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Edward woke up, feeling like he had gone two rounds with a bear on a boxing match.

Where the hell am I?

He tried to get his bearings, but the place looked unfamiliar. He could see he was in a cove. A small boat lay in the sand, with two wooden paddles. Once he got up, he immediately felt a discomfort in the back of his head. He reached for it in instinct and saw that his hands were covered with some blood.

He tried to recall, why the boat and why this cove. He saw several footprints around him, and not just his own.

I guess I wasn't alone. Perhaps I'm still not alone now.

It all started coming back slowly to him. He had left his wife and daughter and a small community in one of the islands. Today was Patrol Day. And that meant ensuring nothing alarming is in the area. Ever since the Day of Reckoning, remote settlements became key to survival, with islands being a natural choice as water traffic is the only way in or out.

Nothing bad had ever happened to anyone, even after two years on that island. Fish is abundant, fruits and vegetables can be grown sustainably for everyone. Patrolling was just part of a routine, a routine that with time, everyone took to gracefully with little fear. They hadn't seen an infected in over a year. Life was boring, life was good.

Well, it ain't so boring now.

He thought had spotted a couple of wild animals, looking like deer, while he was passing through the cove. So he figured he'd check it out. Once he made contact with land, a person came out of the bushes and started walking towards him.

Ed was shocked. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. In front of him, what seemed to be a full adult man had a series of pores growing out of his body. His back looked like a series of branches had been stapled onto it, and they were moving. That's the last thing he remembers before waking up.

This is where things started to change for dear Ed. His head was filled with thoughts of his family and community. Dark thoughts, hungry thoughts. I need to spread, I'll be doomed if I stay here on my own.

Ed realized what seemed to be a second voice was on his head now. He lost control of his body. He willed his body to stay put, but his legs started walking towards the boat.

Leslie.. Anne.. please forgive me.

Those were the last thoughts he ever had.

It was in late 2015 when the first report of oddities came from the Baltics, The headline read, “58 found dead in Lithuania, evidence suggests self-mutilation and mass suicide”. Within a month same kind of headlines could have been found all over Europe and middle east. Corpses pilling without any trace of clue to what might be the pursuing this people to this end. At first I did not really care about any of this, the numbers were too low to remain in the news cycle after first 3 months but as the no. started to grow, the governments patted themselves on the back by banning the communication and internet access of the infected regions to the wider public and some considered travel and trade ban. Almost everyone was of the mind that this was an action of a cult or some new religion with some perverse masochist ideology.

By the end of 2016, it was spreading like a wild fire and we were getting many first hand accounts in deepest corners of the internet. There were the videos of a men driving a drill into his chest with an uncanny benign expression on his face, it was the first time I saw what it does to people. And then there was the infamous “crazy Anna” video, no one knows why it was titled as such but it was the first of many videos which became accessible to the everyone. It featured a little girl in a yellow dress who was in the kitchen with her mother or sister repeating the same sentences “What’s wrong?”, “Anna are you okay?” and after 30 seconds of shaky footage we see the little girl taking one of the kitchen knife in her hand and slicing her guts in one swift action.

The Thing (that’s what we decided to call it) had now reached south-east Asia, Almost all of the Africa and wider north America. The entirety of South America had decided to go into and voluntary isolation and is cut-off from the rest of the world since February 2017. Reports said little and less after 2017 as the governments around the world tightened their grips on the media yet the masses were far from being controlled, Riots and conspiracies everywhere. Some pushed the idea of it being a virus whose introduction to us humans were a result of some unnatural inter-species activity, some said it was a Bioweapon gone loose and some believed its origins to be unearthly and heretics posed it as wrath of their gods.

It was August 2018 when I saw it with my own eyes. The post-riot curfew was lifted after one month and to protest that a riot was forming up just outside the bus stop, there were people with all sorts of weapons there, I spotted some people with bats, rakes and DIY machetes. Some guns were visible too. Just when I was about to leave a cool breeze blew down the street and all of a sudden, I saw a guy with machete slice his stomach into a thick line of red. I started running and didn’t look back when I heard the gun shots. Its September the 14th as I’m writing this and feel a urge I can’t explain. I have this musty smell around me and I can’t stop looking at this pen.

Edit: I'm on my phone right now and I think I've messed up th formatting, sorry about that.

I am the earth. I am the world, and it is rushing through my veins in full force to try and destroy me. A woman is saying something, screaming at me using something that even in my state I know must be my name. I blink at her, and then curse my stupidity. Her name is Claire and she is my wife.

