The rain fell softly over St. Lucian Medical Center, washing the blood from the ambulance bay.
Inside, fluorescent lights flickered over worn tiles. Nurses moved like ghosts. Doctors whispered behind masks. Everyone felt it — the tension, the fear — but no one said it out loud.
In Room 214, Dr. Arian Velasquez stared at the syringe in his hand. The vaccine had expired three weeks ago. It wasn't supposed to be used. But this patient — a 12-year-old boy named Eli — was dying fast from the mutated virus tearing through the city. His mother clutched the boy's hand, her eyes swollen from crying, her voice shaking.
"Please," she whispered. "Please just try."
Arian's fingers trembled. He glanced at the file again. "EXPERIMENTAL – DO NOT ADMINISTER." But there were no other options left. The hospital was days from collapse. Outside, protestors chanted. Gunshots echoed in the distance.
He injected the boy.
10 seconds.
Eli's body went stiff. Then it jerked.
The mother screamed as her son's eyes rolled back, then snapped open — clouded, white, inhuman. A gurgle. Then a shriek.
Eli lunged. Teeth. Blood. Chaos.
A nurse slammed the emergency button. Too late. Screams erupted down the hallway. The first to fall was the security guard. Then the nurse. Then the boy's mother.
Dr. Arian stood frozen, blood sprayed across his mask, watching a child tear apart three grown adults in under a minute.
This was not a side effect.
This was the beginning.
---
In the following hours, the infection spread floor by floor.
A patient in the ICU bit an intern. An orderly was mauled trying to lock the cafeteria doors. Police arrived and opened fire, but bullets only slowed the infected. Not stopped them.
Downstairs in the trauma bay, Samantha "Sam" Torres, an EMT, kicked open the back doors of her ambulance.
"We got two critical!" she yelled, helping lift a burn victim out.
"We don't have beds!" a nurse shouted. "We're in lockdown!"
Sam turned toward the elevator and saw Dr. Arian, soaked in blood, standing alone. He met her eyes and shook his head slowly.
"Don't go inside," he said. "They're not... human."
Then a roar echoed down the corridor. Not a scream. A hunting noise. Something that used to be human.
From the shadows, Eli burst forth, mouth open wide, sprinting.
Sam dropped the stretcher. She didn't think. She ran.
---
Two hours later, the hospital burned.
News anchors called it a "mass psychotic episode." Military sealed off the city. But the infected had already escaped through the sewers, side streets, alleyways.
By midnight, a dozen cities reported similar attacks.
By dawn, over a thousand people were dead.
And rising.
---
One day later, Arian sat in the dark, listening to emergency broadcasts echo through his radio. He replayed the moment again and again — the boy's mother begging him to save her son.
"Please just try."
He had.
He failed.
The weight of those words crushed him. Arian's hands trembled as he turned off the radio. Static filled the room — a cruel reminder of how alone they all were now.
His phone buzzed. A message from Jess — the intern who had survived the chaos.
"Meet me at the east stairwell. We need to move."
Arian forced himself up, wiping the blood from his face with a shaking sleeve. He grabbed his bag, stuffing it with medical supplies and the last vial of vaccine serum — expired but better than nothing.
The hallways were eerily quiet now.
He stepped into the corridor, every shadow a threat.
---
At the east stairwell, Jess waited, her face pale but determined.
"Dr. Velasquez," she said breathlessly, "It's spreading. Faster than we thought. The infection — it's not just biting anymore. They're hunting."
Arian nodded grimly. "We have to get to the CDC field lab on the outskirts. Maybe they can help."
Jess hesitated. "It's a death march out there."
"We have no choice."
Together, they slipped out the back emergency exit.
---
The night was thick with fog and silence, broken only by distant screams and the occasional gunshot.
Cars were abandoned in twisted piles. Fires burned unattended, casting orange glows on crumbling buildings.
In the distance, groans echoed — the relentless, hungry sounds of the infected.
Jess clutched Arian's arm. "Do you think there's a cure?"
He shook his head. "Not yet. But we have to try."
---
Her voice haunted him — soft, desperate, pleading.
"Please… just try…"
Arian's eyes blurred with tears.
He clenched his fists.
He would make sure her sacrifice — and all the others — would not be in vain.
---
The hospital's power flickered. Outside, the city lights dimmed.
A siren wailed.
"Evacuate now," a booming voice ordered. "National quarantine in effect."
Arian looked around at the frightened faces.
The world was ending — and this was only the beginning.