The dog did not look quite as ordinary as any dog should.
Sure, it still had its features, some of which had made it adorable long before this apocalypse started.
But right now, those features, the features Grey could see, were anything but normal.
Grey’s eyes ran down the roughened fur covering the body of the dog, which had once been an ordinary brown but was now a stunning silver.
The frame of the dog was evidently bigger, maybe twice the size Grey recalled it being.
Grey’s face tightened with worry as his gaze clashed with the viscous red of the dog’s eyes, their color deepened to such an extent that they reminded him of blood.
There was no doubt about it.
Grey shifted slightly.
His dog had been mutated.
Yet he stood there at the entrance of the room and waved at it, as though it still possessed its original sentience.
He hoped it did.
But he knew better than to think things would remain that simple in this new world.
The dog before him was very much no longer his, so he readied himself, one hand prepared to summon his dagger as he carefully monitored the movements of this predator.
It would attack, and he needed to be ready.
That was what Grey told himself as he patiently waited for the mutated dog to make the first move.
And when it did, he...
Blinked a few times.
His eyes widened in shock, his stance loosening almost immediately.
"What?!"
The mutated dog leapt into the air a few times, its paws landing onto the small pool of blood beneath its feet with a low, squishing sound.
Its tail wagged in... strangely, joy at seeing Grey.
Could it be that...
His dog still remembered him despite the mutation?
Grey opened his hands wide, his tone suddenly bright and excited.
"Come over here, Bolt."
At this, Bolt let out a proud bark, stopped leaping, and then bolted toward Grey’s legs.
Then it sat before him, its tongue hanging out, and its formerly demonic eyes now carrying an almost ridiculously cute charm.
"That’s a sight," Grey said, glancing at his dog from head to toe.
It was almost the same height as he was, muscular and very, very...
"Soft," Grey whispered to himself, his hand pressing into the warm, feathery fur of Bolt.
His fingers sank straight through it, and he immediately wanted to bury his face in it, to rest his entire body against the abnormal warmth and softness of his dog.
He held himself back from that pleasure for now.
Instead, he raised a hand and patted Bolt on the head.
And his mood now grew serious.
"I’m glad I found you... still you."
With that, he walked past Bolt and into the ruined room, stopping beside the body on the ground and staring at it.
Grey swallowed hard.
The scene was gruesome.
He stared at the neck of the human, twisted into ribbons of flesh he could barely comprehend without feeling the urge to vomit.
Then a large part of the neck was missing, clearly the cause of the pool of blood beneath the body.
Grey could recognize the face of this person.
His roommate, Jerry.
"What a brutal way to die."
Grey shifted as he spoke the words, then turned to stare at Bolt before looking back at the body, suspicions rising in his heart.
Had Jerry died a human, or a zombie?
No.
That was not the question that truly bothered him.
Instead...
Grey stole another glance at Bolt.
Had Bolt killed a human or a zombie?
That question had no answers for now.
But Grey could not linger on it for too long, at least not for now.
He walked around the room, his hand pushing aside scattered rubble, books, and whatever other rubbish obstructed his search.
"Where is it?"
"Come on, where can I find it?"
"It should be here. How is it missing?!"
"Damn it."
Moments passed as Grey thoroughly searched the room.
And finally...
"Yes!"
He exclaimed as he pulled a small, slim black laptop from the corner of the room and into his grasp.
Grey sat on the floor immediately and opened the laptop.
Its body was pretty old and made noises from even the simplest movement.
But this was his only hope.
After encountering the first zombie, he had lost his phone.
Or, more appropriately put, its screen had stopped working after that life-ending encounter.
Grey gnashed his teeth.
’Damn those expensive phones.’
The laptop finally booted up, its brightness staggeringly low, barely illuminating the darkness Grey was sitting in.
Of course, this was partly Grey’s fault.
He had neglected the rusty old laptop after getting his expensive phone, leaving it to gather dust in the corner of the room.
He cursed again at it.
Or maybe it was just because of the earthquake that had hit.
Grey shrugged at whichever it would be in the end.
He continued to operate the laptop, connecting it to the hostel’s Wi-Fi.
Ding!
It actually worked.
The internet connection flourished within the system, and messages popped up almost immediately. His laptop even buzzed with system updates and other notifications, almost making the old device vibrate itself to death.
And then, finally...
Overshadowing all the notifications he had received was a screen that suddenly forced itself onto his laptop.
At first, a deep blue covered the screen for only a moment before refocusing into some sort of live broadcast.
A woman was seated behind a table, a smile plastered across her face that fooled no one.
She was clearly panicked, sweat running down her face despite the cold weather.
She was beautiful, showing a bit of cleavage, but none of that mattered at the moment.
Then she spoke with the sweetest voice she could muster, doing her best to hide her fright.
"Good evening, every inhabitant of Earth. This is the end as we might very much know it."
Tears began trailing from her eyes at this moment.
Then a loud thud echoed throughout the entire newsroom, seemingly putting her even more on edge.
It took her a few seconds to shake off that feeling before continuing.
"There is a new pandemic that has struck the world. Called Mana Evolution. As those of us who are still alive have seen, this is not something to panic about. Sure, it might be scary, but... please approach it with the best confidence and strength you can muster."
She paused and wiped away her tears, her teeth clattering against each other.
Her head tilted slightly, her face turning red as she gripped the table tightly with both hands.
Then another loud thud echoed through the room.
"There is no help coming to any of us. The military is down. The presidency is down. Everywhere has been infected with this pandemic. I myself... will go down soon..."
Those last words could barely be forced out of her mouth.
And then...
"Miles, my son, I am sorry."
The bang came again.
This time, a number of screams followed.
Then, in the next few moments, the sound of bones caving in beneath wicked crushing force filled the room.
One after another, those screams were silenced.
Again and again.
And each time, the woman’s face seemed to grow paler, her mouth hanging open with each scream that abruptly fell silent.
She quivered in her seat, and her tears were no longer held back at this point.
The view went blank at this point, but the stream continued.
And then...
She screamed.
And was silenced.
Only at this point did the stream stop.
Grey reeled back from the livestream and swallowed hard.
So this was truly the world they were in now.
No one was coming to save anyone.
There was no line of defence.
He could only imagine that the same thing that had happened in the hostel had happened everywhere else.
Maybe monsters worse than zombies had even appeared.
No military force would be able to curb such an attack, especially one of such scale.
Grey minimized the news and then explored his device further.
He entered the message section.
There were many.
Some of them were from the government, clearly advising everyone to stay calm and assuring them that the situation was being handled.
Obviously, a big lie.
Then there were others from his friend Pat, his best friend back at home.
He read none of them, as others were far more important.
There was one from his sister.