Empire

PROLOGUE

Letter Dated Sept. 20, 2007

To whom it may concern,

To anyone that's still alive, anyhow. If you're holding this letter, presumably you've looted the Pointe Bank in Jefferson Harbor. No hard feelings, though I am curious as to how valuable — if at all — the dollar is in your day. I guess there will always be those who stake their well-being on green pieces of paper, even when society lies in ruins around them.

So what do I need to tell you? You must have already gotten the jist of what's happening. Yes, they're undead. No, they're not your friends or loved ones anymore. The soul has left the building and been replaced with…well, something.

Let's go back to the beginning. I mean the beginning of everything.

When the universe erupted into existence, spitting cosmic detritus across infinity, tears were made in the fabric of space. Now, the universe is constantly opening and healing wounds on a quantum level, but these were unintentional rifts. Big ones. And though they were sealed off in a nanosecond, things still managed to pour through.

Tendrils of dark energy, unlike anything in our reality, stretched out and were snarled in the cooling masses that would become planets, moons, asteroids. One of these tendrils got caught up in our planet, Earth.

There are a handful of places on the surface where the dark energy breaks through. We called them Sources. By "we" I mean the United States government. I assume it's still called the United States? After all, a bank doesn't go unburglarized for centuries. Anyway, these Sources had a singular, horrifying property. Any dead animal — from dogs to humans — lying in the vicinity of a Source would return to life.

Most Sources are located in places that Man left long ago. That's why you never heard accounts of the dead getting up and walking around — at least not enough accounts to make anyone believe it. But the government still looked into it. You'd be surprised at the ridiculous bullshit that we spent taxpayer money investigating.

Now see, those first undead — or "afterdead" as we classified them — weren't contagious. They fed on the flesh of the living, of course, but they couldn't pass the reanimation catalyst into their victims. There was no epidemic, no plague.

Until we made it.

You won't believe me, but it was an accident. We weren't so stupid as to think we should engineer and weaponize a "zombie virus". It just happened. Evolution, perhaps. Judgement, maybe.

So here we are. At the time of this writing, the infection is spreading at a maddening rate. It's strictly blood-borne but it's already gotten overseas. We're well into the "martial law & religious panic" phase of the apocalypse. The public are learning about the afterdead's abilities. Things you probably already know. If you don't, here's the cardinal rule: headshots don't kill them. HEADSHOTS DON'T KILL THEM. Burn them to ash. Always.

It won't be long before most countries have collapsed beneath the ever-increasing weight of the zombie threat. I personally believe we're already outnumbered. I can only wonder what sort of world you live in.

Now you know where it came from. I know that, somehow, understanding your end makes it easier to accept. I've accepted it. The bite doesn't even hurt anymore…admittedly, I'm a little curious about what happens next.