All Chapters of Eclipse of the Dead: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The days were starting to blend together. Every day was like the last: endless hours spent pouring over research, barely enough sleep, and the constant undercurrent of fear that something was about to go terribly wrong. And yet, amidst the chaos, there was a certain rhythm to it all. A pattern that, though imperfect, helped us all keep moving forward.Ethan and I had fallen into our roles over the weeks. He was the general, the protector, the one who made sure everyone stayed alive long enough for us to figure out what was happening. I was the scientist—the one who had the answers, or at least, that’s what I told myself. I had to keep my head in the game. The cure was out there, somewhere, and I was going to find it. I had to.But the more time I spent working with Ethan, the more I saw him as something more than just a soldier. There were moments when his usual stoic demeanor would slip, revealing a crack of vulnerability beneath. It wasn’t much—just the way his jaw tightened when he

I’ve seen a lot of things in my life. I’ve studied countless viruses, examined their mutations, analyzed how they affect the human body. I’ve observed everything from microscopic bacteria to the way a disease can tear through entire populations. But there’s one thing I never expected to witness—one thing I couldn’t have prepared myself for: the toll Ethan’s powers were taking on him.I’ve known for a while that his abilities were something beyond ordinary. He had control over energy—something that allowed him to push back the infected, protect his team, and clear paths when necessary. He was, without a doubt, a powerful asset. But power, as I was beginning to realize, had its limits. And Ethan was pushing those limits every single day.It happened one afternoon, in the middle of what should have been a routine mission. We were moving through an abandoned area, searching for survivors, when we stumbled into a nest of infected. At first, there were only a few—a handful of them, moving s

The infected weren’t the only threat anymore. That much had become clear over the past few weeks. It wasn’t just the shambling hordes of zombies that kept me awake at night, but the survivors—the desperate ones, the ones who had lost too much, the ones who saw others as nothing more than resources to take.We were facing more attacks from hostile survivor groups, scavengers willing to do anything to stay alive. They didn’t care about the cure I was working on or the lives we were trying to save. To them, we were either competition or prey. And that reality was beginning to weigh heavily on all of us.The missions were getting riskier, the stakes higher. Ethan and I had been in the field together more often than not, and I found myself relying on him more than I ever thought I would. He wasn’t just my protector anymore. He was my partner—someone I trusted implicitly, someone I couldn’t imagine doing this without.It wasn’t just his strength or his powers that I depended on, though thos

It was late, and the base was quieter than I had ever heard it. The usual hum of voices and movement had faded, leaving only the low buzz of the generators and the occasional sound of footsteps outside. Everyone was either asleep or too exhausted to speak. I couldn’t blame them. It had been a long, grueling day, one of the worst we’d had in weeks.I sat at my desk in the makeshift lab, staring at the screen in front of me. The data blurred together, a mess of numbers and charts that refused to make sense no matter how many times I analyzed them. My head throbbed, my shoulders ached, and my eyes burned from lack of sleep, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop.The virus was mutating again, shifting into something even more dangerous. Every test I ran seemed to lead to more questions instead of answers, and the frustration was eating away at me. We were running out of time. I could feel it in every failed experiment, every dead end. The weight of it all sat heavy on my chest, making it ha

The command tent was eerily quiet, the only sounds coming from the faint hum of the generators outside and the rustling of papers on the table in front of me. The room was dimly lit by a single overhead bulb that flickered every so often, casting long shadows across the walls. It was late—well past midnight—but I couldn’t bring myself to leave. The weight of the day still clung to me like a heavy coat I couldn’t shrug off.The mission had been another close call. Too close. We’d lost three soldiers, and Ethan had barely managed to get us out alive. My hands still trembled slightly when I thought about it, the image of the infected swarming around us burned into my mind. I couldn’t stop replaying it, the sounds of gunfire, the screams, the sickening growls of the infected closing in.I sat at the table, staring blankly at a report I’d been trying to read for the past half hour. The words swam in front of my eyes, refusing to settle into anything coherent. I rubbed my temples, trying to