The black pen slid across the paper for the final time. I dropped it onto the metal desk and stared at the officer in front of me.
"That's it," Sergeant Mendes said, pulling the file closer to check the signature. He stamped the sheet with an automatic motion. THUMP. "You're discharged. You are officially a civilian."
"Thank you, Sergeant."
He held out my copy of the document, rubbing his tired eyes.
"You sure you're going out in this weather? Command suspended all external operations. This rain hasn't stopped for a week."
I looked at the office window. The sky was a leaden gray, dumping that fine, irritating drizzle that coated everything with a shiny film. The news said it was a rare but harmless atmospheric phenomenon. To me, it just looked like filth.
"Better rain at sea than sunshine in here," I replied, tucking the paper into my pocket. "I have a boat waiting at the marina. I'll fish until I forget the way back to the barracks."
Mendes gave a short, humorless laugh.
"Good luck, then."
I picked up my backpack from the floor and left the room without looking back.
The corridor was empty. I crossed the administrative building and pushed through the double glass doors to the parking lot.
The air outside was cold and excessively damp. The rain fell silently, without wind. I held my hand out for a second and felt the cold, viscous drops touch my skin. I wiped my hand on my jeans and walked to my old jeep parked in the visitor's spot.
I tossed the backpack onto the passenger seat, next to the fishing rods that had been there since early that morning.
I turned the key. The diesel engine roared to life, drowning out the sound of the rain. The clock on the dashboard read 2:00 PM. If traffic was normal, I'd be at my Parker 2520 in forty minutes.
I shifted into first gear and drove out through the main gate, waving to the guard. The coastal road was just ahead.
The jeep merged onto the highway, tires hissing on the wet asphalt. The rhythm of the windshield wipers was hypnotic, swishing back and forth against the gray glass. I reached over and turned up the volume on the radio, which was tuned to a local news station.
"...and we are now on the seventh consecutive day of this phenomenon the internet has dubbed 'Stellar Tears.' For those just tuning in, NASA and the European Space Agency issued a joint statement this morning reaffirming there is no cause for panic."
The anchor's voice was calm, but carried that overly professional tone of someone trying not to alarm the audience.
"According to the statement, the rain, which began simultaneously on all continents last Tuesday, is the result of Earth passing through the tail of an unmapped comet. The slightly silvery color and viscosity of the water are said to be caused by inert cosmic dust and unknown minerals."
I scoffed, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel as traffic ahead began to slow.
"Inert," I muttered to myself. "My grimy jeep says otherwise."
The broadcast continued, now with the voice of a guest expert. The voice was sultry, with a slow, velvety cadence that seemed to stroke the ears. The timbre was so distinctive the mind already conjured an image of a woman with dangerous curves and red lips.
"It's fascinating, Roberto. It is true we've had isolated reports of electronic equipment failures and some complaints of headaches or skin tingling after prolonged contact, but hospitals continue to operate normally. The WHO's recommendation remains the same: use umbrellas, avoid drinking the rainwater, and stay calm. The forecast is that the debris cloud will disperse within the next forty-eight hours."
"You heard it here," the anchor came back on. "Two more days of rain and we're back to our regular programming. Now, over to traffic..."
I lowered the volume, letting the voices fade into background noise. I looked at the sky through the glass. The so-called "inert dust" seemed to cover the entire world.
Leon looked out the side window. Even under the persistent drizzle, the city still pulsed with a stubborn energy. The sidewalks were full; some pedestrians hurried along with colorful umbrellas, but many others, perhaps numbed by the miserable routine of that week, walked exposed, letting the shimmering water soak their clothes without a care.
Minutes later, the jeep climbed the on-ramp onto the Cable-Stayed Bridge, the colossal structure of concrete and steel cables linking the mainland to the artificial island of Porto Prisma.
He was almost halfway across when the brake lights ahead lit up in unison. Traffic came to a complete standstill in both directions.
Leon frowned, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. The bridge had three wide lanes on each side with smart traffic flow. In all his years serving in the region, he had never seen that place gridlock like that.
"Must have been a nasty accident," he murmured, straining his neck to try and see past the line of cars.
That's when he noticed the silence.
The constant drumming on the car roof had ceased. Leon couldn't say the exact moment it happened, but the rain had stopped.
He looked up. The heavy clouds were tearing apart, and for the first time in seven days, rays of sunlight pierced the gray blockade, illuminating the wet asphalt with beams of light that seemed almost sacred.
His attention, however, was hijacked by a sound from outside. Shouts.
At first, Leon thought it was celebration. Finally, the sun, he thought skeptically. After a week of downpour, people must be euphoric. It seemed like an overreaction, but the weather affected everyone's morale.
But the illusion didn't last. The tone of the shouts changed. It wasn't euphoria. It was terror.
Leon sharpened his gaze. Through the rearview mirror, he saw the cause of the commotion approaching down the corridor between the stalled cars.
A woman ran desperately, pulling a small child by the arm so hard the girl was almost lifted off the ground. The woman's face was contorted in pure terror, pale and sweaty.
And right behind them, something was in pursuit.
It was a man in his forties, bald and burly. But there was something fundamentally wrong with his appearance. His skin was mapped with a web of black, pulsating veins that crawled up his neck to his bare scalp.
He wasn't running like a normal person. His movements were spastic, clumsy, like a marionette with its strings cut, throwing his limbs forward without motor coordination, but with a supernatural speed.
"Shit," Leon hissed. Instinct screamed before rational thought could catch up.
He yanked open the glove compartment. His hand closed around the cold polymer of the Glock 19.
