Avengers! Assemble! Then Die

Ten minutes.

Just ten minutes.

At this moment, time lost its meaning as a measure of civilization and became a nightclub for a viral carnival.

Wildfires spread through the streets, and crowds became tides of corpses.

Under the Brooklyn Bridge, a homeless man had been fighting a pigeon over half a moldy loaf of bread one second, when the next, a gray, filthy hand with grime embedded in its fingernail crevices landed on his shoulder.

He turned back in shock and saw a rotting face enlarged before his eyes, its mouth torn all the way to its ears and black saliva dribbling down.

"Uh, buddy, your complexion—"

Before he could finish, his heart-rending scream was drowned out by louder chewing.

Less than five seconds later, the new zombie staggered to its feet, its cloudy eyes locking onto terrified, screaming passersby.

The massive screens in Times Square were still looping Stark Industries clean-energy advertisements. Beneath them, office workers in suits packed the intersection like sardines.

The light turned green, and the crowd surged forward.

Then, a shriek so piercing it scarcely sounded human exploded from within the crowd!

Shoving, trampling, screaming!

But the virus spread even faster than the panic.

A man who had been knocked down futilely kicked at the blond, burly receptionist from his company who was straddling him—someone he had been laughing and chatting with moments ago—while more "people" lunged at him with bloodshot eyes.

Coffee cups rolled across the ground. Brown liquid mixed with dark red gore, instantly trampled into filthy mud by countless staggering yet unnaturally powerful feet.

Ten minutes? No, perhaps five minutes. That broad avenue, once a symbol of prosperity and order, had become a grinder of flesh and blood.

The Glass Curtain Walls of the skyscrapers reflected cold sunlight. Once the pride of