He was pinned to the concrete by dozens of unseen hands scrabbling at his biohazard suit, probing for gaps or clasps or anything they could use to touch his skin and bring him into the fold. His mother warned him that there would be days like this - impossible and glorious and as the sun began to rise he felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth.
He may be outnumbered and surrounded by countless unfortunates who hadn't been as prepared or as lucky as him but the day was just beginning and he still had a plan. You couldn't survive out here for as long as he had without thinking ahead and he knew the swarming hands were always at their worst on Thursdays.
Sure, time didn't really hold much meaning for anything else but Thursdays were always swarm days. The kind of days you either find a bunker to wait the day away in, praying the swarm don't already know about it, or you meet them in open territory and bait them until they grow bored.
His suit was covered in false leads - zippers that to more fabric, ties that held nothing together, extra layers of fabric for them to pull apart like rowdy children playing pass-the-parcel and all he had to do was lie back and wait. Soon as they started to fatigue he'd be able to get up and signal to the rest of the group that the area had been cleared for now.
He felt confident enough to laugh a little, comfortably jostled by the unseen hands and so complacent he didn't even notice them unsheathing his knife and setting it to the suit. When the group came by the next day he was still smiling and a post-mortem bloat was beginning to settle in.
Several miles away, the swarm welcomed their new member with open hands and cups of fresh blood.
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