A Dogshit Apocalypse
The five-ton dump truck, loaded to the brim, slammed into the bus with a sudden body blow that didn't quite knock it flat — but it was more than enough to pulp everything inside.
Window glass and handrails shattered like human ribs and went flying in every direction. The passengers, who had the misfortune of serving as the bus's guts in that moment, took the full force of the truck's charge head-on — along with a storm of glass shards and plastic debris.
Thud— thud-thud-thud—
CRAAACK!
Of course, I was no exception.
Fortunately the truck had hammered the opposite side of the bus from where I sat, so I avoided dying on impact. That was where my luck ran out.
First a long, snapped handrail came flying and smashed into my skull. Then a vicious spray of glass shards from the side buried themselves deep in my neck, elbow, ribs, and thigh.
Damage beyond any hope of recovery. No point even putting it into words.
The handrail, carrying the full kinetic force of the truck, cracked my head open like a baseball bat swung at full power. The glass driven into my body as a finishing blow had already forced out more than a lethal amount of blood.
So how was I still thinking?
Honestly, I was wondering the same thing.
What the hell is this situation now.
I couldn't move. My vision wasn't completely black so much as painted over in blood-red, too smeared to make anything out.
For a second I wondered if this was death — if people just sat around thinking calmly like this while their soul slowly floated up to heaven or whatever.
Crunch! Crack—
CRASH-CRASH-CRASH—
The bus, shoved by the truck into a chain of collisions with other cars, finally shuddered to a stop. Even without sight, my hearing painted the chaos in perfect clarity.
Every physical sense except vision was still working. I could feel all of it.
Gurgle— cough, cough—
The sensation of blood surging back up my throat was vivid beyond belief — but there was no pain. The feeling itself was filthy. Blood kept flooding into my lungs and windpipe until I could barely breathe, and it dragged up the memory of nearly drowning as a kid at the beach.
...Am I even breathing right now?
No idea. I finally stopped thinking and focused everything on trying to move — but my body still wouldn't budge.
How long I sat like that, I couldn't say.
...Huh?
I felt something change inside me.
The bus and its passengers had been completely wrecked.
Everyone sitting on the right side, where the truck had hit, died instantly — no time even to form a thought. On the left, people barely had time to scream in horror before the spray of glass and debris tore the life out of them.
Every passenger on that bus looked hideously, unmistakably dead.
But even in a situation like this, exceptions had a way of existing.
"Ugh... uhhh..."
In the rearmost seat on the left side of the bus, the sole survivor — still unconscious — finally managed to open her eyes.
"Hah! Hhk!"
The moment she saw the carnage, she gasped in shock, then nearly choked on her own breath and broke into a painful fit of coughing.
"Cough... cough..."
Whether from the rawness in her throat or the sheer mental blow, tears welled at the corners of her eyes. She reached up to wipe them — and flinched hard when her hand came away streaked with blood.
Then she checked and confirmed it was only a nasty gash across her forehead.
...I didn't die in that, and this is all I got?
Pure dumb luck. Calling it a miracle wouldn't have been an exaggeration.
But before relief could even loosen the tension in her body, she shuddered at the grotesque corpse slumped right beside her.
Th-this person is the reason I'm alive.
His massive bulk had taken every shard that should have killed her. She offered a silent, sincere thanks mixed with pity, then slowly forced her heart to settle.
...I'm alive. That's enough for now. If I'd died like this, I wouldn't have been able to close my eyes for the sheer injustice of it.
She had only just started to feel her talent truly blooming. After enduring practice that carved her down to the bone, to wither before she could fully flower — she would have gone mad even in the afterlife.
She pressed a hand to her chest as it gradually steadied, then noticed the smoke beginning to seep up from the front of the bus. She stood at once, ready to get out of there.
And in that exact moment—
"Grrruuuhhh..."
A groan.
She spun toward the sound, startled — and saw a corpse near the shattered exit beginning to twitch.
"H-hey?! Are you okay?!"
Joy flared at the thought that someone else had survived. The figure was convulsing face-down, clearly in agony, and for a second she thought she should rush over to help.
Then her expression froze solid.
"Ghk. Grrghk. Ghk."
The man on the floor went past mere convulsions. Every joint in his body cracked and twisted violently as he slowly rose — and his condition was beyond anything that made sense.
More than half his skull had been caved in, spraying blood and brain matter like a fountain. Glass shards bigger than her own head were driven into him all over.
And worst of all—
His neck, probably from the fragment buried in it, was bent nearly ninety degrees downward. Those alien eyes rolled and swiveled in their sockets — pure white, like melted candle wax poured over them, utterly empty of life or light, a void of black and white with nothing human left.
The woman instinctively held her breath and shrank into herself.
...What the hell is that?
People said living things recognized their own kind through some innate sense written into their genes. Whether that was true or not, she didn't know — but in this moment, one thought filled her entire mind:
I cannot let that thing notice me.
She carefully wiped away the blood that kept sliding into her eyes and stayed perfectly still, barely breathing.
Then another movement beside her made her turn with trembling eyes.
