Narrator

Setting: On the northern end of the East Coast in the mountain region known as the Grenlees in Maine, United States. Smoky Island is located across the mainland.

The gas, when inhaled, causes a rapid series of neurological changes, it begins rapidly suppressing its hosts' human rationality and stripping away all civilized impulses, leaving a crazed cannibal who's constantly weeping black tears. Every impulse is immediately acted upon, the victim not only loses the ability to suppress unwanted communications, but unwanted actions. The black gas operates via progressive brain damage, eating away at the parts of the brain responsible for people's inhibitions.

Although, the infected victims are referred to as Zombies; they do not fit the classical definitions of being reanimated corpses or will-less people controlled by another. The Black Gas transforms people and animals into aggressive murderous carnivores that seem indifferent to most injury, but they are definitely not mindless and in fact carry on conversations with their victims. The monsters are aware of their acts yet are unable to help themselves. In some cases, they express regret at what they are doing yet are unable to stop, whereas others seem to show no remorse whatsoever. The infection is spread by the monsters through saliva and tears, so being bitten can transform a regular person into one of them.

If an uninfected person gets those in their mouth, eyes, or an open wound, they'll slowly be overcome. The gas is lighter than air, so being underground at the time of its release or being upwind from the emission site is enough to escape infection and being under the influence of anything that alters brain chemistry will dramatically slow down the change. An ordinary gas mask will also prevent the gas from affecting a person.

The victims in the early phases of the infection, are actually aware of what's happening to their brains and bodies. In the early phase, they can actually talk. Many of the people afflicted by the Black Gas aren't quite berserk. Some can carry on a conversation. Others aren't in full control of their own actions but can beg to be put out of their misery. They aren't zombies so much as they're humans gone completely berserk, with a taste for human flesh and a habit of doing every sick, cruel act that's ever occurred to them at any time.

They don't just eat people. They do utterly horrific things. All that black stuff in the back of our brains that we never act on... That all comes out. They're out of control, but technically they're not mindless. They're just beyond reasoning with. Some people immediately go feral and only attack with their teeth; others still have enough fine motor control to use weapons or drive a car. If a gassed human has eaten enough recently, they may be relatively lucid but are still completely psychotic.