Under Negative Pressure

On the North American continent in 2038, the ice covering Lake Michigan completely melted in April, a full forty days earlier than usual. Mercury compounds that had settled on the lakebed rose with the evaporating water vapor into the stratosphere. Air purifiers in Detroit had long since become useless decorations. Mutated fungal spores drifted through the gray-green smog, creeping underground through subway vents, where they fused in strange ways with genetically engineered bacteria leaking from a sewage treatment plant. When the first case of “living decay” appeared at the port, no one suspected the apocalypse had begun. They treated it as an ordinary infectious disease and imposed a quarantine. No one imagined this was the opening of doomsday’s overture...