They dropped us in at 0600. That's how it started.Grey sky. No wind. Dead silence that stuck to your skin like old sweat.
We were told it was a quarantine op. Civil unrest. Flash mobs. Biohazard containment.Same excuses, different coordinates.But we knew the shape of lies.And this one had teeth.
Our boots hit a school parking lot east of downtown. Still warm from last night's panic.The flag out front was shredded halfway down the pole. An arm—just the arm—was hanging from it like it had something left to salute.
Sergeant Yates took point.I checked the perimeter.Private Aldridge puked in the bushes because he was nineteen and still believed in warnings that came with countdowns.
Inside, the school smelled like bleach and failure.Lockers were open. Blood painted the linoleum like an abstract surrender. A child's shoe was still spinning in the hallway, slow and impossible.No kids. No teachers.Just noise.
Not sound. Noise.From the PA system.
"—don't open the door—""—they remember how to speak—""—if it sounds like someone you love, it isn't—"
Yates turned it off."Shut that horror show up," he muttered.The speaker crackled once more. Then silence.Too much of it.
We found the first survivor in the library.Corporal Singh spotted her. A girl. Maybe sixteen. Wrapped in a mascot costume. Some kind of purple bear with one eye missing. She was covered in blood that didn't look like hers. She was shaking. Not crying. Crying would've made her too human.We pointed rifles.She pointed a finger at the ceiling.
"They're in the vents," she whispered.
Yates rolled his eyes. "Of course they are."
That's when the ceiling moved.
And then the screaming started.
They weren't people anymore. That much was obvious.But they remembered how to be people.How to move like them.Sound like them.Smell like them.
They fell from the ceiling like hunger wrapped in muscle. One of them still had a substitute teacher badge. It read: Mr. Beckett. He tore Aldridge's face off like it was wrapping paper.
We shot.We screamed.We ran.
We left the girl.Don't say you wouldn't.You would.We all would.
By the time we reached the roof, we were down to four.Me.Yates, bleeding from the neck.Singh, missing a finger.And Lobo, silent as always, like he was already writing the after-action report in his head.
The evac chopper wasn't there.Of course it wasn't.
Transmission failure.Do not attempt extraction.King County has fallen.Repeat: There is no safe zone.
Yates screamed into his radio until the battery died. Then he screamed at the sky.The sky didn't scream back.But something in the stairwell did.
Lobo handed me his last grenade without a word.
"Door duty," he said.
Then he opened the stairwell.Then he didn't exist anymore.Just sound.And red.
Singh tried to jump.I caught her by the collar.She cried. Finally.I said, "We wait for night. They don't see as well at night."
That was a lie.They see perfectly at night.Better, maybe.
But lies are what keep people breathing.
We stayed until sundown.Then the girl showed up again.No blood now.No fear.Just that stupid purple bear suit.
She waved from the playground like we were still in a world where waves meant hello.
Singh smiled.I raised my rifle.
The girl opened her mouth and said, in my mother's voice,"Come down, sweetheart. You forgot your lunch."
Singh moved.I didn't.Because I remembered something—
My mother's been dead for ten years.
I don't know how long I stayed after Singh followed the girl.
Long enough to hear the base go dark on the emergency channel.
"We tried to hold the line.""They didn't break it.""They became it."
I waited until the rooftop smelled like copper and silence.Until the shadows stopped pretending to be still.Until I couldn't tell the difference between memory and mimicry.
Then I moved.
Down the stairwell.Through the blood.Through what used to be Lobo.
No hesitation. No prayers. Just a gas mask, two mags, and something close to fury.
They came at me in the gym. Four of them. Maybe five. One had a cheerleader uniform. One still had braces.I shot until I didn't. Then I used the butt of the rifle until it snapped.Then the knife.Then my hands.
When it was over, I didn't check to see which parts were mine.
I made it to the street by sunrise.There were bodies in the playground.The flag was gone.
No evac. No signal. Just wind and rot.
I walked twenty miles north with a limp and a lung full of smoke.Found an abandoned gas station with just enough water to taste like hope.Slept with my back to the freezer.Dreamed about doors that never stay closed.
I haven't spoken in six days.Because they listen.Because they learn.
They still remember how to say "I love you" like it's a password.
And me?
I've forgotten how to answer.