In kansas city, missouri
On the outskirts of Kansas City, the area had been designated a military zone due to a government policy enforcing a mass vaccination program against the avian flu outbreak.
In the end of busy street the bus Richard was riding came to a screeching halt.
Outside, the world looked frozen—sealed behind layers of steel gates, thermal scanners, and armed personnel. A red digital banner flickered above the entrance:
QUARANTINE INSPECTION
Outside the window, a police officer wearing an N95 mask vigorously waved a glow stick, while staff members fully encased bio hazard suit raised their spray guns. The pungent smell of disinfectant rushed into his nostrils, even through the closed window.
The regional checkpoint had arrived.
"This damn thing is never-ending..." Richard pressed his sweaty forehead against the cool glass and closed his tired, aching eyes.
The outboard radio blared noisily: "...The first round of ZTR Vaccine inoculation has commenced across the entire city. Individuals must apply at designated agencies..." The roar of the engine restarting drowned out the rest.
He pulled the vibrating old-fashioned feature phone from his pocket. When opened his phone and saw the overdue electricity bill notification, a flicker of irritation crossed his face. With a quiet sigh, he locked the screen and slipped the phone back into his pocket.
'Once they got through this wave of the Bird Flu and the economy recovered' he thought tiredly, he absolutely had to find a proper job. Then he would buy his sister that new color-screen flip phone from ADS. She had been asking about it for ages.
"Sam, let me tell you, don't be stupid and waste money getting that broken shot early!" A loud voice women who had just boarded the bus yelled into her phone. "I felt terrible all over after getting it today. It wasn't like an allergy, it was just... eerie. Seriously, that kid next door to sam, he got the shot and started burning up and talking nonsense..."
Paying to get the shot early? A surge of irrational anger flared up in Richard's heart. Working himself to death for a chance was nothing compared to someone just throwing cash around.
Annoyed, he turned his head away and looked out the window. "We has arrived in final Destination . Passengers please disembarking..."
Richard haphazardly stuffed the notice back into his pocket and squeezed toward the back door.
The bus door hissed open, and a blast of air, thick with heat and dust, rushed toward him, instantly plastering his shirt to his chest and back.
"Damn, this hellish weather..."
He muttered, pulling up his mask, wanting only to quickly escape into the pathetic bit of cool air inside his home.
The sycamore leaves in the old district drooped under the scorching sun, and the cicadas screamed themselves hoarse.
Below the familiar red-brick building, vendors guarded ice cream carts, pedestrians hurried past, and old men fanned themselves in the shade... Everything seemed normal.
But Richard stopped in his tracks.
In the distance down the street, several layers of people were densely packed, and faint sounds of fierce arguments and wails could be heard. The glaring red blue light of police sirens flashed between the moving heads.
Something happened? Richard's heart skipped a beat, and he subconsciously moved a few steps forward.
Peering through the gaps in the crowd, he glimpsed dark red stains on the ground. Two uniformed figures were struggling to pin down a wildly thrashing black person whose hands were cuffed behind their back.
The person struggled with terrifying strength, guttural, hoarse sounds escaping his throat.
"Move! Disperse! Stop crowding!" A police officer yelled hoarsely, but to little effect.
A chill inexplicably crept up Richard's spine.
This wasn't right... It was completely wrong.
He wanted to see more clearly, but the dizziness brought on by a day of exhaustion and intense heat suddenly worsened, and his temples throbbed violently.
He shook his head and turned away from the crowd.
Just as he squeezed out of the periphery, a young man, whose face was paper-white and whose body was shaking like a sieve, stumbled past him.
Out of the corner of his eye, Richard subconsciously glanced at the person's exposed neck. Dark blue-black veins bulged and twisted like living things, writhing frantically beneath the pale skin.
"Hnnk..." A short, hoarse gasp was forced out of the young man's throat.
Richard's hair instantly stood on end. 'What the hell is wrong in this man'
He push the man around violently, only to see the young man fall stiffly to the ground like a piece of dead wood, his limbs twitching unnaturally.
