Part 1 – The City Was Burning

  The metropolis of Calderna, a tech-vibrant city known for its majestic downtown and the wilderness that surrounded it, was well past the brink. By the time the sun’s rays lit the pine boughs in the forest above it, the city was already burning.

  It was the middle of March, and the Skaitish national forest that buffered Calderna to the north and east sang with wildlife and a true promise of spring. Rob Hollins woke to the sounds of birds in the forest, a cacophony of jays, woodpeckers, quail, and a pheasant or two. A hawk called overhead, screeching the morning awake. He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and peered through the mesh of his bivy camo tent. The sun was already two fists above the horizon.

  He had become a strange mix of a man, one who no longer fit neatly into society. A biochemistry professor who'd once been a progressive idealist - but his old liberal friends didn't recognize him anymore, and he barely recognized them. He stayed away from their causes but gave his time to the people in the trenches that mattered; LGBTQ suicide hotlines, teen-runaway shelters, and most recently, veteran crisis support.

  The M4 Benelli shotgun under his cot had been a gift from a man he'd met nine months ago - a man who'd been on the knife's edge when he called a veteran crisis support hotline. That shotgun had been the man’s last grip on life, and in talking the shotgun out of that man’s mouth, Rob had found a friend. They had hunted together, burning the candle deep into the night under scattered tents across hundreds of miles of wilderness. Fast friends who were each trying to put their lives back together.

  Down the mountain, past a couple of ravines, Rob’s 4x4 camper truck sat in a dirt lot, blending in with the pines. The truck was one of the few things he had spent his newfound wealth on - money he had neither wanted nor asked for. It had come with a price, a life attached to it, and he had let it sit untouched through the darkest days of his grief. When he finally emerged, he put some of it to use - something utilitarian, something that could take him far away and help him rebuild.

  He had had the depths of his soul dredged out in the past year, and it was one day at a time for Rob Hollins.

  Unzipping the tent, he reached his hand into the black soil, squeezing the damp earth between his fingers. Rich with pine needles and dew-soaked moss, it smelled of life, of renewal. He had sought out these woods for solace, for a reminder that death was not an end, merely a cycle. Hunting had not been about the kill but about understanding - about learning the intricate dance of predator and prey, of life and death. The forest had become his healing salve.

  He’d been hunting for a week during this unique antipodal hunting season that had been called due to an explosion in the deer population. He stood and stretched, feeling the bite of early spring air against his skin. The light slanted through the tall pines, golden and pure. Then, suddenly, the light disappeared.

  Darkness swept over the valley - unnatural, too fast. A cloud? No. The angle was wrong, the movement too fast. His breath hitched - a primal warning from the depths of his gut. He grabbed the shotgun without thinking, scanning the horizon.

  In the distance, the city skyline was ablaze, with skyscrapers transformed into towering infernos, like jagged rips in the canvas of reality. Closer to his immediate concern, thick black smoke billowed upward and over the pine forest, blotting out the sun and turning the air heavy with an acrid stench of burning rubber, plastic, and decay. A choking haze filled the atmosphere, mingling with distant shrieks of the sounds of madness that echoed through the trees and grew louder by the minute.

  Then came the sound.

  A concussive roar. A deep, percussive thump that sent birds shrieking from the canopy. The ground beneath him trembled, ever so slightly. A black plume of smoke twisted into the sky, rising from the suburbs below. Then, the screaming began, distant and faint and desperate.

  Rob quickly broke down his tent and cot, every motion practiced and swift. He piled the gear into his already overloaded backpack, and hoisted it onto his shoulders with a grunt of effort. He pulled his custom-built Remington 700 from its Trinity scabbard, checking the Schmidt and Bender PM II scope, his hands steady but his mind racing.

  Through the scope reticle with its complex blend of mil-dots, he spotted them—men and women rampaging through the haze. "Oh, shit!" His heart skipped a beat. He sheathed the Remington 700 and grabbed the M4 Benelli.

