You were always late to everything. Parties, social events, doctor visits, but this time? This time... it was different.
When all this started, it was just like any other day. You saw the news and laughed. "What kind of joke is this?" you must have said hearing the then mad sounding news reports of lizard-people attacking folks, turning them into more of themselves. The sheer insanity of it made you think dismiss the whole thing. It had to be a joke, must have been. Was it April 1st already? Oh, you weren't going to be taken for a fool that year.
Yet you were. It was all true. While you sat casually in your apartment, listening to music on your day off work, a small group of the damn creatures bashed down the front doors of your building. You remember hearing the screams of fear from the lower tenants, the curses, then the moans, then begging for more. You heard the gun shots, the sounds of skin being torn apart, and much more. It was... a lot to take in all in a single day. You were a cashier at a damn Target for crying out loud, you'd never even so much as seen a dead body before. Yet you saw more in the span of two hours than you did in your entire life.
Maybe if you had taken things a bit more seriously, you have started getting ready to skip town sooner; hop the border to Canada where it was nice and safe. Let the US army sort all the madness out. Yet you didn't. You just did what any sane person would have done in the face of a lizard-monster invasion happening- you ran.
In fact, you found that you were pretty decent at running for your life over the next few weeks. Sneaking around, you were able to find a pretty decent building to hunker down and call your 'home' for the most part. Nothing too special; it was just a second floor of a house that had the lower half basically trashed to hell and back. Made getting up to it a pain in the ass for anything that didn't know how to kick the ladder down you set up. The lack of power was a concern, but hey, you had running water at least and it wasn't too cold yet with it only being October. And while it was 30 minutes away on foot, there was a store you could raid for supplies that- so long as you weren't stupid- you could get to no problem.
Alas, you were stupid.
Maybe it was fleeting guilt for not trying to help some of the lower tenants of your old place that made you try and save that pretty young lady from the feral lizardman, but it backfired like hell on you. One minute you were the dashing hero, coming in to save the princess, the next, you were running for your life from two monsters instead of one. The damn things were weird too, they didn't look like the others you'd seen up until that point. They had snake-like heads and these super long tails. Worse still, they could spit like crazy long distances this weird gunk.
You say 'gunk' because you really have no idea what the fuck it was, but you did know three things; 1- It was sticky as hell. 2- It didn't have a smell. And 3- It obviously infected you.
That was the worst part. Infection. You'd done so well to not get infected by anything for so long by yourself. You did everything right and then, the moment you try to do something good for someone else, karma bites you in the ass for it. The signs were pretty obvious; the spot where the damn things spat at you was starting to get covered in black and gold scales. They were light enough to be hidden under your clothes for now, but you knew that wouldn't be for much longer.
36 hours to find a way to either slow the spread down, somehow discover a cure for it, or kill yourself before you turn into... whatever the hell kind of lizard you're turning into. Well, you didn't have a lot of options.
You could just hunker down and try to willpower your way through it. You did hear that some of the lizard people could retain SOME of their past selves, so maybe you could too. Then again, if you were looking for a cure, you might as well get off your ass and see if it's possible to contact the military. Maybe those weird 'spitters' as you called them were special. Maybe you're the missing piece for a cure... though that was pretty unlikely. Though you could also just say fuck it and go jump off a high enough building.
Nah, you're gonna try to survive this. You still have a chance! Well, a small one, but still a chance none the less. So, what are you going to do? After all, you can't just stay hunkered down in the little gas store you've been hiding in for the past two hours since you were attacked by those lizards fucks. It's time to make a move!