Straighten up. Dress like a lady. Sit like you’re from a noble family. That is not lady like. These things and more are what Shara has heard since as far as she can remember. Even now as she sits in the backseat of her father’s expensive limousine, she could feel the judgmental eyes of her mother stabbing knives in her chest from the front seat.
Her father, Kyber Fend, was the owner of Fend Pharmaceuticals. A successful business that only got richer after poaching and consuming any company smaller than it. Then to make the infamy list longer, her father dabbled in the chemical arms trade during the war. Supplying to both sides was a risk he was willing to put his entire family at risk for if it meant lining his pockets with a few extra dollars. Now that the war is over it’s back to nefarious business as usual. He has meetings on top of meetings and has forced Shara to go to each and every one. This specific meeting they’re going to is a check in on an investment Kyber made to a scientific community known as The Vocanov Collective. He found an interest in their latest project and has been funding them with whatever they need. Their leader, Paetyr Vocanov, recently contacted Kyber with news of a breakthrough in their research and invited him to their laboratory so that he could bear witness to his latest work.
Her mother, Yasmina, was the company’s treasurer and accountant. So Shara can only imagine she’s just as money hungry as her husband. On top of keeping the family money in order, Yasmina is also charged with turning Shara into someone suitable to take the Pharmaceutical throne. A role she never wanted in the first place. Everything she did that wasn’t in line with acting like a snob was met with a lecture and harsh criticism meant to tear her down bit by bit.
Her father demanded her from the front seat, “Sit up Shara, and fix your face.”
Shara rolled her eyes like any defiant rebel in their early 20s would, moving strands of her wavy black hair out of her face and tossing the rest to the side of her head that wasn’t currently resting against the car window. The warm sun felt good on her naturally coffee brown skin. She wished she could be out in it taking a computer apart instead of in this car wallowing in misery.
Yasmina chimed in, “Now if only we could have gotten you to dress like a lady for once. This meeting is important to this company.”
Shara preferred her own style rather than pretending to dress like someone she wasn’t. She wore a worn, heavy dark green jacket with a blood red lining on the inside. The Dark green portion was made of a Parka material while the red portion was made of soft fleece. The hood was the same color as the lining and the dark green parts were covered in different patches, the biggest one being the patch on her left shoulder, it was the symbol of her brother's unit. That symbol being of a three headed Crow. It was a gift from Irvin that he sent her while he was overseas and it became one of her most prized possessions. It was worn over a simple black tank top that fit her curved, slender form. For her pants she wore form fitting dark jean shorts over sheer tights and lightweight flat shoes.
She whispered under her breath, “I see why Irvin went to war instead of staying in this family.”
Irvin Fend, her older brother, chose the path of a soldier rather than the path of a businessman. It infuriated her father so much that he practically disowned him, leaving Shara to have to take the full force of her parent’s pressure in grooming the next CEO of Fend Pharma.
The limousine drove in awkward silence for another 10 minutes before it suddenly stopped. Traffic had jammed up the street and people were running from the other direction like something terrifying was driving them away in droves. With nowhere left to go, the driver and the two armed guards stepped out of the car to investigate the cause of the stall. Kyber and Yasmina stepped out with them, their faces already very telling of their growing impatience. Shara was the last to exit. There was an uneasy feeling in her chest that made her keep her distance, it didn’t take long before soon she learned why that weight sat on her chest.
Two of the armed security men shoved past screaming and frightened civilians, their attention was turned for only a moment before the next they looked they were confronted by a scene of horror. In the middle of a busy intersection, blood and a thick black liquid splattered all over the abandoned cars, windows, and in the middle of the street. Bodies of the dead were strewn and thrown so haphazardly that you’d have thought a bomb went off and sent their blood chunks scattered everywhere. Body parts that looked as if they had been ripped off, or chewed off, lay mutilated amongst the fresh cadavers. One of the guards nearly slipped in a large puddle of blood that was currently leaking from a small mound of dead that were still twitching their last as their souls left their bodies. For another guard, the chewed remains of a large intestine ended up wrapped around his foot, making him gag. Strange violet bubble-like clumps could be seen growing within the Black liquid and steadily rising in size as they anchor themselves on any open space they could find
one of them whimpered, “Oh dear God.”
They could tell it was no bomb that caused so much death, for in the middle of the street and among all this gore, there were humanoid like creatures chewing on the remains. Some of them had pinned a woman to a corner and were delighting themselves in her screams as they stabbed at her with razor sharp appendages of bone jutting from their mutilated skin. They carved her piece by piece before devouring whatever their pointed fangs could sink their teeth into.