  Rob had been on a 6-month sabbatical from the University of Calderna, and in that time, he’d spent 5.9-months in the woods. He’d heard reports of a strange virus with worrying symptoms, but FM-radio wasn’t necessarily filled with a lot of information, and AM-radio was a mine-field of ‘end of the world’ madness in the best of days. His cellphone hadn’t worked in 3-weeks, but he figured that was a billing issue, and frankly he didn’t miss it.

  ‘Make sure to get those masks on and wash your hands’

  ‘Be careful out there, folks’

  ‘Emergency rooms are filling up – the CDC asks you to stay in-doors at the first sign of symptoms’

  It was 2024, and ‘COVID-fatigue’ was real. The radio had always been filled with “Emergency Broadcast System” warnings that “easy-listening and soft-rock in the mornings” listeners had simply tuned out as they filled mug after mug of coffee to get them through their office jobs.

  "The following is a test of the Emergency Alert System. This is only a test."

  But this wasn’t a test, and it was not a nightmare. It was reality, and it was unfolding faster than Rob could process. He wavered for a moment, then he moved deeper into the forest, putting some distance between himself and the approaching shrieking mob. The trees swallowed him as he pushed on, silently maneuvering over roots and underbrush. He found a secluded spot behind a large boulder, his pack hitting the ground with a heavy thud. For a moment, he leaned against the rock, closing his eyes to steady his breath. Panic clawed at his insides, but it was clear he couldn’t afford to break down now.

  With a practiced hand, Rob opened his pack and scanned its contents—his rifle, a Glock19, ammunition, first aid supplies, water purification tablets, a small camp stove, high-energy food packets and bars. The distant shrieks gnawed at his soul and kept him moving with an urgency that was suddenly automatic. His mind flickered to the screams in suburbs of city just down the mountain and the carnage of the skyline on the horizon. The stench of fire and death reached him even here, but he didn’t have time to linger.

  Taking a deep breath, Rob hoisted his pack again and began making his way toward the outskirts of the suburbs, sticking to the tree line for cover. The devastation grew more apparent as he descended out of the forest and toward the line of buildings appearing through the trees. Abandoned vehicles clogged the roads—overturned, crashed, burned out—and shattered glass littered the streets, mingling with discarded belongings and dark stains he couldn’t look at too closely.

  He dropped his bag behind a thick patch of trees and moved quietly, constantly alert, his fingers grazing the shotgun’s trigger guard. His heart pounded as his mind raced, his gaze jumping from shadow to shadow. Occasionally, a figure bolted past in the distance, its motion bizarre and jagged. But he didn’t stop.

  Suddenly, muffled screams cut through the chaos, sharp and raw. Rob froze, his pulse spiking. The screaming had come from a nearby office building—one of the few structures not engulfed in billowing toxic clouds of smoke. Without thinking, he started moving again, faster this time, each step calculated and urgent. Another set of screams reverberated through the gutted street, echoing off shattered buildings—a high-pitched cry for help, then the sound of splintering wood and bending metal. Rob’s stomach tightened. The noise was coming from the upper floor of the unmarked building in front of him.

  The plate-glass door of the office building was shattered, its hinges containing the sparkling remnants of the door and swaying like broken teeth in a mouth. Rob didn’t hesitate. His boots crunched the glass on the ground as he stepped inside, shotgun raised and ready. The darkness was thick with smoke, the gun’s LED light produced a formless and undulating specter in front of him.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The lobby was a disaster—overturned furniture, broken windows, dark smears of something on the walls, and bodies everywhere. The elevator doors were bent at strange angles, off their runners and useless. Rob heard the faint clamor of footsteps above and the muffled shuffle of something else moving in the building. Goosebumps rose on his back; every nerve was on edge. He spotted a stairwell and began to ascend, each step deliberate but filled with the weight of terror.

  He stepped over bodies on the first landing - governmental agency officers and corporate employees in tattered Patagonia vests, twisted together in death.. Moving through this building felt like a complete mistake, but he kept climbing. On the 2nd floor, a hallway stretched in front of him, lined with shattered office windows overlooking the burning cityscape. Desks and chairs were scattered in disarray, with papers fluttering in the breeze from busted-out windows. At the far end of the corridor, a closed door was streaked with fresh scratches and dents, as if something had tried to break through from the other side.

