
The ground rumbled. The once-isolated patches of sand cracked up in humour, as layers of the ground split apart around the Middle East, revealing a dark, deep hole. After a minute, the shaking reached its end. Emergency response team X, led by Captain Newton, arrived at the scene of the quake. Newton was average, although a bit too average. 30, unmarried, with slightly blond hair and black eyes, coupled with his average height, weight, and strength, makes him look like the ideal team captain.
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4.2, was the number Newton saw on the seismograph as it was measured by a fat-looking scientist. Around the area, buildings were either tilted or demolished from the quake. Newton ordered his men to rescue some civilians trapped underneath the destroyed buildings. He spun around just to notice a group of people surrounding an area. Maybe a group was an understatement, what he actually saw was a horde of people. He asked for his trustworthy sub-captain, Tim, to supervise the rescuers as he went to investigate the commotion.
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“Excuse me,” Newton said, as he passed through the crowd until he reached the front. He could not believe his eyes, a massive abyss opened up that seemed to reach the ends of the earth. The hole was unbelievably dark and stretched for as far as seemed like 500 meters. However, this made Newton a little suspicious, he remembers the seismograph he saw earlier, 4.2. This doesn’t seem like a hole to be caused by just a 4.2 earthquake. He snatched out his iPhone and snapped a picture, before turning back and walking out of the crowd through the sandy ground. Reporters and reporting helicopters rushed past him as he walked toward the sub-captain.
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“Everything done?” Newton asked.
“All done captain, there should be no one left,” replied Tim. Tim was tall, but not skinny. With mud-like eyes, matching his chocolate hair. He is not very muscular but is quite strong from his experiences of rescuing. Newton called his team back to the jeep and drove off through the sandy plains back to the depths of the crowded city.
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Their headquarters are located beside the world's tallest building in the 21st century, the Burj Khalifa, making their base look dark and deserted. They got off the jeep and walked back into their main room. Unlike the outside, the inside was very lively. Bright furniture and people’s chatter filled the building. The base commander welcomed Captain Newton and his team with a smile and some freshly baked cookies.
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“How’s the mission? Have a cookie.” the base commander exclaimed.
“Everything went well, but there’s something you should see,” Newton replied in an unsure voice.
“Come,” the base commander said in a serious manner, and Newton followed her into her office. The office was dark and grim, until the base commander flicked on the lights with her shiny fingers, coloured with pink glitter. She flung her long hair around and applied pressure on her table in a tilted posture.
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“What do you need to show me?” the base commander asked Captain Newton politely yet seriously.
“Look at this footage that I took, it doesn’t look like something caused by just a minor 4.2 magnitude earthquake, so I suspect that something is terribly off” Newton replied. The base commander looks confused. “Oh, about that, I saw a scientist’s seismograph and it read 4.2,” Newton explained quickly as he handed over his phone, which was displaying the image of the deep dark hole. She looked at it once, and just as she was about to return the phone, she took a moment’s glance just to be sure. She asked Captain Newton out of her room as she phoned the higher-ups about their discovery. Newton showed his team the image that he had taken in the afternoon, telling them to be on high alert as something else bad might happen in the following days. In his experience, he had never once seen such a large hole before, let alone at it only being such a small quake. He placed his worries aside and soon, it was nighttime.
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The dark clouds moved continuously, just to leave behind a dark and isolated sky. There was not one star and the moon couldn’t be seen, surprisingly. Newton was looking out of his window, admiring the cloudy view. Once the clouds thinned, he turned to his bedside to look at his family photo, a young boy with a mother and father, just like any ideal family, as he slowly fell asleep.
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Ding! Ding! Ding!
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Newton got scared out of bed by the rapid sounds of the emergency bell. Something had gone terribly wrong. He stared out of the window by his bed. What used to be a nice isolated, dark blue sky now was turned into a red burning background as if the devil himself had made an appearance in their city. He rushed out to the main room to gather his crew, but to his surprise, the building was empty and quiet of all human activity. He took another look at the toilets, bedrooms, and kitchen, but it was all empty and isolated. He decides to go outside to investigate. Flames were dancing across buildings and trees, and people were eating each other. He wiped his eyes to see if the sight would disappear. Yet when he opened them all he could see was an ocean of zombies? More and more brainless humanoid creatures started moving towards the city, away from the direction of the hole. They are from underneath. Words cannot express the shock he felt as he powerlessly watched his team being consumed by these zombie-like creatures and turning into one of them. He took a small step back, just to trip over a leg, a green, gross, disgusting leg that seemed bloated and almost unlifelike. It wasn’t long before he realized that he made a massive blunder.
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