"I don't remember much from that night. I only recall the utter chaos—people running in fear, in complete despair, away from those things. Those horrific, hideous, disfigured creatures. We didn't know what they were or where they came from; we knew nothing. I ran and ran until I couldn't anymore, and then I heard her screams: 'Daddy, Daddy, help me!' For a long time, I ran after her, but I couldn't find her anywhere. It felt like I had arrived too late. I fell to my knees, paralyzed, drained of strength and determination. I had no path left to walk. I was... collapsing. Not five seconds after I stopped there, on my knees, I wept. I wept in total silence—not to hide from the monsters, and not even for a moment of mourning because I thought she was dead. I cried because I didn't even have the strength left to scream. The world is cruel, and everyone knows it. But of all its cruelties, taking my daughter from me was the worst." The man spoke, heavy with sorrow.
He began to grit his teeth, his face twisting into an expression of great fury. His watery eyes only emphasized his rage.
As his tears hit the ground, he stood up and began to walk down a dirt road. Scattered around him were houses of all sizes—small, medium, and large.
The sight was traumatizing: bodies strewn across the ground, mangled. Those dead people had become nothing more than food. As he walked, he caught the stench of rotting flesh and covered his nose, the tears on his face beginning to dry.
Despite his outward calm, the man was consumed by fury, sadness, hatred, and self-loathing. He was a broken man; his only family had been ripped away. He entered a house with a plaque beside the door that read: "John's House."
Inside, John stayed alert to every sound. Some of those things could have easily slipped inside.
On a rack beside him lay a pistol—John's personal sidearm. He picked it up, ejected the magazine, and checked to see if it was loaded. It was. Reinvigorated by a spark of determination, John slammed the magazine back into the grip. He moved slowly through the house, weapon ready. He reached the breaker box on the wall and flipped the switch; the lights flickered on, revealing no monsters. Relieved, he quickly turned them off again to avoid drawing attention. It was a rare moment of lucidity. He headed to a bedroom to the left of the entrance, containing a double bed, a wardrobe, and a mirror shattered for unknown reasons.
John noticed the broken glass but ignored it. He lay down on the bed and, in less than a minute, fell into a deep sleep.
He woke to a cloudy sky, almost devoid of sunlight. The stench of death persisted, wafting through the bedroom window. John rose, opened the wardrobe, and dressed: leather trousers, running shoes, a white tank top, a black leather jacket, and fingerless gloves. In a drawer, he found several pistol magazines.
He grabbed a shoulder holster from the drawer, strapped it on, and tucked the magazines away. He walked to the kitchen and checked the cupboards; there was bread, butter, and biscuits. In the fridge, he found some preserved fruits and vegetables.
He unplugged the fridge to save power and devoured an apple. When he stepped outside, the corpses on the ground began to rise, shambling slowly toward him. There were five of them.
With no other choice, John began to fire, aiming for the head to grant them a "quick" death. Within a minute, they were all down, blood pooling from their skulls. John approached one and looked into its lifeless eyes; they were the same eyes he had seen when they were "alive" moments before. He realized they had been dead all along.
"If they were already dead... how were they moving?" John thought.
He continued walking in search of answers, trying to ignore the rotting bodies. This town wasn't the same anymore. Before the incident, it had been a quiet, peaceful interior town. No one knew how this happened, and perhaps no one ever would.
John found himself in a town field. It should have been a flowery meadow under a scorching sun, covered in green grass—or at least, that's what he wanted it to be.
Instead, the place was rotten. Flowers were wilting, the grass was dead, and the earth was pockmarked with holes. These small holes opened into massive cracks, much like the ones near his house.
The stench of rotting meat was overpowering. Lifeless bodies were being devoured by crows. John felt a wave of nausea and covered his mouth to keep from vomiting. These corpses were more decayed than the ones from the day before, suggesting they had been there a long time.
This town had always been plagued by a wave of murders every year. The residents knew, but they never tried to change anything because of the powerful criminals and their well-armed henchmen. Even the police were powerless; they were owned by the gangs. Remembering this made John sick; he used to hear about it constantly at the local station.
"These won't turn, it's been too lon—" John's thought was cut short as he vomited.
He staggered toward the other side of that makeshift graveyard. The gate was still far off, and his strength was failing. He forced his legs to move and ran, stumbling but determined, until he reached the gate. It was locked with a heavy chain and padlock.
His only option was to climb. His body trembled from exhaustion. He reached the top, but his balance gave way. He fell, hitting the ground headfirst. Everything went blurry, a high-pitched ringing filled his ears, and he blacked out.
He heard a voice calling. "Dad? Hey, Dad! DAD!" It was a girl's voice.
John was on the sofa. He looked at the girl. She had a young face, long hair, and stood about 1.40m tall—maybe ten years old. She wore a long white dress.
"What is it, honey?" John asked, standing up.
"You finally woke up. I wanted to tell you something," she said.
"And what would that be?"
"It's about school," she said hesitantly.
John grew suspicious and curious. "Go on."
"I got a detention!" Lisa blurted out, her voice trembling with the fear of being punished.
"WHAT? What did you do this time?" John barked, kneeling beside her.
