Captain John Price's eyes fluttered open to a world of green and gold. Dappled sunlight filtered through a dense canopy of leaves overhead, shifting and dancing with each breath of wind. The earthy scent of decay and growth filled his nostrils—rich humus, rotting bark, the loamy smell of undisturbed forest floor. He lay on his back amid a carpet of pine needles and dead leaves, their texture scratching against the back of his neck.
His body protested as he pushed himself up onto his elbows, muscles stiff and joints aching like he'd been lying there for days. A dull throb pulsed behind his eyes. Price blinked hard, trying to clear the fog from his mind, trying to remember. Afghanistan. The Zodiac. The waterfall. Shepherd's gun pointed at Soap's head. The muzzle flash. Then... nothing.
How the hell had he gotten here?
Years of combat conditioning took over. Before his mind could fully process his situation, his hands were already moving—conducting the automatic inventory every soldier performs upon waking in an unfamiliar place. His HK433C assault rifle, the weapon some circles called the Kilo 141, was still slung securely across his chest, the familiar weight reassuring against his tactical vest. His right hand dropped to his thigh holster—M1911 still there, the grip worn smooth from years of use. Combat knife in its sheath on his vest. He patted his belt, counting by touch: three fragmentation grenades, all present and accounted for.
His gear was intact. Boonie hat still on his head, though knocked slightly askew. Soft-shell jacket, tactical gloves, reinforced boots—all standard issue, all exactly where they should be. Everything was in place.
Yet nothing made sense.
"Where the bloody hell am I?" Price muttered, his gravelly voice seeming too loud in the heavy silence of the forest.
He climbed to his feet, swaying slightly as blood rushed from his head. The world around him was wrong in ways he couldn't immediately articulate. This wasn't Afghanistan—the vegetation was all wrong, too lush, too green. The air was humid and thick, pressing against his skin like a warm, damp cloth. Deciduous trees mixed with pines, their branches interlocking overhead to create a cathedral of leaves that filtered the sunlight into soft, muted tones.
Price turned slowly in a circle, scanning his surroundings with the methodical precision of a man who'd spent thirty years surviving in hostile territory. No signs of habitation. No aircraft contrails in the patches of visible sky. No distant engine sounds, no radio chatter, no comms traffic at all—just the occasional rustle of leaves and the far-off call of a crow.
The forest was eerily, unnaturally quiet.
Something tightened in Price's gut. His instincts, honed across countless missions, were screaming that something was fundamentally wrong with this picture. He unslung his rifle, conducting a quick press check to ensure a round was chambered. The metallic click-clack of the action was crisp and clean, a sound he'd heard ten thousand times before. At least his weapons were reliable, even if the world around him had gone mad.
Determined to find answers—or at the very least, to find some indication of where the hell he was—Price began moving through the underbrush. He moved the way only experienced soldiers move: weight on the balls of his feet, rifle at low ready, eyes constantly scanning the treeline. He avoided dry branches, placed his boots carefully to minimize noise, and stopped frequently to listen.
The forest revealed nothing. No tracks, no trails, no signs of recent human passage. Just endless trees stretching in every direction, broken occasionally by dense thickets of brambles and deadfall. The sun's position told him it was late afternoon, but that was about all he could determine. Northern hemisphere, probably temperate zone based on the vegetation, but beyond that he was navigating blind.
After what felt like hours of cautious movement—though his watch insisted it had only been forty minutes—Price caught his first break. Through a gap in the trees ahead, he spotted the angular lines of human construction: weathered wood siding, a peaked roof sagging slightly in the middle, windows dark and empty as dead eyes.
A cabin.
Price approached with the same deliberate care he'd use clearing a building in Fallujah or Pripyat. The structure was small, maybe a thousand square feet, and looked like it hadn't seen maintenance in years. Ivy crawled up one wall, its tendrils forcing their way between boards. The windows were filmed with grime and pollen, making it impossible to see inside clearly. The front door hung slightly ajar, moving almost imperceptibly in the breeze, its hinges releasing a soft, rhythmic creak that set Price's teeth on edge.
