~Prologue~

~Mike’s POV~

My sight is lost in the endless sea of black. Silence engulfs the mind. This is death, surely, but why is there so much pain. Agony grips my body. The venom doesn’t just sear, it immobilizes. I didn’t even see the beast coming. One second, an eerie calm, the next, a massacre.

It had been eight months since all order had been upturned. We humans expected an apocalypse to be our demise. Well, some of us were right. Instead of humans being hosts to this new mind-altering disease, it was animals. The large carnivorous predators quickly took the upper hand and filtered out most other species. Now it was the big cats, the wolves, and the bears that dominated the land we once had. Herbavores, like deer and other plant-eating prey, still existed to serve as prey.

Venom was the killer. Venom was what raced through my veins now, corrupting every cell it came in contact with. I had led a group of six out hunting. We stalked a couple doe and were at the point of engaging when all hell broke loose. I let down my guard for the moment of the kill shot. How ironic that I would never pull the trigger literally, but instead figuratively on my own life. The pride of lions had been stalking us as well.

There ended up being four of them. One sunk its poisonous jowls into my shoulder, initiating my painful death. This was one positive alternative the popular version of the zombie apocalypse: we didn't turn on contact. Instead, a series of steps followed the venom that ultimately end up at death.

Every breed has its own effects of specialized venom. Lions weren't new to us. Their bite sent venom on a shockwave through the system, but burns the skin from the inside, one of the more painful deaths. Time is estimated from the initial bite to death at five minutes from lion venom.

We hadn't been far from camp and my hunting crew carried me hurriedly back after swiftly killing the remaining lions. They laid me out on a table. We shouldn't have gone out at night.

Mostly everyone had been sleeping. Those that were standing guard raised the alarm. I blacked out for a minute. I awoke on a hard table, most likely our dining table. Someone spoke near me.

"How long since the frenzy?" It was Nick, asking of the initial bite. We had named all the steps of venom progression. Frenzy. Nuke. Purge. Tranq. Death. He always had a calming voice, but even now it was shaky.

"About three minutes", Chester said. He was as close as a brother could get, clasping my hand, and continued, "He's still in Purge, though. Shouldn't he have moved on by now?"

Purge was the most painful state. The venom literally burned you alive.

"Not necessarily," Nick said, "You know Mike has the strongest will here. That's why he led."

A woman screamed, bloodcurdling, shattering the silence in the candlelit room. Mel.

"No, no. Not my Mike, no. Oh God, no." She collapsed on my chest into sobs.

"It's been six minutes," Chester said, "maybe..."

Yeah, maybe. Just maybe I would be that one in a million who survives this venom. Not likely. I wanted to punch Chaz for giving everyone there false hope. I mean, we had heard a total of two people escaping the clutches of the venom, only to then possess new qualities of the beast itself.

Even then, they were just rumors. Or were they...