Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
The first thing the boy remembers about the incident is dust. There was dust, and rubble, and broken glass.
And blood.
But that’s getting too far ahead. To fully understand this story, we have to begin just a little while earlier, far, far away from the boy, in an odd laboratory with white walls and a polished floor where some people have been working on something in secret. It’s an important secret, and one that must be kept lest world order be entirely overturned. It’s a dangerous secret, and it’s a scary secret, and it’s a secret that will eventually come to affect the lives of millions of people.
But first, here.
Here there is a lab, and here there is a secret, and here there is a careless person who didn’t quite finish his job as he checked the equipment before shutting down for the night. Who figured ‘I’m tired, and they’re always careful anyway.’ Here there is a virus brewing in a test tube, and here there is a team of people who until that day, until that person, had been so very careful. So certain that nothing would go wrong. That nothing could go wrong.
And here there is death.
And there, there is a boy who still sleeps, completely unaware of the secret, of the horrors that can be contained in a tiny test tube. Completely unaware of the kinds of things humans can do when their minds are turned in the wrong direction.
And there, there is a boy who sleeps. And here there is death. And somewhere else, the virus has already begun to spread.
And far away, the boy awakes, and he goes to school. He goes about his day, and he meets with his parents, and they go shopping.
The first memory of the incident is that of dust from the ceiling, and rubble from the walls, and broken glass from the shattered windows.
The second memory of the incident is that of blood. He sees red seeping down the face of the shopkeeper he had been chatting with just moments before. He has a strange urge to reach out and touch it, but he stops himself. Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to touch the blood on other people’s faces.
The third memory is where the sound comes back. The boy almost wishes it hadn’t. Because the only sound he can hear is screams, and alarms, and an odd ringing sound in his left ear that just won’t go away. He still isn’t entirely sure what is happening. He can almost hear words, but they’re so ridiculous that he almost ignores them entirely.
Zombies.
See? Ridiculous.
And he blinks, and the shopkeeper is gone, and his parents are gone, and he wishes he was gone, too.
And then, in a place other than the store, but still not his home or anywhere familiar, the boy wakes up.