Chapter 3

I stayed in Bunker Zero, two hundred feet underground, until the tenth day.

My routine was flawlessly disciplined. Four hours of physical training a day, two hours stripping and polishing my firearms. The rest of my time was spent sitting in front of the surveillance matrix, watching the four-thousand-person base above descend into total paralysis step by step.

For the first few days, the civilians reveled in the sheer ecstasy of sleeping in every morning around the clock.

But the consumption of resources was ruthlessly real.

By the fifth day, the reserve rations had been completely squandered. The hydroponic farm's water pumps severely clogged up because no one bothered to clean them, and over two-thirds of the crops withered and died in massive yields.

By the tenth day, a full-blown crisis exploded.

At 10:00 AM, over a thousand people swarmed the central plaza.

"We haven't received rations in three days! Where's the meat you promised us?!"

"Why are you telling us to unclog the sewers again? What happened to our freedom?!"

The crowd pushed and shoved violently against the guards. It was a hair's breadth away from sparking a full-scale riot.

Marcus stood on the control room balcony, megaphone in hand, desperately trying to pacify them. But eventually, under a barrage of anger, he cowardly retreated back indoors.

I tapped a button and switched the camera feed to the interior of the master control room.

Elena was standing beside Marcus, looking equally panicked and restless.

"We can't force them to work the farms," Marcus gritted his teeth, panting heavily. "If I order the guards to hold them at gunpoint and force them into the fields right now, how am I any different from Gideon? These people will throw me off the balcony in a heartbeat."

"But there's no food left! Someone has to clean the farms, and a chunk of the outer wall collapsed yesterday and no one even went to fix it. We have to find people who are willing to work."

Marcus paced back and forth across the room. A few minutes later, his gaze locked onto the broadcasting equipment on the desk.

"We need fresh blood," Marcus stared at Elena. "A lot of it. People who are so desperate they'll happily scoop filth out of the sewers and patch the razor wire for a single bowl of moldy soup."

"The people inside the base won't do it. They think they're untouchable heroes now," Elena said.

"If the people inside won't do it, the people outside will." Marcus stepped up to the console. "There are tons of wandering refugees out there. They're on the verge of starving to death. If we just give them a roof over their heads, they'll do anything we ask. Plus, it'll show those idiots rioting in the plaza that we are saving lives, that we're doing the right thing."

Sitting in my bunker, I lit a cigar.

To solve an internal conflict he created himself, he was perfectly willing to introduce uncontrollable, highly dangerous elements, meticulously packaging it all as some grand act of benevolence.

That afternoon, Marcus tapped into all public radio frequencies within a fifty-mile radius.

Over the broadcast, he boldly announced: "Blackstone Base has overthrown its dictatorship! We are officially opening our doors to all suffering brothers and sisters."

By dusk.

A line of headlights appeared on the western side of the base.

It was a convoy of three battered trucks, pulling up right in front of the base's first steel security gate.

About sixty sooty, starving refugees squeezed out of the vehicles.

The garrison captain at the gate was Razor. For the past few days, he had been deliberately sidelined, relegated to handling basic entry logs.

On the monitor, Razor led eight guards out of the outpost. "Everyone line up in two rows with your hands behind your heads! Proceed to the inspection zone for a strip search. Those without scratches will be sent to the quarantine block on the right for a mandatory fourteen-day isolation!"

Razor walked down the line, rifle at the ready. He finally stopped near the back of one of the trucks.

There stood a woman, tightly clutching a little girl who looked about seven or eight years old. The girl was bundled up in a heavy winter coat and a thick scarf, shivering violently against her mother.

Razor acutely sensed something wrong. He strode over and used his gun barrel to nudge the woman's arm aside. "What's wrong with her?"

"She has a fever... it's just a normal cold!" The mother frantically tried to shield the girl's neck.

Razor didn’t waste his breath. He reached out and violently yanked the scarf off the girl's neck, revealing a stark, undeniable scratch whose edges had already begun to turn black.

Clack.

Razor instantly racked his rifle, pressing the muzzle flush against the girl's skull. "Everyone step back! Infected target identified. Executing on site immediately!"

