*Thump*

*Thump*

*Thump*

“Ugh, five more minutes,” Michael “Mike” Tanner groaned, pulling the covers over his head. It was Saturday. He had zero desire to be up before noon.

It did not feel like noon.

The noise stopped. But only for a few moments before it came again.

*Thump*

*Thump*

“What?! What do you want Jeff?” Mike shouted.

Throwing back the covers, Mike sat up in bed. Looking over at his alarm clock he saw the bright red digital numbers read 9:23am.

Nope, it definitely wasn’t noon yet.

Groaning in frustration he shifted his attention back to the door. He sat in silence for several long moments waiting for Jeff, his roommate, to respond.

The quiet lasted just long enough Mike started to consider going back to sleep. Then the thumping noise came again.

“Grrrrah, I’m coming, dammit, I’m coming. This had better be freaking important dude. I was up all night raiding…”

Mike didn’t have time to finish his complaint.

As he opened the door a crack Jeff forced his way inside.

Stumbling back into the room, instinctively, Mike knew something was wrong.

Jeff was a scrawny guy. Athletic looking, but short with a wiry build.

Even unprepared, Mike was still twice his size. It shouldn’t have been so easy for him to push his way into the room.

Sudden bursts of strength are a real phenomenon. A mother shifting the weight of a car to save a child, or the youngest sibling getting the last piece of pizza. Mike – still half asleep – would normally have chalked Jeff’s strength up as a similar instance.

Or he would have if his roommate hadn’t looked so wrong.

Mike had seen Jeff in the kitchenette the night before. He’d looked fine – normal.

Now his healthy bronzed skin was a desiccated grey. His blue eyes were a milky pupil-less white. Worst of all, he gave off a faint, pungent odor, almost like rotting meat.

Speaking frankly, Jeff looked like he’d been dead a week. Clearly something wasn’t right.

An unfamiliar sense of pressure built up between Mike’s shoulder blades. Having lived a relatively sheltered life, it took him a moment to realize he felt threatened.

Without taking his eyes off Jeff, Mike stepped back slowly. Reaching behind his back, he fumbled around on his desk for something to use to protect himself, just in case. His fingers closed around something solid.

Feeling slightly better – improvised weapon in hand – Mike tried to look concerned as he talked to Jeff,

“What happened to you man? Are you sick or something?”

Jeff’s head whipped around at the noise, like he’d just noticed Mike was in the room with him.

He didn’t respond to Mike’s questions.

He just lunged forward.

Backpedalling, Mike ran up against the wall. He just wanted to put distance between him and Jeff. Jeff however seemed determined to attack him. Unsure of what to do Mike shouted, “Quit playing man. I’m seriously about to hit you if you don’t stop.”

Jeff didn’t so much as blink as he continued forward, snarling.

Mike stopped thinking.

He swung his weapon, an old desk lamp – a hinged hunk of cheap metal and screws with a heavy base.

The lamp connected with Jeff’s shoulder hard enough to knock him several steps sideways.

The blow didn’t seem to faze Jeff at all. Mike regretted holding back instantly.

Grabbing at Mike, Jeff leaned in, his mouth gaping open. Foul, putrid breath hit Mike full in the face. Jeff’s jaws chomped open and closed repeatedly, as he tried bite down, into Mike’s throat.

Shoving his shoulder hard into his chest, Mike bowled him over. He bolted for the door.

He didn’t get far.

Jeff caught at his ankle.

In blind panic Mike kicked out, destroying the smaller man’s nose.

Again Jeff seemed oblivious to the pain. His death grip on Mike’s ankle never loosened.

“What’s wrong with you man?” Mike pleaded, not caring how close to tears he sounded.

He was too scared to care.

Jeff wasn’t messing with him.

Whatever was going on, it wasn’t just a prank. If it had been, Jeff would have broken character when he got hit with the lamp. If not then, then definitely after Mike broke his nose.

Jeff ignored Mike’s questioning. He just continued to work his jaws open and closed. His teeth got closer and closer to Mike’s hairy leg meat.

From out of nowhere, an uncomfortable, and far-fetched, explanation for all of Jeff’s symptoms sprang to Mike’s mind. Everything could be explained with one single, ridiculous, word – zombie.

He knew it was an absurd idea. He wasn’t in a movie. People didn’t just turn into zombies. That didn’t happen.

The idea wouldn’t leave Mike alone. He suddenly felt he couldn’t afford to let himself get bitten. Maybe he was crazy. That didn’t mean he had to take chances.

He was still holding his desk lamp in his hand. He’d forgotten it in his panic. Now he slammed it down hard, again and again. Mike rained blows down on Jeff’s unprotected head. Losing himself in his fears temporarily he lost all restraint.