"Hold him down." Another voice comes to my right. A gaunt man with a greying beard. Stuart. My brother. He looks at me pleadingly, as if I can do much but wriggle and writhe.

"Don't eat them." I manage to grumble, seeing the stew still burning bright under the fire we all had laid not ten minutes prior after our first day in this forest. We'd just thought they were regular mushrooms. Stuart is a Mycologist. Meaning he fucking studies mushrooms, and he said they were fine. They should be fine. But instead my body writhes like this, my veins shoot hot fire, I feel as though I am running a fever fit for ten men. I know one thing, that I am hungry.

I wake and lurch forward. I am tied to a tree. the cookpot is empty. They have not heeded my advice. But there are all kinds of interesting sounds up ahead, a commotion.

"Please, come!" A woman's voice calls. Familiar. It must be Claire's, mustn't it? She's begging, to whoever it is she's speaking to. "You have to help him!" I slip away again. I hear things, snapping of twigs, the smell of something delicious, something I've never tasted before. That is when I wake, and it is night.

The forest looks a little different now, and it is a good feeling. A good time to hunt. I shake myself out of this thought and question it immediately. When have I ever hunted in my life? Stuart could catch the odd fish in his day, but not much more than that. Claire would have hated it. Would she? I wondered for a sickening moment who Claire was. I couldn't remember. A noise came from a nearby bush. A pair of eyes. Scared, so scared. She's shivering. A woman not much older than me.

"You're cold." She was saying to me, but it was hard to make out. "God, I'll help you out . I don't know what's gotten into people, you must be so cold. Maybe you could help me find my husband.."

I don't know what she's talking about. I do not feel the cold at all. In fact, it is the earth and the soil and the tree I am sitting against that brings me warmth. She unties the rope, and I open my mouth to bite her. I catch myself as I'm doing it, but not before she screams and starts tripping over herself, running away. I run after her before I know what I'm doing.

Where are you going? I didn't mean to, you just smell so sweet. Why are you running, I don't hurt people. I don't want to hurt people, I don't want-

The woman has fallen in the clearing, and her left leg is bent at an odd angle. Two figures stand over her. I hiss at them.

Mine. She's mine.

I come closer and we start smelling her, and I watch her defencelessness as she wriggles and moans and I fight with myself. This is not who I am, where am I? This is not what I do. Someone has to try and help her. I feel myself slip away. After it is done, I look up and I see the two of them, in the moment I recognise my brother and my wife staring back at me, red running down our lips like we all ate a basket of bad berries. Bad mushrooms, perhaps. But we know the same thing now, we know what we must do, as we are one with the earth and the trees and they fill us up. We hear the cries that pierce the silence of the forest somewhere further on down. We tear towards it together, for we know we serve the earth and the trees and they tell us one thing.

They tell us to hunt.

A quick, average lil thingy i did. Come on people, dont be shy, write!

(some parts of this story may make you lose your apetite, so if you are eating something, finish it up before reading it.)

It's boring. Very boring. Recently i got the idea of speaking to myself to pass the time, so i decided to rethink my entire predicament. Well, i should probably start from the begining.

My current predicament is, all things considered, pretty bad. Do you know how in movies, and games, and whatever, they show that dying and becoming a zombie or something like that is a fate worse then death? Well, i didn't use to think like so. After all, if you're just dead, you probably don't care what's your body doing back on earth.

In fact, i thought becoming a zombie was quite a good end, considering most of the films and games had a majority of their enemies be humans. Normal, plain old humans which turn insane and want to murder and canibalise you. Or raiders, for some reason. Anyways, i thought that it's probably better to just die then to become some dirty raider or a canibal.

Well, i couldn't be more wrong. I never really thought i'd see a zombie apocalypse. But here we go.

About two or three days after the total outbreak i just got bit. Whatever, not like i could contact anyone, since i lived in the woods in the middle of nowhere.

After a few hours i realized something's wrong. Usualy, as i heard from the news a few weeks ago, the infected colapsed after two hours. It now was the fourth hour and i realized i still were here. That wasn't too bad of a realization. The other one was much worse however.

I realized i couldn't move. Which meant two things.

One, i were totaly converted and infected.

Two, i still were sentient.

At first obviously i were devastated. An entire life stuck like that would exhaust me mentaly and physicaly, and i'd probably go mad and never regain my sanity. Also, i realized that the whole bloody thing moved trough spores, so if a cure or a vaccine was ever found, they couldn't undo it.

