Eighteen years.
That number was heavy in ways words couldn't capture. For some, it meant an entire childhood inside barbed wire fences, growing up never knowing what a world without spores looked like. For others, it meant nearly two decades of surviving on scraps, watching people die one by one, carrying ghosts heavier than any pack they'd ever hauled.
For the MC, it meant something else entirely it was proof that humanity hadn't been wiped out, not yet. Broken, scattered, starving, paranoid? Yes. But still breathing. Still walking. Still fighting.
The quarantine zone wasn't what it had been in the early days. Back then, military patrols marched in tight formation, rations came in crates air-dropped by convoys, and the walls had felt impenetrable. Now the walls sagged, patched with sheet metal and burned-out vehicles. Patrols were thinner, soldiers traded more bullets than they gave away, and rations came in halved portions when they came at all.
Desperation had a smell. A texture. You could taste it in the soup lines, see it in the way people huddled around scraps of firewood. You could hear it in the silence of the children children who didn't laugh, who didn't play, who just watched with wide eyes as adults argued over food.
Sarah and Lena had been children once. Now, after eighteen years, they were women carved by the same rot that reshaped the world. Their hair was shorter, more practical. Their arms bore the faint bruises of training, of endless drills. They didn't look like survivors clinging to the edge they looked like fighters who had accepted the edge as their home.
Alice was harder still. Always alert, always listening, always ready with a blade in her hand. She had once smiled often, MC remembered that. Now her face wore calm like a mask, the kind that never cracked unless the danger was already over.
Kyle had become his right hand in everything. The man had knowledge knowledge of weapons, of crafting, of how to make things out of nothing but scrap and imagination. The two of them had worked in shadows for years, building what they could, never making too much noise, never drawing too much attention. In a place where whispers could turn to bullets, you didn't want anyone knowing what you had.
But it wasn't only people who had changed. The infection itself had grown, mutating as if it were a living, thinking thing.
The early years had been Runners. They were simple terrifying, yes, but still human enough to understand. Their faces twisted with rage, their limbs jerking like puppets pulled on broken strings. They were fast, reckless, and loud, driven by the last embers of whatever human instincts remained.
Then came the Stalkers. The MC still remembered the first time he saw one half its face covered in fungus, the other half still human enough to scream. They hid in shadows, made croaking sounds in the dark, and attacked when you least expected it. If Runners were storms, Stalkers were knives waiting under the bed.
By the time the world marked its first decade of rot, Clickers had appeared. Blind, with heads split open into grotesque fungal crowns, they clicked through the dark like some nightmare sonar. They were stronger, faster, deadlier. One wrong sound, one broken bottle underfoot, and you'd have a monster tearing your throat out.
But now now, after eighteen years the infection had shown its full hand.
Bloaters were real. The MC had seen one, hulking and massive, skin plated with fungal armor, slow but unstoppable. He had a scar along his left arm from the acid spores it threw, a burn that never fully healed.
And then there were Shamblers. Variants that had evolved in damp areas, their bodies swollen with pustules that burst into toxic clouds. They were less armored than Bloaters, but their death was a weapon in itself. He had lost a scavenger once one second alive, the next choking to death in a cloud of spores.
The world had aged. The infection had aged. Humanity had aged. And none of it had aged well.
That morning or what passed for morning in a place where smoke blotted out the sun MC and Kyle slipped beyond the walls. Scavenging was dangerous, but it was necessary. The military only cared about feeding its own men now. Civilians were left to rot unless they made themselves useful.
Sarah, Lena, and Alice had wanted to come. But today wasn't for training. Today was about supplies metal, scrap, chemicals, things that could be turned into weapons later. Things that could mean the difference between living and starving when the walls finally gave way.
The two men moved carefully through the ruins. Buildings sagged like old bones, windows broken, staircases collapsing under their weight. Nature was reclaiming what the infection hadn't. Vines wrapped around lampposts, moss crept through cracks in the street, and spores clung to every damp surface.
Their destination was an old subway entrance. Underground stations had proven dangerous but resource-rich. The tunnels collected metal, tools, and sometimes untouched storerooms. But they also collected spores, and where spores grew thick, infected followed.
Masks on, they descended into the dark.
The air was heavy. Thick. Every breath through the filter carried the faint taste of mold. The sound of dripping water echoed through the tunnels. Their flashlights cut thin beams across the decay.
Then came the sound.
Croak. Croak.
MC froze. Kyle heard it too. They exchanged a look Stalkers.
They moved in silence, crouched low, weapons ready. The croaking grew louder, bouncing off the walls until it was impossible to tell direction. Then one burst from the shadows.
MC reacted on instinct, slamming a pipe blade through its chest, wrenching free as it screamed. Another leapt from the ceiling, tackling Kyle to the ground. Kyle's knife found its throat before its claws could.
The tunnel erupted. Croaks, footsteps, screams. Stalkers poured from the shadows.
The fight was fast, brutal. MC swung wide, blade sparking against the wall, catching one in the jaw. Blood sprayed across the tiles. Kyle slammed another against the floor, stabbing until it stopped twitching.
They fought like men who had done this too many times to count, like predators who had learned the shape of the hunt. Their breathing was harsh, masks fogging with sweat, muscles burning.
And then Click. Click. Click.
The sound froze them both.
From deeper in the tunnel came the unmistakable shuffling of a Clicker. Its head swayed side to side, fungal crown splitting open grotesquely, its mouth releasing those bone-deep clicks.
It screamed, a sound that tore through the tunnel like glass.
MC grabbed Kyle's shoulder. No words. Just a look. They both knew.
They couldn't win this fight. Not against a Clicker not without noise, not without more bombs.
Slowly, silently, they backed away. The Stalkers were dead, but the tunnel wasn't safe anymore. Nothing was safe anymore.
When they returned to the quarantine zone, they carried more than supplies.
They carried proof.
The infection wasn't just surviving it was evolving. Faster, stronger, deadlier.
And if it could change… so would they.