@thvndrr
Sarah thought she would never catch up to him, but there he was, bright yellow Starfleet uniform practically glowing among the drab industrial greys, blacks, and browns of the colony’s east side. She picked her way through the streets after him, taking care not to come too close in case he heard her. The captain would only send her back with the other refugees, and what good would she be there?
‘Stay with Mister Carroll’, she thought. Like heck.
The streets were barren of life, littered here and there with bodies--ravaged--and evidences of what must have once been a beautiful colony square. When the control of the virus was lost, the society they had built came crashing into chaos within hours. Panic consumed the colonists and within a week, the healthy were tearing each other apart with as much ferocity as the infected. Sarah tried not to look as she passed. Her father wouldn’t be among them, she was sure of it.
Sarah continued to follow him as he weaved closer toward the heart of the colony where the virus had supposedly sprouted. Homes and schools would soon give way to research facilities and laboratories, and with them, fungus.
Within two miles of the central colony, the alien growth had already spread. Fleshy tubes and tendrils rose up from the ground and crawled along infrastructure while more bulbous, mushroom-like masses clotted from bodies long left behind to rot. Farther ahead, the agonized moans of the sick.
They were no longer alone.