Twitch. Twitch—
The massive corpse right next to her — the one that had looked so thoroughly dead — began convulsing the same way.
Crrrack— snap—
And at the same time, every single body strewn throughout the bus was slowly rising.
"Grrrghk. Gulk."
"Grrraaaaaah..."
"Grrghk. Grr-grr-grrghk."
The woman who had only just managed to pull herself together felt the strength drain out of her body all at once in the face of something this impossible.
Her reason was screaming at her to get out of the bus right now, even if she had to climb through a window — but her body wouldn't move. Her mind had hit its limit.
...I was so happy just to be alive. Wouldn't it have been better to die instantly, without any pain?
Whether those things were real zombies out of the movies or some other kind of monster, she didn't know. She just knew she couldn't stand the thought of being torn apart by those hideous, clacking human teeth.
No. Don't give up. If I just stay quiet in this corner, maybe...
Before that fragile sprout of hope could even open, she watched the face of the corpse that had saved her life lunge straight toward her.
...Ah.
She squeezed her eyes shut and let the hope go.
"Grrruuuhhh..."
A grotesque breathing sound, less than thirty centimeters away. Getting closer.
And right then—
Rustle. Rustle.
A brief noise from the front of the bus.
From her position it was so faint it was almost drowned out by the breathing right in front of her — but the others clearly heard it. Every single thing in the bus whipped its head in that direction.
"Ah, fuck..."
A human groan followed — and with their already rolled-back eyes rolling even further, the things lunged.
My head feels like it's going to split open...
What the hell had just happened? I'd felt some indescribable change rip through my body, and before I could even process it, I'd blacked out completely.
The half-open view in front of me was no longer painted solid red, at least — but my skull throbbed so viciously the world kept spinning. Even my hearing was so fogged that everything coming in sounded like a hallucination.
Touch and smell were about the only senses still working properly.
"Ah, fuck..."
I forced myself to ignore the acrid, unidentifiable stench clawing at my nose, grabbed the window frame, and staggered up out of the seat. Something clattered off my body in a wet shower.
I looked down. Glass shards, thick with blood. They'd been driven deep into me all over — so why had they just fallen out on their own?
"Grrgagagak."
"...?"
Some nonsense noise from beside me. Before I could even turn my head—
Crunch—
Something bit down on my forearm.
I looked and saw it was another person — and I didn't even have time to process how absurd that was. More of them came charging at me with their mouths wide open, and I threw my hands up in a hurry.
I wrenched the face of the one chewing my arm free and shoved it forward, then drove my elbow hard into the cheek of the closest one coming in.
Thud—!
I was already half out of my mind, and this was the kind of day it was — someone trying to bury spit-slick teeth in my flesh. Of course I put force into it.
Crack— crunch—
I twisted at the waist, hooked the next one's jaw, and dropped a low kick to break their stance. Then I grabbed a head and shoved with everything I had, hurling it into the ones still charging from the front. That one didn't work as well.
Clatter—
"Grrraaaagh."
A woman ignored the shove and locked her teeth onto my wrist. I drove a knee hard into her thigh and heard something snap like a dry stalk.
I looked. Her leg was dangling, bone and all, shattered like a sugarcane stick.
"What the fuck?"
The curse came out on pure reflex — but she didn't care in the slightest and kept coming at me, and that was when the wrongness finally hit.
My spinning vision started to clear. I looked at the eyes of every single thing still trying to sink its teeth into me. No pupils. Completely gone. And they were all moving just fine despite injuries that should have dropped them cold — the woman whose leg I'd just broken looked almost normal by comparison.
No. Looking closer, "serious injury" didn't cover it.
The middle-aged man I currently had by the throat had the back of his skull cracked open so wide you could see the brain inside — and he was still clacking his teeth like he wanted nothing more in the world than to chew me up, as if I'd been basted in honey.
I finally got my head back together enough to deal with this insane situation and decided I needed a tool to get free of these people — no, these things.
I twisted and writhed, dodging bites aimed at my arms, legs, shoulders, knees, pushed forward, and grabbed what I wanted.
CRAAACK—!
I clenched my fist tight around the snapped handrail and smashed it into the temple of the one-legged woman with everything I had.
Then I shortened my grip for the ones right on top of me.
Crack— crack—
One clean hit to each skull in turn. They staggered and dropped.
Then they got right back up like nothing had happened and charged again — and my arm, eyes just as gone as theirs, came around in a full swing.
CRUNCH—!
I hammered the middle-aged man whose skull was already broken open. The impact shoved half his brain out through the hole. I ignored the teeth still chewing at my upper and lower body and turned what was left of that head into paste.
Only when he finally stopped moving did I look at him — and then, shock of murder or whatever else be damned, I locked onto the next target, grabbed him by the jaw, and focused on caving his head in.
"You— dog! Fuck!"
Crunch—
Blood and brain matter from another shattered skull splattered across my cheek, and somehow I didn't care at all. I just wanted this goddamn situation cleaned up as fast as possible.
Seriously. I'd only just clawed my way back from death.
What kind of dogshit situation was this supposed to be?