Today makes it exactly three hundred and sixty-five days since the world fell to shit.

A full year since the world, as we knew it, completely collapsed.

A year since the variant decimated more than 70% of the planet’s animal, plant, and human population and created mindless, near-unstoppable, bloodthirsty creatures.

A year since we lost everything. Since I lost everything.

My pain isn’t entirely because of what I’ve lost, it’s because I saw it coming and no one listened to me. When a pandemic spread across the globe in the year 2020, few predicted that it would become something more, something much worse. First came the Omega variant, a new strain of the virus that severely crippled the immune system and left millions dead across the globe.

Humanity recovered from Omega, or they thought they did. A year later, in December of 2021, there was a new strain. The Alpha variant, a sign of things to come. Alpha caused incredible sickness, and not just a cold or body aches. It affected humans and animals on a mental level: some experienced hallucinations, others experienced uncontrollable fits of fiery rage. Then they died.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

The warning bells were ringing louder than they ever had, and yet humanity chose to turn a blind eye. A deaf ear. They thought the worst was behind them, but they were wrong. So, so wrong.

Three months later, in March 2022, the world collapsed. A new variant emerged, a new strain, one that spread at a rate unlike any disease that had come before it. A strain that caused horrifying mutations within anything that could be mutated, a strain that turned humans into colorless, mindless monsters with an insatiable hunger for human flesh and blood.

This was when humans paid attention.

It was far too late. We’d already lost. I’d already lost.

Don’t get it twisted: this isn’t a story of survival. Thoughts and dreams of survival are symptomatic of optimistic idiocy.

This is a story of pain, of suffering, of fear, of horror. A story of hopelessness, of desperation, of despair. A story of loss, of death, of blood.

My name is Lionel Walker but Leo works too. And this? This is my story.

This chapter will be the only one written from a first-person narrative/perspective. The rest of this book will be in third-person.