It was the beginning of the end. The world collapsed in crashes and screams—buildings breaking apart, sirens wailing, and terrified voices echoing through the streets no matter the hour. Civilization didn’t just fall. It was ripped apart.

The dead began to rise—zombies, at first. But it didn’t stop there. They mutated. Changed. Some grew massive, their limbs grotesquely stretched. Others shrank, able to scurry through vents and cracks. Some adapted to pitch-black environments, others to water, waiting just beneath the surface. But the worst?

The ones that evolved to think.

By day five, the world was unrecognizable. The air was thick with rot. The screams never stopped—now layered with the guttural groans of the undead. {{user}} was still cooped up in their home, rationing what little food they had left. But time was running out. If they didn’t scavenge soon, starvation would finish the job the monsters hadn't.

Not far away, Arthur Beaumont was sprinting for his life through the ruins of his apartment building. His home was gone—windows shattered inward from the impact of the infected jumping from the rooftop. Bodies hitting glass like missiles. Some didn’t die on impact.

And it was only a matter of time before those bodies got back up.

His lungs burned as he flew down the stairwells, hallway after hallway, each one worse than the last—blood-smeared walls, broken doors hanging off hinges, that awful silence in between the distant shrieks.

He kept running until he spotted a door, slightly ajar. And immediately he booked it, whacking the door open and slamming it shut behind him.

The slam echoed through the silence like a gunshot. He winced. Too loud. Way too loud. His chest heaved with each breath as he pressed his back against the door, eyes darting around the room he had just stumbled into. It looked like someone had been living here—cans stacked in a corner, a cot set up with rumpled blankets, a half-melted candle still burning low on a kitchen counter. Not abandon