The stench. Always the goddamn stench. One month.
If you ask me how a zombie apocalypse feels, I, Dan Olsen, twenty-five years old, wouldn't talk about fear. I'd talk about the smell. A sour combination of rotting flesh, stagnant sewage, and the metallic humidity of dried blood. Thirty days of that filth rots your soul.
People, if there were any normal people left, would wonder how a guy like me, an inexperienced office worker, survived. I wonder that too. It was pure, stupid luck.
I remember that day. I think it was a Thursday morning. Everything was so normal. I was at the supermarket, looking for pasta. Five minutes later, hell had knocked.
The first week, inside the relative safety of that barricaded supermarket, was a prison of souls. There were about fifty of us. The food was consumed at a cruel pace. I saw cruelty in people's eyes.
My main anguish wasn't hunger. It was my family.
A week into the lockdown, my cell phone was still working, but the flow of messages from my family stopped. Nothing. They stopped answering. The silence was worse than any scream.
That anxiety made me reckless. I had to go find them. I armed myself with a steel baseball bat.
I went out. The street was hell. I saw that the virus respected nothing. Animals, humans... the mutation was universal.
I ran into a couple of them a few blocks away. The sight paralyzed your soul: the skin, a sickly, dark blue shade. The veins, red and thick. And their eyes... bloody red pits, without a hint of soul.
The terror electrocuted me, but I had to get home.
I arrived. I entered through the back door. And there they were. Figures identical to my father, my mother, and my brother. They attacked me. I, the guy who played video games, was unable to react. I couldn't raise that bat.
I just ran.
I escaped, leaving their monstrous versions behind. I couldn't kill them. Couldn't put them to rest. That cowardice settled deep within me, cold and heavy. I returned to the supermarket and lived the next twenty days in a spiral of depression.
...
The month of the apocalypse was marked with screams. People in the supermarket were about to kill each other for scraps.
"It's over," I told myself. "The fights are going to be worse than the zombies."
I gathered a few lousy supplies and left. I headed to an apartment building area, seeking isolation.
Now, I'm climbing the fire escape. The steel bat is an extension of my arm. I climb to the third floor, slow, silent.
I found an open door. I pushed it with the bat. Silence.
"Is anyone here?" I whispered.
The apartment was a typical two-bedroom. There was a trail of dried blood. No body.
They were dragged out. Lucky for me.
I collapsed onto a dusty couch. If they had been here, I would have taken this refuge from them. Being good only gets you bad things.
I locked the door. I took out my cell phone. I unlocked it. There was still network coverage, and the screen lit up with dozens of late notifications.
I opened the messages. They weren't greetings. They were pleas. I scrolled through the chat of Jorge, that jerk from the gym, begging me for water. Then, Laura, my former coworker: "I'm with my sister, Dan. Remember that dinner... we can pay you back the favor. Send us your location."
I threw the cell phone onto the cushion. The hypocrisy made me sick. They read the global survival news still circulating and clung to any contact.
I checked the browser: the zombie phenomenon was worldwide.
The weight of guilt and the horror of being alive returned. I looked at the cable near the window.
It's time to end it. To join them.
I was getting up to look for a noose, to end my misery.
[BEEP! CONGRATULATIONS, USER DAN OLSEN HAS BEEN SELECTED FOR THE INFINITE STORAGE SYSTEM!]
The voice resonated, metallic and cold, directly in my brain. I froze, immobile.
What the hell...? Have I gone crazy?
[STATUS: SANE. THE SYSTEM IS REAL.]
"It can't be real," I whispered, looking into the void.
[FUNCTION: THE USER CAN PLACE ANY NON-LIVING OBJECT IN THE INVENTORY. THE PLACED OBJECT WILL BE REPLICATED TO INFINITY (∞).]
"And how do I test that madness?" I muttered.
[INSTRUCTION: CONCENTRATE ON THE OBJECT AND WISH TO 'STORE.']
My gaze fixed on the package of instant noodles I had saved from the looting. My last bite of the old life.
I focused my mind on the package, forcing myself to believe in the fantasy: "Store these noodles."
POOF!
The package vanished. And in front of me, floating, a translucent blue panel materialized, like a video game interface.
DAN OLSEN'S INVENTORY
Instant Noodles (Chicken Flavor): ∞
I approached the panel, trembling. I touched the image. Noodles. Another one. And another. The package materialized in my hand, coming out of nowhere. I started to laugh. The hysterical, terrifying laughter of a man pardoned.
"I am the fucking king! I am the end of scarcity!"
I grabbed my steel bat. "Store Steel Bat."
I replicated it again and again. I felt the despair fade, replaced by a powerful arrogance. Everything infinite. I was a god of logistics.
And just as that certainty settled, a new notification, accompanied by a color change in my field of vision to a bright orange hue, resonated.
[BEEP! A CRITICAL SURVIVAL PROGRESSION HAS BEEN DETECTED!]
[THE SLAUGHTER REWARD SYSTEM HAS BEEN ACTIVATED!]
Two. I held my head. The blue panel remained, but now a second smaller, blood-red holographic panel materialized next to it.
"It's another system!"
[FUNCTION: YOU CAN KILL AND RANDOM REWARDS WILL BE SENT THAT CAN BE OF ANY TYPE TO HELP YOU SURVIVE THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.]
My mind, now sharp, formulated the crucial question: The first system gives me unlimited resources. The second gives me random items.
If this system gives me a unique and powerful reward, can I put it in the Storage Inventory and make it Infinite?
A single system made me a king. The combination made me the embodiment of invincibility.
"With just one, I can already be a king in this world," I muttered.
But the second system demanded action.
"Killing..." I said, feeling the weight of the bat. "Taking that risk alone is insane. It could be the end of everything, or the key to absolute power. If I die, my infinity dies with me."
Dan Olsen, the twenty-five-year-old man with infinite supplies, stood there, in the center of his new refuge, weighing the value of his first kill against the promise of his unlimited power.