He paused at the treeline, watching and listening. No movement. No sounds from inside. No fresh footprints in the thin layer of dirt on the sagging porch. The place had the feel of abandonment, that particular quality of stillness that comes from months or years of disuse.
Still, Price had survived this long by never taking anything for granted.
He approached from an angle, keeping the door in his peripheral vision while scanning the windows. When he reached the porch, he tested each board before putting his weight on it, avoiding the ones that looked rotten or liable to creak. The door's gap was maybe six inches wide—enough to peer through, but not enough to enter without opening it further.
Price used the barrel of his rifle to push the door open slowly, the weapon raised and ready, his finger resting along the trigger guard. The hinges protested with a long, drawn-out squeal that made him wince. So much for a silent entry.
The interior was dim, his eyes needing a moment to adjust after the brightness of the forest. Shafts of dusty light pierced through cracks in the walls and the grimy windows, illuminating thousands of dust particles suspended in the stale air. The cabin smelled of mildew, mouse droppings, and something else—something organic and unpleasant that Price couldn't immediately place.
He conducted a quick tactical sweep, rifle panning across the space in smooth arcs. Living room to his left: ratty couch, overturned coffee table, debris scattered across a thread-bare rug. Kitchen straight ahead through an open doorway. Staircase to his right leading up to what he assumed was a second floor. No immediate threats. No bodies. No signs of recent occupation.
Price lowered his rifle slightly but kept it at the ready as he moved deeper into the cabin. The floorboards groaned under his boots despite his careful footwork. He headed for the kitchen first—in a survival situation, water and food were always the priority.
The kitchen was a disaster. Cabinet doors hung open or missing entirely, their contents long since looted or rotted away. The sink was dry, stained with rust. The refrigerator door stood open, revealing nothing but mold and the desiccated remains of something that might once have been vegetables. Flies buzzed lazily in the trapped heat near the ceiling.
But Price's search wasn't entirely fruitless. In a cabinet mounted high on the wall, its door nearly hidden behind a curtain of cobwebs, he found three cans—their labels faded and partially peeled away, but the metal still intact, not bloated with botulism. Beside them sat two plastic bottles of water, their contents cloudy but potentially drinkable if boiled.
"Better than nothing," Price muttered, grabbing the supplies and setting them on the kitchen table, a rickety Formica-topped relic from the 1970s.
A small backpack lay crumpled in the corner by the back door. Price shook it out, sending dust and dead insects scattering, then stuffed the canned goods and water bottles inside. The pack was laughably small compared to the rucksacks he was used to, but it would serve.
He slung the backpack over one shoulder and made his way to the staircase. The steps creaked ominously under his weight, and twice he had to test a tread before trusting it with his full mass. The second floor was a narrow hallway with two doors, both partially open.
The first room was clearly a child's bedroom. The walls had once been painted pink, but time and neglect had faded them to a sickly salmon color. Posters clung to the walls by a few remaining strips of tape—boy bands and pop stars whose names Price wouldn't have known even before whatever disaster had befallen this place. The single bed was unmade, its sheets tangled and musty. A shelf held a collection of stuffed animals, their button eyes staring blankly. He gave the room a cursory search, found nothing useful, and moved on.
The second bedroom was the master. Price pushed the door open with his rifle barrel and immediately caught the source of that organic smell he'd noticed downstairs. It was stronger here, concentrated, though aged to the point where it was more dusty than putrid.
Three bodies lay on the bed.
An elderly man and woman, their gray hair thin and wispy against yellowed pillowcases, flanked a teenage girl positioned between them. The three were arranged as if in sleep, the parents' arms wrapped around their daughter in a final embrace. Their skin had mummified in the dry air of the sealed room, pulled tight over skulls and bones, lips drawn back from teeth in unconscious grimaces.
