INT. BUNGALOW 47 - CONTINUOUS
John moved through the bungalow, pulling furniture toward the doors, checking windows, cataloging weapons.
“Barricade the back entrance. Curtains closed. We don’t want them knowing anyone’s inside.” He pointed at his son. “Michael, find light sources that don’t require electricity.”
Michael snapped into motion. “Candles in the bathroom. Resort matches too.”
“Good. Lisa, medical supplies?”
“First aid kit in the master bedroom. Basic. Bandages, antiseptic, painkillers.” She was already moving. “Sewing kit too.”
“Grab it. We might need to improvise.”
Sarah stood in the center of the room, watching her father transform into someone she’d never seen before. Not the CDC scientist who worked too much and missed too many dinners. Not the father who tried too hard to make up for it on weekends.
This was harder. Different.
“Dad.” Her voice cut through his planning. “Stop.”
John paused, hands full of chair cushions. “We don’t have time to…”
“We have time for you to tell us what we’re actually dealing with.” Sarah crossed her arms. The same posture Lisa used when she wasn’t going to be moved. “No more half-truths. What did you find in that lab?”
“Sarah…”
“She’s right.” Lisa emerged from the bedroom, first aid kit in hand. “If we’re going to survive, we need to know what ‘this’ is. All of it.”
John looked at his family. His wife who’d seen death more times than she could count. His daughter who’d never backed down from anything. His son whose encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies had suddenly become relevant.
He told them everything.
The engineered virus. The Nexus Biotech connection. The patients in the laboratory, transforming into creatures that weren’t human anymore. The way the infection spread. Fast. Aggressive. Rewiring the nervous system until only hunger remained.
When he finished, the room was still for five full seconds.
“So basically,” Michael said, “we’re in 28 Days Later meets Resident Evil, with a side of The Last of Us for the fungal component.”
“This isn’t a movie, Michael.”
“No, but the rules still apply.” Michael’s voice had changed. Steadier. More serious. “Infected are fast and aggressive. That’s the rabies. But they’re not immortal. Brain damage still works. The fungal element means they might coordinate somehow, like the cordyceps victims in that game.”
“He’s right.” Lisa’s nurse training was kicking in. John could see it in her posture. “Rabies affects the limbic system. Aggression, fear response, survival instincts. If the fungal component enhances neural networking…”
“They could hunt in packs,” John finished. “Exactly what I was afraid of.”
“So what do we do?” Sarah asked.
“We get off this island.” John moved to the window, carefully peeling back the curtain. Outside, nothing moved. That was worse than seeing the infected. “There should be boats at the marina. Emergency transport. We find a way there, commandeer a vessel that can make the crossing to the mainland.”
“That’s a mile across the resort,” Sarah said. “Through who knows how many of those creatures.”
“Which is why we’re not going through. We’re going around.” John pulled out his phone, brought up the resort map he’d photographed. “Service tunnels run under most main buildings. We use those to get close to the marina. Minimize surface exposure.”
“What about other survivors?” Lisa asked.
“We help who we can. But our priority is us.” John met his wife’s eyes. “I know how that sounds. But I’m not losing any of you to play hero.”
Lisa nodded. “When do we move?”
“Dawn. The infected seemed more active at night. Probably a holdover from nocturnal hunting patterns of the original hosts. We wait for light. Move fast. Stay together.”
“And until then?”
John looked at his family, felt the weight of what he was asking them to do.
“Until then, we rest. Because tomorrow…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t have to.
INT. BUNGALOW 47 - FOUR HOURS LATER
Sleep didn’t come. Not really.
John sat in the darkness, back against the barricaded door, listening to his family pretend to rest. Michael’s breathing was too even. Faking. Sarah hadn’t moved in an hour. Stress response, not sleep. Lisa dozed fitfully beside him, her hand never releasing the fruit knife.
Outside, the sounds had changed. Less screaming. More of that wet, rattling vocalization the infected made. Hunting sounds. Communication, maybe.
They were organizing.
A scratch at the door made John tense, but it was followed by three quick knocks. Human pattern.
“Don’t open it,” Lisa whispered, awake instantly.
“I know.” John pressed his ear to the wood. “Who’s there?”
“Survivors.” A man’s voice, heavily accented. “Please. We have wounded.”
John looked at Lisa. She shook her head, but he could see the conflict in her face. Twenty years of saving strangers didn’t switch off.
“How many of you?”
“Three. One cannot walk. The things… they are everywhere. Please.”
John closed his eyes. Thought about what he’d told his family. Our priority is us.
Then he thought about his brother, dying alone in a hospital bed because no one recognized the signs in time.
