Apocalypse: King of Zombies

Ethan squinted and smiled slyly. ”Relax, come here. I’m just going to give you a shot.”

”A shot?” Nina’s eyes widened in surprise. She glanced at the thing in Ethan’s hand and quickly pieced together what he meant.

She didn’t know exactly what it was, but whatever it was, it had to be better than being eaten alive.

So, after a moment of hesitation, she slowly stepped forward.

Ethan picked up a vial of what he called the ”evolution serum” and, without any warning, jabbed it straight into the pale skin of her neck. The sharp sting made Nina wince, her brows knitting together in pain.

But she bit her lip and forced herself to endure it.

As Ethan pressed his thumb down on the syringe, the orange-yellow liquid flowed into her veins. Almost immediately, she felt a searing heat coursing through her body. Her skin flushed red, and an odd, itchy sensation began to creep across her scalp.

This was the first sign of Neurocore crystallization—the serum was already taking effect.

”All done,” Ethan said casually, stepping back.

He wasn’t expecting much from Nina’s evolution into the Neurocore stage. She wasn’t exactly combat material, but hey, at least she’d be stronger for manual labor. That was what really mattered.

...

The next few days in Los Angeles were eerily calm. Nothing major happened, and everything seemed to progress in an almost mundane, routine way.

Genesis Biotech, once loud and arrogant, had gone completely silent. Their official website was wiped clean, with no announcements or updates. It was as if they’d vanished overnight.

The government-run shelters, on the other hand, showed occasional signs of activity, though nothing too frequent or significant. Most of their operations were focused outside the city, targeting the outskirts.

One of the few updates on the shelter’s website read:

”Bad news: A search team in the outskirts was attacked by an unidentified creature. Five members are missing. The exact cause is still unclear. Teams venturing out are advised to exercise extreme caution.”

That was the only announcement in days. The comments section below was filled with messages of mourning and condolences.

Because in a world like this, ”missing” was just a polite way of saying ”probably dead.”

The post included photos of the five missing individuals: three men and two women. The team leader was a burly guy with a square jaw, dark skin, and a kind, almost naive expression.

”If anyone heading out recognizes these faces, please keep an eye out for them,” the shelter’s admin added beneath the photos. But it was clear they weren’t holding their breath. It felt more like a formality than a genuine plea for help. Everyone knew the odds of survival were slim to none.

Ethan skimmed through the post and shrugged. It wasn’t his problem.

Still, it was interesting to note that there were people actively moving around in the outskirts. The area was safer than the city, with fewer zombies to worry about. Sure, there were mutated beasts, plants, and the occasional small-scale monster, but it was nothing compared to the chaos downtown.

Ethan had been toying with the idea of finding some humans to experiment on—injecting them with the G-virus to create a few bio-monsters. The outskirts seemed like the perfect place to start.

With that in mind, he decided to head out of the city for a little ”field trip.”

...

Ethan’s figure flickered and vanished into thin air.

Moments later, he reappeared at the edge of the city, walking along a cracked and overgrown highway that stretched toward the wilderness.

The road out of the city was a graveyard of abandoned cars. Vehicles were piled up in chaotic heaps, some smashed together in violent collisions, others flipped on their sides or burned to blackened husks. The aftermath of desperate escape attempts during the apocalypse was written all over the scene.

Three months of rain and decay had washed away most of the blood, but the rusted metal and moss-covered wreckage told their own story. Rats the size of small dogs scurried through the cars, squeaking as they darted in and out of shattered windows. They’d made this place their home.

Ethan walked on, leaving the city behind.

The further he went, the greener it got. The sides of the road were overrun with dense vegetation—tall grass, wild shrubs, and trees that had grown unchecked. To his left, an open field stretched out, wild and untamed.

Ethan’s sharp eyes scanned the area, and something immediately caught his attention.

In the middle of the field was the wreckage of a transport aircraft. It looked like it had crash-landed, its nose buried deep in the dirt. The damage didn’t seem too old—maybe it had gone down recently.