Murder-suicide, Price assessed with grim professionalism. He'd seen it before in war zones, when people chose their own end rather than face whatever horrors were coming. The way they were positioned spoke of a conscious choice made together.
His eyes tracked to the nightstand beside the man. A Glock 19 Gen 5 lay there, a solid choice for home defense. Reliable, easy to maintain, good capacity. Price picked it up, ejected the magazine—empty—and checked the chamber. Also empty. The slide had been locked back, suggesting it had been fired until the last round was expended. He looked closer at the man's skull and found what he expected: a small, neat hole in the right temple.
Price set the pistol back down, feeling a weight settle in his chest. Whatever had driven these people to this point, whatever had made them choose this fate for themselves and their daughter, it must have been something truly horrific.
He left the room, closing the door softly behind him out of an instinctive respect for the dead.
Downstairs, the living room revealed more clues. A rickety wooden table sat beneath the grimy front window, its surface cluttered with the detritus of someone's last days: empty bottles, a flashlight with corroded batteries, scattered photographs of people Price didn't recognize, all smiling in happier times.
And a map.
Price approached the table slowly, his eyes locked on the map spread across its surface. The edges were frayed and yellowed with age, the paper soft from repeated folding and unfolding. But the text across the top was still legible in bold letters: "The State of Georgia."
Georgia. The United States.
Price's brow furrowed, confusion and disbelief warring in his mind. He could still vividly remember the pursuit—him and Soap tearing down that underground river in Afghanistan, the Zodiac bucking beneath them, the cave walls blurring past. He remembered the satisfying kick of his rifle when the third shot struck the Pave Low's tail rotor, the spray of hydraulic fluid, the helicopter's death spiral.
He remembered the waterfall. The impact. The cold, violent water.
He remembered dragging himself up the muddy bank, every muscle screaming, his head ringing from the concussion. He remembered running through the sandstorm toward the crashed Pave Low, arriving just in time to see Shepherd standing over Soap with that massive .44 Magnum cocked and aimed at his sergeant's head.
Price's fist clenched involuntarily at the memory. He'd tackled Shepherd, thrown everything he had into that desperate charge. They'd fought, fists and knees and elbows, two soldiers with nothing left to lose trading blows in the howling sand. He'd tried to kick the revolver away, but his injured leg had betrayed him. Shepherd had gotten to the gun first.
Price's left hand moved unconsciously to his forehead, fingers probing the skin above his right eye. He half-expected to find torn flesh, a crater where the bullet had entered. But there was nothing—no wound, no scar, not even a scab. Just smooth skin and the familiar contours of his own skull.
It should have been him. The gun had been pointed directly at his head, Shepherd's finger tightening on the trigger, that last bullet—"for you, Price"—already on its way. There should have been a muzzle flash and then nothing, just darkness and whatever came after.
Instead, he was here. In Georgia. In the United States. Thousands of miles from where he should be.
It pained him, this failure. He was Captain John Price, veteran of conflicts across three decades, leader of Task Force 141, a man who'd stared down warlords and terrorists and come out on top every time. He wasn't supposed to fail. It should have been Shepherd lying dead in that desert, eyes wide with fear and recognition, a bullet in his brain. Not Soap wounded, maybe dying. Not Price mysteriously transported halfway around the world with no memory of how he'd gotten here.
Please, God, Price thought, the closest he'd come to prayer in years, let Soap have finished it. Let him have put that bastard down.
But dwelling on what should have been wouldn't help him now. Price forced himself to refocus on the present, on the evidence before him. He sighed deeply, the sound carrying all the weariness of a man who'd seen too much and was about to see more.
Beside the map lay a newspaper, folded but not neatly—someone had been reading it, then set it aside in haste or despair. Price picked it up, noting how the paper felt brittle, like it might crumble at too rough a touch. The date at the top read nearly eight months ago.
The headline dominated the front page in stark, black letters: "GLOBAL OUTBREAK CAUSES MASS PANIC."