  Rob snuck down the hallway, peering into offices where bodies lay broken and ravaged; these bodies were not going to magically spring back to life in some grotesque zombification process – these offices were filled with death and its stench. Something horrible had happened here, and Rob was fearful this was what was happening throughout Calderna.

  He heard voices further down the hall and in adjacent offices, but from the stairwell he heard the faint cries and arguments coming from above. He slowly ascended the last of the stairs, even as more shouts roared from the lobby below; he had the shotgun trained ahead of him, and he had to kick-in a dented and streaked door.

  As his eyes gained the landing level that led to the roof access, he was shocked by a scene of utter chaos. Three women in their mid-20s were huddled against the maintenance door, with go-bags and makeshift weapons covered in gore; one was clutching an axe-handle from a fire extinguisher cabinet. Their clothes were smeared with the blood and remnants of their fight for survival. Their eyes flickered toward him, and they bristled like wild mountain cats, cornered and ready to strike. Two attackers lay motionless on the landing, their faces gouged inward.

  Rob stared at them as they scrambled to their feet. The tallest, with short dark hair, blue eyes like a cornered animal, stepped forward, gripping a gore-streaked axe handle.

  Her hands were shaking. Office hands. Manicured nails chipped and split, knuckles raw. She'd worked at ViralStrategies - he could see the logo on her Patagonia jacket, half-hidden by blood. Executive assistant, maybe. Kept someone's calendar, smiled through meetings about things she wasn't supposed to question.

  The blonde behind her looked like she'd quit something. The petite brunette pressed against the wall had the haunted look of someone who'd filed complaints no one read.

  Now they were here. Heels traded for survival.

  "Who the fuck are you? Are you one of them?" the tall one demanded, voice cracking.

  The scene was still hard to take in, and the other two women looked feral and terrified. “What the hell is happening here,” he demanded, his eyes tracking the landing room and the stairs behind him.

  The second woman had long blonde hair and she trembled, but she squared her shoulders, trying to maintain a brave front. The third, a petite brunette, pressed herself against the far wall, terror streaked and pained across her face; she had what looked like a blood-streaked metal handle of a glass door in her hand.

  None of them were speaking the same language. Rob didn’t know what the hell was going on and the three women had clearly been clawing for their lives. He eyed them for a moment, then shifted his attention back to the stairwell, his gun trained on the landing below.

  "I’m Rob," he said, his voice trailing off as he glanced back at them. "What the hell is happening?"

  Their eyes locked on him, confusion and fear clear in their gaze. They huddled together, and then the tall brunette reached for her go-bag.

  She swallowed. “Are you, um,” she asked. “God damn it,” she whispered, holding the axe handle tight. “Are you sick,” she squeaked.

  Rob shook his head as the other two looked up. “I’ve been in the woods camping and hunting for weeks,” he said, his anxiety slowly catching up to him through the adrenaline. “God almighty, is this that virus people were talking about,” he asked.

  The woman with the axe handle bobbed her head and the other two slowly started to stand, grabbing their bags.

  “We need to get out of here,” begged the blonde, as she and the petite brunette hoisted their bags on their shoulders.

  Rob blinked and nodded, then turned the cone of light on the shotgun toward the stairs. “Okay, let’s go,” he offered, as he felt a trembling iron grip holding his shoulder.

  "I’m Sarah," said the woman behind him with the axe handle, her voice still shaky but determined. "That’s Lisa, and Maria, too," she added, motioning toward the blonde behind her and the brunette closely following.

  As they descended, the sounds of pandemonium grew louder. They rounded a corner on the third floor and were suddenly face-to-face with a mob of raging berserkers packed tightly in the narrow space. They weren’t zombies; they were human, but their humanity had disappeared – what remained was a rabid bloodlust. Their faces were streaked with gore and they cried out with savage brutality and lustful rage at the sight of the women. Without hesitation, Rob opened repeated fire. The shotgun's blast of 00 buckshot tore through flesh and bone, dropping the group with violently horrific efficiency.

