A tiny glimmer of light coming from a hole in the wall illuminated the immensely tenebrous old and worn-out apartment. The old floorboards would even produce eerie creaking sounds under someone's feet. Long existing accumulation of mildew on the worn-out wall and ceiling contributed to the old house smell of the space due to the fact that only a little amount of light made its way inside the shabby apartment.

Ezra fixed her thick and crooked eyeglasses up her oily nose bridge and turned to face her brother who is intently reading a book in his hand.

"Hey Zeke, what if a zombie apocalypse took place here in the Filipinas, a third world country wherein corruption, unemployment, heinous crimes of all sorts, and extreme poverty are prevalent and long-existing?" She asked.

His thick black eyebrows furrowed with her peculiar question. Zeke shut the thick book close. "Zombie Apocalypse, you were saying?" A blow of dust flew as he carefully placed it on the wooden table in front of him. He continued, "Poor people like us are likely to die first if that happens,"

Ezra gasped. "You don't say that! Even the smallest rodents inside the filthy sewers get to live peacefully amidst the countless traps and poisons existing around them!" She banged her hand on her knee, protesting.

"If you say so," Zeke shot his eyebrows up to the ceiling and bitterly smiled.

Ezra's intestines tied into a knot upon hearing her brother's direct-to-the-point remark. She was expecting him to say something uplifting, however, she received words indicating otherwise: a dark and harsh reality of the world they live in where the poorest sectors are seen merely as dispensable trash.

Zeke took a few steps back and slightly pat his anxious sister's head. "Stop biting your nails, you are going to end up finishing them." He added, "I assure you if a zombie apocalypse indeed happens... which I doubt," He smiled and continued, "I will do my best to protect you at all costs. You are my only precious younger sister,"

Ezra's once pale and almost paper white face regains its flush and lively color with her brother's assurance. It is three in the afternoon, the sun's mellow rays barely absorbed into their two-room basement residence. She meticulously observed her brother's every calculated movement of wearing his worn denim jacket and grabbing his trusted backpack.

She jumped off from her well-made bed, covered with patches of various cloth. "Zeke, where are you going?" Ezra anxiously asked, not wanting to be left alone for their mother will only arrive at ten in the evening coming from her work.

Zeke was about to twist the rusty doorknob open but came to a halt when he heard his sister's desperate plea. He looked back at her and curved his lips upwards showing the best smile he could ever give.

He grabbed both of Ezra's shoulders and slightly slouched to reach her eye level. "I will be gone for a week. Take good care of yourself, Ezra. You are now eighteen and I know you are a strong woman,"

"Tell me where you are going! Does Mama even know? She will surely be furious to learn you are out finding money again instead of studying," Ezra hissed under her breath while her eyes are fixated down on the wooden floor.

Zeke let out a deep sigh. "I have you, don't tell Mama about this. You can tell her I will be attending a field trip and the expenses are shouldered by our university's engineering department,"

"I guess I am left with no choice," Ezra lifts her head up and scanned her brother's handsome face.

Zeke is a fourth-year Mechanical Engineering major at Las Filipinas Unibersidad, a venerable state university in the country where only the best of the best students get to enter after a series of brain pulverizing examinations and interviews. A student is considered to be the cream of the crop if they happen to make it to a prestigious university.

It is where a seemingly equal ground for students of privileged families and poor upbringings meet and are supposedly given the same set of opportunities to excel and escalate their social classes. Unfortunately, giving equal opportunities to people of all sorts is not a thing in Filipinas or even in Las Filipinas Unibersidad, the highly esteemed higher education facility.

Ezra started school a year late. Peers at her age are now usually in their first year in college but as for her, she is still preparing for a tough brain fight for the first set of Las Filipinas Unibersidad admission exams. She is an ace but is with an anxious heart. A cataclysmal event that occurred years ago which made them lose their home, livelihood, and social status was when her father died.

In a highly patriarchal society where just a few women made it to succeed, their mother was robbed out of opportunities, belittling the poor single mother thus contributing to their difficult situation right now.

However, Deena, their mother is a wise and sharp-witted woman that one supposedly should not think lowly of. She struggles to support her children with their day-to-day needs but never did she show it to them, so as not to cause worry because, for her, they have suffered enough.

Ezra paced back and forth inside their home while biting her nails. Her knees turned to melted rubber with every step she make. She has watched a zombie movie earlier which made her pop her weird question to her brother in the first.

'Zeke is right, if a zombie apocalypse occurs in Filipinas, we will surely be doomed,' She thought to herself after pouring a glass of lukewarm water.

Most western zombie movies she saw involved people getting bitten and eventually turning to zombies themselves even if their houses were big and were built using concrete materials. The situation is completely in contrast in Filipinas where most houses are made out of light materials such as woven coconut leaves, bamboo trees, and the like. With just one push of a famished zombie, a typical Filipinas house may collapse in no time.

"I'm lucky we live in a basement of a concrete building," Ezra tied her hair into a bun and sat down, contemplating that a zombie apocalypse as seen in movies is just a product of a wide and limitless imagination.

She tried to calm her heart's galloping beat. "There is absolutely no way a zombie apocalypse could happen in my lifetime, pull yourself together, Ezra." Or so she thought.