Price scanned the article rapidly, his trained mind extracting key information even as his disbelief grew. The outbreak had originated in Europe, reportedly from a laboratory accident in France. The infection spread with terrifying speed—within weeks it had crossed oceans, within months it had touched every continent. The President of the United States had declared martial law. The military had been deployed to "quell the Walkers," though the article made it clear that these efforts were failing as fast as they were implemented.
The images accompanying the story made Price's skin crawl. Grainy photographs showed figures that had once been human, their flesh gray and decaying, mouths open in silent snarls, attacking civilians in scenes of utter chaos. A woman in a business suit, her face half-torn away, reaching for a screaming child. A police officer covered in blood, being swarmed by a dozen shambling corpses. Bodies in the streets, piled like cordwood.
"Walkers," Price whispered, the word foreign on his tongue.
He read further, skimming through the medical jargon and the political finger-pointing to the core facts: the dead were coming back. Not metaphorically, not theoretically—literally reanimating after death, driven by some primal hunger to attack and feed on the living. A bite was enough to transmit the infection. Death followed within hours or days. Then reanimation. Then more victims. An exponential nightmare.
The article detailed society's collapse with clinical precision. Supply chains breaking down. Power grids failing as workers abandoned their posts. Hospitals overrun. Police forces overwhelmed. Entire cities going dark and silent. The military's last reported position had been establishing "safe zones" around major population centers, but even those were described as "under siege."
That had been eight months ago, according to the date. Eight months since this newspaper had been printed. God only knew how much worse it had gotten since then.
Price set the newspaper down, his mind racing through the implications. This wasn't some localized outbreak or Third World epidemic. This was a full-scale apocalyptic event. The kind of scenario intel analysts had dismissed as science fiction, the stuff of cheap movies and pulp novels.
Except it was real. The dead family upstairs proved that. The abandoned cabin proved that. The unnatural silence of the forest proved that.
He folded the map carefully, creasing it along its existing lines, and tucked it into one of his vest's interior pockets. The newspaper followed, folded and secured. In hostile territory, information was worth its weight in gold, and right now Price was operating with a severe intelligence deficit.
One thing was becoming painfully clear: whatever world he'd known before—the world of Task Forces and terrorist cells, of geopolitical chess games and surgical strikes—that world was gone. Or rather, he'd been torn from it and deposited here, in a world where the dead walked and civilization had crumbled.
The questions that had been circling his mind since waking crystallized into something manageable: Where exactly was he? How bad was the situation really? Were there survivors? Organized military? Refugee camps? And, most pressing of all: how was he going to survive long enough to find answers to any of these questions?
Price checked his gear one more time—a habit so ingrained it was practically autonomic. Rifle loaded and functional, pistol loaded, knife sharp, grenades ready. He had perhaps three magazines for the HK433C, maybe two for the M1911. Not much ammunition for what promised to be a very dangerous environment. The canned goods and water would last him a few days if rationed carefully. After that, he'd need to scavenge or hunt.
He'd been in worse situations. Not many, admittedly, but a few.
Steeling himself with a deep breath, Captain John Price shouldered the small backpack, adjusted his rifle sling, and stepped back out onto the cabin's creaking porch. The afternoon sun was sinking lower, painting the forest in shades of amber and shadow. He had maybe three hours of good daylight left.
He needed to move, to get oriented, to find higher ground or a landmark or something that would give him a better understanding of his tactical situation. Staying in one place, especially in an exposed location like this cabin, was asking for trouble. If the dead really did walk, then he needed to be mobile, adaptable, ready to fight or flee as the situation demanded.
As Price descended the porch steps and headed back into the forest, the weight of the unknown pressed heavily upon him—not paralyzing, but sobering. He'd fought in Pripyat, in the Middle East, in South America. He'd toppled regimes and hunted the world's most dangerous men.
But he'd never fought the dead.
The forest swallowed him once more, and Captain Price disappeared into the green shadows, moving with purpose toward an uncertain future in a world that had died while he slept.