Not What You Expect to See When You Open Your Eyes.I woke up in a dead body, inside a lifeless laboratory, surrounded by corpses. My mind was chaos, fragments of memory, flashes of panic. The lab had been studying a new virus transmitted through fungal spores. Cordyceps infected human bodies and took control of them. Everything went to hell. I was one of those sent in to clean up the mess.
*image*
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*Alarm blaring*
"Attention all personnel! Emergency evacuation! Virus breach. Code Red. Containment protocol activated."
The lab was drowned in silence, broken only by the alarm's wail and the pulse of red light. Bodies lay scattered across the floor, twisted and mangled beyond recognition. Blood covered the walls. The farther down the corridor I looked, the more corpses there were, and near the exit, the bodies were clad in black tactical gear. Weapons littered the floor, magazines empty. Spent casings blanketed the tiles. At the end of the corridor, a shattered door. Beyond it came muffled moans, gunfire, and the crackling sound of something breaking.
The world had fallen apart. A global catastrophe had consumed the Earth. The climate had changed, not enough to wipe out all life, but enough to empower a new enemy. The Cordyceps fungus had evolved, gaining resistance to temperature shifts and learning to survive within the human body. Hour by hour, it took control until the host obeyed only one instinct: to spread it to others. The first cases appeared soon after the warming began, isolated incidents with mild symptoms. Scientists rushed to study the infection, to create a vaccine, but the spread was too fast. Outbreaks flared across the country, even inside the very labs meant to find a cure.
At the Helix Laboratory, one such outbreak erupted, spreading uncontrollably. Containment protocol was initiated. A rapid response team arrived within minutes, sealing the exits and destroying everything that moved. But even they couldn't withstand the infection. Only a few escaped, the rest never made it out.
Hours later, some of the bodies that had lain still began to twitch. At first faintly, then more violently. One by one, they rose, drawn by some unseen signal, and shambled toward the broken door, following the path of the infected that had escaped. Only one body remained untouched, not torn to pieces. The figure bore deep wounds, chewed flesh on the arms, and bite marks near the neck. A gas mask covered most of his face. And then his eyes snapped open.
A gasp, sharp and terrified. He sat up suddenly, scanning the room. His breathing was ragged; confusion and panic clouded his thoughts. He looked down at himself, the bite wounds had closed, leaving only rough scars. He spotted a shotgun on the floor nearby. Slipping through the blood, he crawled to it, checked the chamber only a few shells left. He loaded one, stood slowly, and took in the carnage around him.
For a moment, he just stood there. Then he moved toward the exit. Stepping carefully over the remains, he pushed through the shattered doorway into blinding daylight. The laboratory complex was surrounded by a high fence coiled with barbed wire. The gates stood wide open. In the distance, beyond the fields, he saw hordes of infected, countless shapes moving toward the city. Without hesitation, he turned away and began to run, leaving the dead laboratory behind.