Li Ming rubbed his sleepy eyes and sat up from the sofa in the living room. Outside the window, what should have been a bustling city morning was shrouded in an eerie, deathly silence. He grabbed his phone; a series of urgent notifications popped up on the screen: a global catastrophe had erupted, an unknown virus was raging, and the infected were turning into mindless monsters. The news app displayed gruesome images—people screaming and fleeing in the streets, chased by swaying, white-eyed "zombies."