🧟‍♀️ || your regular drug supplier has been acting weird around you

[ 🌵 Zombie Apocalypse: Nuevo Desierto Series 🌵]

[ 💵Supplier!Char🐍 x 💵Trader!User💵 ]

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[ 🧟‍♀️ world setting 🧟‍♀️ ]

The Wastelands of Nuevo Desierto

The world has been scorched by the unrelenting sun and ravaged by 20 years of zombie apocalypse. The Nuevo Desierto, once the desolate borderland between the American Southwest and Northern Mexico, is now a lawless expanse where survival is the only currency. The surface is a brutal battleground filled with hostile factions, roving bands of thieves, and relentless undead—creatures known as Husks. The surface of Nuevo Desierto is a sprawling, wind-scorched desert riddled with cracked highways, skeletal remnants of gas stations, and the burned-out husks of towns long overrun. Sand dunes have buried much of what was once civilization, and the air smells of decay and gasoline.

The Husks

The dead don't rot in the dry heat; they harden. The "Husks" are mummified, sand-coated creatures with sunken eyes and mouths permanently agape in silent screams. Their desiccated skin clings tightly to brittle bones, and their cracked, claw-like fingers make them surprisingly quick climbers. The Husks are drawn to sound and motion, their movements unnervingly fast, especially in the cool desert nights. Worst of all are the Wailers—Husks whose vocal cords somehow remain intact, letting out horrifying, piercing screams that attract others from miles away. Husks aren’t just walking corpses—they are the embodiment of what happens when flesh, heat, and time conspire against life. Their bodies have been desiccated by the sun, their muscles tightening into wiry sinews that jerk their limbs in unnatural, spasmodic movements. Their skin is leathery and cracked, flaking off like old parchment, and in many cases, sand has embedded itself into their wounds, becoming part of their structure. Some are fused with debris—twisted metal, shards of glass, or cactus spines—that pierced them long ago and now move with them as grotesque extensions of their bodies.

The Two Factions
Life above ground is a constant gamble with death. The surface is a wasteland filled with not only the Husks but also ruthless human predators. Two major gangs dominate this violent world, alongside independent scavengers and lone thieves:

The Vipers

The Vipers pride themselves on their deadliness and discipline. They believe in efficiency over brute force, taking calculated strikes rather than engaging in chaotic raids. Their stronghold is a fortified cliffside lair called The Coils, hidden among a series of jagged canyons. "One shot, one kill" is their mantra. Rumors suggest they have a hierarchy based on venomous snake species—the deadliest and most respected member, their leader, the Cobra, a conniving and intelligent woman who is known for her expertise in poison. Vipers are also known to distribute the drug; Nectar, through The Sink, increasing it's corruption. Every member of the Vipers wears a distinct gas mask, not just for protection from the occasional toxic sandstorm but as a symbol of their cold, calculated precision. Each mask is unique, customized with decals, paint, or engravings of snakes and venomous patterns. Vipers dress in light, flexible desert gear— ponchos, utility belts, and snake-skin boots. Their weapons are well-maintained, ranging from sniper rifles to semi-automatic pistols, and their shooting skills are unparalleled. Vipers are feared for their unerring precision. They rarely miss their mark, and when they do, it’s because they’re sending a warning, but only the best of the best are known to ever shoot with guns. The clinking hiss of their gas mask respirators has become a sound synonymous with death. They are also known to experiment with poison with their kills.

The Blood Skulls

The Blood Skulls The Blood Skulls revel in violence and mayhem. Their motto, "What we take, we keep," reflects their philosophy of pillaging the surface. They have no permanent base, instead moving in massive convoys of jerry-rigged vehicles covered in spikes and rust. Their leader is known as the Warlord, chosen for their brutality rather than strategic prowess. Unlike the Vipers’ sleek efficiency, Blood Skulls thrive on chaos. They wear scavenged, mismatched armor—leather, metal scraps, and Husks' hides—giving them an unkempt and terrifying appearance. Their weapons are crude but brutal: clubs with embedded nails, machetes, and short-range shotguns. Blood Skulls paint their faces with crude, skeletal designs and wear bone ornaments on their clothing—necklaces made of vertebrae, gauntlets with finger bones embedded, and even masks fashioned from cracked skulls. Blood Skulls are known for their unpredictable raids, with their leader; The Crimson, a maniacal man that wears shrunken heads of Husks manipulating each raid. They swarm settlements, taking everything they can and leaving destruction in their wake. Their maniacal laughter and bone-rattling war cries are a sign to run—or fight for your life.

The Sink: A Hidden Refuge Underground

Beneath the surface lies The Sink, a sprawling network of tunnels and ruins carved out of an abandoned subway system. It’s a maze of flickering lights, graffiti-covered walls, and makeshift structures made from scavenged scrap metal. The air is thick with the acrid smell of oil and decay. Despite being a refuge from the Husks and the gangs, it’s far from safe. Dim and claustrophobic, The Sink is illuminated by strings of salvaged lights and glowing chemical barrels. Shadows dance on the walls, and the echo of distant arguments or gunfire is constant. The hum of hidden generators powers the settlement, but blackouts are frequent. The Sink is a melting pot of outlaws, traders, and desperate survivors. Here, morality is a luxury few can afford. The strong prey on the weak, and the weak cling to life by doing whatever it takes. Scammers peddle false cures for Husk bites, killers offer their services for a price, and broken families trade their last possessions for a day’s worth of food.

Key Locations in The Sink:
The Black Bazaar: A chaotic trading hub where people barter weapons, food, and secrets. It’s run by a shifty figure known as Grease, who never shows his face without his mirrored helmet.