"Ah!"
A piercing scream broke through the barrier of the ringing in his ears, followed immediately by the dull thud of bodies colliding and the sharp crack of bone hitting the hard ground.
Richard was knocked down after being shoved by someone rushing in the opposite direction, trying to escape.
the two of them tumbled to the ground.
The ringing stopped abruptly.
The sounds of the world instantly flooded back into his ears like a tide, terrifyingly clear yet shatteringly chaotic.
"Get away! Don't bite me! Help!"
"Lunatics! They're all lunatics! Run!"
"My child! Where is my child?!"
"Bang! Bang!"
Two dull, gun shot sounded in the distance.
Richard struggled to prop himself up. The girl he had collided with was covered in blood, her eyes showing nothing but pure, animalistic fear.
She didn't even look at Richard, scrambling to her feet with her hands and feet, and disappeared screaming into the stream of frantically fleeing people.
Richard raised his head, his pupils contracting sharply. The sight before make him wasn't sure whether it was real or just a hallucination.
The street, which had been full of life just moments ago, was now a chaos.
Under the shade of the trees, the old man who had been fanning himself was lying on the ground. A large, glaring patch of dark red blood was spreading beneath him, and his body was still twitching unnaturally.
The fruits and vegetables at the vendor's stall were splattered with his blood, which was still dripping heavily and seeped over the soles of his shoes.
He saw people tackling others, tearing at their necks like beasts. And peoples wildly swinging clubs and bats, hysterically smashing them at the figures lunging toward them.
He saw even more people just screaming and shoving, running around like headless flies.
A cold sense of numbness instantly shot from his tailbone to the crown of his head. Richard felt chilled all over, yet his limbs were unnaturally filled with strength.
Home. He had to go home!
This thought branded itself onto his mind like a red-hot iron.
He sprang up almost instinctively, stumbling and running frantically against the flow of people, heading toward his familiar apartment building.
The stickiness underfoot made his uncomfortoble several times, but he ignored it, focused only on the door to his home.
The familiar, slightly dilapidated iron gate of the apartment building appeared before him, like a lighthouse in the darkness of despair.
He charged inside like a cannonball, abruptly shutting the cries, roars, and smell of blood outside the door behind him.
The hallway was dimly lit, filled with dust and the smell of age. Suppressed discussions and fearful glances came from behind several doors.
The moment he rushed to the third-floor landing, a potent stench, a mixture of rust and sweet, rotten decay, violently assaulted his nostrils.
His steps were instantly nailed to the spot.
In the corner of his eye, in the darkest part of the stairwell landing, a twisted figure stood silents its head was tilted at an angle that no human neck could possibly withstand, almost drooping onto its shoulder.
Thick dark red blood streaks, continuously seeped out of one eye socket, which was swollen almost to the point of bursting, and a deep, black-red cavity next to it, slowly sliding down its neck, which stil covered in worm-like blue veins.
Its cracked lips, stained with blackish-brown blood, trembled slightly, emitting a rattling sound like an old bellows.
Richard's heart felt as if it were being tightly squeezed by an icy hand. Blood rushed to his head and instantly receded, leaving only the sound of his own heart pounding like a drum in his ears and the frantic throbbing of the veins in his wrist.
Even though his face was no longer recognizable and was covered in a thick layer of blood and deformed, the faded property management uniform and the vaguely recognizable outline...
"...Uncle... Uncle michael?"
A hoarse voice, unrecognizable even to himself, was uncontrollably forced out of his throat.
"Hnnk... Hnnk hnnk..."
Hearing this address, the festering muscles on the monster's face suddenly spasmed and stacked, the corners of its blood-soaked mouth slowly stretched open on their own widening unnaturally until the flesh tore at the edges, splitting further and further apart, revealing the dark, glistening depths of its throat, upward into an arc beyond human limits stretching all the way to its earlobes.
A smile twisted to the extreme, filled with inhuman malice and bizarre satisfaction, froze in Richard's wide, fear-filled pupils.