A Weird Virus

Two days later, Zhang Jue and Tang Mao arrived outside of Chlamydia. They scope around the area. The inside of the town was already in ruins, with dilapidated houses, collapsed streets, and a few black smoke slowly drifting into the sky in the distance. The town's perimeter was fenced off and surrounded by a fort that had just been built. The air was filled with smoke, and there were many bullet marks and explosion traces on the fort, which looked like they had undergone several very fierce battles.

Inside the fort, a team of heavily armed MTF members, holding their sniper rifles, were guarding on the ground, standing by as if they were afraid that something might suddenly appear inside the town. Looking at the scene in front of him, Zhang Jue was suddenly in a bit of a trance. If he hadn't just been playing a game on the plane, he would have thought he had traveled to the battlefield of World War II.

"The situation is rather complicated." Tang Mao said. "At first, the town's residents caught a cold and fever one after another, and people thought it was a common flu, but then they realized things weren't that simple. This virus is very contagious. Several large hospitals are overcrowded, but there is still no way to cure them, and the number of the infected is increasing." Tang Mao said here. Zhang Jue suddenly waved his hand to interrupt him.

"Wait, can I ask? In what way is the virus spreading? Have you taken any countermeasures?"

"The small town of Chlamydia was so remote that no one thought of the matter so seriously at that time, and they didn't even use masks. Until a few days later, when the government found that things were out of control, and only then did they ask the Foundation for help." Tang Mao sighed and was helpless.

"You know, the President of Mei Province, Tebukao Park is a very... very… what's the right word? He will never admit that his decision was a failure, and by the time we arrived here, the whole town had been turned into a dead city."

"Dead city?" Zhang Jue looked around and pointed to the fort that had just been built, "So you're shooting at a bunch of devils with submachine guns? That sounds pretty exciting."

Tang Mao scratched his head in embarrassment, "It's true that 'devils' is a bit exaggerated, but I really don't know how to describe them." Zhang Jue lifted his chin, signaling him to speak freely.

"Those who infected with the virus, most of them died and died very tragically. Usually with seven stages of bleeding, only a small portion of their body remained. Which would turn into a kind of fake death." Tang Mao continued, "That fake death, although they will also experience brain dysfunction, their hearts will still keep beating weakly, and after a few hours or days have passed, they will be resurrected."

"Resurrected?" Zhang Jue raised his eyebrows.

"Yes, they are resurrected." Tang Mao said, "And after they're resurrected, they become so aggressive that they start tearing up the normal people around them. Like the zombies in The Walking Dead."

"But zombies aren't hard to deal with." Zhang Jue said.

Tang Mao hummed, "At that time, the government hadn't sent a plea to the Foundation for help, and they sent a team of soldiers to Chlamydia to execute people as soon as they found them turned into zombies. But then, something bizarre happened."

"When they executed the first batch of zombies, the ones that appeared since a certain point became fast and would move in groups, specifically killing those in uniform. That group of soldiers was consumed within a week. From that point on, the whole thing began to move in an uncontrollable direction."

"After the first group of soldiers was killed, President Tebukao sent another group of soldiers. The group lasted three days before they were all wiped out, and the town had already fallen by then."

"Finally, the Mei governmental army surrounded Chlamydia, and the forts you see now were built at that time."

Zhang Jue looked at the surrounding fences, knowing that Tang Mao had one more thing to say that he hadn't been able to get out. Looking around the area, the defense may not be the only reason to keep those who have turned into zombies. Of course, some things could only be understood, not spoken.

Zhang Jue looked at the town in the distance and said, "It looks like even with the forts from the Mei army was built, they still haven't been able to stop them."

"Yes." Tang Mao nodded, "According to the information they provided, those zombies are very scary, not only do they have extreme speed, some of them have evolved wings, and there was even a zombie that dived out to the river next to the town and attacked the Mei army from the rear. The Mei army only had a moment to conduct a round of bombardment on the town before they collapsed under their attack."

"It was also from this point that the Mei upper echelons realized the seriousness of the matter and turned to the GOC (Global Occult Coalition). The GOC came and suppressed those zombies within the town, but if they couldn't solve the underlying problem, it would be useless even if they killed all the zombies. If someone else got infected with the virus, everything would be back to square one, but the GOC is not good at this. So, they contacted the Foundation."

Tang Mao's mouth was almost dry when he finally gave Zhang Jue a rundown of what had happened. Zhang Jue nodded and understood why they had called Yang Xue to do the job. The Foundation wanted to analyze what kind of virus could turn a normal person into this.

It's okay to just turn into a zombie but grow wings and swim? If the Foundation came two days later, would they still be able to go to the sky?

"Wait, I think I know what that thing is." Zhang Jue suddenly slapped his thigh, "A virus that will make the host evolve, isn't this SCP-016?"

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SCP-016 is a blood-borne pathogen with an incubation period ranging from 24 hours to two years. Initial symptoms are similar to the common cold and include itchy eyes, runny eyes, cough, and body aches.

When the virus enters the body to the final stage, the host will collapse and bleed profusely throughout the body, with blood gushing from all orifices, including the nostrils, tear ducts, pores, mouth, and urethra. If the patient survives this stage, the pathogen will be inactivated and go back into dormancy, returning to the incubation period.

Those infected with the virus become aggressive, and even more bizarrely, when the host is in a state of stress (e.g., under life-threatening conditions), the pathogen changes its survival strategy from simply replicating itself to recombining with the patient's DNA, promoting cell division and the growth of limbs (e.g., wings and gills) that do not conform to the host's body structure to solve the problem being encountered.

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"But that doesn't seem right either." After carefully recalling SCP-016's information, Zhang Jue shook his head and dismissed his thoughts, "They don't behave exactly like SCP-016's characteristics." Tang Mao was just about to speak when Yang Xue's voice came from behind them.

"The reason is simple. Because what these people are infected with is the mutated variant of SCP-016."