July 12, 2030 – OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg
The man in Seat 14B didn't look dangerous.
Dr. Elira Nkosi noticed him first because he was sweating—not the nervous glisten of a traveler scared of flying, but a feverish, oily sheen that darkened the collar of his shirt. His fingers tapped arrhythmically against the armrest, twitching like a dying insect.
*Malaria?* she wondered. *Or something worse?*
The plane—a packed British Airways flight from London—had just taxied to the gate when the man's head snapped up. His eyes were ruptured veins and pupil-less hunger.
Then he screamed.
Not a human sound. A wet, guttural shriek that sent the cabin into chaos.
Elira, an epidemiologist for the WHO, was halfway to him when he lunged at the flight attendant. His teeth tore into her throat before anyone could react. Blood sprayed across the overhead bins.
Then the second passenger turned.
And the third.
By the time Elira stumbled onto the jet bridge, the screams behind her were already fading into something worse—the silence of a hunt.
---
Seven Years Later – Cape Town, South Africa
March 17, 2037
The wind carried salt and rot from the Atlantic.
Lerato Khoza adjusted the strap of her rifle and squinted at the ruins of the V&A Waterfront. The skeletons of yachts listed in the harbor, their hulls chewed by rust. Beyond them, the Table Mountain cableway hung like a broken noose.
"Movement," whispered Tariq, her spotter. He pointed to the shadows near the old aquarium.
Lerato didn't flinch. She'd learned the hard way that the infected didn't just charge anymore. They waited.
A figure lurched into the sunlight—a woman in the tattered remains of a safari guide's uniform. Her skin was gray, her jaw unhinged. But she wasn't sprinting. She was… sniffing.
Shit.
"New variant," Lerato muttered. "They're tracking scents now."
Tariq's breath hitched. "That's not possible. The Rage Virus burns through brains too fast for—"
The infected woman's head whipped toward them.
And then she howled.