I think the purest form of love is just wanting someone to notice life with you. "taste this. look at that. hear this song." again and again. until you can't imagine noticing life without them.
in 2026, remember how GOOD writing feels. remember how satsfying it is to get your characters to the point you have been dying to get to, where they will experience the love, fear, relief or whatever the feeling you want to bring to life may be. let this year be the year of writing, prgress and of satisfactory endings.
The Year of the Dead didn't begin with screaming or sirens.
It began with a press conference.
A virus, they said.
Harmless.
Contained.
Seasonal.
The Necro Virus—Nevirus, if you preferred the version polished for morning news and push notifications. A name engineered to sound manageable, to lower heart rates and keep people moving. At the time, I didn't question it. Now, I understand exactly what that kind of language is meant to do. It buys time. It delays panic. It allows systems to fail quietly while everyone agrees not to look too closely.
Back then, I believed them.
They compared it to a common cold and smiled through press briefings, repeating phrases like low mortality, isolated clusters, no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission. I hear those words differently now, stripped of their context and their comfort. They weren't lies—not entirely. Just incomplete. The virus hadn't finished changing yet.
Mutation came fast. Faster than anyone was willing to admit.
The pathogen adapted with ruthless efficiency, rewiring the human body in ways that felt deliberate in hindsight. Higher cognitive function went first—executive reasoning, memory, inhibition—followed by vision. Auditory processing sharpened instead, hypersensitive to the point of pain. Every footstep became a signal. Every breath, an invitation. Hunger replaced everything else—not metaphorically, but biochemically. A compulsion for human flesh that overrode identity, memory, fear. The person disappeared long before the body did.
The smell was the first thing I learned to recognize.
Not just unpleasant—informational. A chemical signature of collapse. Volatile compounds released as tissue broke down, clinging stubbornly to air, skin, fabric. Once I learned it, I couldn't unlearn it. Even now, I smell them before I see them. Before I hear the shuffle of feet or the wet pull of breath through ruined lungs.
This wasn't delirium.
Not illness-induced psychosis.
Not mass hysteria.
It was reanimation.
Cells hijacked. Muscles contracting without conscious command. Biological processes dragged back online inside bodies that should have remained still. In simpler terms, they tried to downplay a full-scale fucking zombie outbreak.
And we let them.
Normalcy was seductive. We wanted schedules and deadlines and coffee runs, so we dismissed the screaming threads online and laughed at conspiracy videos. We called it fear-mongering. Pseudoscience. Noise. Bullshit.
I kept studying.
Kept planning.
Kept believing the systems in place would hold.
Because the alternative required admitting how fragile everything actually was.
Silver Lake. Los Angeles, California. Once known for warm light and quiet hills. Later whispered about like a fault line.
It wasn't the end of the world.
It was the beginning of adaptation.
◂ previous transmission full index next transmission ▸
Silver Lake, Los Angeles.
A neighborhood of warm light, winding hills, and the illusion of safety.
When reports of a new virus surface, officials reassure the public with careful language—low mortality, isolated clusters, no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission. Life continues. Lectures stream. Coffee cools on desks. Futures remain intact.
Indigo Rhodes, a molecular biology student with a talent for noticing what others dismiss, listens closely. What she hears is not comfort—but delay.
As infection spreads quietly through the city, Indigo and those around her are forced to confront the fragile distance between normalcy and collapse. Survival becomes a series of intimate decisions: who to trust, who to protect, and what parts of themselves they are willing to sacrifice to endure what comes next.
Infection Point documents the beginning of the rot—and the promise between strangers to survive it.
areudirty
gracieabrams
gummygunk
ellievsbear
stormborns
titsay
