NightFall

The day the world ends starts just like every other day.

Three days after the 747 had taxied back down the runway and disappeared into the darkness she got the word that she had come to dread as she delved deeper down the rabbit hole of what had been encountered in the African desert several years ago. The workups done on the two subjects had been thorough but shed no light on what this was or how they were different. The samples of infected that had been collected only reinforced the fear and urgency. It also reinforced the futility. She understood enough about how it went about invading the host to know that stopping it was not going happen. As she read more papers written by the tight circle of scientists that were actually briefed in from the beginning she could see the telltale signs of circular logic and certainty bias begin to sink in. Paper after paper beating the same dead horse over and over again as they kept thinking applying the same logic from a different angle was going to make a difference. She understood how they thought and had to admit that if she had been there from the beginning she probably would have suffered the same tunnel vision.
The night before she had stood at the edge of the runway in full biohazard gear watching the meteor shower fill the sky. She had laughed during the decontamination as they fervently scrubbed the top layer of skin off of what she already knew was an infected host, herself. They all were. Maybe, somewhere near the center of the earth, in a deep pocket surrounded by molten lead there were some places that this submicroscopic life form hadn't penetrated but she was pretty confident that a hot shower and some caustic soap wasn't stopping anything. Two hours later as she gazed into the blood she had drawn from her own arm she knew she had been right. She didn't know where the signal would come from first. But once the first odd report came out of Madagascar, she knew it was only a matter of time. The major had simply stuck his head in the door as he rapped his knuckles on the frame.
"Doc?" He said.
"Yes?" She said without looking up from the microscope.
"NightFall." He said.
She heard his footsteps echo down the hallway. She blinked as a tear dripped onto the eyepiece.'

The Marionette Zombie Series is the story of survival in a world of the undead.