Day of Chaos — Minutes Before the Panic Began
Dr. Antero Chaves State SchoolAmaro Ribeiro District, Conselheiro Lafaiete
The Amaro Ribeiro district borders Paulo VI, where the Cohab community would later be founded by Alonso Reidner and João Paulo. But in Amaro Ribeiro, things took a very different turn. Groups began forming all over the neighborhood, eventually growing into territorial factions that would soon wage war against one another over scarce resources. It wasn't just a fight for food and shelter anymore—it was also a struggle for slave labor and military strength.
The remaining supplies all had an expiration date. Canned goods would last for a while, but anything perishable would soon rot away. Before long, survival would depend entirely on what the first generation of survivors could produce with their own hands—and that would demand blood, sweat, and death.
This was where everything began to spiral out of control.
At Dr. Antero Chaves State School, the afternoon passed without anything unusual. The courtyard was crowded, and a stage had been set up for a performance open to the public. Students wandered through the hallways, some buzzing with excitement, others completely indifferent.
Meanwhile, in an empty classroom at the back of the building, Lídia and Lucas were making out, breathing hard as they pressed themselves against each other. In the room next door, Marlon and Ana Luísa were doing the same, making the most of the few minutes they had before they had to return to pretending everything was normal.
Outside, Vinícius, Vivian, and Geovane stood watch, keeping an eye on the door so no teacher would catch their friends in the act. They chuckled under their breath, trading dirty jokes about the couples hiding inside.
On the school's sports court, a completely different scene was unfolding. Amanda Vitória and Letícia sat on the concrete steps beside the chain-link fence. Letícia was crying, her face buried in her hands. She had broken up with Geovane that morning after finding out he had been cheating on her. It wasn't just some vague rumor—she had seen the messages on his phone herself. Now all that remained was the bitter taste of betrayal.
Not knowing how to comfort her friend, Amanda gently rubbed her back and said,
"Don't do this to yourself, girl. Why can't you see you're better off without him? You know he doesn't deserve you, right? He's a total asshole."
Letícia lifted her head, her eyes red and swollen.
"The problem is... I love him, Amanda. I still can't believe he did this to me. I would've done anything for that guy..."
Amanda let out a quiet sigh, a knot tightening in her throat. She had run out of things to say. Instead, she wrapped her arms around her friend, hoping the embrace alone could offer some comfort.
"I know it hurts, but sooner or later, it'll get better. You'll meet someone else someday. Honestly, you've still got it better than me—I haven't even had a boyfriend. I always end up getting hurt before I can even steal a single kiss."
She forced a smile, trying to lighten the mood.
Letícia let out a faint laugh, but before she could say anything, a scream ripped through the air.
Just one.
Sharp. Desperate.
It came from the main hallway.
Then another.
And another.
Within seconds, the entire school erupted into a horrifying chorus of panic and terror.
The two girls locked eyes, frozen in place, when a deafening crash echoed across the courtyard.
The sound of shattering glass.
A heavy body slamming into the ground.
A woman's scream rose above all the others, followed by a guttural, inhuman roar.
Chaos had arrived.
Inside the school building, students ran in blind panic, crashing into one another and knocking over chairs and backpacks as they fled. Blood spread with terrifying speed, splattering across the walls and soaking the floors. People were changing within seconds, throwing themselves at anyone nearby as though an all-consuming hunger had erased everything that made them human.
***
At the entrance to Ouro Branco, the massive steel mill dominated the landscape, running around the clock with its blazing furnaces and constantly replenished gas tanks. But when the virus began spreading through the air, there was no time to evacuate. Within hours, every worker had been infected, turning the industrial heart of the city into a graveyard of steel and staggering corpses.
With no operators left to monitor the systems, pressure inside the storage tanks rose to dangerous levels. Gas built up unchecked throughout the pipelines, triggering a catastrophic overload. Every critical section of the mill became a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode. On the fifth day after the pandemic began, the disaster reached its breaking point.
The explosion was catastrophic.
The blast was felt for dozens of miles, a deafening roar that rolled across the region like an enraged clap of thunder. Ouro Branco was all but erased from the map. Buildings collapsed like houses of cards, streets were ripped open into burning craters, and the few survivors were hurled into a living hell of fire and twisted debris. The sky blackened with soot and fragments of the steel mill while the ground itself trembled beneath the force of the detonation.
Conselheiro Lafaiete, the neighboring city, didn't escape the catastrophe. The shockwave tore through entire neighborhoods, destroying nearly half the city. The air filled with the stench of scorched metal, shattered concrete, and charred flesh. Homes were reduced to rubble, and twisted vehicles littered the streets like the skeletons of a world falling apart.
