Cerita Pendek & Novel Apocalypse

In 2300, a virus swept across North America, turning huge numbers of people into zombies and giving a few survivors special abilities. I stayed behind to cover the retreat of my fiancé, Adrian Walker, and the Federal Defense Force from Old Saint Clair. During the fight, a high-tier Mutant bit through my neck. Everyone believed I had died in the Surge. But I hadn't. I had become the Zombie Queen and somehow kept my human mind. I could control nearby low-tier zombies, but my face was ruined, and I could no longer speak. I'd always cared about my appearance, so I couldn't bring myself to return to the human fortress. I hid in the basement of an abandoned lakeside villa, cleaning the engagement ring on my left hand every day with my still-intact right hand. Adrian had put the ring on my finger himself just before the evacuation. Two weeks later, he finally came looking for me. I was so excited that I almost forgot what I looked like now. I was about to step out of the shadows when I saw him by the shattered fountain, placing his black combat jacket around another girl's shoulders. Her name was Erin Bell, an Awakened healer who had recently joined his team. She pointed at the zombies behind me, her eyes lighting up. "Adrian, that high-tier zombie's energy core is so pretty. Can you get it for me? I could make it into a necklace. Everyone at the fortress would be jealous." Adrian adjusted her collar, as if he was worried the cold wind would hurt her. But when he looked at me, his eyes were filled with disgust. To make Erin happy, he ordered his team to search the entire ruined city for the high-tier zombie. He had no idea the monster he was hunting was the fiancée he'd been searching for these past two weeks. I slowly backed into the shadows behind a crumbling wall. Adrian gripped his thunderblade, its blade glowing white in the darkness. I tried to call his name, but only foul black blood came out of my mouth. "A... Adr..."

At the base entrance, the guard stopped us for the usual inspection. “Your infection test came back negative, right?” I nodded. The guard was just about to let me through when Ethan Cross, the team’s new medic, suddenly spoke up. “Wait, Captain. What about that scratch on your arm from the mutated rat?” The air froze. The guard’s expression changed at once. “Captain Hale, is that true?” I gritted my teeth. “It is. But the wound has already been treated, and I have antibodies.” “I’m carrying a top-level mission. I need to enter the base immediately.” The guard hesitated, his hand already moving toward the gate controls. But Ethan stepped across my path and blocked me. “Captain! You were coughing badly on the way back. What if you’re a carrier?” Then he turned to the guard, his voice firm and absolute. “I request immediate quarantine for Falcon Squad and a full screening for Captain Hale.” The guard’s eyes sharpened. He raised his weapon. “I’m sorry, Captain Hale. You’ll need to come with me to isolation first.” I froze where I stood. A full screening would take at least forty minutes. But the zombie king in the base laboratory would awaken in thirty. I had to lead my team in and stop it before it broke free.

Global supernatural horrors descended upon the world, and everyone had to clear horror-game instances to earn a slim chance at survival. In my previous life, my fiancée refused to use her item to open the exit because she wanted to wait for her first love to clear the instance. But this was the final escape point in the instance, and our only chance to survive. With only three minutes left, I had no choice but to knock her unconscious and use her item to force the exit open. Her first love was ultimately left behind in the horror realm, where the horrors devoured him. However, I cleared the instance successfully and used the generous score rewards to build a happy life with my girlfriend at the survivor base. During the final instance, just as I was about to lead humanity in defeating the supernatural boss, my girlfriend injected me with an anesthetic, deliberately destroyed my item, and threw me into the horror realm. The horrors swallowed me whole, tearing my soul apart while I was still alive. Meanwhile, she watched from the safe house, sneering at me. “If you hadn’t been so afraid to die and abandoned Finn back then, he could have made it out alive.” “You must pay for everything Finn suffered!” When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day my girlfriend stubbornly refused to use her item. Since she wanted so badly to live and die alongside her first love, the two of them could become nourishment for the horrors together.

