— Dr. Elena Kovacs: Transmission is not uniform. Bites cause infection more quickly, from seconds to a few minutes in some cases. Scratches vary, from minutes to hours depending on the depth and exposure to contaminated blood. Early symptoms include bleeding from wounds, intense eye irritation, red eyes, high fever, and disorientation. After that, aggressive behavior and loss of cognitive function may occur.
He continues reading without blinking.
— Dr. Elena Kovacs: If infection is suspected, immediate isolation is necessary. There is no proven treatment at this time. Avoid contact with bodily fluids. Blood is an active vector.
Below is another response, this time from the CDC, from an American doctor, name visible.
— Dr. Sarah Mitchell: Any open wound is a beacon. I repeat, blood attracts. The creatures can detect the smell of blood from a distance. If you are injured, clean, cover, and hide the smell as much as possible. Leave no trace.
The information is strong, fits with the rest, and makes too much sense to ignore.
He keeps scrolling and sees more names, more voices, some still trying to maintain their composure, others that have already given up.
General Hawkins: Stop waiting for perfect order. Do the best you can with what you have. This is now distributed survival.
Lieutenant General Liu Wei: Adapt quickly. Fixed behavior leads to death.
General Delacroix: Help each other when you can, but don't sacrifice yourselves without purpose.
— General Richter: Technical knowledge is worth more than brute force now.
Admiral Caldwell: If you hear an aircraft, don't count on it. Count on yourselves.
Israeli Command: Build. Build fast. Build high.
General Sokolov: Hold your position. Don't abandon the army without a plan.
The screen becomes a mosaic of command without command, leadership without a central hub, heroes without capes, just people trying to hold on to what they can.
And in the midst of all this, there are still the others, those who are not heroes, those who appear with twisted messages, with dirty proposals, with wrong ideas, and he sees both things coexisting at the same time, people trying to save and people trying to take advantage.
A message goes up, someone saying there's an armed group "protecting women," and immediately below, dozens respond warning people to run, denouncing, exposing, and for the first time he sees something different, the internet itself hunting down the problem before it grows.
Another person writes offering food in exchange for strong people for "work," and someone replies, "Decide properly before posting, whether it's work or slavery," and the conversation explodes on him.
And in the midst of all this, a Brazilian engineer posts an improvised barricade design with a reinforced door and diagonal support, someone from India translates it, someone from Germany adapts it, someone from Korea tests it and replies that it worked.
He notices something strange there, in that digital chaos.
There's still a world to be lived.
Broken, ugly, bleeding, but functioning in another way.
No boss.
No order.
No warranty.
But it's working.
And he watches it all, generals telling the truth, doctors explaining things without anesthesia, ordinary people trying to help, corrupt people trying to exploit, and he understands that what's there is a true reflection of what's left.
It's not pretty.
It's not organized.
But it's real.
And perhaps that will be enough.
He leans back in his chair, takes a deep breath, and returns to the keyboard, because as long as there are responses, as long as there are people reading, as long as there is someone on the other side trying too, it's still worth continuing.
The screen doesn't cool down; on the contrary, it heats up like a digital bonfire in the middle of the world's wrong winter, and suddenly something happens that no one expected to see so soon: flags that always came with conflicting discourse begin to speak the same language—not idiom, but intention—and this immediately draws attention because it's no longer a dispute over who's in charge, but a dispute over who survives first. A profile with an American military seal pulls the thread and doesn't come with a closed statement, but with open coordination, almost a forced invitation.
— General Hawkins: Attention all remaining units and civilians with radio access. We are releasing emergency shortwave frequencies. Take note now while you still can. Band 5.3 to 5.6 MHz, listening window every two hours. Repeating, listening window every two hours. This is not a drill. This is all we have.
Immediately afterwards, a Chinese profile appears confirming something that, until yesterday, would have been impossible to see without a thousand layers of formality.
Lieutenant General Liu Wei: We confirm frequency sharing. Add the 7.1 to 7.3 MHz band for redundancy. Coordinate local schedules. Do not rely on a single channel.
And it doesn't stop, Russia comes, Europe comes, everything comes together as if someone had switched off the part of the brain that likes to fight for power.
— General Sokolov: transmitting approximate coordinates of still-operational bases. Latitudes and longitudes will be updated as possible. Warning: routes may be compromised. Do not travel without a risk assessment.
— General Richter: Germany confirms. Publishing fortification points and areas with active engineering. We need civil engineers, masons, machine operators. Anyone who arrives with technical knowledge will be immediately integrated into the teams.
Israeli Command: We are raising walls and creating vertical containment zones. Open coordinates for anyone who can reach them. If you have construction skills, you do the work. If you don't, you protect those who do.
Admiral Caldwell: UK confirms ports are partially operational. Small vessels are safer than large ones. Avoid formations. Birds are attacking flocks.
The screen turns into a map, numbers appear, people take notes, people save data, people ask how to read latitude and longitude as if they were back in basic life lessons. And in the midst of all this emerges the rawest part, the part that nobody likes to talk about but everyone understands.
General Hawkins: If you arrive at a base and have useful skills, you work on the fortification. If you don't, you go to the front lines. This isn't punishment. This is necessity.
The phrase is weighty, but nobody argues much because the alternative is dying in the street. And then, in the midst of this improvised global coordination, someone tags his profile, someone who read everything, someone who noticed the pattern.
General Delacroix: You who posted about behavior and ammunition economy, please answer: What exactly did you see that was out of the ordinary?
He stares at the message for a second—the kind of question that until yesterday would have come on letterhead and now appears as an open comment—and answers in the way he knows how, directly, without trying to seem more than he is.
— I saw the pattern changing too fast. It's not just zombies. It's the whole environment. Insects grew and became weapons. Ants the size of piglets with mandibles that can cut. It's not one, it's thousands. If you fall into the middle, it's over.