Leon didn't wait to see the outcome. He kicked the jeep door open, stepped out onto the asphalt, and raised the weapon, barrel pointed down but ready to aim. His eyes locked onto the figure of the bald man advancing, snarling, toward the woman and child.
"Stop!" Leon yelled, trying to use the authority of his former rank as he stepped fully from the jeep, the Glock held ready.
The man didn't stop. His eyes were glazed, focused solely on the woman and child.
"I said stop!"
The man lunged to grab the boy.
BANG!
Leon fired. The bullet tore through the man's shoulder, spraying dark blood. Any normal person would have fallen, screaming in pain, but the man just staggered from the physical impact and kept running, not uttering a single sound.
"What?" Leon furrowed his brow. Drugs? Psychotic break?
He aimed lower. He didn't want to kill an unarmed civilian if he could avoid it.
BANG! BANG!
Two shots to the knees. The man's legs gave way, bones shattered. He fell face-first onto the asphalt.
The mother and son stumbled and fell a few meters away, weeping.
Leon relaxed his posture for a millisecond, thinking the threat was over. But then, the man on the ground began to crawl. Using only his hands, nails scraping the asphalt, he pulled his broken body toward the family, snarling and snapping his jaw like a rabid animal.
That wasn't human. No one ignores that much pain.
Leon realized there was no choice. He adjusted his aim for the head.
BANG!
The body finally slumped, inert.
Leon ran to the pair on the asphalt. The woman trembled violently, clutching her nine-year-old son.
"Are you hurt?" Leon asked, scanning them both quickly.
The woman shook her head, unable to speak.
"Who was he?" Leon pointed at the body. "Why was he attacking you?"
"It was... it was Roger," she sobbed, her voice shattered by shock. "My husband."
A bitter taste filled Leon's mouth. He had just executed that woman's husband in front of her.
"Ma'am, I had to..."
"No!" she interrupted, looking in horror at the corpse. "That wasn't him anymore. We were in the car... the rain stopped and he opened the sunroof. As soon as the sun touched him... his hair fell out in seconds. The veins appeared. He tried to bite Junior."
Leon looked at the sky, where the sun was beginning to shine brighter. The sun is the trigger?
Before he could process the information, a sharp scream right beside them cut through the conversation.
Five meters away, a young woman—also bald and with grayish skin—was on top of a young man who had fallen beside a sedan. She was biting his neck with savage violence.
The young man thrashed, blood gushing onto the asphalt, until his movements ceased and he fell like a ragdoll.
The infected woman lifted her head, her face smeared red. She saw Leon and the family. With a hiss, she charged toward them.
This time, Leon didn't hesitate or aim for the legs. He already knew pain didn't work.
He raised the Glock.
BANG!
The shot was clean, right in the center of her forehead. The woman fell dead instantly.
Leon approached cautiously, the gun still ready. When he got within a meter of her body, something impossible happened. A translucent blue window appeared floating in the air above the corpse.
[Target Eliminated] [Extract Soul Energy?] [YES / NO]
Leon blinked, confused. He looked around, but no one else seemed to see it. The shouts on the bridge were multiplying, the panic was widespread. Am I hallucinating? But the text was crisp. Instinctively, he reached out and touched "YES."
A wisp of green light emerged from the dead woman's chest and was absorbed into Leon's hand. He felt a sudden warmth travel up my arm.
Before he could understand what it was, he heard a gurgling sound from the ground.
The young man who had just had his throat torn out was writhing. Black veins were rapidly surfacing on his pale skin, and his eyes rolled back. He was getting up.
"No fucking way," Leon snarled.
He shot the young man in the head before the transformation could finish. The body fell motionless.
Again, he approached. This time, there was no prompt. As soon as he entered the radius of the corpse, a sphere of green light detached and flew straight into Leon's chest, being absorbed automatically.
The notification glowed in his vision:
[Target Eliminated] [Energy Collected: +1] [Initialization Progress: 2/10]
Leon felt the influx of energy but didn't stop. He remembered the first body, the woman's husband, lying further back. He ran to it.
The process repeated. As he approached, the green light was drained from Roger's corpse and absorbed into his body without ceremony.
[Energy Collected: +1] [Initialization Progress: 3/10]
When he lifted his head, reality returned with full force. The woman and child had vanished, swallowed by the panicked crowd now running chaotically across the bridge.
Leon looked around. The Cable-Stayed Bridge had become a death trap. Crashed cars blocked the lanes. Shouts, smoke, and sporadic gunfire echoed. Dozens of those bald things ran between the vehicles, hunting the slower drivers.
"I have to get out of here," he murmured.
He ran back to his jeep. This place was a deathtrap. If he stayed on the main roadway, he'd be surrounded.
He opened the driver's door and grabbed his tactical backpack. He checked the pockets of his vest: he only had one more full magazine for the Glock. Eighteen bullets. Against hundreds of infected.
"I need to conserve ammo," he thought.
He opened the trunk and rummaged through the tools until his hand closed around the cold metal of a 60-centimeter crowbar. Heavy, solid, unbreakable.
As he adjusted the backpack, the car radio, still on, crackled with an automated emergency transmission. The robotic voice repeated:
"...Attention. Avoid direct sunlight. Exposure catalyzes the dormant virus. Symptoms include hair loss, venous necrosis, and cannibalism. The bite transmits the viral agent instantly. The Armed Forces of the Federation are mobilizing..."
The transmission cut to static.
Leon looked at the edge of the bridge. There was a narrow maintenance walkway on the outside of the guardrail, used for inspecting the steel cables. It was dangerous, very windy, and a fall would be fatal in the churning sea below.
But there were no infected there.
He gripped the crowbar in his left hand and the Glock in his right.
"My luck, right at the start of my long-awaited vacation."
Leon hopped over the protective railing.