The sun beat down on my cracked lips, each ray a tiny hammer blow. I hadn't tasted water in what felt like days.
Days bled into weeks, weeks into months, all the same shade of dusty brown. The world was dying, choked by the Crimson Rot.
They called it Polycythemia Vera back before everything went to hell, but that was just a fancy name for a blood disease that turned you inside out.
I scavenged, like always. My stomach growled, a constant companion. The skeletal remains of houses lined the street, silent witnesses to the plague. I kicked a rusted can, the sound echoing eerily in the stillness. A heavy, stale air lingered, with a hint of a metallic, decaying odor.
Suddenly, a glint of metal caught my eye. A small, abandoned pharmacy. Hope flickered in my chest – maybe there were some antibiotics, something to ward off the infections that thrived in this wasteland.
I cautiously pushed the broken door open. Dust motes danced in the shafts of sunlight that pierced the gloom. The shelves were mostly bare, ransacked long ago. But then I saw it. A small, metal cabinet, locked.
My heart pounded. Something valuable had been hidden away. I rummaged in my bag, pulling out the jagged piece of metal I used as a pry bar. It took a few agonizing minutes, the rasping of metal against metal loud in the quiet ruin, but finally, the lock clicked open.
Inside, were vials. Small, glass vials filled with a clear liquid. Labels, faded but just legible, read: "Polycythemia Vera - Treatment."
Treatment. My hand trembled as I picked one up. Treatment for the Crimson Rot. Hope surged through me, almost painful in its intensity. I could be cured. I wouldn't have to live like this, scavenging and starving.
But why was it hidden? Why wasn't it taken?
I ignored the nagging doubt. I was too thirsty, too tired, too desperate. I fumbled with the vial, pricking my finger on the glass as I managed to open it. I raised it to my lips, ready to gulp down salvation.
Then I saw it. Reflected in the glass, in the corner of the room, was something crawling. A dark, pulsating mass, clinging to the wall. It was moving slowly, deliberately, towards me.
And suddenly, I understood.
The Crimson Rot. It didn't just kill you. It changed you. The fever, the delirium, the final, violent transformations… they weren't symptoms of the disease. They were the disease.
The treatment wasn't to cure the Rot. It was to prevent it. To stop the infected from turning into… that.
My eyes darted to my hands, to my skin. The constant fatigue, the splitting headaches, the persistent itchiness... the signs I'd ignored for so long, attributing them to starvation and dehydration.
My blood ran thick.
And then the realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. I hadn't been surviving despite the disease. I had been surviving because of it. I'd adapted. I was resistant, a carrier, maybe even… something more.
The creature on the wall inched closer. It recognized me. Knew I was like it.
I looked at the vial in my hand, then at the thing on the wall.
Maybe survival wasn't about holding onto what I was. Maybe it was about becoming something else.
I closed my eyes, and I drank.