The creatures themselves looked like they were once human. But their bodies were all but destroyed. Some of them had lost most of their skin as extra muscle, tendon, and bone overgrown broke through their bodies. The same violet tumors that were now invading the nearby surfaces also grew all over their bodies too, pulsing and writhing as they fed on their host. The extra limbs were twisted and gnarled as some of their arms had grown extra appendages or ruined their bodies so badly that their exposed innards were twisted out of place to make way for layers of cartilage that formed something like natural armor. These bone plates grew from the inside of their bodies, mainly the chest and spinal areas, and wrapped around. Their still beating hearts laid exposed for all the world to see as this sickness forcibly hijacked their anatomy. While some walked on two legs like the humans they used to be, clicking their sharpened teeth as they chewed on the flesh of the dead, others of them walked on all fours. Their spines had been broken by their changes and long spindly tendrils grew from between new, mutilated muscles going down their backs. Each bone and sinew made ended with razor sharp points that rattled and leaked a thick black liquid.
It wasn’t until they finally noticed the three guards and the Fend family behind them that they began moving again, letting off ear splitting screams and charging head first at their new prey.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
One of the guards yelled, “Shit! Shoot them!” as they all began unloading rounds of their handguns at the monsters. The bullets bounced off their bony armor or pierced muscle but could not dig deep enough to stop their advances.
One of the Infected closed the distance on a guard and with a swing of its heavy, bladed bone appendage, sliced the man clean in two. Blood sprayed into the air like a fountain as the man’s halves of his body drifted apart and crumpled to the ground with a sickening and heavy squelch. The other two guards fired until they ran out of ammo but by then it was too late. They were mobbed by the rest of the infected who carved away at them with their razor sharp hunting limbs, adding their fresh blood and screams to the street of the dead.
Kyber looked at Yasmina one final time, before pushing her into the oncoming pack and pulling out a handgun of his own. Yasmina screamed to the sky as the pack covered her vision in blood and darkness. One of them drove its claws into her eyes while the rest stabbed her repeatedly to flay her insides open for all to see.
Shara gasped and shivered as she watched her mother die right in front of her. Her father stared blankly as Yasmina’s screams grew faint. Then his eyes set on Shara who broke out in a sprint away, but Kyber moved faster and caught her arm before she could get a safe distance away from him.
In his madness he declared, “One of us has to survive to continue our legacy and with God as my witness it will be me.” It wasn’t long until after his short monologue, a creature materialized from behind him as if it was born from shadows and stabbed through his chest. The claws pierced clean through Kyber and allowed Shara a chance to escape his dying grip. As she ran, she felt a sharp pain hit her leg that made her fall face first into the ground. She reached back and could feel a large and very sharp projectile stabbed into the back of her thigh, one of those creatures must have thrown it when she was running.
She yelped in pain, “Fuck. This hurts, but I can’t stay here. I need to keep running.” She could hear the infected closing the distance as they attacked others who were too slow to escape and she knew that lying there in the middle of the street would not help her chances of survival. She rolled over on her side and reached back to feel for the bone-made knife that had pierced her. She found it and with one strong pull ripped it out, sending blood and blackened liquid oozing from the wound. It throbbed painfully but that was something she would have to address when she found safety.
She said to herself, “C’mon Shara. Pretend you’re running from one of mom’s lectures again.” and forced herself up using a nearby blood drenched car to steady herself. The pain in her leg was becoming unbearable as it traveled up her leg to her burning chest. She limped her way to a dark alleyway and crumpled there behind a trash can.
Through gritted teeth she muttered, “Damnit, Damnit, Damnit! What did Irvin tell me about wound wrapping again?” She took her jacket off and checked her pockets for anything she could use and found a roll of bandages Irvin had told her to hang on to and practice with. The roll was enough to wrap around her thigh but by now the pain was so bad that she was starting to see spots in her vision. By the time she finished wrapping herself up, the pain had peaked and she fell over. Black cracks traveled along her body and the wild pain of skin ripping on her back left her floored. Her tank top became soaked in blood as exposed muscle grew from spots behind her shoulders, on top of her wing muscles, and down her lower back.
She did all she could to keep from screaming so that she didn’t alert the monsters that were still lurking in the area. Shara grabbed a piece of metal nearby and bit hard into it until her guns bled. Her entire body clenched from the burning of every muscle contracting. She curled up in a ball from the pain and burning sensations that left her paralyzed for what felt like a century until her vision darkened and she allowed what felt like death to take her with a bitter sob.