The mother shrieked and dropped to her knees, clinging to Razor's thigh for dear life.

"She wasn't scratched by a zombie! She scratched herself last night from a rash! That's all it is!"

Razor stared down, completely unmoved. "That sob story doesn't work on me. Do you have any idea how many infected people I've seen?"

Just as Razor was about to squeeze the trigger, a jeep screeched to a halt right in front of the gates.

Marcus and Elena jumped out. Marcus rushed forward, grabbing Razor's wrist and viciously pushing the rifle down.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?! She's just a child!" Marcus roared.

"She's been scratched by a zombie." Razor pointed at the blackened wound. "You let her inside, and not only will you get zero labor out of it, but every single person in this base is going to die."

"Don't lecture me with Gideon's cold-blooded rules!" Marcus spun around, shouting toward the civilians watching from the walls. "We are no longer barbarians! This is a human life!"

Razor took a hard step forward, firmly planting himself dead center in the gateway.

Smack!

Marcus slapped Razor brutally across the face. A trickle of blood instantly oozed from the corner of Razor's mouth.

"I am the leader here!" Marcus drew his sidearm and shoved it directly against Razor's chest. "You are relieved of duty. Hand over your weapon and get to the back. I'm taking charge here."

Elena stepped forward and crouched down, slipping a piece of candy into the little girl's pocket. She shot Razor a look of pure disgust. "You are just as sickening as your dead tyrant master. Didn't you hear her mother? It's just a scratched rash. The base has plenty of antibiotics."

Razor wiped the blood from his mouth, threw his rifle onto the dirt, and turned around. Right before he walked out of the camera's sight, he tilted his head up and glanced at the lens tucked in the top left corner. Even though he couldn't see me, I still nodded in approval.

Basking in his hard-won victory, Marcus turned back and waved grandly to the refugees. "Welcome to Blackstone Base! No quarantine needed—just grab your luggage and head straight inside!"

On the feed, all sixty refugees flooded through the base gates like a broken dam.

The mother holding the infected girl bowed profusely to Marcus as she crossed the threshold.

Marcus settled this entire batch of refugees directly into the most densely populated indoor area of the base—the central gymnasium in Zone C.

Night heavily fell.

Half the base was plunged into absolute darkness due to a complete lack of generator fuel.

1:15 AM.

On screen three, the gym floor was wall-to-wall with deep-sleeping refugees.

On the infrared thermal imaging, the little girl's body temperature plummeted from a severe high fever down to a completely cold, lifeless blue—all within the span of five minutes.

Immediately after, her body snapped upright like a coiled spring. Without a single scream, the girl lunged and bit clean through the carotid artery of her sleeping mother next to her.

At the exact same moment on screen two, over in the Zone D residential tower, the man who had been released from quarantine ten days ago with a scratched neck finally ceased breathing as total organ failure hit.

Half a minute later, he stood up in horrifyingly contorted angles and threw himself violently down onto his wife.

A multi-point outbreak. Zero early warning.

2:00 AM.

The lights flipped on up on the second floor of the master control building.

Marcus sat up in bed, looking thoroughly annoyed.

He heard faint, chaotic crashing noises echoing up from outside.

He simply assumed it was the furious mob from earlier in the day protesting their lack of rations and smashing things up again.

He threw off the blanket, quickly slipped into a sleek overcoat, and neatly buttoned it up. Elena rubbed her eyes, sleepily following behind him.

"Don't worry, we brought in the refugees; we have people to do the heavy lifting now," Marcus said, straightening his collar. "I'll handle this. All I need to do is give them a few new promises, and they'll quietly go back and shut their mouths."

Escorted by four freshly awakened bodyguards, Marcus confidently marched down the stairs and strode into the first-floor lobby.

"Sir, the noise out there doesn't sound right," one guard muttered, his expression pulling tight.

"Lower your guns. Violence will only escalate the conflict over nothing. They wouldn't dare hurt me."

Marcus walked straight toward the heavy set of locked front doors.

I could see it crystal clear through the night-vision surveillance—those weren't protesting civilians standing right outside. It was a ravenous swarm of zombies.

Marcus reached his hand out and confidently grasped the door handle.

The door opened.