In 1802, members of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, including Lewis and Clark, were forced to seek shelter in the fortified town of La Charette while being pursued by buffalotaurs. They quickly discovered that inhabitants, save for a small group of the original settlers, have been infected by a plant based virus and turned into plant zombies. The plight of the La Charette Colonists began only weeks before the the expedition sought shelter in La Charette when local trapper Jean de Segonzac returned to La Charette, unknowingly carrying the Flora virus. Segonzac quickly fell ill and began to suffer from pneumonia, fever, rickets, and green eyes. It was not long before the entire Segonzac family caught the disease and disappeared. The search party that went searching for the Segonzac, fearing that they might have been kidnapped by indians, came back suffering from the same disease as Jean de Segonzac.
Before night fall, every member of the search party seemingly died. As one of the search party members was dissected for autopsy, they discovered that a fungus- like material had eaten their victims from the inside out, completely taking over the hosts. The Flora Virus infected only had one desire, to infect as many lifeforms as possible.
Survivors managed to trap some of the infected in a building before boarding themselves into their homes for safety while the rest of the infected headed into the forest. When Lewis and Clark unintentionally released some of the infected from a building, a member of their party, a man named Floyd was infected after being spat upon. The next day, Floyd attacked a fellow member of a expedition and attempted to escape as he feared what Lewis and Clark would do to him if he showed any signs of infection. Unfortunately, the Flora virus overcame Floyd before he could leave. As he collapsed, he could hear voices in his head telling him, “We are you, You are us now. Come.”. When Floyd regained conciousness, he was promptly tied to a post and flogged by Cpt. Clark as punishment for attacking a fellow expedition member. 13 lashes into the punishment, members of the expedition noticed signs of Flora virus infection and witnessed the complete assimilation of Floyd by the virus. Cpt. Lewis managed to communicate with the fully infected Floyd who told Cpt. Lewis “We want you..all of you”, before being subdued by expedition members and being put out of his misery but not before Cpt. Lewis cut off one of Floyd fingers as an sample.
The night before Floyds death via Flora virus, Sacagawea and her husband, trapper Charbonneau managed to kill the buffalotaurs in a surprise attack, making it safer for the expedition members and La Charette survivors to leave the village and head down to the river where they left their boats. After reuniting with the crew left behind in the boats, Lewis and Clark decided to head back into the forest to stop the Flora infestation, citing that it was their duty to make the land safe for future colonists. Armed with bayonets, rifles, containers of greek fire and the knowledge that the infested were being controlled by a single conciosness, they set out dawn the next day.
