of course he missed the old days, everyone did. the time before everything was dangerous, before the day was as fearful as the night. that didn't bring it back, but he couldn't help but think back to before, when no one had even the slightest inclination of what was to come. how it started remains a mystery; an alchemy experiment gone wrong, an unknown disease, and divine intervention to punish us for our sins were all common theories, but the means by which patient zero was infected are completely unknown. it doesn't really matter how it started though, what matters is that now, safety is a foolish delusion and security is a thing of the past.

he was always extraordinarily cautious, he didn't step foot out of the house if he didn't have to, but even he knew that he was only postponing the inevitable. the world was ending, how was anyone meant to survive that? it was a thursday evening that he peeked out of the house to pick the pears growing on his trees that it happened. all he heard was a rustling of leaves, and then he felt it, a burning pain along his lower torso, stretching from his back to his front, unlike anything he had ever felt, with a sting that couldn't possibly be matched by the stings of a million wasps. and as he fell he saw it, standing over him, covered in pus oozing boils, with dead eyes and long, spindly fingernails. then, it turned and left, mindlessly leaving him to his fate, and he saw the gash across its shoulders that must have infected it.

he had been unlucky, most of the time the attack was enough to kill, but he had survived, and now the worst was yet to come. by nightfall the wound barely stung, but in its place his left eye had been swollen shut. he willed himself to look in the dusty mirror, and there above his eye was the first boil. he was infected, it was over. he knew that any attempt to destroy himself to stop the transformation would be futile; the infected were essentially invincible, their skin hardening and their insides tightening, no longer requiring food or fuel of any kind, and completely immune to poison. he was facing a face worse than death, with no way to stop it.