There was nothing pleasurable in watching the human body rot.

We start off as these perfect little humans, with skin, hair, a body and a voice. We are given these things by the Holy beings of the Universe, to borrow, cherish and preserve until death.

You see, when people die, something happens to the dead body though.

It rots.

There was nothing perfect or beautiful about the human body when it goes through the rotting phase. Rather, it’s quite tragic to watch a body that was once full of sturdy skin and meat become nothing but useless bones and dust for the earth to fester on. 

Yet... what happens when you’re not quite living, and you’re not quite dead?

Simple. You’re just a rotting piece of meat pacing back and forth, leaving plague upon the world, ending humanity as we speak.

You think you’ve felt fear? No, I highly doubt you did. You don’t know fear, until you see it in the dying eyes of the person you loved most. That's when fear grips your insides the hardest and tells you that it's too late to do anything and that you were right to be terrified of what was coming for you. 

My brother was six when he lost his life. He had been reckless that day. He never took heed to any of my warnings, he never listened to me. He loved me, he did. He was the best thing that had ever come into my life, but that damn kid was as stubborn as a mule. I had told him to stay put, because that’s all you can ever do in EXODUS. You can only stay at home. If you open the door, and you're not prepared to fight, then you’re ing dead. If it’s not the Nightcrawlers, then it’s the Rebels. They will kill you, they will slice you in half and make you pay for daring to step out of your house. There is no Mercy here, you can only fend for yourself and your team. The world had become a jungle, it was survival of the fittest. If you don't got the guts or the skills, you better stay put because nobody is going to feel sorry for you.  

My brother was six when I told him that. I told him as blatantly as possible because I wanted him to understand that this was not a joke; that we were at war with the Rebels and the Nightcrawlers. I wanted him to understand what the world was becoming and that we had no choice but to become Hunters to defend ourselves from this form of evil. We needed to fight, and keep our part of the land. Nobody was going to take that away from us, not the Rebels, not even the Nightcrawlers. But my brother never believed me, he was too young to really understand the situation. By the time I had arrived home with my training mate Kris, the door to my house was opened and Haewon was nowhere in sight. I knew that it was impossible for anyone to bust into my house, because every window and every door was boarded protectively with wooden boards drilled over it. The door was only open through choice, and Haewon made it his choice to leave.

The first thing we did was to check all the floors and make sure there was nothing and nobody in there. We were trained mentally and physically for this, so fear was not an option for us but it still didn’t stop me from crying my eyes out.

My tears had stung my cheeks, but I had made sure to keep as quiet as possible. I couldn’t yell for Haewon or else they would find us.

Fortunately for me, I had been with Kris at the time. He had kept me well controlled throughout the whole ordeal. Kris was the highest in position in our Training camp. He had the most experience in Hunting and I had looked up to him as my leader. Somehow along the way, he had become one of the few men in my life I can call my confidant.

The memory of Haewon's death was very raw and it stuck to me with such clarity that some nights I’ll pull back the image of my dying brother back in my memory and felt the urge to gag. It was not a pretty way to go down.

About a mile away from our house, Kris had located Haewon by following the blood trails that he found left on the dusty pavement. It was leading to the abandoned Playground. My heart was racing in my chest, I kept thinking to myself, Not him, please, not him my Lord. My hope had died down all too soon when I saw the recognizable figure. 

Haewon was lying on his back in the abandoned playground. He had been bitten pretty badly on the neck. Blue and green veins were beginning to pop out of his neck, and his face had turned extremely pale. There were no more tears in his eyes, only a look of terror glazed over them now. He knew what was happening to him. 

Everyone in the world of EXODUS had lost somebody, whether it was family, friends or even their pet, somebody lost so