It was only after the lamp finally broke apart – the metal base separating from the top half, spiraling off into the far corner – that he finally snapped out of it.

Feeling something on his cheek, Mike wiped it away with the back of his hand.

His hand came away from his face bloody.

Shocked, he forced himself to look down at Jeff.

The source of the blood was obvious. Jeff’s skull was in pieces all over the room. In his berserk state Mike had not stopped until long after he quit moving.

A million feelings washed over Mike all in the same moment, relief, disgust, shame, depression. He couldn’t handle it all.

He fled the room.

Mike barely made it to the shared living room before he fell to his knees and heaved the contents of his stomach out onto the coarse blue carpeting.

He’d just killed a man.

He’d never liked Jeff.

The school had assigned their housing last second. They’d been given a room in the overflow housing apartments off campus. Even if they had both applied to switch roommates there would have been nowhere else for them to go.

As total opposites, getting along hadn’t been easy. Jeff was a neat freak, a health nut, and had terrible taste in music. Mike was a fat, slob, who made poor dietary choices and liked quiet.

They’d been a powder keg waiting to go off. It was only their drastically differing schedules that allowed them some semblance of harmony.

None of that meant he’d wanted Jeff dead. Mike just didn’t think that way. Sure he might have wished he could punch the guy in the dick, from time to time.

But he didn’t go around dreaming of killing him.

Just how long Mike sat there next to his regurgitate, he had no idea. Eventually he gathered the pieces of himself and put them back together.

Forcing his legs to move Mike stood up. He grabbed the comforter off the couch and walked back into his room.

Intending to cover Jeff’s body until the ambulance – and probably the cops – showed up, Mike hesitated as he noticed a small white crystal mixed in with the bits of Jeff’s grey matter.

Admittedly he wasn’t an expert in anatomy. Still Mike thought he would have remembered if it was common for people to grow crystals in their brains.

Swallowing hard, he decided his curiosity was stronger than his revulsion. He reached down to pick it up.

The moment his hand closed around the small white crystal, it pulsed warmly.

The faint feeling of warmth flowed into his palm. Building for a moment the heat began to move slowly up his arm, across his shoulder and around his neck. Finally it pulsed one last time before dissipating with a comfortable sensation directly between his eyebrows.

The crystal in his hand turned to powder, and slipped through his fingers.

Mike’s senses swam as information overloaded him. Then suddenly he, like they’d been turned off at the source, he lost all sensory feedback.

Blind and deaf Mike didnt even have time to panic before everything got weirder. The blackness that replaced his vision sprouted a rotating wheel of colorful light.

Mike couldn’t help noticing the similarity between it and a loading graphic. A feeling that strengthened as soft jazzy music began to play softly in the background.

The wheel of light only lasted a few moments. As it, and the music, faded away, his vision came back, clearer than before. Everything was sharper, more vibrant, like he was suddenly seeing in high definition.

His visual acuity wasn’t the only thing that had changed.

In the top right corner of his vision were two graphic symbols. The first was a transparent box containing a blue plus sign. Below it was an even smaller transparent bix containing a red exclamation mark.

Concentrating on the exclamation mark, a transparent rectangular window opened in the middle of his vision. In the top corner of the box was a small dark x, like the common symbol for closing a window on a computer.

[System] Loading…

Registering Player [Mike]

[System] Updated…

Level Up!

Congratulations! You have defeated a [Lvl_1 Zombie]

Achievement: You have successfully slain a monster and joined the [System]

Calculating Randomized Reward…

Reward: Common Rank Bloodline [Orc] + 1000 Credits

Accept Reward: [Yes] / [No]

Shaking his head did nothing to clear his vision. Rubbing hia eyes and blinking were equally useless. The box wasn’t physically there, it was some sort of projection. Either that or he was crazy. Which to be fair was still a possibility.

Shrugging, Mike changed tactics; rather than deny it, he embraced the insanity. He shifted the focus of his attention to [Yes] and thought of selecting it.

Immediately the box blinked out, disappearing along with the red exclamation mark.

The air in front of him began to shimmer slightly. A cube of blue light formed, hovering in front of Mike’s face.

Mike touched the box, dissolving it into tiny particles of light. Floating where the box had been there was suddenly a small metal injector – filled with a brilliant blue colored liquid.

The space between Mike’s eyes pulsed, then fell silent. Not understanding how exactly, Mike realized he knew what the blue liquid was and how to use it.

Without stopping to consider the validity of the information’s source -or his own safety – Mike pressed the injector needle into his neck. Pushing the plunger down sent liquid fire through his veins.

For minute’s Mike fought the pain.