  Rob had never killed a person, but his mind didn’t have the stability to process the act – the chaos was descending. There was no sound left to be heard in the stairwell and Rob could only hear the screams by looking into the women’s eyes. There was only one way out, though, and that was down through whatever was left of humanity. The women followed closely behind, hearts pounding in their chests and eyes darting every direction at once. Maria whimpered and was racked by sobs, but she forced herself to keep moving, eyes wide with fear. As they reached the ground floor, Sarah spotted an axe lying near a dead fire fighter. She grabbed it and handed the axe handle to Lisa; the weight of the weapon giving her a marginal sense of safety – anything against the darkness.

  As they emerged from the building, Rob took in the scope of the chaos. The upscale office building district was at the end of a broad avenue that dead-ended into the national forest, but in the other direction the road descended down the slope toward more office buildings and tree-lined communities, with a suburban boutique shopping complex in the distance. The road was interrupted by a series of wide and ornate round-abouts, and it was clear this community had been recently designed as a tech-centric wonderland.

  However, the entire landscape in front of them and down the slope was utter madness. Fire and pluming black smoke engulfed most of the receding valley, and cars were abandoned and car alarms were blaring; all of that was background, though, in comparison to the people. Mobs of manic berserkers were swarming the area, and the violence was unspeakable. Men were being stomped to death on the street with wild cries of lunacy, and women were screaming for their lives, with whole groups of mad men and women dragging them into the shadows.

  In the vicinity of the office building they’d just emerged from, Rob noticed things you didn’t generally see in an upscale tech-heavy residential office district. Vans marked with FEMA and DHS were all over the place, some smoldering, and some flipped with their windows bashed in. Rob saw unmarked vans everywhere, too. Clearly governmental, and their presence spoke to a feeble response to a major crisis. Whatever was happening wasn’t a crisis; a crisis could be managed – whatever this was, it was the end. Rob looked around one last time, then grabbed the three women and they made for the rugged trail he’d descended from.

  A shriek erupted behind them as they crossed the littered parking lot - close, too close. Rob spun, shotgun raised. A security guard in a torn road-hazard vest lunged from behind and overturned FEMA van, eyes wild, mouth frothing. He fired. The man dropped.

  "Move!" he barked, grabbing Sarah's arm. They bolted for the trail.

  The group burst into the woods behind the office building and Rob found the patch of thick trees where he’d left his bag; they were all shaken, huddling together in the relative safety of the edge of the national forest.

  Rob took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. "Look, I don’t know what the hell is going on, and I’m not sure what we’ll do,” he started, his eyes scanning the surroundings.

  Maria looked despondent, her fingers still clutching at Lisa’s shirt, but Lisa and Sarah both had their fingers gripped around weapons, and their tremors had somewhere to anchor.

  Rob swallowed hard. “I’ve got a truck two ravines over. If we move now, we might make it.”

  Sarah looked at the others and then held his gaze, searching his face intently. “Might,” she asked.

  “Yeah, we might,” he said, watching the line of building through the trees.

  She looked around the shadowy forest, anxiety evident in her eyes. Maria remained silent, arms wrapped tightly around herself, her eyes wide and haunted.

  Sarah nodded decisively. “If that’s all we’ve got, then let’s go.”

  Maria looked up from the base of a tree. She hadn’t spoken at all. “How do we go on if it’s all like this,” begged Maria almost silently.

  “We have to try,” pleaded Lisa.

  Rob was watching the buildings, and figures started to pour out of an adjacent office complex; their hysteria and rage sounded euphoric, like the violence was a drug.

  “We’ve got to go,” Rob demanded, as he pulled Lisa out of the line of sight of the men.

  Sarah rifled through her go-bag as the other two opened theirs, fishing out running shoes and yoga pants, and they swapped them out for their corporate suits as Rob hoisted his pack.

  Sarah turned to Rob again, her jaw set in determination. “Lead the way,” she said.