through dry grass. Men and women put down their tools to watch.
"Do you have anything to say to the families?" the leader asked.
"I am sorry," Marco said. "I'm sorry and—"
"You dumped your wife," Wilder shouted. "You left her to the monsters. She had a child's hand in hers. If this is an apology—" He spat the word like a stone.
"Enough," another voice demanded. The leader lifted a hand. "Marco, you will be held accountable by the camp council."
"Accountable how?" Marco asked. He tried to swallow. His voice trembled but he tried to hide the tremble like a child hiding a bruise.
"You will purge your name publicly," the leader said. "You will work. You will repair what was damaged. You will live publicly to face your deeds. You will be watched. There will be no private corners. The survivors decide whether you are trusted."
"That is not punishment," Marco said, daring now. "That is slow death."
"It is more than you gave," Wilder said. "You will stand at market while your accusations are read. You will say each lie and own every one."
The crowd agreed. They dragged a crate to the center. They set burning coals on it—no flames, but heat that stung the skin like truth.
"Marco," the leader said. "Tell the camp what you did."
Marco bowed his head. Sweat gathered at his temples.
"You sold a child's arm to scavengers for a bag of rice," someone said, and the crowd echoed it. "You bought nothing. You paid nothing back. If there is any man who would talk for you, speak now."
"You are a liar," Wilder said. The circle closed.
"Speak!" the leader ordered.
Marco's eyes slid up. "I—I pushed my wife," he said in a voice that was not big enough. "I told them to run. I told them to live without me."
"You made them die," the woman said.
"I didn't—" He could not finish.
"He said he had money," someone cried. "He used lies to get into houses. He stole rings and pushed mothers out when the crowd came."
A small murmur grew into a roar. People took out their phones—yes, we had a few working devices—and they recorded. They recorded not just for evidence but for the thing that made punishment raw: the world must see.
"Marco Alvarez," the leader said, "this is your account. You will not be left alone. You will push a cart of goods to the ruins and rebuild the broken market. The council will determine whether you can work or must leave."
Marco began to cry. He had been smug before. Now he was raw.
"Please," he said. "Please, I can——"
"Stop." Wilder moved forward. He did not strike. He stepped into Marco's space and held the man's gaze. "Look at me," he said.
Marco looked up, eyes wide.
"You left your child to die," Wilder said. "And you begged us for mercy now. You want us to let you sleep like a man. Tell me how that feels."
"It's—it's empty." Marco whispered.
"And will you sleep in peace?" Wilder asked.
"No."
"Then live with what you made." Wilder's voice was flat and final.
The crowd changed mood. They began to chant for the families. They began to tell of cross‑checked stories of Marco's deals. The leader read names: the wife, the child, the men they had promised to save. The list was long.
Marco's face went gray.
"Where will he work?" someone asked.
"Market repairs for twelve days," the leader said, and named watchers.
"One more thing," Wilder said. "You stood at a shutter when a man screamed for help. He told you he had a son. You turned away. The son was eaten on our street. You did that."
"I know," Marco said.
"You will pick up the child's name, and you will say him every hour you shovel rubble."
So Marco stayed. He was moved to the market's edge with a cart. For twelve days he carried crates and swept rubble. He was not struck. He was not bloodied in public. He was watched. People whispered. They recorded his work. He had to kneel and tell the child's name, out loud, sixteen times a day. He had to hand food to the families he helped hurt. He had to be given rope to bind his own hands and then use those hands to help in burning the tools he had stolen.
The punishment's cruelty was not that it caused physical pain. It was that it demanded witness—and witnesses kept memory alive. People who had felt small in the beginning found a way to make the man look small. They did not glorify the act. They read evidence. They recited facts. They made sure the man had to feel the weight of what he had done in a way that was public, that could not be rewound.
Marco's face changed over the days. It first slid from smugness to anger, then to denial. He'd plead: "It wasn't like that. I had to." He'd try to worm out. Crowd members would hiss and call him liar. Then his eyes sank into something like collapse. He tried to bargain, to take on more labor to buy silence. People refused.
On the ninth day a little girl—whose father had been taken in the early days—walked to him and spat. "You should have died," she said. The circle turned quiet. Marco laughed like a man who had nothing left. Then he sank and wept for the first time not because he might die, but because he realized the world he had chosen to save himself from had no place for him.
It was public. It was held in our market with standing bodies, with cameras and with children watching. It lasted twelve days. In the end Marco left with a cart several times lighter than when he arrived, and a scar on his hands that came from scrubbing rusted metal until the skin rubbed raw.
He did not beg for mercy again in public. He learned to walk among the people who watched him and to own the steps of a man marked by his own choices.
I watched him go away one evening, the sun a thin coin on the horizon.
"Did that fix things?" I asked Edison later.
"It started to," he said. "People needed to see consequence. They needed to feel that justice could be human and not a coin toss."
"Was it cruel?"
"It was necessary," he said. "We cannot make a new world where the old cruelties are forgotten."
Edison and I continued to live our small life in the base. The days were a thread of chores, candle burns, and small soft moments. He taught me the names of some herbs. I taught him how to roll a candy into a bite. We had eleven candles at one point.
"Eleven days," he said once, watching the tiny flame. "Eleven days until something may come."
"Then let's eat candy for ten of them," I said.
He smiled, the slight curve of his mouth that used to be rare. He had trained himself with rules of restraint. Now he found reasons to break them.
"I will take a risk," he whispered one night. "For you."
"What kind of risk?" I asked, and my voice was too sudden.
He unbuttoned his collar to the third button and turned his head like a man who was no longer sure he could hide. "This degree," he said.
"What can that buy?" I asked, playfully.
"A Big White Rabbit candy?" he answered.
"A whole candy?" I laughed. "That will not buy any guarantee."
He reached and slid a wrapped candy into my hand. "Can it buy a feed? A taste?"
I tasted the candy into his mouth like we had done with smaller jokes, and his hand came up and held mine as he licked my fingers. He murmured the word that earned him a smirk from me.
"Businessman," he teased.
"Sweetheart," he answered. "You are the merchant."
Then he kissed me, softly, and the rest of the world—the roars and horns and dead things—fell into a sudden polite silence.
I had come into the apocalypse determined to slack off. I had kept my fortress and my supplies. I had thought staying put might be enough.
Instead, I found warmth. Love arrived as a quiet weapon. People demanded justice, and justice happened: public, messy, and necessary.
We kept eleven candles for a long while after. When I blew them out one by one with Edison beside me, each tiny flame went with a promise: to stay alive, to hold others accountable, and to remember the name of that small arm of serum tucked into my pocket and the feel of a Big White Rabbit candy between two fingers.
The End
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