"It's just... I..." Lisa looked away. "I hit a boy in my class." She finished the sentence on the verge of tears.
"Everything happens for a reason. Tell me, why did you hit him?"
"He called me a filthy pig. He said I live with a lunatic, and he insulted Mom... called her a 'little city slut.'"
John was livid. He gnashed his teeth, his face contorted with rage, veins pulsing in his neck. He stood up and marched toward the door.
"What's his name?"
"Jorge..."
"I know where he lives. I'm just going to have a little 'word' with his parents." John suppressed his fury and left the house, slamming the door and leaving Lisa alone.
John woke with a start, filled with dread. He was in a dark room on a messy bed, covered by a thin sheet. He threw the sheet aside; he was wearing only shorts.
The only light came from an open door nearby. He stood up, left the room, and saw an open window. Beside it sat a small, square dining table, perfectly clean. There was a plate of food and a glass of clean water. Starving, John rushed to the table and ate until he was satisfied.
Then, he sensed something was wrong. The rest of the house was swathed in shadow, and from that darkness, someone—or something—was emerging. The sound of footsteps grew louder. He looked into the gloom and saw a figure with elongated limbs. Its face was hidden. The man wore a black suit with a red tie. His skin was stretched tight, incredibly thin and wrinkled over a skeletal frame. His nails were thick and sharp, and his sleeves were nearly bursting from his gaunt limbs.
Terrified, John fell from his chair. When he scrambled back up and looked at the same spot, the creature was gone.
John bolted for the exit. Every door he opened seemed to lead deeper into the house. He began to hallucinate: a floor lamp in a hallway took the shape of that bizarre, slender man in a suit. Desperate, he ran faster. Finally, he burst through a door and tumbled outside onto infertile land, seeing the hill where he had fainted earlier. He realized he had lost his clothes and his weapons. He would have to return home to re-arm.
One Year Later
John was inside his house, exhausted. He closed the door and leaned against the wall, his legs weak. Food was scarce; he survived on what he found in the streets—expired fruit, banana peels—not caring if he got sick.
He was surviving; that was the baseline. The power was long gone. He had a backup generator he'd never used, but the fuel had run out. Now, he lived in total darkness, and his carefully preserved food would soon rot.
John sat on the sofa, scratching his chin. He felt his heavy beard, which he hadn't trimmed in a month. In a year, no one had come to rescue him. No one else seemed to live in the city. He was the last one.
Totally alone, his melancholy journey was about to get harder. He left the house and headed toward the city cemetery. There, he encountered a different kind of creature. Through the gate, they looked like a new variant of zombie. Their eyes were covered by a mass of raw flesh.
"How did they get like that?"
One of them heard the flapping of a crow's wings and took off after it, reaching out with clawed hands.
John pulled a notebook from his backpack. It was filled with notes on places he'd visited and creatures he'd encountered. He turned to a blank page and began to write:
"I think I've seen it all now. Shambling corpses, men with four arms and four legs, five-foot spiders, and now this. This new one is like the normal corpses, already rotting, but it has a mass of raw flesh covering its face from the forehead to the mouth. It still has hearing and smell. I've categorized the corpses into stages: Stage 1 is just dead skin. Stage 2 has patches of raw meat, usually on the neck, legs, and mouth. Stage 3 is fully dead skin, through and through. Stage 4, the penultimate stage, is when the bones start to show—forearms, chest, abdomen. Usually, the intestines are exposed. It's sickening to even remember."
John tucked the notebook away and headed toward a large field with a farmhouse visible in the distance. He was looking for animals to hunt.
As he approached, he saw a small building near a road further past the farm. He ignored it; the distance made it hard to see clearly. He began to smell a powerful stench of excrement. He stepped in what he thought was mud, but realized it was animal waste.
"If an animal did this, it means... someone is still taking care of them!"
Hope surged. John ran toward the farmhouse, desperate to find another human being. He hadn't eaten in three days. Rain began to fall, soaking him, but he reached the farm with a smile. He saw pigs in a pen to his left. In front of him was a barn, and to his right, a house. An old man sat in a chair on the porch. John walked up and touched him. The man didn't move. John checked his pulse; he was dead.
"His skin is in perfect condition. It must have happened this morning. He just looks... worn out."
There were no wounds. He had died of natural causes. John carried the body behind the house and went to the barn. Inside were fifteen strong horses, but John was only looking for a shovel. He set everything else aside to bury the man who had cared for these animals.
It took four hours of digging. As the sun set, John laid the old man in the grave and covered him. He said a prayer as a final mark of respect.
The night chill set in under a brilliant, starlit sky. John clicked on his flashlight and entered the house, pistol drawn. According to his journal:
"I've noticed they are rarely seen during the day. It's the night that catches me off guard. The lack of light in my house has me terrified. In the early hours, I hear footsteps. I know they get in. The padlock on the gate rusted through, so I can't lock up anymore. Sleep is dangerous. The most common ones are Stage 2s, 'Spider-Men,' and those huge spiders. I have to be careful. I hope Lisa is okay. I'm not leaving this city until I find her."
