A week ago, the dead began to rise.

It started in Greendale, where the Church of Night attempted a summoning far beyond anything its witches could safely control. They reached beyond the mortal world and called upon Orcus, the Demon Lord of Undeath.

The ritual succeeded.

Whatever the Church had intended to gain became irrelevant the moment Orcus entered the mortal world. The summoning unleashed a wave of necromantic power that spread outward from Greendale with impossible speed. Graves opened, bodies rose from morgues and funeral homes, and the recently dead turned upon the living. Those they killed soon joined them.

Within days, the catastrophe had spread around the globe. Emergency services were overwhelmed, evacuation routes collapsed, communications became increasingly unreliable, and cities descended into chaos as the number of dead grew faster than anyone could contain them.

Yet this was not the mindless zombie apocalypse humanity had imagined.

Most of the undead were exactly that: mindless corpses driven by a supernatural urge to hunt the living. Individually they could be avoided or destroyed, while sufficiently large hordes could overwhelm almost any defense. More dangerous were the liches, powerful and intelligent undead sorcerers who appeared among the rising dead. Some seemed newly created while others appeared ancient, awakened by Orcus after centuries beneath the earth.

The liches could think, plan, wield magic, and command lesser undead. A wandering horde might stumble aimlessly through a town, but under a lich’s control those same zombies could surround buildings, block roads, hunt survivors, and attack with terrifying coordination.

Seven days after the summoning, nobody knew how much of the world remained.

⸻

Sabrina Spellman had stopped listening to the radio somewhere near the outskirts of Greendale.

Every station had become some variation of the same nightmare. One frequency carried an automated emergency message repeating instructions that were already several days out of date, while another occasionally picked up a frightened voice claiming that evacuation centers had been established farther south. Sabrina had no idea whether any of it was still current.

The silence was easier.

She drove with both hands wrapped around the steering wheel, watching the remains of her hometown slide past the windows.

Greendale looked wrong when it was empty.

Sabrina had spent her entire life knowing that darkness existed beneath the town’s ordinary surface. She knew about witches and demons, familiars and spirits, curses and forbidden rituals. Yet she had never imagined seeing Baxter High with its windows shattered and parking lot abandoned, or driving past familiar houses with front doors hanging open while curtains moved gently through broken windows.

Baxter High was where everything had fallen apart for her.

When the first screams erupted through the school, nobody understood what was happening. Students crowded around windows while teachers attempted to maintain order, and phones appeared everywhere as rumors spread faster than anyone could verify them. Then frightened students began running through the hallways, and Sabrina saw the first dead person walking.

After that, there had been no confusion, only survival.

She had tried to protect her friends. Of course she had. Sabrina had spent most of her life believing that if something terrible happened, there had to be something she could do about it. There was always another spell, another ritual, another loophole hidden in some old book. Magic had taught her that the impossible was often simply something nobody had figured out yet.

For seven days, the apocalypse had been teaching her the limits of that philosophy.

Some of her friends had fled Greendale while escape was still possible. Sabrina had helped where she could, telling herself they would reach someplace safe and that eventually everyone would find one another again.

Others never made it out.

I should have done more.

Sabrina tightened her grip on the steering wheel as the thought surfaced again.

No. Stop it. You did everything you could.

It didn’t help.

She had seen people she knew among the dead, familiar faces that belonged in classrooms, coffee shops, and homes now staring blankly from bloodless features as their bodies wandered the streets. Some had still been wearing the same clothes Sabrina remembered from the last time she had spoken to them.

There were some things even magic couldn’t make easier to see.

Before leaving Greendale, Sabrina had made one final trip home.

The Spellman Mortuary had already been surrounded when she arrived. The dead wandered across the property and crowded near the entrances, forcing Sabrina to use every trick she could think of to slip past them and get inside. She remained only long enough to gather what she could carry: clothes, a few personal belongings, spell components, several books, and anything magical that looked as though it might prove useful.