When she came to, she was laying in a dried puddle of what she could assume was her own blood. She felt weak, fatigued, and hungry. Instinct took over for her as she dragged her finger through a pool of blood near her left by a mutilated corpse and began licking the blood off her fingers. The blood on her tongue tasted sweet like honey, and it sickened her to her core. But her hunger spoke louder than her morals as she repeated this a couple more times until her hunger began to subside. Weakly she sat up and felt along her back under her top. Her fingers were met with surfaces that did not feel like skin. They were smooth, striated, and squishy but also solid. They felt like a very solid balloon filled with sand. But it didn’t hurt to the touch like she thought they would. She removed her bloodied tanktop and angled herself in front of a cracked mirror. What startled her too was the tinge of violet glowing faintly within her olive green pupils.
She fell back, retreating from her reflection in the mirror and screamed, “What the hell happened to me!?”
Then she thought of her parents and their faces as they were killed by those…things. No matter how hard she tried to cry for them, not a single tear fell.
She said to herself, “Maybe I am a monster. Most normal people cry for their dead parents, but why am I….relieved?”
She looked down at her bloodied hands then back up as the hairs on her neck stood up, she didn’t quite understand but she could feel a message in her brain telling her one of those things was close by and heading her way. She looked up, following the new sense that was screaming at her, and found the source of her new sense standing down the alley. Its bloodied, distorted, violet tinged eyes darted and its split bloodied face twitched then let out a menacing screech. Its bones snapped and creaked as it walked forward on all fours, dragging a heavy blade grown of its own Bones behind it.
Shara picked up the metal pole she had bit into earlier and prepared for a fight. In her fear, Shara yelled “STOP!” with her eyes locked into the creature’s own. When it got close it suddenly froze when their eyes met. Its body shook as it fought to take control of its body back. Shara could feel another tingly feeling in her brain while it sat frozen in front of her.
She put on her jacket then asked herself, “Did I do this?”
She moved closer to the creature. Her vision held a violet glow along the outside of her vision and rippled the longer she stared at the creature. Just as she stepped out its way, the violet glow disappeared and the creature finished its lunge straight into the wall. It shook and twisted its upper body a full 180 degrees to stare at her before going to attack again.
Shara said to herself, “Here goes nothing.”
They locked eyes again as it went to swing at her with its hunting appendage but was once again stopped in its tracks. The violet glow returned to her pupils and her outer vision, thus confirming her suspicions. She inched forward as her nose began to bleed. She had no time to waste. She clutched the metal pole tight and ran for her life back out into the streets.
Unfrozen, the infected chased behind her. Shara broke free into the street just as the creature was stalking towards her. It jumped on top of her but she used the pole to stop its fangs from biting her. Its split face opened down the middle exposing a skinned face and a mouth housing rows of pin needle like teeth that all bared themselves at her in its frustration. She kicked at its body until a knee connected to its stomach and hit it right in its exposed liver. It fell back in pain as Shara began to crawl backwards. The Infected rallied for another attack but was pelted with bullets before it could ready itself for another attack. The bullet storm pierced its exposed body and left it gasping for air in a puddle of blood in the middle of the street. Whatever muscle wasn’t strong or developed enough to stay attached to its body was blown off by the bullets and sent sliding across the asphalt.
Shara staggered to stand up as two of the soldiers walked over to the dying creature, flipped it over, and one of the men used their knife to pry open its chest to stab its heart. Blood and black liquid pooled under their boots as they grabbed their weapons again and waited for further orders from their captain.
A lean, slightly tan skinned man with messy disheveled brown hair approached her. His sullen tan eyes pierced her soul like a hawk yet carried a sort of gentleness behind them. A slight stubble grew on his chin and his military uniform was covered in blood. He came walking down with an assault rifle in hand, the barrel still breathing smoke after fighting his way up the street. The closer he got the more visible the slight bags under his eyes were, his scowl made them no better. following him was a shorter, chestnut brown haired woman with a rounded face who was checking for survivors. Her face got more distressed the more dead bodies she flipped over.
The hawk eyed soldier walked over to Shara and extended a hand to her then asked, “Are you hurt?”
Shara whimpered, “I don’t know. I’m scared.” Her body and senses were overwhelmed after everything that’s been going on. Fear and exhaustion gripped her throat and those few words were all she could get out.
The man replied as his face softened to a reassuring smile, a big change from the menacing glare he sported when he first walked up. He said, “It’s okay. Me too. Then let’s make sense of this madness together. My name is Rowan Servis.”
