Chapter 155: The Sound of Someone Coming Home

Chapter 155: Chapter 155: The Sound of Someone Coming Home

Jason had stopped counting the days since he started waiting.

He knew, in the vague, exhausted way a person keeps track of time when nothing about their situation has changed in any of them, that it had been over two weeks since his parents left for their business trip. Two weeks since the world ended while they were somewhere on the other side of the city, or maybe further, and he had no way of knowing whether they’d even made it out of whatever building or hotel or conference room they’d been in when the red sun first rose.

He sat on the floor of his own apartment now, back against the couch, a flashlight resting beside him with its batteries down to the last quarter of their charge. The power had gone out with the rest of the building twenty minutes ago, and the darkness pressing in against the windows felt heavier than it had the night before, though he couldn’t have said exactly why.

Somewhere below, faint through the walls, he could still hear the muffled echo of shouting — the panic Ethan had gone upstairs to report, still rippling through the lower floors like something alive.

Jason pulled his knees up to his chest and tried not to think about how alone the apartment felt without anyone else’s breathing to listen to.

The knock, when it came, nearly stopped his heart.

Not the growling, scraping sound of the infected — a real knock, urgent, human, three hard strikes against his front door followed immediately by a voice, hoarse and desperate, calling his name.

"Jason! Jason, baby, are you in there?"

He was on his feet before he’d fully processed whose voice it was, flashlight forgotten on the floor, crossing the apartment in three strides and fumbling the deadbolt open with hands that had gone clumsy with disbelief.

The door swung open, and his mother stood there, soaked to the bone, mud streaked up both legs, hair plastered flat against her skull — and behind her, his father, leaning heavily against the doorframe, breathing hard, both of them looking like they’d walked through the entire flooded city to get here.

"Mom." Jason’s voice broke completely on the single word. "Mom, you’re—"

"I’m here." She pulled him into her arms before he could finish the sentence, holding him so tightly it nearly hurt, her own breath coming in ragged, relieved gasps against the top of his head. "I’m here, baby, we made it, we’re here."

Jason clung to her, tears finally breaking free after two weeks of holding them back through sheer stubborn determination, and for one long, perfect moment, nothing else in the world existed except the fact that his mother’s arms were real and warm and actually there.

"Dad—" He pulled back enough to look past her, reaching for his father, who managed a tired, watery smile despite how gray his face looked in the dim hallway light.

"Hey, kiddo." His father’s voice came out rough, exhausted in a way that went deeper than simple tiredness. "Told you we’d make it back."

"You said you’d be back in three days." Jason’s voice cracked between a laugh and another sob. "It’s been like two weeks."

"The city had other plans." His father managed a weak, apologetic smile, stepping fully into the apartment and pulling the door shut behind him with visible effort. "We got stuck. Roads were impassable, then dangerous, then—" He stopped, shaking his head slightly, like even summarizing it cost him something he didn’t have much left of. "It’s a long story. We’ll tell you everything. Just needed to get home first."

"You’re really here," Jason said again, like saying it enough times might make it feel less impossible.

"We’re really here." His mother pressed a kiss to the top of his head, still holding him close. "We heard about everything from other survivors on the way. The zombies, the powers, all of it. We didn’t know if you’d—" Her voice caught, and she didn’t finish the sentence, just held him tighter instead.

"I’m okay," Jason said. "I’ve been okay. There’s people here who’ve been helping. I have neighbors now, real ones, they check on me, they—"

His father made a sound then — small, strained, nothing like a word at all — and Jason turned just in time to see him sway on his feet, one hand shooting out to brace against the wall before his knees buckled entirely.

"Dad!" Jason lunged forward, but he wasn’t fast enough to catch him properly, and his father collapsed the rest of the way to the floor, unconscious before he even fully hit the ground.

"Oh my god—" His mother dropped beside him instantly, hands hovering, panicked. "David? David, can you hear me?"

Jason’s heart slammed against his ribs, the brief, perfect relief of the last few minutes shattering instantly into raw terror. "Is he—" He couldn’t finish the question. ℯℯ𝘭.

