Mutagen-Chapter 1 The Arrival, Starting The End Of The Peaceful Era

<strong>Day 1 - 5:22 AM - South Triangle, Diliman, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines</strong>

A busy place whether it was the time of the day or the night. Buildings small and large should be seen everywhere along with the people minding their own business.

Unfortunately this day, everyone's peaceful morning was severely disturbed. Different sounds of sirens echoed across the large area of the city. Some might find it more acceptable if a crime happened and the noise was caused by the police chasing after the criminal.

However, that was not the case.

The media, the police, rescue workers, firefighters, and many other people with the same field of work gathered. They made their way to this place as fast as possible even it was this early.

Still, even in their field of work, everyone felt devastated by the scene in front of them.

Buildings, whether business or residential establishments, collapsed. Flames spread almost everywhere mixed with the debris scattered around the area. Several streets were blocked and inaccessible because of the destruction.

The number of deaths could not be estimated just by looking at the scene in front of them.

And the cause, it was not an earthquake as anyone would have expected. A huge passenger plane, an Airbus A350, crashed in the middle of the city. Its huge body crashed unto the buildings causing the collapse of many while the plane itself was dismembered into pieces.

As the buildings cushioned the crash of the plane, large parts of its body still managed to retain its shape. Some of the airplane's fuselage was still intact and lay there motionless among the debris. The people around hoped that there would be survivors among the passengers of the plane.

They would have never thought that they would have changed their minds later.

Rescue immediately started as they tried to address the disaster. Looking for survivors on both the collapsed buildings and the plane, extinguishing the fire, carrying the injured to the ambulances, and record the situation for media coverage.

As fast as they started, as fast the next disaster ensued.

People emerged, stumbling from the intact parts of the airplane. Rescuers rushed to their aid. Everyone exclaimed for the miracle that they witnessed. It was like a dream.

The dream, however, became a nightmare in the blink of an eye.

"AAHHHHH!!!"

Blood-curling screams from the rescuers were heard. The people that they were supposed to help from the crashed airplane lunged at them. The supposed survivors of the airplane started biting and tearing the rescuers and everyone else at the surroundings.

As if that was not enough, an eight-foot-tall abomination burst out from one of the airplane's remains with its festering skin and ear-piercing roars.

Gunshots ensued as the police finally took action.

However, they were not enough to deal with the current situation. f𝑟e𝒆𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗oѵ𝐞𝗹.c૦𝑚

Everyone that ran away for their lives could only think of one thing.

'Why did that airplane not explode into pieces instead.'

***

<strong>Day 1 - 9:27 AM - Emilio Aguinaldo Highway, Bacoor City, Cavite, Philippines</strong>

"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 had gone out, he was not going too far from home. Yet today, he was forced to do a whole hour of travel, just to reach his initial destination.

His electricity bill was due by today. Being lazy to go out of the house, it ended up like this.

Since he 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 afterward.

Due to the unexpected heavy traffic, it was already past 8:00 AM when he arrived. Mark felt lucky that when he arrived, only four people were 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 staff of the office getting flustered 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."

The branch manager explained.

Many of the customers asked questions. They learned that the current problem rooted in 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 days without electricity at home and would also need to 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 as 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.

Before he walked up the stairs of the overpass, there are too many people walking in the same direction. When he was walking across the overpass, he should have been able to see that the flow of traffic, was rather way heavier than usual. Numerous annoying sounds of car horns echoed across the highway as the drivers of the cars stuck in the heavy traffic expressed their frustration.

Even stranger was that the heavy traffic only affected the northbound lane of the highway while the southbound lane had far too few 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.

***

<strong>Day 1 - 10:04 AM - Emilio Aguinaldo Highway Cr. Tirona Highway, Panapaan IV</strong>

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 an attempt to counter-flow and overtake the vehicles in front of him.

It was then that a city bus from the northern side of the highway appeared moving at a very high speed. As the traffic in this lane was going rather 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 bus, on the other hand, was sent flying due to the impact. It rolled several times obliterating everything on its path whether it was other smaller vehicles or people. Its onslaught only stopped after crashing into another large bus.

The whole event 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 them. 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 a 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 that 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-curdling screams echoed across the highway for everyone to hear.

What everyone saw was 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-curdling screams could be heard.