A Day In September - BTS Zombie au

Intro - Kuru ⚕

As the sun rose again, the air thickened with heat.

Crows picked at corpses, scavenging in the plentiful heaps of rotting flesh and maggots. The pavement scorched exposed flesh, the stench of burning skin prevalent in the air. Buildings lay in piles of rubble, some still falling, and some remaining tall. The streets were covered with coats of glass shards, trash, and many miscellaneous, forgotten and useless items. Cars sat completely destroyed, crushed into idle mounds of metal. Most had burst into flames after fatal collisions, and others destroyed by arsonists long ago.

Exhaustion was evident in the eyes of Mara, her deep set brown eyes encompassed by a couple of days worth of restlessness. Sleep, now a luxury, was hard to come by when surrounded by the dead that had once fallen, yet walked the earth mindlessly in search of the living. Food was still easy to scavenge, seeing as the world had only recently ended.

Quite a statement, but you would have to be extremely deluded to think the world could just get back up again, and act like nothing happened. You can't ever forget the fact that people eating other people in masses had become an everyday norm.

Just like flies, people dropped to the ground, dead in a matter of excruciating days that seemed to go by slower the more you felt yourself becoming it. Mara has watched several people attempt to claw their eyes out, screaming in pain when something in their brain sort of...ticked. She'd witnessed people jump off of buildings, bridges, and even in front of cars–back when there were enough people "alive" for cars to be considered nothing special.

Seeing people before the outbreak, crowding streets, driving cars and serving occupational jobs was...it was life. Life normally included humans, and they were the everyday thing. People couldn't hurt you without being prosecuted, and even then, the government system was faulty. Now, it was dangerous to come across other humans. Intentions became much more cynical, and sadistic.

Now, you can't trust anybody that comes across your path, for regulated systems like prisons and mental asylums were no longer supervised or under any authoritative control. There was no longer any bona fide structure of command that could secure anyone. At this point, no one could control anyone. People had created their own governments within their own groups, answering either to themselves or whoever they respected enough to listen to. Some even usurped their way to leadership, often creating villainous scavengers who got what they wanted by mercilessly killing. People took it upon themselves to follow such a leader as means to stay alive. The consequences of failed compliance led to banishment, and that meant starving to death, turning into one of them, or a much harder way of life. Some people were lucky enough to have their families, but being banished meant that the struggles prior mentioned would now be instilled onto the rest of the family. Some weren't even lucky enough to be banished, some were just shot or stabbed between the eyes.

It came down to one thing: Kill or be killed.

Anarchy in its purest form.

You could only trust people you knew you could easily overpower if things were to ever go south. Sometimes, you'd come across people with humanity still left in them, and you'd trade what you had in exchange for something they had. It's either that, or you could tag along with them until your paths came into an inevitable split, and you were left alone once again.

Mara was a lone trekker, her voyages straggled as she searched aimlessly for a way of life that'd give her some sort of purpose. Two years into the world's collapse, Mara knows what its like to live in a world overrun by what is known as Kuru, an infectious, fatal virus affecting the brain, and every system of the human body. The virus was spread over decades, introduced minorly by the black market, involved in the selling and distributing of infectious human meat and brains. The widespread, illegal, and private consumption of the infected tissue was believed to have caused the spread of Kuru. At least that's what the majority of people believed through spouts of theories from conspiracy groups around the world. Kuru was able to withstand antibiotics and remain undetectable to blood tests and brain scans, kept in check by several of its suppressant genes. The disease remained dormant, its incubation period far too long to be discovered in time, as the attempts to fight it were far too late. As the virus mutated and evolved to become immune to vaccines and recent medicinal breakthroughs, the first symptoms began to show. Toxoplasma, a parasite resting in the cells and tissue of the human brain, began making its first appearance. The parasite caused fits of uncontrollable rage, violently impulsive behavior, and severe depression. The severity of it forced many of the infected to be placed under isolated surveillance. The patients would have to be strapped down, their rabies-like behavior sedated with the use of strong tranquilizing drugs. The amount of people with this symptom began increasing at an alarming rate, creating a stir within The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.