Suddenly, John heard frantic footsteps. He spun around. Nothing. The floorboards creaked and groaned. A scream pierced the air, and a corpse lunged at him.
John hit the floor, struggling as the creature gripped his face, its nails digging a deep gash into his left cheek. He fought to keep its snapping jaws away from his neck. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a switchblade, flicked it open, and drove the blade into the creature's skull. It died instantly.
John pushed the body aside, gasping for air, drenched in cold sweat. As he stared at the corpse in horror, his mind fractured. He didn't see a monster; he saw Lisa.
She looked thirteen, the age she was when she vanished. Her hair was shoulder-length and brown. She wore her brown hoodie and blue shorts.
Then the vision shifted. He saw the hoodie stained with blood from a stomach wound. Then he saw her naked and covered in bruises. Then mutilated. Then charred. Then sliced into pieces. And finally... a "living" corpse of his daughter approaching him.
The hallucinations paralyzed him. The "Lisa-corpse" drew near. Tears streamed down his face; he was shaking with terror. As the thing reached him, it lifted its head, revealing a deformed face with no eyes—only rotting teeth and missing lips. John scrambled away, bolting up the stairs to the first floor.
He looked back and saw her—it—climbing slowly after him. He ducked into the door on the right and locked it. John covered his mouth, sobbing in total silence until he eventually collapsed into a fitful sleep.
He woke to the morning sun. But the world that used to be full of color was now entirely... gray.
In a city far from John, others were not so lucky. At a river crossing near a bridge overtaken by vegetation and "shamblers," a boy stood. He was about 1.80m tall, wearing a tattered white coat and black trousers, barefoot.
He wasn't eating vegetables or meat. He was consuming the body of a woman.
He chewed ravenously. He was emaciated, a skeleton held together by skin. In the urban ruins, people had turned to cannibalism to survive; the crops were moldy, and the butcher shops had rotted years ago.
The boy had long hair, his fringe covering his eyes. His face and hands were stained red. Hearing the grunts of "Spider-Men" and "Auditives," he moved with practiced caution, avoiding the crunch of beer cans and debris.
He reached the base of a mountain and walked until he found a hidden meadow. It was full of daisies, jasmine, and roses. There was even a pond with a single narcissus.
"Hahahahahahahaha... hahahaha!" The boy barked out a laugh, struck by the grand irony of finding beauty in a graveyard.
Two Years Later
John was carefully trimming his beard with a kitchen knife, his hand trembling as he navigated the scar on his cheek. He swept the hair away and stepped out of the farmhouse. He had stayed there, tending the animals and feeding himself for a long time.
He mounted one of the fifteen horses and rode toward the horizon. The world was a vast thicket under the midday sun. He spotted an "Auditive" in the brush and took it down with a single revolver shot to the head. After twenty minutes of riding, he tied the horse to a tree and sat down to drink some water.
"Still nothing," he thought. "I've scouted half the city. The further I go, the weirder they get."
His journal entry from that morning read:
"I entered a collapsing building today and heard fast footsteps. I saw a pale, incredibly thin being devouring a corpse—bones and all. Its mouth was huge, its teeth like razors. It had no eyes or ears. My theory? Some kind of clairvoyance. It passed right by me and didn't even try to attack. I've never been so lucky."
February 21, 2074
John came across an old, abandoned house that reeked of urine. From inside, a scream rang out. "HELP!"
John leapt from his horse, drew his pistol, and kicked the door open. Two corpses were cornering a woman. John fired and missed, while the woman threw pots and pans to slow them down. He fired again, hitting one, then stepped in front of her and finished the second one with a machete.
"Are you... are you okay?" John panted.
The woman was on the floor, traumatized. John sheathed his weapons and knelt, extending a hand. She had long brown hair and wore a brown jacket over a white shirt. She looked at John, her eyes wide with terror.
She took his hand. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it. You want to... get some air?"
Thirty minutes later, the girl sat on a wooden plank while John built a fire.
"How long have you been here?" John asked.
"Just a few weeks," Marlene replied.
"Is this the first time you've seen them?"
"No... I've seen them."
"Sorry, I forgot my manners. I'm John. What's your name?"
"Marlene. I came here because of someone else."
"Who?"
"I don't know his name. Long hair, scars on his mouth... wore a white coat and rags," she said.
"Was he... good to you?"
"Living with him was a nightmare. He told me if I wanted to stay, I had to do whatever he wanted. I had no choice. He... he used me. Every day. He was aggressive. When the 'shamblers' came, he just ran. He left me to die." Marlene buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
John placed a hand on her shoulder.
Later, Marlene was atop John's horse, holding his pistol. She looked back at him as the horse shifted. "You're not coming?"
"I have unfinished business back where I came from," John said. "But listen—there's a small village called 'Dry Waterfall.' I was there at the start. It's quiet. If you want to be safe, stay on the outskirts. And be careful—it's mating season for a lot of the 'new' species."
Marlene nudged the horse into a gallop. John turned and began to walk in the opposite direction.
"That old man at the farm had an office full of books. Most were about animals. I've spent my nights reading them. I've learned about hundreds of species—how they live, what they eat. I've learned a lot. I'm ready for whatever comes next."