The Last Broadcast

Day 1 - 20: The End Begins

Day 1 - The End Begins

The world ended on a Tuesday.

Jackson Cole had been drinking stale coffee in the dimly lit booth of K-102 when the first reports crackled through the emergency broadcast system. Riots downtown. Hospitals overwhelmed. National Guard mobilized.

He’d seen enough disaster headlines to recognize the signs. This wasn’t just another flu, another seasonal panic. This was something worse.

By nightfall, the city had collapsed into chaos. Power outages spread like ink in water. People screamed in the streets. Gunshots echoed through the alleys. And the worst part? The silence that followed.

Then came the monsters.

They weren’t the sluggish, arms-outstretched zombies from old movies. These things were fast when they smelled blood, but slow when left alone, wandering aimlessly until the next hunt. Their eyes were vacant, their skin pale and stretched tight over their bones.

Jackson had locked himself inside the station, barricading the doors with old furniture and radio equipment. The building was sturdy, meant to withstand storms. He had canned food in the break room, a few bottles of water, and—most importantly—an emergency generator.

When the city went dark, he was still on the air.

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Day 5 - The Last Voice

“—this is Jackson Cole, broadcasting from K-102. If you’re out there, you’re not alone.”

The words felt like an empty promise.

Every night, he spoke into the microphone, telling stories, reading from old books, playing music from the station’s archives. The sound of his own voice kept him sane.

But the static never answered.

The world outside had grown quiet. Too quiet. He’d spent hours staring through the cracks in the boarded-up windows, watching the dead shuffle aimlessly. Sometimes, he saw movement that wasn’t them—a shadow darting between cars, a figure sprinting across rooftops. Survivors. Maybe.

Or just the last desperate people trying to outrun the inevitable.

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Day 12 - A New Voice

It happened just as he was about to sign off.

The static shifted. A faint crackle. Then—a voice.

“Hello? Is… is someone there?”

Jackson’s breath caught. He nearly dropped the mic.

“Yes! Yes, this is Jackson. Who is this?”

Silence. Then, a weak, static-laced response.

“My name is Sam. I’m in Riverside. We have survivors here. Food. Shelter. If you can make it, come.”

Jackson clenched his fists. Hope was dangerous. Hope could get you killed.

But he’d been alone for too long.

He clicked the mic one last time. “I’m coming.”

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Day 13 - The Journey Begins

The city was worse than he imagined.

Corpses littered the streets, most of them long since picked clean by the infected or by something else. Cars were abandoned in tangled wrecks. Buildings had burned, leaving skeletal remains of homes and businesses.

And the air smelled like rot.

Jackson moved carefully, a baseball bat gripped in his hands. He had an old revolver at his hip—only five bullets. Enough to save himself, if it came to that.

Riverside was twenty miles away.

It might as well have been the other side of the world.

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Day 15 - The Wrong Kind of Survivors

He found the first trap by accident.

A tripwire, nearly invisible in the moonlight, stretched across the road. If he had been moving any faster, he would have set it off. And judging by the rusted metal spikes buried in the dirt nearby, he wouldn’t have walked away.

Someone else was alive out here.

And they weren’t friendly.

Jackson tightened his grip on the bat and kept moving.

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Day 18 - The Signal Fades

The radio crackled again, but this time, it wasn’t Sam.

The message was fragmented, barely audible through the static.

“—they’re coming—run—don’t—”

Then, silence.

Jackson’s stomach twisted.

He wasn’t sure what scared him more—the infected… or the people still left alive.

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