The destruction only worsened as Rix pedaled over the shattered asphalt. Cars littered the road, some flipped onto their roofs, others crushed into twisted piles of scrap metal.
Then he passed something that turned his stomach inside out.
A school bus lay crushed beneath a slab of fallen concrete, its side split open like a tin can. What was left of the bodies inside had been reduced to pulp, and a knot of zombies had already gathered around it, feasting.
Rix's grip tightened on the handlebars. He forced his eyes forward and kept moving.
Further down the avenue, a few survivors were making a run for it. Some didn't make it fifty feet before they were dragged down.
A guy in a sedan tried to start his engine, but the sputtering ignition acted like a dinner bell, and a crowd swarmed the car in seconds, bashing at the glass while he screamed inside.
From a distance, Rix probably looked calm. Fearless, even, just some guy casually coasting through the apocalypse.
In reality, he was terrified out of his mind. His hands shook so badly he could barely keep the front wheel straight.
Still, weaving around an abandoned delivery truck, he had to give credit where it was due, this bike was the only reason he was still breathing.
He leaned forward and gave the handlebars a pat. "Told you that you were my best investment, didn't I, buddy?"
If the bike could talk, it probably would've said something like 'oh really? That's not what you said about that flat tire last week.'
The advantage was obvious: it was quiet. The rattle of the chain blended into the background noise of a dying city.
Every running engine drew a swarm, he floated past unnoticed.
The disadvantage was just as obvious. He was completely exposed. A car gave you a shield, a cage that bought a few extra minutes. The bike gave him nothing. Just air between his skin and the dead. If one of them lunged, there was no window to roll up.
Fear made him sharp. As he rode, his mind kept piecing together what he was seeing.
First hypothesis: these things aren't like the slow, weak zombies from the movies.
They were dense, heavy, unnaturally tough. When he'd kicked one in the face earlier, it should've dropped. Instead it barely stumbled back.
'Or maybe I'm just weak,' he thought bitterly. 'Fuck, I should've actually trained when Jake told me to.'
Second hypothesis: sound draws them. Maybe blood too,
Though he wasn't sure yet. But one thing was obvious - they could see just fine.
And there was something else he'd caught: they didn't always know who was actually a target.
He'd noticed it back at a car with its engine still idling, empty, swarmed anyway, zombies biting at the mirrors, pounding the hood, chewing on a tire, gnawing at the windshield like it was alive.
As Rix rode past, the one on the windshield stopped.
Its head turned.
Clouded eyes locked onto his.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Something cold settled in Rix's chest as the thing just... stared, like it genuinely hadn't expected to see a guy riding a bicycle through the middle of the apocalypse.
Then it dropped the glass from its mouth and started toward him.
Slower than a healthy person. That didn't stop the panic flaring up his spine.
"Shit," Rix hissed.
Every careful theory he'd been building fell apart the second he realized he was screwed. He pushed up off the seat, stood on the pedals, and put everything he had into the chain.
"Go away, you bastards!" he gritted out, heart slamming against his ribs.
The count behind him climbed.
One.
Then two.
Then five.
Ten.
Looking back was the mistake. His focus slipped for a single second, and the front wheel caught a rock hidden under the dust.
The handlebars ripped out of his hands. He flew over the frame and hit the asphalt hard, rolling across the broken road.
"Ahh — dammit, shit—" Pain shot up his elbow and knees.
There was no time to feel it. He scrambled up, lunged for the bike, hauled it upright, threw himself onto the seat, and pedaled like his life depended on it-because it did.
The nearest corpse was barely ten meters back, fingers grazing for his rear tire. Two seconds slower and he'd have been torn apart on the spot.
He drove through every gap he could find, weaving between wreckage to break their line of sight. It didn't matter. They wouldn't drop off. More kept joining as the noise carried.
Twenty...
Thirty...
Forty!!
A whole horde now, strung out behind him.
"FUCK!!! fuck you all!" he shouted, legs burning, pedaling with whatever he had left.
At this rate, even if he made it home, he'd be dragging a parade straight to his front door.
Assuming the house was even still standing. Fifty-fifty at best. He'd already placed the bet. No taking it back now.
His breath came in ragged pulls, stamina bleeding out fast. His legs felt heavier with every rotation, his vision going soft at the edges.
Then, through the drifting smoke — a shape.
Four hundred meters out.
His house.
Roof intact. Walls standing. No damage he could see from here.
"Come on — move!" A spark of hope cut through the exhaustion.
Then something completely impossible happened.
Out of nowhere, a zombie came sliding in from his right, low and fast, and tackled his front wheel with the kind of clean precision you'd see on a football pitch.
It was wearing a tattered sports jersey.
