CONTENT WARNINGS: SUICIDE, gore, The Last of Us Zombies, disembowelment

You are infected.

Three weeks ago, the world broke out into chaos as the Cordyceps fungi ran rampant. Not even a month ago, you were living a perfectly normal life, but now the fungi that once preyed on ants has spread to humanity with no foreseeable cure. When the fungus first infected humans, you read all the papers, every scientific journal about this bug. You knew everything there was to know about this infection, how the spores grew a parasite, how the mind became nothing but pure jelly.

Scavenging for what food you could find at the grocery store for your small group of survivors, you walked into the canned food aisle and found it ransacked clean. A slight disappointment, but not unexpected. You turned around, holding the baseball bat you used as a weapon (since guns seemed difficult to find… and finding ammo was even harder) —  when  you heard footsteps echoing through the empty store. You didn’t bring anyone with you — everyone else was either injured, unable to for other reasons — or was a child. You were the only able-bodied over-18 person without a designated job in your group.

The footsteps meant bad news: it could be another person whom you might have to kill. Or it could be an Infected, which meant you likely didn’t stand a chance.

You preferred the first choice.

Gently making your way toward the footsteps, both of your worst fears came to life: a newly infected human, covered in a thin layer of fresh fungi, stumbled around the frozen food aisle. She? He? They? It had brown hair and dark caramel skin, though you had to squint to make out the details in the barely illuminated store. It grabbed its head, trying to tear off the Cordyceps.

The Cordyceps fungi also seemed to have turned parts of the dark skin into patches of a dark sickly green and large abscesses filled with yellow fluid; other parts looked like armor plating. The face was barely human anymore, now taken up by the thick layer of plating.

It didn’t act like the other infected, though. The other infected often stayed in one spot as the fungus caked them to walls, floors, corners or even ceilings. This one was moving.

You continued to watch with curiosity, having never seen such a newly infected person. It kept trying to tear off the ever-hardening shell, failing as human strength wasn’t strong enough to fight off the fungus. After a few minutes of watching, you knew you needed to kill it quickly.

It couldn’t be that hard to kill, you thought. It was still partially human, more human than fungus actually. You stood up, holding the baseball bat in position. It screamed, making you hesitate. It still had humanity. The human began to convulse, laying on the ground, writhing and wailing in pain until choked off by a tentacle growing from its mouth as a sac began to form.

The human grabbed at it, pulling at it in a desperate attempt to continue to live. They began to pull, ripping away at the seemingly endless stem. With an awful choke, the human kept trying to rip out the deep roots, vomiting and crying the entire time, red saliva dripping from their face. You stepped back, watching as what was left of the human was ripped apart as the fungus finished its final stages of growth, tentacles emerging from all over the body as the fungus released the fluid filled sac.

The sac began to vibrate before exploding in a cocktail of guts, blood and yellow liquid. You watched as the liquid began to spill, the human falling to the floor, truly and finally dead, the liquid spreading toward your feet.

It started to smell. You knew what that meant: it was too late for you. The liquid began to release a thick green gas. You chastised yourself as you felt the spores fill your lungs, filling your mouth with the taste of rotten meat and eggs. You sat down, accepting your fate as you closed your eyes. It was only a matter of time before you became what you just saw.

With a sigh, you felt a fever begin to spread from your chest to your head. Closing your eyes and holding your head, your chest tightened as you felt every nerve in your body go alight. Small abscesses of pus dotted your skin, stinging and itchy.

It was too late for you. You listened as your heart began to thump louder and louder, a feeling of acceptance growing inside of you. There was no point in resisting anymore; too late for you. How much of that was you — and how much of it was the fungus already corrupting your brain — you couldn’t tell. You imagined it burrowing inside your brain, intestines, lungs — everything and anything — as it ate through your flesh. You felt sicker than before, if that was even possible. You felt your hands, the thick fungus plating now growing on your flesh. It was really happening, you were really becoming one of them.

You stood up, your pants now covered in the viscous, yellow liquid that coated the floor, stumbling your way to the kitchenware aisle. You coughed, blood covering your hands as the taste of iron became overwhelmingly strong.

You could end this early. At a slow pace, you began to scour the aisles for a kitchen knife or anything sharp and deadly. You felt it as tentacles began to spread, writhing against your insides as the fungus burrowed in your flesh. You suppressed a scream as you picked up a knife barely peeking out from under a shelf. You sat down and examined the case: it was the kind that you needed scissors to open. The kind nearly impossible to open without any sharp objects.

Your flesh ripped and a warm liquid began to ooze from your chest. You should’ve felt extreme pain — the fungus must be numbing. You watched the fungus tear through the fabric of your shirt, a stem just like before, tentacle-like and bloodied, sprouting from your body. You felt a second one make its way into your esophagus. You reached up to pull at it, grasping at your throat for air, air, air!

You sit down again, holding the kitchen knife still in its case in your hands. It is too late for you.