Small enough to ignore. A bulge in a farmer’s field. A crack in a city road, formed overnight. But that was not the end. It split the ground open, exposing something red, pulsing and throbbing its way up. A wound that scarred the earth out of nowhere. A wound the earth made itself...

The growth was covered in swollen, fleshy red lumps, dripping with moisture and alive with trembling veins. Its pus sacs grew and grew until they burst with a deathly pop. It grew like a cancer under roads, farms and houses on every continent, all at once.

Cut it, and it grew back bigger. Burn it, and the ashes became fertiliser. They call it the Upwelling, or at least they did, back when the papers were still in print.

The growth became hungry for more than soil and stone. It started to inhabit animals: first chickens, then cows and, finally, horses. But it was still not enough. Hungry and rumbling for more, the growth went into people. Once inhabited, it was as if their souls had left their bodies. All that was left were ravenous bodies, biting and spreading as they walked the earth.

Desperate, humankind united. Across borders of hate, countries put their armies under one command and declared war on the earth. Burdened with failure, they made a decision: once the growth has taken you, death is your only mercy. A desperate hope that this would save us.

No matter the cost, people still sign up. Some want to kill, others want to help. Nobody cares about the reason, because it doesn’t matter. The odds are bad, and they will get worse. All that matters is that we get the job done.