The bike jackknifed and Rix went airborne.
Mid-air, his eyes met the thing that had just executed what could only be described as a professional-grade slide tackle. Must've been a die-hard defender in his past life.
"What the motherfucking hell?!" Rix swore, somewhere between rage and disbelief, and then the ground came up to meet him.
He hit shoulder-first, rolled, and slammed into the side of a parked car. Blood filled his mouth, metallic and thick, as he fought to get air back into his lungs.
He looked back. His stomach dropped.
The horde was right there. Meters away. The bike had rolled too far to reach, courtesy of the jersey zombie now scrambling back to its feet — faster, hungrier than the rest, already lunging again.
Rix threw himself left on pure adrenaline. The zombie missed and slammed headfirst into the parked car, its upper body wedging into the open window frame, thrashing.
He didn't wait to watch. He turned and bolted for the house.
Four hundred meters. Should've taken a minute. Today it felt like miles.
Then he stopped dead.
Ahead, a dozen zombies feeding around an overturned van lifted their heads at the sound of his footsteps.
Blocked from the front. Hunted from behind.
His lungs burned. His arms hung useless at his sides.
There was no way through.
In that dead-certain moment, a bitter smile tugged at his mouth. He couldn't stop it.
"Hahaha... is this really how I die?" he murmured. "Is this what they call karma?"
He looked between the two closing walls of monsters, something cold and ironic settling over him.
"Is this what I get for leaving Noel? For ignoring Professor Harin?"
His eyes caught on a length of steel rod lying in the rubble by his foot. He grabbed it, knuckles going white around the cold metal.
"Come on, then. If I'm dying, I'm taking some of you with me."
He didn't get to finish the speech. A zombie hit him from his blind spot, teeth sinking into his shoulder, tearing through hoodie and flesh.
"AAAHHH! Get off me!" He twisted hard, swinging the rod blind. It connected with something, a dull thud-but another zombie was already on his leg, teeth in his thigh.
"AAAHHH!" Tears burned out of his eyes.
He knew, somewhere under the pain, that this was it. That knowledge hit harder than the bite.
Another set of jaws closed on his forearm and the bone gave with a sound he felt more than heard. The rod slipped from his fingers and clattered away.
"Please — any...one — ple...please help me—"
The horde came down on top of him, pinning him flat. Teeth everywhere. Tearing.
"AAAAAHHHHHHH!"
Whatever composure he'd had left shattered. He lay there, shaking, his voice tearing the street apart.
"Anyone... please..." He dragged his left arm across the gravel, reaching for nothing.
Weight settled over his lower body as another set of teeth found his leg and pulled until muscle gave way.
"AHHHHHH!"
The swarm was fully over him now, a heavy, suffocating press of rotting bodies. A woman with half her face gone leaned in and tore into the side of his neck.
They dug under his skin. Pulled muscle away in strips.
"M-Mom... Dad... Siya... someone, please—"
His voice broke, gurgled, drowned in his own blood.
Then the pain went soft. Distant. The world dissolved into red and gray.
In the last fraction of a second, something flickered behind his eyes — himself as a kid, his mother's smile, his father's hand on his shoulder, his sister Siya laughing somewhere in a park that didn't exist anymore.
The memories hurt worse than anything the zombies had done. Tears ran freely now, mixing with the blood and grime on his face.
'I don't want to die.'
Then, in the instant before his heart gave out...
A chime. Sharp. Digital.
DING~
It wasn't in his head. It rang through his skull, cold and absolute.
Every surviving human on the planet heard it at the exact same moment.
But Rix's eyes had already gone flat. The light behind them went out, and his head fell to the side.
He died before he heard what came next, the world moving on without him while the dead finished what they'd started.
DING~
Glowing text bled into the darkness behind a billion pairs of dead eyes.
⛧ [INITIATING GLOBAL BROADCAST…] ⛧
[System Channel: Prithvi Mandala — Planet Designation: Earth]
Source: Core Seal of Prithvi-Lok — Unsealed After 432,000 Earth Cycles
⛧ — THE TRIAL OF KALI YUGA HAS BEGUN — ⛧
The Dharma Wheel lies in ruin.
❖ The Four Sacred Yugas have withered into ash: Satya, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali, consumed by time's hunger.
❖ And now... a new epoch emerges from their remains.
❖ Now dawns the Fifth — the Unspoken Yuga...
→ The Age of Rot.
[System Activation: Universal Evolution Protocol]
All sapient lifeforms are now subjected to the Trial.
Those unable to resonate with the Etheric Flow — Prana (Mana) — will be Dehumanified.
All hail the almighty Blight.
Let the Apocalypse descend.