A/N: "Kia Ora" is a greeting in Maori (the native language of New Zealand). The New Zealand news channels generally start with these words, if my memory's anything to go by. Enjoy :D

Part One: Auckland City, New Zealand, 5:57 PM, 20th December, 2012

'They're sturdy, they're safe, they're packed with enough supplies to last ten people two weeks and they're marked with red steel doors, but are these so-called test "Safehouses" the government has set up going to be enough to save us from the predicted 2012 apocalypse?'

As the bus made its journey across Auckland City back to St. Monica's College, Blaize averted her gaze from the T.V. showing the previews of the articles to the six' o' clock news a few seat rows down the bus and looked down at the writing pad on her lap, which had the words "UNKNOWN TITLE" scrawled across the top in her handwriting, and sighed.

She'd run out of ideas for a story she'd been working on. It was supposed to be a romance novel set in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and she'd been wondering what to write down next. The hero's love interest had just been bitten, and the hero and his two friends were doing everything they could to try and save her. Question was, what came next? Did they succeed in finding Zoey a cure? Or did they fail? It was all questions to ponder.

The snoring from her right gave her a refreshing distraction from her thoughts as she checked on her little brother Ben as he leaned on her shoulder, giving him a smile as he slept peacefully.

Blaize finally decided that she'd ask her mother, Stephanie, what she should do with the story after she and Blaize's father, Bill Jr., got back from Fairfield. After all, she was the expert on writing fantasy romance.

She sighed, placed the writing pad and the pencil perched on her ear back inside her dark green linen knapsack, reached inside with her fingerless black leather gloves that were currently serving no purpose other than to leave her digits out in the cold and pulled out a brown, woollen shawl. She wrapped it around the jeans and thin dark red Kathmandu jacket that emphasized her slim figure to her advantage and shivered, as the heaters inside the bus had broken half an hour ago. Although it wasn't snowing in Auckland City yet, as it had been in Hamilton, the place was almost as cold.

Norman, noticing the sound of the clips fastening as Blaize closed her knapsack, turned around in his seat in front of her and looked at her.

'Getting bored?' he asked her inquisitively, raising his eyebrows and smiling for a second.

Blaize just sighed.

'I just don't know,' she replied wearily, glancing outside the window. The bus was travelling through Queen Street – she could tell by the particular assortment of shops with their neon signs and lights on in view as the night had already crept in.

She shook her head, sighed again, and looked back at Norman. 'Y'know, you and Siob watch the news every day, and to be quite honest, it's scary, how you two never seem to get tired of it.'

Norman met the remark with a smirk.

'"Scientia est vox",' he simply replied. 'Knowledge is power. You never know when you're gonna need it.'

'Sure,' Blaize replied in a sarcastic tone. 'And how exactly is watching the news as much as you do going to help with that?'

Siobhan turned around next to Norman and looked at Blaize as well.

'It keeps us up to date,' she replied, answering Blaize's question. 'Sometimes teaches us stuff we didn't know – y'know. For example, did you know that Norm here was right?'

Blaize raised an eyebrow curiously.

'Right about what?'

'The Sickness. The chimpanzee escaping, remember? Turns out, it bit a New Zealand Army captain that had been guarding the lab.'

'My God. What happened to the chimpanzee?'

'It escaped into the wild after it bit the poor fellow. Animal Control is off to track it and put it down as soon as they find it.'

'Why put the poor thing down?'

'Because,' Norman explained, 'turns out, the chimpanzee single-handedly killed all of the scientists in the lab in the same way – by ripping out their throats with its bare teeth.'

Both Blaize and Siobhan cringed at the mentioning of the gruesome deaths.

'Holy shit,' Blaize grimaced.

'Bloody animal zombies, I tell you,' Norman agreed, nodding.

'They're not zombies,' Siobhan corrected him. 'The Sickness just screws around with their neocortexes – that's basically their minds, Blaize - and mutates them.'

'Technically, that means The Sickness turns them into zombies, Siob,' he replied, turning to face his sister.

'Not really. Zombies don't run. These can.'

'Wait a sec,' Blaize butted in before the argument escalated to references to Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later being flung around, 'if all the scientists had their throats torn out, where did the captain get bitten?'

'Good question,' Norman said. Looking behind him at the T.V., he noticed that the previews for the news articles were about to end and start the first article, the one about The Sickness. 'It appears we'll have our answer about now.'

Turning up the volume, he made sure it was loud enough so that the three of them could easily hear what the reporters were saying.

'Kia Ora, I'm Jenny Fox, and welcome to Three News,' the reporter's voice could be heard over the speakers. 'Tonight, we have a special cover on the recently-discovered virus labelled simply as… "The Sickness".'

The reporter gulped before continuing.

'Scientists in the Medatech Laboratories near Auckland City had been conducting tests on a chimpanzee that had the virus when early this morning, at around four, the animal went missing from its cage. After attempts to find it were unsuccessful, the chimpanzee ambushed the scientists, killed them, bit one of the security guards, and escaped.'

'See? I told you,' Norman said.

'Animal Control is currently looking for the escaped chimpanzee. In other news, one of our camera crewmen, Tony Fergusson, was just granted access to the lab, and we now cross over to him live on the scene. Tony, over to you.'