When the extreme-heat apocalypse arrived, surface temperatures reached 158°F, and the first group of people began moving to Frostpoint Base. As a scientist, my wife had two spots to bring family members with her. Everyone thought she would take me without hesitation. But in the end, she put the name of her graduate student on the application. "He's my student, and he doesn't have his parents with him. I can't bear to leave him alone in a place this hot." She submitted the application without a second thought. Her next words chilled me to the bone. "Ethan, you're different. You've been tough since you were a kid. I know you can survive until the second group is evacuated." I forced a bitter smile and said nothing. That night, as I watched the temperature continue to rise, I calmly made a phone call. "You once told me you would grant me one wish, no matter what it was. Does that promise still stand?"

Three years into the apocalypse, my girlfriend, a captain of the Spark Sanctuary, kept me stuck living in the outer quarantine belt for 1,095 days. Every time I dragged my battered body to her with an entry pass in hand, she would put on a conflicted expression. "Shane, you're my boyfriend, so I have to avoid showing favoritism. These spots need to go to the families of fallen soldiers. Just wait a little longer. You don't have special abilities, so you're just regular muscle inside." I bought her excuses completely, turning right back around to risk my life fighting through swarms of infected. It wasn't until the day I accumulated my ninth entry pass, crawling back to find her while burning up with a 104-degree fever, that I caught her handing the last spot to her ex-boyfriend. She shielded him. "Logan's healing power is humanity's greatest hope. I have to look at the big picture." She snatched the blood-stained entry pass from my hand and tossed it into the trash can. In that instant, it all clicked. Her supposed "difficulties" and "big picture" were nothing more than convenient excuses to sacrifice me whenever it suited her.

On day forty-three of the end of the world, my fiancée, Selena Reed, injected me with poison herself and left me outside the shelter. She was wearing my hazmat suit, curled against Damian Hale, the man I had trusted like a brother. Damian took my storeroom keys and smiled down at me. "You had everything handed to you from the day you were born. Too bad you were never any good at reading people." Fallout rained down. Mutant beasts closed in through the black rain. I watched helplessly as they shut the iron door and survived on the supplies I had gathered. When I opened my eyes again, I was back seven days before global nuclear war broke out. This time around, Damian still played the concerned friend, offering $2.4 billion for my stake in the group, a stake worth $3.8 billion. Selena still talked to me sweetly over the phone about selling the company and taking her around the world. They thought I did not know that the two of them had betrayed me long ago, and that together they had killed my father. I did not call them on it. I only signed my name on the contract. Seven days later, the company, the stock, and the mansions would all be worthless. Only cash could still buy food, medicine, weapons, and a fortress. They took the shares and started planning the wedding of the century, waiting to watch me go broke. I used their money to clear out warehouses and turn a hilltop estate into a nuclear-proof fortress. On the night of the wedding, the city's elite stood outside my door and laughed at me for hoarding canned food. A second later, a strategic alert tore through the night, and the first warhead detonated high above the city. Selena threw herself at the closing steel gate, covered in blood. "Noah, save me—" I watched her through the blast glass. This time, I am your god!

I found a wounded giant wolf. After the world ended, I treated him as my strongest fighter and a living source of warmth, curling against him to sleep every night. Later, once he healed, he turned into a man and warned me with a savage look, "I'm the Alpha of a werewolf pack. I have responsibilities to my people. Don't think you can make me stay." And with that, he left. I pulled my ragged blanket tighter, confused. What was he talking about? I had been keeping him as a dog the whole time. What did his responsibilities have to do with me? Later, I rescued a foolish husky from a pile of zombies. When I led him back to my crumbling shelter, I found the heir to the werewolf pack crouched at my door, covered in blood and looking utterly betrayed. His voice was hoarse, close to tears: "Throw that thing out and keep me instead, all right? I'm bigger, stronger, and have a thicker coat. I can warm your bed, and I'm better in that department too! "...If you don't agree, I'm kicking that stupid dog of yours back into the zombie pile!"