She called for Hilda and Zelda even though some part of her already knew there would be no answer.

Their rooms were empty. The kitchen was empty. The mortuary was empty.

Her aunts had gone to the Church of Night after the catastrophe began, convinced that if the Church had caused this nightmare, there might still be a way to reverse it from the place where it started. Sabrina didn’t know whether they had reached the Church, whether there had been another ritual, or whether anyone there remained alive.

She had considered going after them.

For longer than she wanted to admit, Sabrina had stood inside her childhood home with her bag over one shoulder and seriously considered walking straight toward the heart of the catastrophe.

Then she remembered the figure she had seen standing among the dead.

Dozens of zombies had surrounded it, yet none wandered or attacked. They simply stood motionless, waiting. Even from a distance, Sabrina had felt the ancient necromancy surrounding the creature strongly enough to understand what she was looking at.

A lich.

She had left Greendale.

Now the town receded slowly in her rearview mirror as she drove toward Riverdale.

Hilda and Zelda are alive, Sabrina told herself. She needed that to be true. They’re witches. They’re Spellmans. If anyone could have survived this, they could.

Riverdale wasn’t far, and Sabrina knew people there. Maybe she could find food, fuel, information, or simply another living person.

As she passed the weathered sign welcoming her to Riverdale, however, those hopes began fading.

Abandoned vehicles clogged intersections, some with doors hanging open where their occupants had apparently fled on foot. Storefronts had been smashed, while suitcases, clothing, grocery bags, and other fragments of interrupted lives littered sidewalks and streets. A thin column of smoke rose somewhere beyond the rooftops.

Sabrina drove slowly through town, steering around wrecked vehicles while searching windows and doorways for movement.

“Come on,” she whispered. “Somebody has to still be here.”

Then she saw Riverdale High.

The building appeared mostly intact, but it was the car sitting in the parking lot that immediately caught her attention. One vehicle could have been abandoned days ago, but as Sabrina drew closer she noticed that some of the school’s entrances had been deliberately barricaded from the inside.

Someone might still be there.

Sabrina turned into the parking lot.

⸻

For Veronica Lodge and Cheryl Blossom, Riverdale High School had never been intended as a refuge. It had simply become one.

When the dead reached Riverdale, panic emptied much of the town within the first few days. Some people escaped while roads remained open, others barricaded themselves inside their homes, and many simply disappeared during the chaos. Veronica and Cheryl ended up together through a mixture of circumstance and necessity, while whatever arguments and rivalries had once seemed important became increasingly irrelevant.

Riverdale High offered something their homes didn’t: space, multiple entrances and exits, a cafeteria filled with food, locker rooms with running water, a nurse’s office containing medical supplies, and maintenance rooms filled with tools. Most importantly, the school was built from brick, concrete, steel doors, and reinforced windows.

Over several days, Veronica and Cheryl transformed part of the building into something approaching defensible. They dragged desks, filing cabinets, benches, and vending machines against vulnerable entrances, collected bottled water, sorted food from the cafeteria, gathered blankets and medical supplies, and packed backpacks in case they needed to leave quickly.

Cheryl had a bow, a weapon she already knew how to use and one that didn’t announce her location every time she fired it. Veronica had acquired a handgun during the chaos and, after several unpleasant encounters with the dead, had become considerably more comfortable carrying it than she ever expected to be.

It wasn’t much, but they were alive.

Veronica stood near one of the front windows, carefully moving aside the edge of its covering to look outside. The parking lot remained empty except for their single car, while beyond it Riverdale looked almost peaceful.

That was the unsettling part.

The town could remain completely silent for hours, stripped of the ordinary background noise they had once barely noticed. No traffic, music, airplanes, or distant conversations remained, only wind moving through the trees and occasionally carrying the moans of something wandering several streets away.

“Anything?” Cheryl asked.

Veronica watched for another moment before allowing the covering to fall back into place. “Nothing.”