"He’s breathing." His mother’s voice shook badly as she pressed trembling fingers against her husband’s throat. "He’s breathing, he’s just — I don’t know, Jason, I don’t know what’s wrong, he’s been exhausted the whole way here, we haven’t eaten properly in days, maybe it’s just—"

"I need to get help." Jason was already moving, adrenaline burning through the shock faster than he could process it. "There’s people upstairs, they’ve helped before, they have medicine, they’ll know what to do."

"Jason, wait—"

But he was already through the door, sprinting down the hallway toward the stairwell, Kai’s voice from two weeks ago suddenly loud and clear in his memory — if you need anything, or if you just don’t want to be alone, come upstairs. We’ll be on the twenty-first floor.

He took the stairs two at a time, lungs burning, legs shaking from exhaustion and fear in equal measure, counting floors as he climbed without fully registering the numbers, driven by nothing except the desperate need to reach someone who might actually know what to do.

By the time he reached the reinforced gate on the twenty-first floor, he was gasping too hard to speak clearly, both hands slamming against the metal in a frantic, uneven rhythm.

"Please—" His voice came out cracked, barely audible even to himself. "Please, somebody, I need help—"

The gate opened faster than he expected, Erik’s face appearing on the other side, expression sharpening instantly at whatever he saw in Jason’s.

"What happened," Erik said, already pulling the gate fully open.

"My dad." Jason’s breath came in ragged, uneven gasps. "My parents made it home, they finally made it home, and then my dad just — he collapsed. He’s breathing but he won’t wake up, and my mom doesn’t know what’s wrong, and I didn’t know who else to—"

"Show me," Erik said, already moving, Kai appearing behind him within seconds, axe forgotten somewhere, already reaching for the medical supplies Penelope kept stocked near the door.

"I’ve got this," Kai said, slinging the bag over his shoulder. "Ben, with me."

Ben appeared from the other room almost instantly, already grabbing his own gear.

"Take me to him," Erik said, resting a brief, steadying hand on Jason’s shoulder. "Breathe. We’re coming."

Jason nodded, some fraction of the panic in his chest easing at the simple, immediate willingness in Erik’s response — no hesitation, no questions about whether it was worth the risk, just immediate, practical action.

They moved fast down the stairwell together, Jason leading, Erik and Kai close behind him with Ben bringing up the rear, and by the time they reached Jason’s floor, his mother’s voice was already audible through the open apartment door, pleading, desperate.

"David, please, wake up, please—"

Erik crossed the threshold first, dropping immediately to his knees beside the unconscious man, two fingers pressed to his throat with the same calm, practiced efficiency he brought to every crisis.

"Pulse is steady," he said, mostly to Jason’s mother, whose face had gone white with terror. "Strong, actually. What happened before he collapsed?"

"We’ve been traveling for days," she said, voice shaking badly. "Barely eating, barely sleeping, just trying to get home. He kept saying he was fine, that we needed to keep moving—"

"Exhaustion," Kai said, already checking the man’s temperature with the back of his hand. "Maybe dehydration too. This isn’t the infection, if that’s what you’re worried about. No fever, no wounds."

The relief that crossed the woman’s face was immediate and overwhelming, a fresh wave of tears breaking free that had nothing to do with fear this time.

"He needs fluids, food, and actual rest," Ben said, already pulling supplies from the bag Kai had grabbed. "His body’s just finally stopped running on adrenaline long enough to demand what it’s been owed for days."

Jason sagged against the doorframe, some enormous weight lifting off his chest all at once, watching as Erik and the others worked with quiet, practiced efficiency to make his father comfortable, to reassure his mother, to turn what had felt like the worst possible ending to the best moment of his last two weeks into something manageable instead.

"Thank you," he said quietly, to all of them, to none of them in particular. "I didn’t know who else to run to."

"You ran to the right people," Kai said, glancing back at him with something warmer than his usual easy grin. "That’s kind of the whole point of neighbors, Jason. Glad you remembered."

Jason nodded, throat too tight to answer properly, and watched his family — whole, exhausted, but together again — slowly begin to settle into the relief of simply having survived long enough to find each other.