He checked one last time that his boots were in perfect condition. Well tied, the sole clean and not consumed, laces doing fine, and in general no holes or any signs of aging.

  Today was a special day, so he had to be extra sure.

  Perfect.

  He gave a thumbs-up to the camera, and a groan could be heard from the microphone as the heavy metal doors started opening. The warm, humid air of the First City rushed into the small room, also fully encased in metal, and in his nostrils and mouth.

  This time, he offered the man behind the camera a sly smile.

  “Fuck you, and get a move, France’. Stay one more second, and I’ll get Rafa’ to do your cleanup.”

  Francesco’s middle finger was perfectly visible to the lens as he rushed out.

  “I comply only because today is Anna’s turn. I’m not screwing over that lovely lady just because you’re annoying.”

  And Rafaele will probably break my knees “on accident” if he’s scheduled even one turn with me. Fucking racist.

  The world around him was familiar. Much more than the inside of the colony, at that point.

  Old skyscrapers and residential buildings, half the windows broken by the huge plants that grew everywhere. Climbing ivy, turned into colossal stalks that excavated what once was the pride of humanity, the leaves taking care of enjoying as much sunlight as possible, but not obscuring the streets.

  The ecosystem had its own way of communicating, and the roaming zombies appreciated it.

  It was sunset, and their shape was still altered. Those were once people, people who couldn’t resist the spores and ended up like this.

  Vines flowing out of one eye and into the opposite ear, fungi in their mouths, bulbs, flowers, and little tree branches breaking their skin and clothes. In that common variant, their muscles were the biggest risk: the more light they received, the bigger and stronger they became. Francesco had once gone out in the middle of the day (heartbreak was a bitch), and one of those had swiped at him, missed, and broken through a metal pole.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  How strong they were mattered little when he had a spear to stab in their heads.

  Pokey stick, hehe. He thought as he pierced an eye and scrambled a brain.

  It was only the size of a gymbro of old times, so it didn’t make much noise as it fell. Had the man not been there, it would have been back to the size of a scrawny man by midnight.

  Francesco kept running on the empty streets, killing the occasional zombie, burning down some fast-growing weeds before they could grow enough to swallow a building.

  Damn habits. Today’s not the day to play it safe.

  The world had gone through a lot. Humanity’s abuse. An absurdly invasive zombiefying plant. The mutations it brought as it propagated. The nukes the leaders had tried to use to get rid of them when nothing else worked- and they didn’t either. The remaining people had been forced to stay in enclosed, subterranean cities to avoid the spores and radiation of the surface.

  Those nukes hadn’t been pointless, though. They had altered some of the last humans’ DNA in the right ways- humans like Francesco. Thousands of little cities all over the world, millions of people, and a few thousand of them had been changed in the right ways: some possessed little mutations, be it their skin tone or an extra toe; others developed amazing capabilities, the lucky few like him; all immune to the plants’ invasion of their bodies.

  Millions of people, and only some thousands could go out of those cities and tell the story.

  He reached a street filled with the abominations, and instead of taking the long route, he simply used his raw hands to climb the side of a short building and avoid them.

  From the top, he saw it, far in the distance:

  The place covered in the densest foliage, surrounded by the most dangerous of monsters, a well and true killing jungle. The laboratory where it all started, giving the old metropolis the name of First City.

  Also, likely the only place where the cure could be found.

  It was a pipe dream, but also the only hope he had left.

  The life of an Explorer was filled with excitement, risk, and adrenaline that no one else in the colony could feel. But it was lonely. When he came back, he had to wear layer upon layer of restrictive clothes. And people still stayed far from him, gave him bad looks, refused to sell him, avoided his presence as if he were a danger.

  It wasn’t always that bad, not until one immune had come back in and killed his family by turning them into zombies by accident.

  Immune to the effects of the spores, but still able to spread them.

  If there were a cure, a targeted poison, a way to permanently eradicate the infection… he, who didn’t have a use for it, needed it the most.