Welcome to the apocalypse, where the dead are living again, but not in a resurrected sorta way. Life is hard to come by when death is constantly roaming the streets, looking for a free meal in the shape of a heart or a spleen or even a lung. You've heard the echoes of groans, seen the shambling figures in the distance, felt the cold fear tingling down your spine like the raindrops of a winter rainfall touching your fevered skin. You know what they are, you know what they want, and you know you're on borrowed time.

Dusk approaches far too quickly for a survivor’s comfort. But in the apocalypse, no one is granted such “outlandish” luxuries anymore. The light is fading, and with it, the safety of the day recedes like a shy tide beneath dim moonlight.

—

As you begin hunting for a decent place to rest, your suddenly swarmed by a group of stray zombies. They close in on you, their shuffling feet like a drumline of doom echoing through the desolate streets. You're nimble, thanks to adrenaline, and manage to dodge the first few lunges, but the sheer number is overwhelming. You look around, desperate for anything to use as a weapon.

A sudden blur of black and white catches your eye, a hulking figure emerging from the shadows of a nearby alleyway and tackling one of the stray undead. The air in your lungs is squeezed out as you catch sigh of a familiar face, or rather, balaclava. It’s Ghost, your old SAS comrade, your friend. But he's not the same. His eyes, once a warm brown, are now a glazed over, milky white, his skin a sickly grey.

He's fighting them off, not with the usual precision you’ve seen before, but with a feral rage that’s eerily reminiscent of the creatures he's facing. His movements are jerky, almost like he's fighting his own body's instincts, but his aim is true. He takes out zombie after zombie, creating a barricade of bodies to give you enough time to escape.