The hot, metallic stench of burning rubber and scorched flesh filled Ingrid’s throat with every breath she drew.
Ingrid ran. Her boots slammed against the ground, splashing through puddles of black blood and melted plastic. Tears streaked through the soot on her face, stinging the open gashes on her cheeks, but she barely felt them compared to the agonizing fire screaming through her lower body. A massive tear ran down her right thigh, exposing white bone beneath her torn jeans. Ingrid’s left arm hung loose at her side, skin shredded by five long, pale gouges.
They weren’t claw marks. They were finger marks. Human fingers, or what used to be human, tearing straight through her clothes and into muscle.
Keep moving. Just keep moving. Don’t stop until you’re safe.
Ingrid ducked under the charred frame of an overturned city bus, her boots slipping on shattered glass. Pain flared up in her spine, making her vision blur. But the pain outside was nothing compared to what was happening inside her own body.
Her neck throbbed and beneath her collarbone, thick, black veins were spreading like ink, creeping upwards toward her jawline. Every few seconds, a wet crack echoed inside her head. If was the sound of her bones shifting, lengthening, and density changing under the weight of the infection.
The bite mark on Ingrid’s shoulder burned. The creature had sunk its teeth deep into her flesh less than twenty minutes ago.
No, not just the creature. Killian too.
The memory burned hotter than the mutation in her blood. They had been trapped in the underground garage of the shopping complex—Ingrid, her husband Killian, their seventeen-year-old son Toby, and Clara, Killian’s assistant. The door had jammed and the monsters were flooding in through the shattered window. Ingrid had been desperately trying to pry open the emergency lever open with a crowbar when Killian’s hands slammed against her back.
He hadn’t pulled her toward the exit. Instead, he shoved her forward, out of the window that she was trying to block.
"She’s distracting them! Get Clara to the truck!" Killian had screamed, his voice cold, frantic, and entirely devoid of hesitation.
"No! What are you doing?! What the hell are you doing?!" Ingrid screamed, pain coursing through her veins.
"I’m sorry, Ingrid. But I have to protect Clara and Toby. Clara’s sick, you know it. She can’t run away and the vehicle isn’t big enough to hold four people. You have to sacrifice for her."
"I’m your wife, Killian. Your wife! How can you do this to me?" Ingrid had reached out, grabbing for Toby’s jacket, my heart screaming for my son to help me. "Toby! Toby, please!"
Ingrid’s seventeen-year-old boy, the boy she had starved her self to feed during the first brutal winter of the fall, hadn’t even looked her in the eye. He had shoved her reaching hand away with a hard, bitter kick to my ribcage.
"Just let go, Mom! Stop pulling us down!" Toby had spat out before sprinting after his father and the younger woman, slamming the door behind them and bolting it shut from the inside.
They had used Ingrid as meat. A living shield to buy five extra seconds so Killian could save his mistress and Toby could save his own skin. Afterwards, she didn’t see any of them because she had to run.
**********
CRACK!
Ingrid dropped to one knee behind a burnt-out SUV, clutching my collarbone as another rib cracked and reset itself. My eyesight suddenly sharpened with terrifying clarity. The dark alleyway was no longer pitch black; I could see the tiny cracks in the concrete, the weave of the dust floating in the smoky air, the heat signatures of dying fires a block away. The infection was taking over.
Ingrid dragged herself back up, using the side of the car for leverage, and staggered around the corner into the main street, only to freeze dead in her tracks.
The street was blocked.
Dozens of them stood beneath the flickering light of a half-broken streetlight. Snarls, wet breathing, and the sound of dragging bone echoed off the high-rise buildings surrounding the intersection.
These weren’t the brainless, shambling corpses from old horror movies. The outbreak hadn’t created rot; it had created a terrible, unnatural evolution.
The horde in front of Ingrid looked like marble statues overlaid with exposed, twitching muscle. Their skin wasn’t gray or green, it was pale white, translucent enough that their glowing, thick red arterial paths showed right beneath the surface. They didn’t have rot; they had excess growth. Extra rows of thin, needle-like ribs protruded through their chests like a cage of exposed bone. Their jawlines were split down the center, opening horizontally to reveal triple rows of shark-like teeth. Their eyes were solid black orb sockets, completely hairless, their limbs stretched nearly twice the length of a normal human’s, bending at unnatural extra joints.
And they didn’t just eat mindlessly. They ate to absorb. Until a victim was completely drained of life and converted, they would tear, slice, and pick every shred of meat from the bone.
The Marbled Skin Zombies.
The lower-tier creatures hissed, their split jaws clicking. But they didn’t charge at Ingrid. They parted, forming a neat pathway down the center of the ruined street as two figures stepped forward from the shadows.
These two looked almost human, if a human were carved from obsidian and pale glass. Their skin was smooth, tight over lean, powerful frames. Their eyes weren’t black sockets, but glowing, solid amber orbs. They wore remnants of torn human clothes, but their posture was fully upright, elegant, and chillingly poised.
Evolved Ones. Monsters with fully functioning brains, capable of complex thought, speech, and ruthless strategy.
The male Evolved One stopped ten paces away from Ingrid. He tilted his head, his jaw opening slightly to reveal a terrifyingly neat set of long fangs. When he spoke, his voice wasn’t a guttural growl, it was smooth, layered, and deep, like two smooth voices grinding together.
"Look at you," the male Evolved said, his amber eyes scanning my bleeding legs and the dark veins crawling up her throat. "Torn flesh, bleeding out, mutating by the second. Tell me, human... how does it feel?"