Curious, Ethan decided to check it out.

Sure, he was here to find people, but stumbling across something like this was too intriguing to ignore. Who knew what kind of treasures might be hidden inside? In a world like this, strange and unexpected things were everywhere.

And Ethan? He wasn’t one to pass up a good treasure hunt.

Ethan stepped into the open field, moving steadily toward the wreckage of the transport plane. From a distance, he could already make out several human corpses scattered around, as if they had crawled out of the crashed aircraft in their final moments.

As he got closer, the stench hit him first—thick, putrid, and unmistakable. The bodies were in an advanced state of decay, with large chunks of flesh missing, exposing stark white bones beneath. Flies buzzed around the remains, adding to the grim scene.

”Only been dead a few days...” Ethan muttered to himself, crouching down to inspect the bodies. Judging by the level of decomposition, the crash couldn’t have happened more than three to five days ago.

”Huh?” His sharp eyes caught a detail that made him pause.

The corpses were all wearing white lab coats—scientists, by the looks of it. But what really stood out was their cause of death. Each of them had a gaping hole in their abdomen, with ribs bent outward, as if something had violently burst out from inside their bodies.

”Parasites?” Ethan mused, his mind already piecing together the possibilities. ”Looks like they were killed by some kind of... host creature.”

He straightened up and turned his attention to the wreckage itself. The transport plane was in bad shape, its nose buried deep in the dirt. Ethan peered inside, hoping to find something useful or at least interesting. But to his disappointment, the interior had already been stripped clean. Not a single crate, tool, or scrap of equipment remained.

What was left, however, were muddy footprints leading away from the site—human footprints.

”Figures,” Ethan muttered under his breath. In a world where resources were scarce, scavengers were everywhere. Anything remotely valuable would’ve been looted within hours, especially this close to the city outskirts. People were like locusts now, leaving nothing behind.

As he circled the wreckage, something else caught his eye—a body lying just a few feet away. This one was older, judging by the advanced decay. The corpse was also wearing a blood-soaked lab coat, though the original white fabric had long since turned a grimy blackish-red.

The old man’s abdomen had the same grotesque wound as the others—a massive hole with ribs splayed outward, some of them snapped clean in half. But there was something different about this one.

In his bony, decomposed hand, the man was clutching a crumpled piece of paper.

”What’s this?” Ethan murmured, his curiosity piqued. With a flick of his wrist, a sleek tachi materialized in his hand. In one swift motion, he sliced through the corpse’s wrist, severing the hand cleanly. The paper fluttered free, and Ethan deftly caught it on the tip of his blade.

He held it up to the light, letting the sun illuminate the blood-stained note. The paper was wrinkled and smeared with dried blood, but beneath the stains, faint words were scrawled in shaky, uneven handwriting:

”Don’t trust anyone...”

The letters were jagged and erratic, as if the writer’s hand had been trembling violently. Ethan could tell the old man had been in immense pain when he wrote this—probably moments before his death.

”Well, that’s dramatic,” Ethan muttered, his tone flat. For most people, this would’ve been a chilling warning, a final plea to be wary in a world gone mad. But for Ethan? It was nothing new. He already trusted no one. Always had, always would.

With a flick of his wrist, he let the paper fall to the ground and continued on his way.

...

It wasn’t long before he came across a small, abandoned community. From a distance, he could see rows of low, crumbling brick houses and a few two-story structures that looked like they’d been built by hand.

The place was eerily quiet, the kind of silence that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

The road leading into the community was littered with skeletal remains, their bones picked clean by time and scavengers.

The buildings were in shambles—windows shattered, doors hanging off their hinges. Some of the walls were smeared with dried, blackened blood, a grim reminder of whatever had happened here.

Ethan stopped at the edge of the community, his sharp senses on high alert.

The silence was unnatural, oppressive.

But there was something else.

He closed his eyes for a moment, focusing.

There it was—a faint trace of human presence.

...