I took a Taxi Into the Fog

That morning, the fog didn’t float—it pressed down on the street, heavy and wet, swallowing every sound around me. When I raised my hand and that yellow taxi appeared, I didn’t see it arrive. It just slipped out of the fog, like it had been waiting right beside me the whole time.

The car was old. Not classic—old. The paint was cracked, the chrome didn’t reflect anything, and when I opened the door a thick smell of damp leather, stale sweat, and decades-old cigarette smoke hit me like a wall. The radio was playing some broken jazz track full of static, almost like the speakers were breathing instead of working.

“To the station,” I said.

The driver didn’t answer. His hat covered half of his face, and the part I could see wasn’t looking at me. It was looking past me, like he expected someone else to climb in behind me.

The taxi started with a shudder. As we moved, I realized I didn’t recognize a single street. The buildings looked older than they should have been, with cracked façades and windows covered by curtains that moved even though there was no wind. It felt like we were driving through a part of the city that didn’t exist anymore. Or shouldn’t.

When we stopped, I pulled out my card. The driver frowned like I’d handed him something rotten.

“What the hell is this? We only take cash here.”

I found a few coins in my pocket and handed them over. He took them slowly, turning his head just enough to speak in a low voice.

“Welcome to a reality that ain’t for everyone.”

Before I could ask what he meant, the taxi slid back into the fog and vanished without a sound.

The station loomed in front of me. Not big, but wrong. The proportions looked slightly off, like the building leaned forward a little. The broken windows weren’t reflective—they were just dark, like empty sockets leading to someplace deeper than a room.

As soon as I stepped through the entrance, a cold draft wrapped around my legs. It wasn’t normal cold; it felt like it was coming from the ground itself. The air smelled of damp, rust, and something else—like a room that’s been locked away from light for years.

Inside, the silence wasn’t complete. There was a low hum, faint and distant, and I couldn’t tell if it came from the walls or my own ears. Every step echoed with a delay that didn’t match the sound I made, like the building was repeating it from someplace deep below the floor.

I walked toward the ticket booth. The man behind the glass stood perfectly still, so still that I wasn’t sure he was alive.

I tapped the frame.

He lifted his head with a stiff, unnatural movement. His skin was grayish, his lips cracked, and his eyes dull. A dark line of saliva hung from the corner of his mouth. When he stood up, he released a low growl that scraped the air. Then the glass buckled under his weight.

A freezing hand, much stronger than it should’ve been, clamped onto my wrist. He pulled me toward his open, broken mouth. His jaw snapped with a practiced, mechanical rhythm.

He tried to bite me.

I elbowed him in the face. The sound was wet and sickening. We fell into the broken glass. His breath smelled like rot, thick enough to sting my eyes. His snapping jaw searched blindly for my skin. My hand found a piece of metal on the floor, and I slammed it against his temple. His grip loosened. I didn’t look back—I just ran.

But the silence behind me was gone. Now I heard dragging, scraping, uneven breathing. Shadows shifted where there shouldn’t have been any.

Figures started coming out of corners I swore had been empty. Their movements were wrong—unbalanced, like they weren’t used to carrying their own weight. Some dragged their feet. Others walked too quickly, like they were remembering how to move. And every single one of them turned toward me at the same time.

Not randomly.

They recognized me.

I backed away, and the echoes multiplied. More footsteps, more breathing, coming from tunnels farther away, all joining into a rhythm that made my skin crawl.

I spotted an old train car sitting dead on an abandoned track. It wasn’t safe, but it was the only barrier I had. I ran, jumped inside, slammed the door shut, and wedged a metal bar across the handles. Then I crawled under the seats and tried to quiet my breathing, but my lungs were shaking.

The banging started immediately. Fists, palms, nails dragging along the metal. Bodies hitting the sides with dull, heavy thumps. Each impact made the whole car shiver.

Then the light went out. Not suddenly—slowly, like something darker than darkness was sliding into the corners, filling the gaps, moving under the seats toward me. And the deeper the shadow got, the colder the air became.

A low, wet murmur rose from the metal floor. Not one voice—many, layered on top of each other. Every time I inhaled, the murmur shifted, matching my breath, getting closer.

I grabbed my right arm. The pain was still there, a sharp, misplaced throb. I hadn’t wanted to look, but the shadow was coming with such slow, deliberate intent that I needed to know before it reached me. I rolled up my sleeve.

No bite. No deep tear.

But scratches.

Thin, red, raised lines—skin scraped by cold, desperate fingers.

They didn’t bleed. They burned.

Was that enough to infect me?

I didn’t know.

No one could know anything in a place like that.

But as I stared at those uneven marks, I felt something pulsing beneath them. A slow tingling rising toward my elbow, like a current that didn’t belong to me. I tried to tell myself it was fear, shock, adrenaline… anything human.

But the doubt tore right through me: if their disease could pass through those scratches, if those nails dragging across my skin were enough, then maybe I wasn’t hiding from them anymore.

Maybe they were just waiting for me to stop being me.

The zombies don’t stop.

The metal bar is starting to bend.

And I can’t find a way out.