Chapter 1
"Why won't you just die?" A voice yelled in the chaos of battle. The speaker pulled out his sword from the corpse beneath him. "What are you waiting for?" his breathing was erratic but he couldn't take even a second to relax, because that would mean death at the hands of the monsters that surrounded him.
The battlefield stretched endlessly over the blazing gaze of the sun. Bodies of humans and monsters were everywhere. The air was thick with the stench of blood and the relentless growls of monsters could be heard all around. Human soldiers clashed with horrible looking beasts in a seemingly futile battle. Most were drained of strength so they could no longer use their Ability.
A handsome young man with curly blonde hair stood at the front lines, his breathing ragged. His metal armor had traces of blood all over it; some his, but mostly from the monsters he had slain.
"Hold the line!" he shouted with a hoarse voice. "We can't let them reach the barrier!"
He swung his blade in a wide arc severing the head of a monster that had sprouted bone-like structures from its back. The creature gurgled as it fell, but the victory was short-lived s five more took it's place.
"Yes, commander Alaric!"
To Alaric's left, an Enhanced soldier released a torrent of fire from his palms, incinerating a dozen monsters instantly. The attack was brought to end when a big monster with reinforced skin made its way through the fiery blast and held the Enhanced by the neck with one hand. Before he could react, the monster separated his head from his body.
"Fuck!" Alaric cursed, watching from afar. "We should've hunted you bastards when you were still dumb and weak," he confessed, gripping two monsters by the head.
They stopped moving the instant his hands touched them. In a second, they turned to ash. Alaric was losing more men by the second. If the battle kept on like this, everyone would be dead before sundown.
In the year 2020, BioGen, the world's top pharmaceutical company produced MIRACLE, a drug capable of curing all forms of cancer. It passed human trials and was distributed to every nation in the world. A terminal patient just had to take one dose and within an hour, all the cancerous cells in the patients body would be destroyed.
Even those who we healthy had to take the miracle as a vaccine to ensure they never get cancer. This was humanity's greatest attempt to purge themselves of the dreaded curse. At first, Miracle did the job it was designed to do, but after 3 months, it decided to fight back.
Miracle contained a virus that had been biologically engineered to feed solely on cancerous cells. When there was no more to feed on, it would die of starvation. What the scientists didn't expect was for Miracle to evolve into a virus that could attach to healthy human cells.
On August 26, 50% of mankind slept as humans, but woke up monsters, or rather; Zombies. They only had one desire; to FEED.
"Alaric!" he turned when he heard a familiar voice call his name. Using his ability, he cleared a path to meet the caller. "This is it pal. If we stay here, we're dead."
"I'm not running, Kyle." Alaric growled, slashing through another wave of zombies. His blade moved like a whip, killing everything in its way, but Alaric was enraged because for every zombie he killed, ten more would replace it.
The human soldiers were completely surrounded. This was no longer a battle. It had become a slaughter. And there was no escaping it.
"Don't give up. We can still push them back," Alaric assured, his back pressed against Kyle's.
"You're not listening to me," Kyle grabbed Alaric's hand. His eyes started to glow red and in an instant, all the monsters 10 meters around them were blasted backwards. "The Hivemind is here. Miracle is here. This battle is already over."
"Now's not the time to be making jokes, K," Alaric muttered, his eyes scanning the premises.
"I'm not."
Those words sent a chill down Alaric's spine. After several evolutions, Miracle now controls the hivemind of the zombies. It's intelligence could compete with that of a human, and win. Not to mention that just like the other zombies, it had awakened an Ability. Miracle was the reason why the human race was on the brink of extinction.
This was suppose to be a simple mission of extermination. When Alaric accepted it, he wasn't expecting a horde of awakened zombies 100 times the size of his army. Now with Miracle somewhere around, he had to accept the fact that he might not make it out alive.
A deafening roar shook the battlefield. Alaric turned to see a towering figure jump down from a skyscraper about 500m from where he stood. Unlike the other zombies with pitch black eyes, its eyes glowed a powerful gold.
"That's it," Kyle whispered with a trembling voice.
Alaric's instincts screamed at him to run, but his legs refused to move. His concentration was only broken for a second but a zombie with blade-like claws, slashed at his chest, barely penetrating through his armor. In a heartbeat, Alaric chopped its head of with his sword.
The Human soldiers were falling one by one, overwhelmed by the seemingly endless horde of zombies. Some were killed by them while others had been bitten and turned into them.
'This mission was a mistake. I led these men to their deaths,' Alaric thought as he saw the chaos unfolding around him.
Alaric looked up and he could feel the gaze of the giant humanoid zombie on him. It raised a clawed hand and the zombies became more aggressive.
"Looks like this is the end, Kyle," Alaric said, feeling the crushing weight of fatigue on his body. "I'm sorry for being such a terrible leader." He kept on fighting even as tears welled up in his eyes.
"What happened to not giving up?" Kyle laughed. "I have an idea. Do you trust me?"
"Of course. Why?"
"Return your sword. For this to work, we need to hold hands," Kyle said, punching a zombie in the face.
"Drop my sword? Can't you see we're surrounded? One bite and we'll become one of them," Alaric protested, making another arc with his sword, beheading other zombies around him. He was standing on a file of infected corpses a few meters from Kyle.
"Do you want to survive or not?" Kyle questioned. "Just return your sword. I'll take care of the rest. I'm not leaving here without you."
"Alright," Alaric heaved a sigh then returned his sword into its sheath by his waist. He punched his way through to Kyle.
"Let's hope this works."
Kyle's eyes glowed red again and he stretched out both hands to his left and right. A red sphere was instantly formed around them. The zombies tried clawing their way in, but everyone that touched the sphere was sent flying back.
"What are you doing?"
"I haven't mastered this aspect of my Ability," Kyle replied, struggling to focus on the energy around him. "Hang on." Kyle warned, holding Alaric by his wrists.
Alaric was still trying to figure out what he meant when his vision began to blur and the loud cries of zombies and soldiers lessened into a deafening silence. Alaric felt like he was being torn apart and reassembled. The erratic display of lights forced him to close his eyes. Then as suddenly as it started, it stopped.
Kyle and Alaric collapsed on cold, cracked asphalt concrete, gasping for air. When Alaric got up, he noticed the world around him was eerily silent. The air was cooler, fresher and free of the overwhelming scent of Zombies. They were no longer in Vegas battling Zombies.
"Kyle," Alaric called, looking around, confused. "What did you do?"
Kyle was kneeling a few feet away, his face pale and drenched in sweat.
"I think I sent us back," he uttered with a cough.
"Back?" Alaric puzzled, his mind racing as he stared at a New York City newspaper on the ground. He knew Kyle had an Ability that could allow him to control space around him and even teleport, but that didn't explain why he was standing in a city that was nuked 5 months ago. "Back where?"
"Not where," Kyle corrected, his voice weak. "When."