Thousands of people—infected and uninfected alike—were wiped out in a matter of seconds. All that remained of the steel mill was a mangled colossus of molten steel and billowing black smoke. Ouro Branco and much of Conselheiro Lafaiete had become enduring monuments to the apocalypse—a brutal reminder that the world itself was collapsing alongside civilization.
***
In the beginning, only a handful of people managed to survive the infected attacks. Desperate to stay alive, they did whatever it took to endure. Amid the chaos and growing paranoia, survivors began finding one another, forming small groups that gradually expanded into independent communities.
These communities soon claimed the neighborhoods they had come from as their own territories, securing control over whatever resources were still within easy reach. With law and order completely gone, the city of Conselheiro Lafaiete fractured into rival factions, each neighborhood enforcing its own rules. Old feuds and territorial rivalries that had existed long before the outbreak resurfaced with a vengeance—but this time, there was no government left to keep them in check. Without warning or any shared code of conduct, some of these communities began enslaving outsiders, turning survival into a brutal game of domination and submission.
Even so, a few long-standing alliances between neighborhoods survived the apocalypse. Amaro Ribeiro and Paulo VI, for example, had always been known as sister neighborhoods. Paulo VI—the primary setting of this new age of chaos—already carried a dark reputation before the pandemic. It was one of the most feared neighborhoods in the city, a place few people dared to enter. Its greatest rival had always been JK, which, on the fifth day after the outbreak began, was hit hard by the massive explosion that originated in Congonhas and Ouro Branco.
Four days before that catastrophic blast, however, JK had already established itself as a dominant force. Unlike other neighborhoods that splintered because of internal conflict, the people of JK remained united enough to organize quickly. That unity allowed Leonardo and Donizetti to rise as the community's undisputed leaders. They ruled with complete authority, without opposition. During the first three days of the chaos, they had one goal: gather as many survivors as possible and establish themselves as the strongest resistance in the city.
They succeeded.
In a remarkably short time, nearly one hundred people were already under their leadership.
Walkie-talkies proved essential to JK's expansion. Using them, they were able to map the surrounding area quickly and plan safe routes for moving through the city. Their weapons of choice were machetes—easy to find, deadly at close range, and quiet enough to avoid attracting more infected. Not everyone, however, believed that was the right choice.
After gathering a large number of survivors, Leonardo and Donizetti led the group to the Granja das Hortênsias condominium complex. The promise was simple: a safe haven, isolated enough to build a new life without the constant threat of the infected. But claiming that territory would come at a terrible cost.
The complex was overrun.
The battle to clear it was relentless—a massacre without mercy. The infected came in wave after wave, and every yard they gained was paid for in blood. Machetes split open skulls, bodies were torn apart, yet the horde seemed endless. The fighting dragged on for hours—perhaps even days—in a nightmare where exhaustion and despair weighed just as heavily as the blood soaking the ground.
Of the one hundred survivors who set out, only thirty lived through the slaughter.
Granja das Hortênsias was finally theirs—but it had cost them friends, allies, and any illusion that surviving this new world would ever be easy.
***
When chaos erupted, Amanda and Letícia barely had time to process what was happening. The deafening sounds of screams and violent blows echoed across the sports court. Startled, they jumped to their feet and ran. The moment they reached the courtyard, they froze at the horrifying scene unfolding before them.
It was a massacre.
Students, teachers, staff—no one seemed safe. People were slaughtering each other like wild animals, bodies piling across the ground as the stench of fresh blood filled the air. Terror seized the two girls, and they sprinted away in panic, searching desperately for any place they could hide from the living nightmare.
One of the school's gates had been left wide open because of an event held earlier that day. It allowed the students who hadn't been infected to escape—but it also unleashed the massacre onto the streets.
The horror was no longer contained.
Upstairs, Vinícius was standing watch by one of the classroom doors when the first screams reached him. Curious, he opened the door and peeked inside, where a few students were secretly making out.
"Yo, there's a fight! A fight downstairs!" he shouted, excited at the thought of watching a brawl.
Kézia, who was standing nearby, lit up with excitement. The desperate screams sounded like nothing more than another typical school commotion.
"For real?" she asked with a laugh, eager to see the drama.
Marlon was the first to step out and look over the railing.
What he saw wasn't a fight.
It made his stomach turn.
The courtyard was drenched in blood. People were killing each other as if they had gone violently insane in an instant, clawing, biting, and tearing apart anyone within reach. The ground had become a carpet of bodies, and the youngest were falling first. Children who weren't even ten years old were being ripped to pieces without mercy, their screams cut short by the sheer brutality of the attacks.
