The world held a deafening tone of shock as background noise. The first room of the haunted attraction was refilling with fog. Soon, even the bland walls, and the monstrous silhouettes before them, vanished from sight.

Through the fog and low light, a large figure stood in the path brandishing a machete. He cocked his head and released a low growl. Shells tore through the poor actor's chest, and he hit the ground hard muttering last words that no one heard.

"Shit. Shit, shit, shit. He wasn't a zombie."

Jimmy turned at the door to apologize to the corpse only to witness the rust-colored flies digging into Jason. The corpse convulsed in abnormal motions from the virus taking hold.

Jimmy learned quick the most important rule of the apocalypse, running.

He ran out of the fog filled room housing the thrashing corpse of horrors most reincarnated villain, and into a hellacious Halloween hallway filled with cardboard cutouts of the undead and animatronic witches swinging into the path on hinges.

Cackling and creaking background noises over the speaker, cramped black walls, vague figures in front of him at every turn, and the threat of something real chasing him. It was abuse on the already thin nerves and pounding senses.

The constricted hallway opened up to a meat locker full of hanging skeletons, and what might have been fake zombies thrashing against very real nooses.

"I'm beginning to regret coming in here," Jimmy pushed through the sea of plastic bones. One broke free from its noose and fell to the ground in pieces.

A sharp chopping came from the door behind Jimmy. Past the swinging carcasses and through the splintering door he could see two things. A blood covered hockey mask leaking wasps and the actor had snuck a very real machete past haunted house management. Why he had done so would forever be a mystery, but his reasoning now was much more obvious.

In the next room, slabs of flesh and various organs decorate tables and meat hooks all around. The carnivorous scientist that owned the assorted collection of gore hung out in a corner of the room where Jimmy couldn't immediately see him.

Mandible bones protruded from his cheeks and blood surrounded his mouth as he rose from his dinner.

Jimmy raised his gun, "are you human!?"

The possible actor continued to rise as Jimmy shouted again, "talk mother fucker or I will paint these walls!"

"Calm down buddy, we just want to eat your brains."

"I am not in the mood. Get the fuck out before the flies eat you!"

"What..." but Jimmy was already leaving the 'haunted' part of the attraction and entering the freakshow.

A bend in the walkway gave way to fun house mirrors amplifying a collection of macabre things on podiums in the next room. A grotesque bug the size of a person wriggling bent and hairy legs out of the eye socket of a two headed baby; a goat with three interlocking plus signs in one eye who followed him around the room depending on the curve of the mirror; the twisting image of a still pulsing heart; and a few jars swimming with nothing but rust colored flies.

More flies were swarming in from outside via a rip in the tent running between a jar on a podium and several mirrors. Their little clicking legs became magnified by the mirrors.

The only sign of human life was the bearded lady leaning over a spilled podium jar. The flies were thoroughly feasting on what was left of her skull. They keep clear of the prized beard though, either knowing better or realizing it lacked meat.

Jimmy snuck past with the sideshow tables to his left and the shifting mirrors all around. Despite the confounding hellscape he was almost to the door, when his foot cracked all of the bones in a three winged bird that lay in a puddle of formaldehyde and broken glass.

The husk of the bearded lady rose behind him, carrying with her an entire hive of the infectious flies. Jimmy felt her presence towering over him. Bloody chunks of drool fell out of her beard to land on his shoulder.

The door he was running for opened up on its own and two figures blocked the exit. One extra long giant of a man ducked into the tent and a snarling midget ran through his legs spewing flies and puss as he made a B-line for Jimmy's ankles.