Prologue
Max
Theredrainiscoming.
The faint tinge of pink in the clouds rolling in over the ocean to my right isn’t the only sign. No, the twitching in some of the crowd to my left is just as fucking telling.
Shoulders roll. Necks crack. Eyes blown wide as gazes flick toward the sky, trying to see through the patchwork of plastic tarps stretched over the seating tiers of this crumbling, stadium-like structure. A shitty, makeshift shelter, thrown together to shield the spectators from what’s coming.
From the rot in the clouds. The sickness in the rain. The madness it stirs in blood and fucking bone.
But it’s not protecting me. Not at all.
I’m under the open sky, standing dead center in the Pit—the exposed heart of what used to be an amphitheater. Half natural, half scavenged from scrap, carved straight into the cliffs of Ibitha like a festering wound. The air is scorching, heavy, pressing down until even my scars feel like they’re burning. Sweat slides down my spine, stinging where yesterday’s wounds still feel raw.
Out here, the heat sharpens everything—the stone, the blood, the eyes crawling over me from every tier. This place doesn’t hide you. It strips you bare.
But it’s still my home. My cage. My godsdamned altar.
And from the far end of this Pit, this circle, behind the rusted iron gate embedded in the wall—just below the raised platform reserved for The Nine, our so-called governing council—comes the third sign of the impending red storm.
The growling starts low but sharp. Almost rhythmic, like an ominous song. Then the snapping joins in. Wet, frantic, rabid. Flesh slaps against iron. Nails scrape stone. Screeches ricochet off the walls, high and broken.
Too jagged to be human. Because yeah… they’re not. Not anymore.
The inhuman things caged behind the gate have woken up.
A moment ago, they were still. Or still enough. Now they surge, limbs tangled as they try to crawl over one another. Frenzied. Starving. Driven by bloodlust, by instinct, by whatever the red rain stirs in their rotting systems.
Or maybe it’s just the scent of something alive.
Of the thunderous crowd around me.
Ofme.
The undead, they’re called. The infected. The Turned. The inhumans. Zombies. Whatever you want to call them, I’ve heard it all before. But here on Ibitha, on this island of fucking so-calledsanctuary, this execution stage masquerading as salvation, we call themWalkers.
I don’t know if the Walkers, as dumb as they are, can actuallyseeme. If they’ve locked onto my shape through the bars from where I’m standing on the rocks of the arena floor, or if it’s something deeper that pulls them forward. Smell, sound, heat. The pulse of blood. The stink of violence.
I never stopped long enough to figure it out.
I just kill them.
Just as the gate rattles again and I brace myself by sliding my feet an inch wider, bending my knees to settle into stance, my hand reaching back over my shoulder to grip the worn hilt of my weapon; the last signal for the impending rain comes.
The final fucking sign. The most obvious one. Yet somehow, it’s always the last. Because these dumbasses? They’re just so damnslow.
The sirens.
Once meant to signal incoming airstrikes, back when the world still had governments, borders, and fighter jets. Back when the sky held anything other than death. Now, seventy-six years after the outbreak of the virus and everything went fucking sideways, they scream for one thing only: The red rain.
The rain of infection. Of madness. Of death.
And even though the meaning has shifted, the message stays the same, just like it did in the old world, inthe before: Get inside. Find shelter. Get off the streets.
But now, there’s an unspoken addition. A rule we live by.
Don’t. Get. Wet.
