The heat of summer clung to the air even after the sun had dipped below the horizon. Austin nights were supposed to cool down, but this one didn't. Sweat ran down the back of my neck as I moved through the neighborhood, flashlight beam cutting over fences and quiet lawns.
Joel walked beside me, steady, the kind of man who didn't waste words. I'd known him only a few weeks, but you could read someone quick if you paid attention. The way his eyes lingered on every corner, the way his hand twitched near his belt like it wanted to hold something heavier than a toolbox, the way he sized me up without ever saying it out loud. He'd seen his share of trouble. Maybe not the kind I had, but enough to know the world wasn't as safe as folks liked to pretend.
His brother Tommy trailed behind us, looser, more easygoing. He cracked a joke here and there, testing the air, testing me. Joel didn't laugh much. I liked that about him. Men who laughed at everything usually broke when it mattered.
We weren't out here for laughs anyway.
"Another one?" Joel asked, pointing his chin at the fence line.
The dog lay stiff, ribs showing through its short fur. No obvious wounds, no blood. Just dead. Same as the one yesterday, and the one before that.
I crouched, sweeping the light across the body. Pupils clouded over, mouth half-open like it had been choking. I pulled a rag from my pocket, wrapped it around my hand, and opened the jaws. The gums looked pale, almost grey.
"Doesn't look normal," I muttered. "Not rabies. Not poisoning either."
"You sure?" Tommy asked. "Could be somebody leaving scraps out, you know, antifreeze in the trash or somethin'."
I shook my head. "Antifreeze hits the kidneys. They don't go stiff like this. And rabies foams. This is something else."
Joel didn't comment, but his silence carried more weight than words. He was already thinking the same thing I was. Something was spreading.
We moved on, checking another yard. Same story. By the time we circled back toward Joel's place, I counted six animals. Dogs, cats, even a raccoon. All within a three-block stretch.
Back at the porch, Joel leaned against the railing, arms crossed. Tommy lit a cigarette and offered me one. I declined. Old habit—never put smoke into lungs that might need to run miles on short notice.
"You sound like you've seen this before," Joel finally said.
"Not this, exactly." I sat on the step, elbows on my knees. "But I've seen patterns. Things don't just happen in clusters unless there's a reason. Water, food, air, doesn't matter. There's always a source."
Tommy blew smoke into the night. "So what, you think somebody's poisoning the block?"
"Not poison," I said. "Something living. Something that spreads."
Joel's eyes narrowed just a fraction. He didn't like the sound of that, but he didn't dismiss it either. That's what made him different. Most people hear something they don't like, they shut down. Joel kept listening, even when it scared him.
The wind shifted and brought the smell of wet soil, damp and heavy. It made me think of deployments overseas, jungle air so thick it clung to your lungs. Fungal, almost.
I pushed the thought away for now. Too early. Too crazy-sounding. If I told them flat out that a fungus could take hold of mammals, they'd call me paranoid. Preparation works best when it looks like common sense, not insanity.
"I'll keep watch tonight," I said, standing. "Just in case. You should keep Sarah inside."
Joel studied me. Not like a neighbor. More like a soldier deciding if the man beside him could carry the weight. After a long pause, he gave a single nod. "Alright."
That nod meant more than words.
I didn't sleep. Instead, I sat in my own living room with the lights low, rifle across my lap, the faint hum of the fridge filling the silence. The system interface flickered at the edge of my vision when I focused on it, almost like a migraine aura.
> [Quest Progress: Investigate Early Signs – 20%]
Optional Reward: Data Fragment – Cordyceps Variant.]
That word again. Cordyceps. It confirmed what I'd suspected, but seeing it written by something I still couldn't explain made my stomach knot. If the system was real, then so was the timeline. Five years. Maybe less if things accelerated.
I thought of Sarah next door. Bright kid. Always waving when I walked by, always trying to drag Joel into a lighter mood. He tried, for her sake, but you could see the strain behind his smile. He reminded me of myself years back, before deployments and losses piled up like bodies in the sand.
The system pulsed again.
> [New Objective: Collect Sample – Animal Host.]
I exhaled slowly. That meant getting close to one of the bodies. Not pleasant, but necessary. If I was going to understand what was coming, I needed proof.
Near midnight, I headed back to the yard with the first dead dog. Gloves on, mask over my face, sample kit from the basement in hand. Old military biohazard procedures came back like muscle memory. Swab the mouth. Check the bloodstream. Bag a piece of tissue.
When I peeled back the gums again, I caught it. White threads, thin as hair, coiled along the roof of the mouth. Not rot. Not bacteria. Something else.
The system pinged.
> [Data Fragment Collected – 1/3.]
I zipped the bag shut and forced myself not to think about how easily those threads could spread if they found the right host.
The dog's eyes seemed to follow me as I walked away.
By dawn, I had the sample stored, gloves burned in the fire pit, mask buried deep in a trash bag. Joel spotted me from his porch when I came back, but he didn't ask questions. He just gave another one of those nods, like he already knew I wasn't the type to do something without a reason.
Sarah waved from behind the screen door, hair messy, sleep still in her eyes. For a moment, everything looked normal. A father, his daughter, a quiet street waking up to another day.
But I knew better.
And so did the system.