We still don’t know how the initial outbreak began. By the time we connected the various reports of confused people wandering the streets, babbling strings of nonsense, they were everywhere. They stumble around in an almost drunken stupor. They seem to still have basic needs. They eat and drink, if they stumble across something appropriate in their wandering. But always ceaselessly spouting an endless stream of random words, even as they feed. Mostly though, what they do is corner you and, well, talk to you. Clinging to anyone they can reach, even pinning people down to just… ramble in their faces. We were so focused on their bizarre speech, we hadn’t realized until it was too late that they were spreading their condition through their touch.

When panic set in and the people began to attack the inflicted, we learned the devastating lesson that gave them their name. If they’re killed once fully turned, they release a cloud of spores. Rather explosively. A single afflicted killed can release enough spores to turn any unprotected human within five city blocks, under the right wind conditions. So, we called them hydra. Cut off one head, and a bunch more spring up. How do you fight that?

It’s hard to say exactly when this fight got to be too much to win, but for me, the world ended on a Saturday in late November. It was still early in all this. We’d heard a few stories on the news about an unexplained uptick in mentally ill drifters, but things were still, by and large, operating as normal. My wife wanted to shop for some Christmas presents, so I dropped her off at the mall and left to take care of some other errands on the other side of town. That was the last time I ever saw her.

As I drove back toward the mall a few hours later to pick her up, I was met by roadblocks. Military roadblocks. I was told that entire side of town was quarantined due to possible biological terrorism. The armed guards made it clear with a deafening warning shot that they didn’t care about my pleas to be allowed to find my wife. The walls went up three days later. Eleven days later the rest of the city was evacuated to refugee camps, and I lost any hope that my wife might miraculously be found alive. I pieced together the real story later through rumors in the camps. One of the hydra, unnoticed in the throng of holiday shoppers and assorted weirdos, had grabbed exactly the wrong person. Caught off-guard and terrified by the hydra’s hands on his face, the man drew a handgun and fired. The spores exploded out of the hydra’s body, spreading through the mall in less than a minute. One of the people I spoke to claimed he’d seen some phone footage from the event, and that in the seconds between the shooting and the spores, the panicked man looked at the crowd and said something like, “She knew my mother’s name.” Was that just the condition beginning to take hold?

Six months later some of us from the camp ended up being transferred to one of the remaining government facilities, where we’d supplement their dwindling staff by doing grunt work in exchange for our meals and a place safe from the hydra. The facility had a number of captured hydra that they were performing tests on. I suppose one of the higher ups had read their mythology, because as they finished their tests on each one, they’d dispose of it by way of fire. Someone had figured out that they could incinerate them in a sealed chamber, and the spores would burn up too, allowing you to kill it without spreading it. I was there when we learned that the hydra are somehow connected to each other. We didn’t have access to the fenced off area where they kept the hydra, but I could see into the yard from my bunk window. Each and every time I heard that incinerator fire up, each and every one of the hydra turned to look directly toward it, and stared until it shut off.

As things continued to get worse, the facility was shut down. Supply lines being as difficult to maintain as they were, we were all to board up on a few trucks to consolidate to another facility the next state over. They took one of the hydra along. I guess to continue testing when we stopped on the road. It was sealed in a plexiglass box with a few air holes, like a frog in a jar. They made us grunt workers ride in the truck with it. They didn’t even muzzle it, so we had to listen to its random ranting the entire way.

As the truck made its way along the icy mountain road, I felt a horrible lurch, and then a sudden plunging sensation. As the world outside the window spun, I caught sight of a throng of hydra in the middle of the road. The driver must’ve panicked and swerved and now we were careening off the edge of a cliff. As we began to tumble down the mountain, I braced myself between a seat and the wall as best I could, closed my eyes tight, and wondered if my wife would be waiting for me.

It’s a surprise to wake up. I’m beat to hell, one of my arms and a few ribs certainly broken. I drag myself out of the wreckage and try to make sense of my surroundings. After a few brief moments of looking around, I collapse, exhausted. It looks like I’m the only survivor. Or at least the only human survivor. I see the hydra before I hear its quiet but constant mumbling, its container having been thrown from the truck. The side of the container is broken, but so are the hydra’s legs. It’s crawled slightly out, but it looks like it’s even less able to move right now than I am. It unnerves me to have it that close, but it doesn’t seem to be an immediate danger, and I need to rest if I’m going to get out of here and go… where? What am I going to do, even if I get off this mountain? Exertion overtakes worry, and I soon fall asleep.

The morning light wakes me again, and while I’m still not in great shape, the night’s rest has helped. I manage to search through the wreckage of the truck and find a bottle of water. Drinking the larger part of it, it suddenly occurs to me that I have to share. If the hydra dies while I’m stuck here recovering so close to it, there will be no escaping the spores. I place the cap barely on the bottle and toss the remainder to the hydra. It manages to open it after some fumbling and drinks the rest, water streaming down the sides of its mouth as it babbles even while drinking.

I stay there another two nights recovering. The destroyed truck still provides at least some protection from the elements. I am laying in the truck on the second night, looking at the hydra across the small clearing. It’s starting to recover a bit too, though its legs are still useless. At the very least, its babbling has gotten louder, clearer. I can make out the specific words, though they still make no sense. Eventually as I listen, its nonsense words start to sound like a hypnotic chant. And then I don’t hear nonsense any more. It’s still speaking words and phrases that don’t make sentences, but the words aren’t random any more. Blue cheese. New Zealand. Jason. My wife’s favorite food. Our honeymoon destination. My name. The hydra repeats these words and others for hours. It tells me these things it somehow knows about me. Eventually, it tells them to me in my wife’s voice.

I understand what the hydra are now. They’re… like a hive mind, but they’re scattered, confused. Like an infant. A hundred, a thousand, a million voices all connected, and all shouting in confusion out of any mouth connected to the whole. I look down at the hydra on the ground before me. She certainly won’t survive on this mountain alone. I might survive, but for what? To keep going, in this ruined world, alone? I walk back to the truck. I’d found one other thing in the wreckage that I thought I’d have no need for, the guard’s pistol. I return to the hydra. As I said, she won’t survive. I grant her the only mercy I can: a quick death.

After days of the hydra’s chants, the sudden quiet after the gunshot feels strange. I drop the pistol and fall to my knees. As the spores burst from her body, I breathe deep and surrender. I close my eyes, and after a few moments the silence is broken by a growing whisper that comes from everywhere and nowhere. The whisper approaches a roar. At first it’s overwhelming, but somehow I manage to pick it out from the hydra’s chorus. My wife’s voice, clear and bright, calling me through the cacophony. Tears fill my eyes, and for the first time in months, a smile touches my twitching lips as I rise to my feet. My mouth already beginning to join in the hydra’s song of its own accord, I start stumbling down the mountain, following her voice home.