Government warning signs dot the chain link fence that stretches the entirety of the outskirts of Unity’s borders. Since the incident, a no-fly zone has been in place, the four military checkpoints are the only way in or out, and only researchers with the proper clearance can pass through. All others were ordered to be immediately apprehended or shot onsite, though there have been no known attempts since the security measures were established.

The official reports said it was a widespread chemical leak. The conspiracies on the internet on the other hand, will say that it was a terrorist attack, an invasion from another world, the opening of a hell gate, the beginning of the apocalypse. Not many survived to tell what really happened back then, but those who did either disappeared soon after or ended up institutionalized. If you are lucky enough to ever speak to one, they will tell you first of an explosion over at the Merchant House. Then not long after, hideous ghosts attacked the townspeople of Unity. They seemed to appear out of thin air where you would least expect, and anyone of these things could brutally mutilate, torture, and murder their victims. Everywhere you went, there was utter chaos and carnage and not one soul was spared if caught. There was no chemical leak or terrorism. The invasion was otherworldly but not in terms most outside of town would think. Hell needed no gate to cross over, and it was not the beginning of the apocalypse, because both were already there from the time of Unity’s founding.

Unity was like a wild animal exhibit at the zoo: at night, the beast sleeps and eats in a cage connected to its larger enclosure, but when morning comes, it is let out of its cage to roam the exhibit for the day. The Merchant House was never the true domain of the undead, but just a cage that released what it contained upon destruction.

The Merchant House might have been where all the worst things happened in town, but it was only the most obvious symptom of a deeper cancer, which used weakness and malevolence as tools to sate the land’s thirst for blood. Whether it started when the settlers spilt innocent indigenous blood on the land, or from the very moment the settlers trespassed onto land that was never theirs to begin with, the foundation was forever tainted. Built upon greed, ignorance, selfishness, arrogance, callousness, and cruelty, Unity was that rotten place doomed to fail as a town; however, it was the perfect cornerstone for a graveyard.