“Step back from the door. Opening on three.”
“John…”
“I know.” He pulled the barricade aside. “One. Two. Three.”
The door opened onto a nightmare.
EXT. BUNGALOW 47 - CONTINUOUS
Three people stood in the moonlight. Two men supporting a woman between them. What was left of her right leg showed a bite wound, deep, already showing the characteristic darkening that meant infection.
“Inside. Now.”
They stumbled through. John had the door sealed before he’d finished counting. Eight seconds. Not fast enough to catch them, but the infected wouldn’t be far behind.
“Lisa, medical kit.”
Lisa was already moving, her nurse’s training overriding other concerns. “On the couch. Carefully. What happened to her?”
“The restaurant.” The man who’d spoken through the door was young, late twenties, with a resort staff uniform and a rosary clutched in one hand. A kitchen knife was strapped to his belt with a strip of tablecloth. “Those creatures… they came through the buffet. Maria was serving when…”
“I don’t need the story. I need to know how long ago.”
“Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.”
Lisa’s hands stilled on the bandages. She looked at John.
John understood. Twenty minutes was long enough for the infection to take hold. Maybe not long enough to turn. But close. Too close.
“What’s your name?” John asked the young man.
“Diego. Diego Rodriguez.” His accent placed him in Mexico, Guatemala maybe. “This is Carlos and Maria. We work in the kitchen.”
“Diego, I need you to be honest with me. Maria… has she shown any other symptoms? Fever, disorientation, aggression?”
Diego’s face crumpled. He knew what John was asking. “She’s my sister.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
A count of five. Then: “She has been confused. She does not remember how we got here. And her temperature…” He touched his own forehead. “She burns.”
“Dad?” Sarah had emerged from the bedroom, Michael close behind. “What’s happening?”
“Go back inside.”
“That woman’s infected, isn’t she?” Sarah’s voice was flat. Accepting. “She’s going to turn.”
Maria moaned on the couch, her eyes rolling back. Lisa stepped away, medical kit in her hands, face a mask of professional detachment that John knew was cracking underneath.
“There must be a cure, a treatment…” Diego pleaded.
“There isn’t.” John’s voice was harder than he intended. “I’m sorry. The infection rewrites the nervous system. Once it takes hold, there’s nothing…”
Maria screamed.
Not a human scream. Not entirely. Her body arched off the couch, muscles spasming, veins standing out black against her skin. Her eyes, when they opened, were filmed with white.
“EVERYONE BACK!”
John grabbed Lisa, pulled her away as Maria’s body continued to convulse. Diego was frozen, rosary raised like it could ward off what was happening.
“Maria, please…”
She turned toward his voice. The creature that had been Maria. For half a second, recognition flickered in those milky eyes. Love.
Then hunger won.
She lunged.
INT. BUNGALOW 47 - CONTINUOUS
Diego moved without thinking.
The kitchen knife came up. Muscle memory from years of prep work, turned to darker purpose. Maria’s teeth snapped inches from his face as the blade found her throat.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m…”
The creature that had been his sister collapsed, infection dying with the host. Diego fell to his knees beside her, knife clattering from his fingers.
John grabbed him, pulled him back. “We need to move. The noise will draw more of them.”
“I killed her. I killed my own…”
“She was already dead.” John forced Diego to look at him. “The person you loved, she died when that creature bit her. What you did was mercy. Do you understand?”
Diego stared at him with broken eyes. Then, a slow nod.
“Good.” John turned to the room. “We’re leaving. Now. Everyone grab what you can carry.”
“What about Carlos?” Sarah asked.
John looked at the other man, who’d been standing frozen throughout the scene. His face had drained of color. His breathing was shallow.
“Carlos.” John approached him carefully. “Were you bitten?”
Carlos said nothing. But his hand drifted to his side, where his resort uniform was dark and wet.
“I didn’t want to say,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to be…”
He didn’t finish. The transformation was faster the second time. Perhaps because they’d seen it once. Perhaps because the infection was accelerating. One moment Carlos was standing there, afraid. The next, the creature that had been Carlos was lunging for Sarah’s throat.
Michael moved.
Later, John would try to understand where his twelve-year-old son had learned to swing a lamp with that much force, that much precision. But in the moment, there was only impact. Crunch. The infected creature collapsing at Sarah’s feet.
Michael stood over it, panting, lamp still raised, face spattered with blood that wasn’t his.
“Rule one,” he said, voice shaking. “Destroy the brain.”
EXT. EDEN RESORT - GROUNDS - DAWN
First light of dawn painted the resort in shades of pink and gold. Would have been beautiful if not for the bodies.
