The Weight of Water

The water made her. The water never let her go.

Brooke Kowalczyk has three things on her mind: her best friends, her relay team, and the IHSA Girls State Championship at FMC Natatorium.

November 15-16, 2024. Two days that will define her senior year.

She doesn't know they're also the last normal days of her life.

Six months later, a virus called TSJ reaches the United States from Europe. It spreads through bites and blood. It turns the dead into something fast, aggressive, and hungrier than anything Brooke has ever faced. The military calls it an outbreak. The internet calls it the zombie apocalypse. Brooke calls it the end of everything she knew.

But she's a swimmer.

She knows how to hold her breath when the world tries to drown her. She knows how to keep moving when every muscle screams to stop. She knows that the water doesn't care about fear - it only cares about the weight you bring into it.

From the suburbs of Hinsdale to the flooded ruins of Chicago to the frozen shores of Lake Superior, Brooke must navigate a slow-burn collapse that doesn't happen in a single explosion - it happens in phone calls that drop and never reconnect, in neighbors who disappear in white vans, in the silence when the power goes out for good.

She'll lose things she never thought she could lose.
She'll discover strengths she never knew she had.
And through it all, the water will hold her. Or it will pull her under.

The only question is: how much weight can she carry?