The Blooming Pestilence

The epidemic, its origins shrouded in mystery, was yet unyielding in its spread—a grotesque malady confounding reason and breaking the spirit of those who sought to contain it. Physicians and nurses stretched beyond endurance and struggled to care for the afflicted. Yet, in their Sisyphean labor, many were claimed by the infection, only to return as mindless, ravenous vessels of disease.

One exhausted nurse, pressed to her limits, was attending to an infected man—a skeletal figure bound by restraints, his head obscured by a mask to forestall the unthinkable. She wiped at the viscous discharge trickling from his mask when he lunged at her with a guttural snarl.

Startled, she recoiled, dropping the soiled tissue. It fluttered to the floor, overlooked in the frantic chaos of her retreat.

“Shit!” gasped Nurse Laine, stumbling backward as the man’s hollow eyes fixed on her. She could hear the ragged hiss of his breath behind the mask.

“Careful, Laine!” barked Dr. Rhodes from across the room, his face pale with stress. “If he breaks skin, you’re next!”

“I know! I know!” she snapped, trembling as she steadied herself. She gestured at the patient, still straining against his bonds. “Why is he so much stronger? He shouldn’t even have the energy to lift his head!”

Rhodes pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re beyond rules now. This thing—whatever it is—it’s remaking them. We just need to keep moving.”

Unseen, the tissue’s burden, a yellow-green globule of virulent mucus, clung to the tiles like a thing alive. It slithered toward the nearest surface, its faint glistening betraying its unearthly vitality.

“Who’s on cleanup here?” snapped an orderly as he entered the room, his voice rough with frustration. “I just mopped this goddamn floor.”

“No one cares, Jared!” shouted Laine, her nerves fraying. “Just bag him up if he dies. Or better yet, incinerate him!”

“Fine,” muttered Jared, brushing past her to lean against the wall. He fished a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and muttered something about taking a break. His hand rested idly on the wall, unaware of the slight, sticky trail moving toward his sleeve.

Minutes later, chaos erupted.

“What’s wrong with him?” screamed Laine, watching in horror as Jared convulsed on the ground, frothy bile spilling from his lips.

“Hold him down!” Rhodes shouted, grabbing the nearest orderly.

“I’m trying!” the man cried, wrestling Jared as he thrashed violently. “His skin—it’s hot! God, it’s burning! He’s burning up!”

Jared stopped suddenly, his chest rising and falling in erratic bursts. His eyes rolled back in his head, but his lips curled into something that was not a smile—a grotesque approximation of human expression.

“He’s… laughing?” whispered Laine, backing into a corner.

The sound that came from Jared’s throat was a guttural, clicking chuckle. He sat up in a slow, unnatural motion, his head tilting at an impossible angle.

“They’re here,” Jared crooned, his voice a rasping echo of something far older. “We see. We know.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Laine hissed.

Rhodes didn’t answer. He backed away slowly, his hand clutching a syringe of sedative. “Jared… can you hear me? Let us help—”

Jared’s laughter grew louder, a chittering sound setting Laine’s teeth on edge. “Fools,” he intoned, rising to his feet. “It spreads. You are already theirs.”

The infected now moved with precision, herding the living toward confinement. Laine and Rhodes barricaded themselves in a linen closet, the low, resonant hum vibrating through the walls.

“This isn’t just a disease,” Laine whispered, her hands trembling. “This is something else, isn’t it?”

Rhodes nodded grimly. “I don’t know what this is, Laine. But it’s not natural. This—this thing is alive, thinking. It’s planning.”

Outside, footsteps echoed—slow, deliberate.

“Do you hear that?” Laine whispered, her voice quivering.

The closet door creaked open, revealing Jared, his body now a mass of writhing tendrils. His glowing eyes met Laine’s.

“Your struggle is meaningless,” he said, his voice resonating with inhuman power. “The stars align. The end blooms.”

As the tendrils reached for her, Laine screamed—only to have the sound cut off as the hum enveloped her mind.

In the following hours, the hospital became a labyrinth of horrors. Outside, the sky churned with unnatural colors. Something vast stirred beyond the veil, and the world prepared to receive its new masters.

The blooming pestilence had done its work. The age of humanity was over.