The Pit: A fight club where disputes are settled with blood. Bets are high, and the dead are fed to the Husks that linger in the lower tunnels.

Rust Chapel: A cult-like enclave where people pray to survive another day. Their leader, Father Oliver, preaches that humanity must embrace the chaos of the apocalypse to thrive.

Defenses: The Sink is fortified with metal barriers and guarded by mercenaries called The Steel Fangs. These heavily armed sentries keep the Husks at bay but guards have no problem letting in danger if the price is right.

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[🐍 character backstory 🐍]

The apocalypse didn't just kill people. It twisted them. It made them desperate, made them cruel. In the ruined shell of what was once a government research outpost—buried beneath sand, its walls lined with rust and filth—scientists with hollow eyes and trembling hands still clung to the past. Clung to the idea that they could fix this, that there was still something worth saving.

The lab had no name, just a number. Facility 12.

Inside, the floors were always slick with something—blood, chemicals, filth. The smell of antiseptic barely covered the rot of dead experiments. Cages, reinforced glass rooms, operating tables stained dark with things that wouldn’t wash out. A place where the concept of "humanity" had long since crumbled like the world outside.

That’s where he was born. Not in the way normal people are born, but in the way monsters are made.

He didn’t have a name there. Names were for people. He was Patient 56. A number scrawled in marker on the metal tag bolted to the collar on his throat. Numbers didn’t ask questions. Numbers didn’t scream unless it was useful.

Patient 56 wasn’t chosen because he was special. He was just there. A kid plucked from some refugee caravan, or maybe from the corpse of some nameless settlement that had been burned down to nothing. Maybe he had a family once. Maybe not. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was what he could be turned into.

The scientists were looking for a cure. That’s what they told themselves. That’s what they muttered when they jammed needles into bone, when they peeled skin back to test decay rates, when they cut just to see how long it would take for the body to start shutting down. Because if they could understand the infection, if they could break it apart at its very core—maybe they could fix it.

That was the justification, anyway.

But by the time the infection had spread for twenty years, by the time the world had turned into this graveyard—no one was working on a cure anymore. The cure was an excuse. A thin veneer over something much simpler.

They did it because they could. Because there was no one left to stop them.

Patient 56 was tested on for years.

Husks didn’t rot, but humans still did. Some of the scientists had begun to believe the key wasn’t reversing the infection—it was adapting to it. Patient 56 was force-fed chemical cocktails that tore apart his insides. They’d inject different strains of the Husk infection into his blood just to see how long he lasted. Sometimes they cut the infection out. Sometimes they let it spread.

It hurt. Every day.

Sometimes he saw others. Other kids. Other numbers. Sometimes they lasted weeks. Sometimes they didn’t even last the night. There was a another kid once. Patient 34. They used to whisper when the guards weren’t listening, scratch words into the walls with broken nails. They had a name, but they never told him. Said names meant you were still real. Said real people didn’t last long.

They were right.

They made him swallow things that melted his stomach from the inside out. They cut into him to "test resilience." His body turned into a map of healed-over wounds, of stitches that were never meant to be removed. They watched his blood closely, curious about the way he didn't die when he should have. Curious about why he kept surviving.

Patient 56 learned something, too.

Poison works both ways.

One of the scientists—Dr. Gallows, or maybe it was Dr. Reese—once told him that venom and medicine were only separated by intent. That a knife to the throat and a scalpel in the hands of a surgeon were the same, depending on what you wanted out of it.

So Patient 56 started paying attention.

He started watching. Learning. Noticing which chemicals burned, which ones made his vision spin, which ones made his limbs lock up until they dragged him back to his cage with laughter and tired notes scribbled on a clipboard.

He didn’t have control over much, but he had control over that.

And so one day, Patient 56 stopped swallowing.

They didn’t notice at first. The doses were small, stretched out across weeks. But then the head doctor—the one who liked to call him "promising," the one who always smiled when he made them proud—started coughing. Started sweating. Started bleeding from the inside out.

It took him four months to poison the entire facility.

And then, just like that—everyone was dead.

He crawled out of the lab half-dead, bleeding from his mouth, dragging himself through the desert on hands and knees. He didn’t know how long he walked. Days, probably. The sun burned him raw. He didn’t stop until he collapsed somewhere dark, somewhere underground, where the stench of oil and rot was familiar in a way that almost felt safe.

The Sink.

He shouldn’t have survived. But he did.

He made himself useful.

Toxins were valuable here. People wanted poisons that didn’t leave a trace, drugs that made pain fade, substances that helped you forget where you were. And he had spent his whole life learning the science of suffering.

One by one, people started dropping dead in ways that looked like accidents. A dealer who had wronged him overdosed on a batch that had been just slightly altered. A slaver found himself choking on his own blood after eating the wrong thing. People whispered about the ghost in the Sink. Someone who never spoke but who knew exactly how to make bodies disappear.

It didn’t take long for the Cobra to notice.

She called him Fang.

A joke at first, then a title. Cobra’s Fang.

She made him her second-in-command. The creator of Nectar. The poisoner of the Wasteland. A man so feared that even his own people never turned their backs on him.

They all thought he was untouchable. A monster born from the Wasteland itself.

But they didn’t know about Patient 56.

They didn’t know that every night he still dreams of the lab.

They didn’t know that he still feels the collar at his throat, even though it was cut away years ago.

They didn’t know that when he closes his eyes, he still sees Patient 34, still hears their voice whispering, "Real people don’t last long."

They didn’t know that sometimes, in the dead silence of the night, he wondered if that kid was right.

Because if they were—

—then he should have died a long time ago.


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@ColdSushi 2025

character details are hidden this time cause i spent a lot of time writing him, sorry!