The island was supposed to be perfect. Sand like powdered gold. Water so clear you could see the scars on your soul in it. Tourists came for escape—honeymoons, second chances, fresh starts. And for a while, it worked. Laughter echoed from cliffside resorts. Champagne bubbled under neon lights. But perfection is fragile. And when the sickness came, it didn’t knock. It tore through flesh and mind like fire in dry brush. One morning, the sun rose on paradise. By sunset, it bathed in blood.
The infection was fast, but the collapse was faster. Phones stopped ringing. Help never came. The screams began with one man at the breakfast buffet—and ended with a dozen guests devouring him like wolves. Within hours, the roads were jammed with abandoned cars and shattered suitcases. Survivors huddled in kitchens, spas, even beneath overturned cabanas. But the monsters wore the faces of friends. Of lovers. Of children. There was no time to mourn. Only time to run. And fight. And hope you didn’t hear your own name on the lips of something that no longer remembered who it once was.
She had been a concierge. He had been a rapper. Another was a retired firefighter. They didn’t know each other before the outbreak, but now they moved like a pack—uneasy, exhausted, armed with golf clubs and broken pool cues. They didn’t talk about what they had to do to survive. Not after the first night. They just kept moving, one burned villa at a time, one street soaked in memory and rot. Somewhere on the island, a voice still crackled over an emergency radio—promising evacuation. But every step toward salvation felt more like descent.
By the time they reached the cliffs above the old resort pier, they had all changed. Not infected—but transformed. Harder. Quieter. The island was no longer a place. It was a trial. A curse. A mirror. The sun began to rise again, casting long shadows over a bay filled with fire. Below, the zombies still wandered the sands, aimless and hungry, dancing like puppets in the surf. She looked at the others, her knuckles bruised, her dress torn, her soul a splinter of what it was. “If this is paradise,” she said, “then maybe hell’s not so bad.” And then, without another word, they started down the hill—into the dark, toward the docks, toward the unknown. Not for rescue. But because there was no going back.
