Francisco Ermita-
A 17 year-old boy standing at 171 centimeters, sporting messy black hair and black eyes. He was born in Pangasinan on March 17, 2025 and raised in Nueva Ecija during most of his life. When the Philippine economy collapsed, Francisco and his parents tried to move to Tarlac. On the way, their car was stampeded over by carabaos. He was the only survivor.
His past is all but a mere shadow as he attempts to survive in a world razed by mutants. Everyday, Francisco wanders around the wasteland that was once called the Philippines searching for valuable items that could be salvaged. He lives at a degraded house somewhere near the village of Mayantoc in the Central areas of Luzon, the Philippines' largest island. Along with four other people, Francisco tries his best to not die early at the hands of inhuman creatures and inhumane humans.
"Wake up!"
This marks the start of Francisco's morning routine. Being shouted at by a girl almost as old as him. His eyes open to see the ever-unchanging view of a wooden ceiling with chipped-off paint. He was lying down on a mattress on the floor of a small bedroom. There were three open jalousie windows lining one side of the old bedroom and an electric floor fan at a corner, swinging its head around to circulate air around the room.
"Okay, okay, wait." He said as he stretched his body. He stood up and put on a green cotton shirt as per every morning that he wakes up, since he sleeps shirtless. The girl who serves as his alarm clock is the sixteen-year old Calliope Castelo, a averagely tall girl with brown eyes and chest-length black hair. A girl with very little outfit combinations, Calliope normally wears an indigo-colored windbreaker on top of a sleeveless undershirt and an old brown skirt originally from the school uniform of an unknown girl that they tried to nurse back to a stable state but eventually died of bloodloss from a much larger wound than the one they tried to patch up.
Calliope put her hands inside of her windbreaker pockets. "Come on, Isko." She grabbed Francisco's pants from above a desk and threw it at him. "Kuya Ron wants us to get stuff." Francisco caught the pants with his left hand and wore it over his boxer shorts. He followed Calliope out of the bedroom and out to a short hallway with three doors. The door opposite of the one they came out of was the door to a different bedroom. The door adjacent to the right of their door was for the bathroom.
To their left was the house kitchen. There was a working refrigerator there, along with a gas stove and a microwave oven. Ahead was a living room with a couch that had very uncomfortable leather upholstery. Sitting on the couch was a tall man in his early twenties, Alfonso Garcia, tinkering with an old radio, something he has been doing for the past week. His goal is to convert the radio into a two-way one, but as the world came apart before he could finish his education as an electrical engineer, he's rather underqualified for the job of doing it.
"Al, what's your progress with the radio?" Francisco asked him. After a minute, Alfonso dropped his screwdriver looked up at him with a look of hopelessness. "Isko, I don't know what to do anymore." He plainly says. "I can't do anything to this thing." He stood up and kicked the coffee table that the disassembled radio was scattered on before heading to the kitchen.
"Al's been cranky because of his project." Calliope scratched her cheek and said to Francisco. "Don't worry though, he'll pull through somehow." She said hopefully, though her aversion to Francisco's eyes suggested otherwise.
The two walked out to the front porch of the house. There lay a bunch of wooden planks and cutting tools. From here, one can already see the makeshift defenses put up around the house. A meter-high fence lined with barbed wire surrounding the house was the first line of defense. A bit more literal, the second line of defense was a thin line of concertina wire suspended a meter above the ground. These two worked really well in keeping the brainless infected away from the house, but it was useless against the smarter mutants.
At the entrance of the gate, Annaliza Domingo, a twenty-eight year-old photographer by profession was smoking a cigarette. With her sunglasses on, you'd think she was a model or an influential celebrity. But in reality, she's the older sister of the group. She enjoyed drinking beer and protecting Calliope and Francisco, since they were the youngest in the group. Even so, when she smokes this early in the morning, the two knew better than to disturb her.
Out the back of the house was the incomplete chassis of a Nissan Frontier and a shed. Working on the restoration of the vehicle was a tall man in his thirties. The de-facto leader of the group, this man was Sergeant Ronaldo Gutierrez a former military combat engineer. The man wasn't all muscular, but he wasn't lean either. Standing at almost six feet, Ronaldo had a fearful, yet cheerful aura surrounding him.
"Oy Kuya Ron!" Calliope called out. Ronaldo turned around from the pickup truck and smiled at her and Francisco. "Ah yes, you finally woke Isko up." He walked over to the two and pointed towards the field in the distance.
"You guys see that?" He pointed at a thick column of smoke near the horizon. Francisco squinted at the rising black clouds. "I need you two to get close to it and try to find out what's happening there." Ronaldo gave Francisco a slight pat on the back. "And while you're at it, take care of Calliope, Isko." He told him in a whisper.
Francisco nodded and looked at Calliope.
Calliope looked back at him and grinned. "It'll be fun, Isko!" She says in a cheerful way.
"Okay, make haste so you can be back for dinner!" Ronaldo says loudly.
It was normal for the two to be sent out to retrieve supplies and other items. The two were prepared for situations like these and stocked food, water and weaponry inside backpacks that were kept at the living room. Ronaldo had trained them sufficiently on the use of firearms such as the MP5 submachine gun and the Glock 17 pistols that they acquired from looting a police station.
"Isko." Calliope said while they walked along the road on the way to the smoke. "What do you think is out there?" She asked Francisco. Francisco retracted the stock of the MP5 he was carrying and let it hang from its sling. "It was a large plume, so probably an explosion." He shrugged.
"Let's hope it's not a ballistic mutant." Calliope laughed.
"Same." Francisco started whistling as they walked.
As the smoke got closer and closer, the two found themselves becoming more anxious about what awaited them.
"We're almost there." Francisco chuckled. He got his gun ready and looked at Calliope. The girl had been doing the same, checking the ammunition of her gun's magazine. "I know." She said to Francisco, while looking around cautiously.
The two eventually approached a large crater. "Oh." Francisco looked around the crater, searching for anything other than ash and dirt. "Seems to be twenty or thirty meters in diameter and a meter or three halves in depth" Calliope muttered to herself while tying her windbreaker around her waist. Francisco gave her a jolt by putting a hand on her shoulder. "What?" She asked Francisco in a surprised voice.
Francisco pointed at a figure apparently crawling at the other side of the crater. Calliope nodded and followed him as they walked around the crater to get to the figure. It was a person with body mostly burned by the explosion that caused the crater to appear. "Are you okay?!" Francisco walked up to it and asked.
The person ignored Francisco and kept crawling using one arm. Their lower body was charred and damaged, while the other arm was bent out of normal orientations. Francisco grimaced at the sight, but took a deep breath and called out to the person. "Are you okay?"
"...fire." The person muttered in a low voice. "...gas leak..." The person kept muttering. "Calliope, are you hearing this?" Francisco asked his companion. Calliope nodded and continued to stare at the crater. "What else do you have to say?" Francisco crouched down to hear the person better. "...black... ...scratch-"
"-BLADE." The person suddenly shouted.
Francisco put one hand over his left ear because of the ringing caused by the person's shout. "Blade?" He said to himself. Calliope turned back to Francisco because of the sight and immediately cried out. "ISKO!"
"What?" Francisco turned around just in time to see Calliope pushing him off balance.
With a blink, he saw something black rapidly descend from above his field of view.
He blinked again.
This time, when he opened his eyes, he wanted to blink once again but couldn't.
For there was an arm in the air.
And Calliope was squirting a red liquid out of the place where her arm was supposed to be.