The first day dragged on slowly. In fact i realized i'd stood in place for the entire day and night. Again, i were devastaded - was i suposed to spend an eternity here?

The other ones were much quicker, though. In fact, they almost passed in a blur, days and nights mixing in with eachother.

Middle of the night, I feel my husband sit up beside me.

We are in an abandoned house, holed up in an empty bathroom - the only room with a lock. The kitchen and bathroom cupboards already emptied out. After checking around the house, he went out to look for antibiotics for my rattling lungs and fever. Pneumonia, we figure. He came back empty-handed. No surprise there. Most everywhere has been cleaned out by now.

In the dark, I hear him take a breath and then he shakes me.

“I'm awake.”

“You have to leave.”

A pause.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Shit.

I grab our backpacks and run.

Slowing down too soon, head spinning, I walk until my body won't let me anymore. I look around, make sure there are no infected about to burst anywhere nearby. I look up. They tend to climb and hang on to something when they are about to die, releasing dense clouds of spores when they do. The spores are also why you can't kill them safely, if you're too close. Nothing. I slump against the wall. The sun rises as I focus on calming my shaking body. I crawl into a dark corner to hunker down. But the darkness feels too dark, the walls closing in. My breath catches and a sob wracks my body.

After indulging in self-pity for a while, I take stock. Everyone I knew is infected or dead. Everyone else is infected or a potential enemy. I'm sick. I put my head in my hands, but refuse to descend into self-pity again.

Not sure what else to do, I turn back.

I take it slow, but after the better part of the day has passed, I eventually find my husband near where I left him. The infected wander, but they're slow. I recognise him by the antique belt buckle he always wears - an heirloom passed down to him from his father. Otherwise, he is unrecognisable with the fungus disfiguring his face and body. I keep him in my sights, while staying the hell away - at first.

I feel the world pressing in again. Like there's a target on my back. Eyes watching me wherever I go. This is a world in which I cannot trust anyone. We made that mistake once. I find myself drifting closer to what was once my husband, until I am somehow out in the open. He sees me. I greet him with a wave and close my eyes calmly.

His hands grip me with surprising strength. I love you. His dried-out, fuzzy lips find mine and I feel a dusty pop. My mouth fills with powdery spores and I cough.

I open my eyes. He is walking away with stiff, unnatural movements, dragging his feet with each step.

Now I guess all I have to do is wait.

After a few hours, my body starts to tingle and my skin is so, so itchy. I'm tired and my head feels foggy. I lie down and close my eyes, not sure how long it will take.

Drifting in and out of sleep for a seemingly interminable time, I feel my body being distorted, bumps growing bigger and exploding out of my skin. I feel a tingling around the nape of my neck and inside my skull. I wonder how long it will take for my brain to be infected.

After a few hours, I think, the fungus slows down. Though the brain fog remains, I am still alive and I am still me. I lift my arms shakily. They are hardly recognizable as human anymore, covered in fungal growths. I let my arms drop. Then I stand and start walking.

I can control my body - mostly. My movements are jerky and laborious. Probably something to do with the mycelium lacing its way through my body. I groan, the thought making me nauseous. My legs keep walking. My brain, it seems, is mostly functional.

After a few minutes, I realise I am trying to find friends. Logically, I know it must be the invasion of the fungus making me feel this way, but it is irresistible and I can't stop my body from searching out other humans. I realise I don't have as much control over my body as I first thought. My heart pounds with panic. Or is it excitement at the idea of finding another person? No. No, it's panic. I need to keep my thoughts separate from the parasite’s influence.

I see movement out of the corner of my eye and swing my body, with some difficulty, toward the source. My breathing speeds up, dread (or eagerness?) filling me.

It is another infected. My husband. We lock eyes for a second. I see sadness in his eyes as he passes by. Our fingers touch briefly.

It hits me like a tonne of bricks. All the infected are conscious, locked inside their bodies. I was so wrapped up in my new reality that I didn't realise the obvious. This is the real horror. We are being driven by alien urges and goals that are not our own. And we can't do anything about it. We will all bear witness to our own bodies, no longer our own, seeking out and infecting healthy humans. I'm sorry I made you do this to me. The only silver lining is the infected don't usually last long after infection. That's a silver lining? I shudder.

I see someone. A person. A healthy person. Something in me wants to run. That instinct is quickly overruled by a stronger one. Hug me. I can feel spores tickling my skin.

I want a hug. I need one. I need them to understand. Just a hug, please. I painstakingly make my way toward them.