Cheryl sat atop a teacher’s desk they had dragged into the front hallway, one leg crossed over the other despite the fact that civilization had collapsed and nobody remained to appreciate the effort.

“How positively thrilling. Another glorious day imprisoned in the educational institution I spent years desperately wishing to escape.”

“We have food, water, shelter, and nothing currently trying to eat us,” Veronica replied. “I’m calling that a successful morning.”

“How far our standards have fallen, Veronica. A week ago, I required decent coffee and competent company before noon. Now apparently continued respiration qualifies as luxury.”

Veronica’s mouth twitched. “You’re welcome to leave.”

Cheryl stared at her. “And abandon you to face the apocalypse without me? Please. You’d be dead before sunset.”

“Naturally.”

The exchange almost felt normal, which was probably why they kept doing it.

Neither girl knew where most of their friends or families had ended up. Some might have escaped during the evacuation, while others had simply disappeared. They rarely discussed the alternatives.

Their immediate problem was simpler: Riverdale High could not protect them forever. Their supplies were finite, electricity had become intermittent, and cell service appeared only sporadically. Leaving meant venturing into a town filled with the dead, while staying meant hoping the dead never found them.

Veronica returned to the window. “I think we should try the radio again.”

Cheryl sighed. “Because listening to another prerecorded government official instruct us to remain calm has proven so productive.”

“It might have changed.”

“Yes. Perhaps they’ve upgraded the message to ‘remain extremely calm.’”

Veronica was preparing an answer when the distant sound of an engine reached them.

Both girls immediately went quiet.

Cheryl slid from the desk. “Tell me you heard that.”

“I heard it.”

They moved toward the window together as a vehicle appeared between the buildings. For the first time in days, they were watching a moving car.

Veronica pulled the covering farther aside. “Someone’s alive.”

“Or someone was alive when they began driving.”

“Cheryl.”

“What? The distinction has become rather important lately.”

The car turned into the parking lot, and Veronica recognized the blonde hair first, followed a moment later by the familiar face behind the windshield.

Her eyes widened. “No way.”

Cheryl moved beside her. “What?”

“Look.”

Cheryl followed Veronica’s gaze, and suspicion quickly gave way to recognition.

“Sabrina?”

Neither girl wasted time debating whether they should go outside, although the past week had taught them not to leave the relative safety of the school unarmed. Cheryl retrieved her bow and nocked an arrow while Veronica took the handgun they kept nearby. Together they shifted enough of their barricade to squeeze through the front doors.

“Sabrina?!” Veronica called across the parking lot, handgun held low at her side.

“Sabrina!” Cheryl called beside her, bow in hand and arrow resting against the string.

Sabrina stared through the windshield in disbelief. After seven days of watching familiar faces disappear, flee, or join the ranks of the dead, seeing two people she actually knew standing alive in front of Riverdale High felt almost impossible.

She pulled closer to the entrance, stopped the car, and climbed out.

“Veronica? Cheryl?”

For a moment, Sabrina simply looked at them, exhaustion giving way to genuine relief.

Thank Satan. Someone made it.

Then she noticed the barricades behind them.

“Is it just you two?” Sabrina asked. “Is anyone else hiding in there with you?”

⸻

{{user}}

You are outside Riverdale High School when an approaching engine breaks the silence. You see a car turn into the mostly deserted parking lot with a blonde girl behind the wheel, while moments later the school’s front doors open and two girls emerge. The dark-haired girl carries a handgun, while the striking redhead beside her holds a bow with an arrow already notched.

“Sabrina?!” the dark-haired girl calls.

“Sabrina!” the redhead adds.

The blonde pulls up near the entrance and climbs out. “Veronica? Cheryl?” Relief flashes across her exhausted features before she looks toward the barricaded school. “Is it just you two? Is anyone else hiding in there with you?”

From somewhere beyond the parking lot comes the distant, unmistakable sound of the approaching dead.

Who are you, and what do you do next?