The Harrisons moved in tight formation. John at the front. Lisa at the rear. Kids in the middle with Diego. They’d stripped the bungalow of anything useful: knives, matches, bottles of alcohol that could serve as improvised weapons or antiseptic, first aid supplies, water bottles, energy bars from the mini-bar.
They’d left the bodies behind. There hadn’t been time for anything else.
“Service entrance should be just ahead,” John whispered. “Once we’re in the tunnels…”
“Shh.” Lisa’s hand on his shoulder. “Listen.”
The sounds of the resort had changed again. Less random. More organized. From somewhere to the east, a series of rattling vocalizations, answered by similar sounds from the north and south.
“They’re coordinating,” Michael breathed. “Like a net. They’re trying to catch us in a net.”
“Then we need to be faster than the net.” John pointed to a maintenance door fifty yards ahead. “On my mark. We run. Nobody stops for anything. Understood?”
Nods all around. Even Diego, despite everything, had pulled himself together enough to grip his knife with purpose.
“Mark.”
They ran.
The infected emerged from everywhere at once. From behind resort buildings. From the decorative jungle. From the maintenance corridors John had been counting on. Fast. Coordinated. Hunting.
The first one to reach them came from the right, lunging for Sarah. Diego’s knife took it in the throat, a savage slash that bought enough time for them to keep moving.
The second came from behind. Faster than the others. Fresher maybe. Lisa turned, the fruit knife inadequate, but she used what she had. A slash across the eyes, buying precious seconds of blindness.
“DOOR!” John reached the maintenance entrance, yanked it open. “EVERYONE IN!”
They piled through. John slammed the door behind them, throwing his weight against it as infected bodies crashed into the other side.
“There’s no lock,” he gasped. “We need to…”
Sarah was already moving, grabbing a metal pipe from the tunnel’s utility systems. She wedged it through the door handle, bracing it against the wall.
“That won’t hold forever,” she said.
“Doesn’t have to.” John was already moving down the tunnel. “Just long enough for us to get clear.”
Behind them, the pounding continued. But they were moving. They were together.
For now, that was enough.
INT. SERVICE TUNNELS - CONTINUOUS
The tunnels were dark, lit only by emergency strips that painted everything sickly green. John led them by memory, trying to match the map in his head with the reality of endless concrete corridors.
“How much farther?” Lisa asked.
“Half a mile. Maybe less.” John paused at an intersection, orienting himself. “The marina should be directly ahead. We come up near boat storage, find a vessel, and…”
A sound from behind them. Not the infected. Human footsteps. Multiple.
John raised a hand, signaling silence. The family pressed against tunnel walls, barely breathing.
The footsteps grew closer. Then a voice:
“Dr. Harrison? I know you’re down here.”
Elena. The guest relations manager. But her voice had changed. Harder. Colder. With an edge John didn’t like.
“We’ve been monitoring your progress. Very impressive, really. Most guests didn’t make it past the first hour.” A pause. “But I’m afraid we can’t let you reach the marina. Corporate has been very clear about containment protocols.”
Corporate. Containment protocols. John’s hands stilled.
“This was all planned,” he said, loud enough to be heard. “The outbreak. The spread. You let it happen.”
“Let it happen? Dr. Harrison, we made it happen.” Elena laughed. “Eden Resort isn’t just a testing facility. It’s a demonstration. A proof of concept for our investors. And you, a CDC virologist surviving against all odds, you’re the perfect testimonial.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m a businesswoman. And business is about to be very, very good.” Another pause. “Now, why don’t you come out? We have much to discuss.”
John looked at his family. At Lisa, whose face had gone gray but whose grip on her knife hadn’t wavered. At Sarah, already scanning the tunnel for escape routes. At Michael, who’d killed to protect his sister and would do it again.
At Diego, who had lost everything but was still standing.
“Run,” John whispered. “I’ll draw them off.”
“No.” Lisa’s voice was steel. “We don’t split up. Not for anything.”
“Mom’s right.” Sarah took his arm. “We’re the Harrisons. We do things together.”
John felt his chest constrict. Pride, maybe. Terror. Love.
“There’s another route,” Diego said quietly. “Service elevator, fifty meters ahead. It goes to the research level. From there, maintenance stairs to the surface. It comes up near the marina. The back entrance, not the main dock.”
“How do you know that?”
Diego’s smile was bitter. “Three years I’ve worked here. You learn the secrets.”
John nodded. “Then that’s our route. Everyone, move.”
They ran again, leaving Elena’s voice echoing behind them. The darkness swallowed them, and John let himself believe they might actually make it.
Then the lights went out entirely, and somewhere in the darkness, the infected began to howl.