Mutagen

Day 1 - 9:27 AM - Emilio Aguinaldo Highway, Bacoor City, Cavite, Philippines

"Haaa….."

Mark sighed as he climbed up the stairs of the overpass. His sigh did not contain any feelings of disappointment or gloominess but was filled with annoyance. He was too annoyed that he could just punch the person walking in front of him and his annoyance would still not dissipate.

He was not the type of person to leave his house too often and even if he goes out, he was not going too far from home. Yet today, he was forced to do a whole hour travel just going to his initial destination.

His electricity bill was due by today. Since needed to pay the bill, he woke up by 6:00 AM and left to go to the distribution office before 7:00 AM. He wanted to finish his task as early as possible and go home afterwards.

Due to the unexpected heavy traffic, it was already past 8:00 AM when he arrived. Mark felt lucky that when he arrived, there were only four people waiting in line. He arrived late so he expected that there would be more people. Lining up at the back, he thought that he would be able to go home early. However, those thoughts shattered when he noticed that none of the customers lined up before him were called for quite a while.

Time passed by and more people arrived. Still, not a single transaction was made since the time the office opened this morning.

Mark started feeling impatient but he could not just leave the payment for another day. If he did, he should expect that his house would not have electricity by tomorrow. It was not just Mark but the other customers also felt the same. Many of them already started complaining and started to ask the office staff that passed by every now and then.

Soon, Mark noticed the staffs of the office getting fl.u.s.tered over something. They were going back and forth while doing their work with unnerved expressions.

At 9:27 AM, the problem was finally disclosed to the customers.

"Our apologies but there seemed to be problems with our system. Transactions will get delayed until we fix the issues."

Many of the customers asked questions. They learned that the current problem rooted from the side of the Main Office and no one can tell when the transactions would be continued.

As they have no other choices left, the annoyed customers left the office while grumbling about the amount of time they wasted by waiting.

Mark felt frustrated as he needed to pay the bill badly. He left while thinking of checking the office again in the afternoon. He really can't delay the payment for another day. If things did not go well, he will surely spend some day without electricity at home and would need to also pay a reconnection fee.

"How troublesome…"

He grumbled under his breath while walking on the overpass.

Since he needed to pass time, he decided to spend it at the city mall a few blocks away. He might as well play some arcade while waiting. It would be a good way to cool down his head.

Still, he needed to wait for some time since the mall opens at 10:00 AM.

Mark walked down the stairs on the other end of the overpass and left towards the direction of the mall.

Maybe, because he felt too frustrated or because he did not go to this place too much, he failed to notice the strange happenings in the area.

Even stranger was that the heavy traffic only affected the northbound lane of the highway while the southbound lane had far too less cars than usual.

No one noticed. Almost all of the cars moving southbound did not come from the northern end but from the branching roads on the western side of the highway. Moreover, the cars that actually came from the northern side of the highway are driving over the speed limit. The cars are moving that fast as if they are trying to escape from something.

***

Day 1 - 10:04 AM - Emilio Aguinaldo Highway Cr. Tirona Highway

A heavily frustrated jeepney driver can't wait for the frozen flow of traffic anymore. He slowly drove his jeepney towards the southbound lane of the highway in attempt to counter-flow and overtake the vehicles on front of him.

It is then that a city bus from the northern side of the highway appeared moving in a very high speed. As the traffic in this lane is rather going smoothly, the bus managed to avoid accidents despite how dangerous it is speeding up.

By a twist of fate, the jeepney driver failed to notice the bus and drove out from his lane at the exact moment that the bus came.

When half of the jeepney already left its lane, the bus that did not even try to avoid, crashed against the jeepney with great force.

The jeepney with its totally crushed front half was thrown and crashed again at the vehicles behind it.

The whole even was horrifying to all who witnessed it. The dozens of vehicles involved in the accident now became mangled metal coffins with blood dripping from what remained of the vehicles. Broken and mangled parts of the vehicles littered the road alongside the bodies of the unfortunate people that were rolled over and crushed by the bus.

Severed, crushed, caved in and mangled were just few of the words that could describe the gruesome appearance of the dead bodies that were lying in the middle of the highway.

Many witnesses felt their knees go weak and some pulled their eyes away from the nauseating appearance of the dead bodies. The shock and fear they felt when they saw everything that happened could not be explained with just a few words.

Those with clearer minds immediately took out their phones to frantically call for help. However, for some strange reason that no one here knew about, all what they heard from their phones are beeping sounds. No one was able to connect their calls on the emergency hotlines they knew.

The flow of cars totally stopped and the people started gathering around the site of the accident. Those who took out their phones to call for help continued trying while others started taking pictures and videos

It was then that…

"Hey look!"

No one knew who shouted but everyone's attention was called unto the wreckage that couldn't even be recognized as a bus anymore. It was because…

Even if they were crawling, staggering and moving slowly, even wounded and had broken bones protruding out of their bodies, the supposed to be dead passengers slowly emerged from that bus.

The good Samaritans immediately ran towards the bus to help the injured people. Nevertheless, the first thing the "injured" people did was to jump towards the nearest person trying to help. It was then that blood curling screams echoed across the highway for everyone to hear.

What everyone saw were the person trying to help getting bitten to death by the "injured" people. The other people around tried to help the bitten person just to suffer the same fate.

The people who saw the scene of the accident had not even able to get over their shock when a large number of people could be seen running away from the northern side of the highway. Panic was apparent in everyone's faces as they ran away. Behind them, more blood curling screams could be heard.