The veins on his neck bulged as he struggled not to cry out. His body shook and his fat jiggling. Every muscle in his body cramped one after the other, blinking on and off as his bones creaked from the strain. His insides burned, slowly turning to liquid, like he’d drank molten iron.

Inch by inch the heat purified him from the inside out.

A thick greasy discharge leaked from Mike’s skin, coating his body in grime. He barely noticed as lay balled up in the fetal position, gritting his teeth. The sounds of his bones creaking, escalated to cracking. Finally he broke crying out in pain over and over again as first one and then another of his bones broke and reformed under the immense pressure. Tears streamed down his face as he prayed to every deity he’d ever heard of for the pain to end.

The pain ignored his sudden faith continuing unabated.

Slowly Mike’s grip on consciousness loosened. His body betraying him as it shut down in self-defense.

Mike fell limply to the floor, lying next to Jeff’s corpse.

His body was covered in a layer of thick, mucous-y, grease. It slowly grew as his muscles twitched under his skin, his bones continuing to snap and reset.

Steam rose from Mike’s body, making the room look like a sauna until he began to cool off, clearing the air.

His hair and nails fell out, then quickly grew back in a matter of moments, longer and thicker than before.

Mike lay still, his deep rhythmic breathing the only indication he still lived. And then he twitched. Suddenly Mike jerked awake with a mindless scream. Several seconds passed before Mike’s consciousness caught up to his body. The screaming abruptly cut off.

He was amazed to discover the pain was gone. More than just gone, he felt great. He felt better than he’d ever felt, in his entire life. Aches and pains Mike never realized he had were suddenly gone.

His body felt lighter. His breath came easier. If he hadn’t been so near Jeff’s body, or covered in such disgusting black grease, Mike might have started to dance.

Standing up, Mike headed to the bathroom, to clean up

The grease took a ridiculous amount of effort to scrub off. It was everywhere too. Even the bottoms of his feet were covered in the stuff. Luckily his balance seemed to have improved as he was forced to hop from foot to foot scrubbing as hard as he could, in order to finally get clean.

Heading back to his room he grabbed clean clothes. He didn’t want to be naked when the cops showed up. Belatedly he realized he should have called the before he messed around

Picking up his cellphone, he walked into the living room. Moving to the opposite end of the couch from where he’d spewed, Mike started to get dressed.

He slipped on the ratty old shirt and pants but something felt off. It took him a second to figure out what it was – his clothes were way too loose. His pants wouldn’t even stay up without a belt several notches tighter than normal.

Whatever else the injection had done, it caused him to lose upwards of forty pounds in an instant. Even better, there didn’t seem to be any side effects to the rapid weight loss. No loose skin, or stretch marks.

His body wasn’t just fitter.

Rushing back to the bathroom, he started to really look himself over. It was only then he noticed the dozens of other minor differences. He was taller, broader in the shoulders and his hands and feet were half again as big as they had been before.

It didn’t end there. His ears had formed points, his eyes were now a glowing golden color, and his lower canines had grown just enough they stuck out above his upper lip.

His skin color even seemed slightly greenish. Not comic book green. It was more natural, almost sickly. It wasn’t really noticeable unless someone had seen how ghostly white he’d been before from years of gaming indoors.

What the hell is going on? He couldn’t help muttering to himself as he rubbed his ear tips for the thousandth time in a handful of minutes.

Maybe I should see a doctor?

No, no doctor, this must be a dream, that’s it.

“Ouch,” he winced as he pinched himself hard. Then had to laugh at himself. If pain meant he wasn’t dreaming then pinching himself had been stupid. He’d experienced more pain earlier than the rest of his life combined.

Pinching himself proved nothing.

“Maybe there’s someone else here?” he reasoned out loud.

Jeff having been a zombie was a point in favor of everything being a dream. The information in his head, from the crystal, disagreed. It said everything was very real, and very dangerous.

Mike decided he needed to find someone else to talk it through with. If he was crazy he’d never figure that out on his own.

Something was telling him that life had just gotten weird. If so he wanted to know for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Stuffing his over-sized feet into boots that were now too small, Mike finishing getting dressed by grabbing a long sleeve shirt and a hoodie.

He layered them.

If he ran into more zombies it would serve as a makeshift armor against biting. Not that it would stop a determined attack, but it might give him a second or two longer when it mattered.

Mike rifled through the front closet. He quickly found what he was looking for – Jeff’s intermural softball gear. Including his wooden bat.

Giving it a few test swings he felt satisfied.

Raising his hood, and sliding his ear buds in, he selected his “Get Pump’d” playlist on his cellphone. Then he stepped up to the apartment’s front door and took a deep breath – his hand on the door knob.

It was time to figure out what the hell was going on.