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Chapter 28: The Black River's Call
The air was thick with the scent of burning flesh, but it wasn’t just human anymore. Wallace, Vanessa, and Rhodes stared in horror as the black tide slithered through the ruins of Palatka, consuming everything in its path. The firebombing should have ended it. Should have purified the town.
But the infection had adapted.
Wallace clenched his fists. “We need to keep moving.”
Rhodes shook his head. “Where? Look at it. It’s everywhere.”
He wasn’t wrong. The river was no longer a river—it had become something else entirely. A sentient, creeping mass that pulsed and writhed, reaching toward them with sickening patience.
Vanessa wiped soot from her forehead, her expression grim. “We need higher ground. If that thing is moving with purpose, it’s heading somewhere.”
Wallace nodded. “The old radio tower. If we can get up there, maybe we can call for help.”
Rhodes let out a dry laugh. “Help? From who?”
Wallace hesitated. The military had already decided Palatka was lost. But there had to be someone.
Someone who still wanted to fight.
The survivors pressed forward, weaving through the ruins. The streets were unrecognizable—charred corpses, twisted buildings, and the sound of distant whispers crawling through the smoke.
Then they heard it.
A deep, resonant hum.
Vanessa grabbed Wallace’s arm. “Do you hear that?”
It was coming from the river.
Wallace turned, his breath hitching.
The water was vibrating—as if something beneath the surface was waking up.
Then, the tide rose.
A massive shape—monstrous and formless, yet undeniably alive—emerged from the blackened current.
It wasn’t just consuming bodies.
It was creating something new.
Eyes—dozens of them—blinked open within the amorphous mass, locking onto them with unsettling awareness.
And then, for the first time, the infection spoke.
“You should not have survived.”
Wallace felt his blood turn to ice.
Then the ground split open.
Chapter 29: The Mouth of the Deep
The earth beneath them collapsed, swallowing Wallace and the others in a wave of crumbling asphalt and debris.
Wallace hit the ground hard, pain exploding through his ribs as he tumbled into darkness. He coughed, tasting blood.
Somewhere nearby, Vanessa groaned.
“We—” she choked, gasping for breath, “—we’re underground.”
The air was damp. Thick with the scent of decay.
Rhodes flicked on his flashlight, the beam slicing through the blackness. What they saw made Wallace’s stomach churn.
They weren’t in a tunnel.
They were in a nest.
The walls pulsed, covered in the same black, fleshy substance that had overtaken the river. Tendrils snaked across the ground, shifting and breathing.
And in the center of the cavern—half-buried in the living mass—stood a human figure.
Or at least, it had been human once.
Wallace’s breath caught.
Mercer.
Her body was fused to the pulsating floor, her limbs elongated, her chest rising and falling in slow, unnatural movements. Her mouth curled into an unsettling smile as her black eyes opened.
“You are too late,” she whispered.
Rhodes raised his rifle. “What the hell did they do to you?”
Mercer laughed. A hollow, wet sound.
“I have become,” she said. “And soon, you will too.”
The walls shifted.
Shapes peeled away from the darkness—things that had once been people. Twisted, melted together, their mouths moving in unison.
Vanessa grabbed Wallace’s hand.
“We need to get out of here.”
But Mercer only smiled wider.
“There is no out,” she whispered. “There is only the call.”
And then, from deep within the cavern, something answered.
A voice. A presence. A hunger.
Something old.
Something waiting.
Wallace knew, in that moment, that the infection wasn’t just spreading.
It was calling something home.
To be continued…