Marlon stood frozen for a heartbeat, horror written across his face.
Then a single thought slammed into his mind.
Lelék!
He spun on his heels and bolted down the stairs, desperate to find his little brother. The others were slower to react, but the moment they looked down, they realized this wasn't just another school fight.
It was something far worse.
The excitement vanished from their faces.
Only panic remained.
Shaken to the core, they sprinted after Marlon. By the time they reached the ground floor, they realized the school wasn't nearly as crowded anymore. Many had escaped through the open gate, carrying the massacre beyond the school's walls.
Now, an eerie silence hung over the building.
It was broken only by the sound of blood dripping... and the faint rustling of bodies strewn across the ground.
Then it hit them.
Surrounded by corpses...
They were the only ones still alive.
The school courtyard looked like a battlefield. Thick pools of blood spread across the pavement, mixing with dust and shards of glass from the shattered windows. Small bodies lay everywhere—some twisted into impossible shapes, others so badly trampled by the panicked crowd that they were no longer recognizable. Most had been torn apart, chewed down to the bone, but many had died without ever being touched by the infected, crushed beneath the feet of people desperate to escape.
Lucas had always been the kind of person who stayed informed. Like Bruno and Íris, he spent hours following the news, digging into every new theory surrounding the bizarre outbreak that had already been haunting the internet for weeks. Now, staring at the carnage before him, a chill ran down his spine. His eyes darted across the infected's mangled faces, mentally comparing them to the images that had been circulating online long before everything fell apart.
The yellowed skin.
The necrotic wounds.
The dull, lifeless eyes.
Everything matched.
Lucas felt his mouth go dry as he muttered,
"Shit... judging by how they look, I'm almost certain this is CWD..."
Ana Maria, standing beside him, frowned. The terror on her face made it obvious she had no idea what he was talking about.
"CW... what?"
Lucas didn't answer.
Terror had taken hold of him.
In a sudden burst of panic, he turned to the others and shouted at the top of his lungs,
"We're fucked! Everybody hide, now!"
He didn't wait to see who followed. His feet were already moving before anyone could react. He sprinted up the stairs, his shoes slipping on the blood-slick steps. Spotting an empty classroom, he threw the door open, rushed inside, and locked it behind him. Ana Maria was right behind him, gasping for breath, her eyes wide with fear.
Downstairs, everyone else was still trying to make sense of what was happening. Some looked around frantically, unsure where to run, while others tried to pull Marlon toward a safer spot.
But he didn't move.
His eyes were locked on the school gate.
Outside...
In the middle of the chaos...
Lelék.
Marlon's little brother was surrounded by two infected. The boy couldn't have been more than nine years old. His skinny legs trembled as he struggled helplessly against the creatures attacking him. One of them had already sunk its teeth into his shoulder, hot blood streaming down his school uniform. The other lunged at him, filthy hands reaching to grab him.
Something inside Marlon shattered.
"Lelék!"
The scream tore from his throat, raw with desperation. Without thinking of anything except saving his brother, he charged toward the gate. His body moved on pure instinct. The first infected was sent flying backward by a savage kick to the head, crashing into the pile of bodies on the ground. The second lunged for him, but Marlon twisted away at the last second, feeling the creature's icy fingers brush against his shirt.
Time seemed to crawl.
His chest heaved with ragged breaths.
His eyes found Lelék...
And in that instant...
Everything fell apart.
The boy wasn't struggling anymore.
His eyes stared blankly into nothing.
There was no life left in them.
His lips hung slightly open, but no sound escaped.
Blood continued to pour from the wound, leaving a dark trail across the ground.
Marlon stood frozen.
The world around him seemed to warp. Voices, screams, and every other sound faded into a distant, muffled haze. It felt as though he were sinking into a suffocating bubble of silence.
A noise behind him snapped him back to reality.
The infected had heard his scream.
Now they were coming for him.
Marlon staggered back, his entire body trembling. Despair gave way to sheer terror as he realized he didn't have time to grieve. If he stayed there for even one more second, he'd end up just like Lelék.
He turned...
And ran.
He tore down the steep hill leading away from the school, his feet barely touching the ground. The wind slashed across his face, mixing with the tears streaming uncontrollably down his cheeks. His chest burned—not just from the sprint, but from the gaping hole that seemed to have opened inside him.
The infected were right behind him.
He could hear their growls.
Their guttural moans.
The sound of dragging footsteps closing in.
But he never looked back.
Because he knew there was nothing left to see.
All he could do now was run...
And carry the weight of that guilt for the rest of his life.