Day Zero / Season 1, Episode 12
Racing Against Ruin
Nina’s sneakers slap against the slick linoleum of the hospital’s third-floor admin wing, the sound swallowed by the low groan of buckling walls and the distant, relentless drip of floodwater seeping through cracks. Her hands grip the gurney’s cold metal edge, knuckles pale, pushing with every ounce of her dwindling strength. The teenage boy on the stretcher wheezes, a wet, shallow rasp that cuts through her like a blade—each breath a countdown. Blood soaks the gauze taped to his chest, spreading in a dark bloom, and his eyelids flutter, half-open, unfocused. Jamal’s at the other end, his broad shoulders hunched, sweat beading on his forehead despite the damp chill in the air. Hector, ahead by three paces, clutches a rusted pipe he scavenged from a maintenance closet, his eyes darting to every shadow in the flickering emergency light. “Left or right?” Hector’s voice is a harsh whisper, barely carrying over the hum of failing generators somewhere below. He stops at a T-junction, the hallway splitting into darkness on both sides. A faded sign dangles from the ceiling, pointing left to “Storage B-7,” but the right corridor reeks of mildew and something sharper, like burnt wiring. Nina’s chest tightens. Left means supplies—maybe bandages, maybe a defibrillator if they’re lucky. Right could be a dead end, or worse, whatever smashed that glass...