The screen was then occupied from the viewpoint of a handheld camera, which revealed an empty science lab.

To Blaize and Siobhan's dismay, the walls were covered in blood.

'Thank you, Jenny - Tony Fergusson here. I'm sorry about the camera quality, but I'm the first one here on the scene, where it appears that members of the Department of Conservation are currently talking to one of the survivors, a Sergeant Thaddeus Cyrus, for information on what threat this chimpanzee could pose in terms to local wildlife, and-'

'Will you please *cough* take that camera away from *cough* here, sir, if you can,' a hoarse, wheezy voice interrupted. The camera didn't turn around to see who was now talking, but the cameraman responded.

'Ah, Captain Nicholas Cale, one of the survivors,' Tony's surprised voice came over the camera. Obviously, Blaize noted, he didn't have much experience as a reporter. 'Blimey. Are you sure that the chimpanzee bit you? It looks more like-'

Tony was then interrupted again, this time by the unmistakable sound of vomiting.

'Nick? You all right?' he asked.

'I'm… *cough cough* fine… *gurgle* never *cough-snarl* better.'

'Are you sure?' The cameraman asked. 'You don't look fine- what the-'

What came next was an unnatural, inhuman scream as the camera dropped suddenly and rolled across the ground for a few seconds and then stopped, with the lens facing towards a cabinet door.

The cameraman's screams could be heard over the speakers as well as a disturbing shredding sound, and then blood began to splatter on the white cabinet door in view.

Everyone who was watching was staring at the T.V. in shock. The bus driver didn't seem to notice the sounds. Blaize guessed that the reporting crew were too curious to find out what had happened to Tony to turn off the live feed.

'Tony?' the reporter's voice could be heard. 'Tony, are you all right?'

Around ten seconds later, the screaming stopped as the camera was picked up. It turned. And then the lens saw something no teenager should ever see, or anyone, for that matter.

It was the face of someone, or rather, something. It was the face of a man, but a full half of it was missing, as if something monstrous had mauled him. An ugly stream of pus was starting to seep out from his exposed and mangled cheek, and where there weren't normal human features was meaty, bloody and throbbing flesh, with the telltale signs of inhuman teeth marks on his forehead. He looked far worse than a burn victim.

You could see his eye socket, part of his left nasal tube and the inside of his mouth just by staring at the stump. And his remaining eye glowed yellow. It was no wonder Tony didn't turn the camera around.

'Oh God,' Siobhan gasped, covering her mouth with both of her hands. 'So that was where he was bitten.'

It was at the mere sight of this thing that everyone on the bus that was watching covered their eyes in horror and disgust with the exception of Blaize, Siobhan and Norman. But worse was to come.

'Another soul… *cough cough cough*…redeemed,' the thing said. Its eye suddenly switched its baleful gaze from the ground to the camera lens. 'This camera…*cough cough*… it still works…'

'It speaks!' Norman exclaimed.

The horrified gasping from Jenny Fox over the speakers explained her reaction far better than mere words could.

'You… *cough*… fear me,' Captain Cale said, noticing the gasp and wiping away a small steam of pus from his mangled cheek before continuing. 'You should. There is only one thing that the Sickness is. It is the… extermination… of every living thing… it is the beauty… of death. The Sickness desires only that everything dies, first of all its worst enemy… humanity.' He pronounced the race as if it were a species of fungus. 'Nice… and simple…'

Blaize and Siobhan's jaws dropped as Norman stared into the screen in morbid fascination.

'The Sickness is… everything,' Captain Cale continued. 'By the time you watch this… the humans the Avatar of The Sickness has infected will have reached the nearest city… and start spreading The Sickness amongst your citizens!' He snarled at the camera, revealing two inhumanly razor-sharp rows of teeth. 'Death comes for you!'

With that, he screamed into the camera, opening his jaws freakishly wide and emitting another disturbing inhuman scream. Then, the image was reduced to static as the signal failed after a flash of sudden movement.

The visibly shaken newscaster reappeared, and swallowed nervously before continuing her report.

'Reports… from the remaining survivor state that the chimpanzee… was increasing in size…' she said, visibly desperate not to break down in front of the cameras. 'And it appears…that by the looks of things… it would've reached Auckland City by now… and it's just been confirmed… the virus… is contagious-'

Before she could continue, Norman had turned off the T.V. as everyone just sat there, dumbstruck as the bus finally slowed down and stopped in front of an alley as the ground began to shake.

'Astronomical, eh?' Blaize shot Norman a venomous look as he scratched his head sheepishly.

'Oh God,' Siobhan said again, panic apparent in her voice, 'what are we going to do? What are we going to-'

The loud screeching sound of what seemed like a car crash interrupted her words.

It was then Blaize, Norman and Siobhan ripped their attention to the alley their bus was in front of to just see a white car flying towards the top of the bus at a surprising speed.

'DUCK!' Norman yelled.

Despite her usual quick reflexes, Blaize was unable to duck in time as the car slammed into the roof of the bus as the screeching sound of metal filled her ears.

In that moment, confusion, shock and the sheer instinct to duck took over in a nauseating second. The force of the explosion of the car just above the bus caused Blaize's head to collide with one of the metal poles inside the bus, knocking her unconscious as fuel showered the area and ignited, and screams filled the night.

Auckland City would burn tonight.