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The rotting flesh of my right leg dragged heavily across the Persian rug on the top floor of the Apex Fortress, leaving a dark brown smear in its wake.

Two fully armed mercenaries pinned me down by the back of my neck, my cheek pressed against the cold edge of the marble floor. The blackened, curled flesh below my knee emanated a foul stench, but this smell was quickly overpowered by the heavy scent of Chanel No. 5.

Elena leaned into the embrace of Victor, the ruler of the fortress, idly toying with a crystal goblet. She had purposely sprayed on a massive amount of perfume, purely to mask her nausea toward me.

Three months ago, at the evacuation point on the New York cross-sea bridge. To shove her onto the last military helicopter, I turned back to face a mutant. It wasn't an ordinary infected; its pupils gleamed with a terrifying dark-gold hue.

That single bite shattered my calf bones and reduced me to a defective piece of trash at the bottom of this shelter, meant for anyone to trample on.

The fortress's chief military medic concluded it was just a severe wound infection. Depending on low-grade antibiotics to linger on at the bottom, I wasn't expected to survive this harsh winter. Everyone was just waiting for me to rot into a puddle of mud.

What they didn't know was that every midnight, the sensation deep within the wound wasn't the pain of necrosis, but a scalding throb. Some unknown pathogen was quietly lying dormant in my bone marrow, restructuring, greedily devouring my cells while incubating another form of vitality beyond human comprehension.

"So this is the fool you mentioned, the one who didn't even want his own life for you?"

Victor looked down at me condescendingly, the toe of his custom-made leather shoe kicking my necrotic right leg. Champing on a Havana cigar, his eyes behind the swirling smoke were filled with arrogant mockery.

Elena frowned, burying her face into Victor's broad shoulder.

"Just a burden who could breathe his last at any moment, Vic. Don't let him dirty your carpet."

Her voice was soft as a feather, yet it pierced my lungs like a rusted bayonet. Three months ago, she was clinging to the cabin door, crying out my name, swearing she would wait for me in the safe zone. Now, she wouldn't even spare me a glance from the corner of her eye.

Victor exhaled a mouthful of thick smoke, his military boots tapping out a heavy rhythm. He walked up to me and crouched down, his gaze not pausing on my rotting leg, but landing precisely on my left hand.

On the ring finger of that hand was a pale mark left by years of wearing a ring. It was the engagement ring we had custom-made in Manhattan before the apocalypse, now reduced to a glaring joke.

"I heard you actually planned to marry her?"

Victor flipped his fingers holding the cigar, aiming the glowing red cherry straight at that pale mark. Without warning, he pressed the burning cigar hard into my ring finger.

The sizzling sound of burning flesh instantly erupted.

The agonizing pain of high heat searing my nerve endings shot straight to my brain. I clenched my molars, cold sweat from my forehead dropping onto the rug, but I forcefully held back even the slightest sound.

"Pretty tough bones." Victor took the remains of the cigar and grounded it forcefully into my skin; sparks flew as it dug deep into my flesh and blood.

I rolled my eyes, staring dead at Elena on the sofa.

Through the rising smoke, I tried to catch even a sliver of hesitation on her face, even a tiny bit of instinctive guilt.

She merely lifted her wine glass and took a light sip. In those blue eyes that used to be full of love, there was now only the disgust of looking at a sewer rat.

This humiliation flowed backward through my blood. At this exact moment, the dormant throbbing deep in my right leg suddenly grew violent. It was awakening. The intense external pain did not destroy me; instead, it became the catalyst to awaken the virus. An extreme hunger for blood was spreading through my veins to my entire body.

"Vic, just dispose of him. It really smells awful."

Elena finally stood up. Stepping in her stilettos, the hem of her silk dress brushed past my nose. Holding the half-finished glass of Romanée-Conti, she tilted her wrist slightly.

The cold red liquid poured down over my head, washing over my scorched finger and festering wound.

"Ray," she wasn't even willing to call me by my full name. Her red lips parted, spitting out words more piercing than the blizzard outside, "Face reality. In the apocalypse, deep affection is the most useless trash."

The wine dripped down my chin. The mercenaries grabbed me by the collar, dragging me toward the door like a corpse.

My sense of pain was slowly fading away. From the scorched wound on my ring finger, the oozing blood caught the dim light of the corridor, refracting a faint dark-gold luster that ordinary people couldn't perceive.

I kept my head down, letting the shadows swallow my vision.

Trash?

Then let's see in this wasteland, who will be the first to become true rations.