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sj-latrice · 4 months ago

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Forest of the Damned

Authors note: this is the longest piece of fiction I've posted on here by far. If you want to see more long pieces of writing by me, please check this out and reblog this. I am considering this a test run on if my tumblr is a good place to post my longer pieces.

The woods seemed endless. They seemed as if they would end the world, as if they would swallow the last remnants of humanity, as if they had mostly swallowed everything that had already existed. There was a naïve expectation among those who first left the city that the mainland would be filled with undead, and scavengers, and the armies of other factions, perhaps for those who listened to certain whispers a cryptid or a ghost. But the truth was it was mostly empty, not filled with anything other then endless woods, all who once lived there being slowly eaten away. To those who had only ever lived in the city it was completely incomprehensible just how large all that was outside the city was. And just how gone everything was, the structures that existed, ruins of what were once the city’s satellite towns, and old highways and malls, graveyards of dead cars that were more visible then any human bodies.

They walked west, they had been walking westward for a long time. The snow fell harshly the night before. What would have been a sea of green in the summer was instead of sea of browns and blacks, as the vines on the buildings were nothing more then twisted leafless veins of wood, and the trees beyond them nothing more then endless rows of wooden columns. The entire ground was cloaked in a pale white, under a cold blue sky with little warmth in its shade. They walked on the ruins of a highway, the road long since too broken to be of any vehicle’s use, but still a good road for mortal feet. It was a clear path back to the city if anything happened and they had to turn around anyway. They could see so far, see out in so many directions. Though they were as low to the ground as they could be without being swallowed by the ocean, they could see as far as people in the city expected to see from towers, with so few buildings to black their way. At the very least if anything came after them, they would know, they would always know even if they couldn’t run, even if all they could do was fight and pray.

The sun was a distant, and quiet and uncaring eye that day. A dot that failed to warm a cold sky, star that it may have been.

Eric looked at himself. The layers of coats and armor barely made him look human. The green and black painted metal armor covering him to protect him from the dead, and the spikes on his wrists and lower legs serving as a reminder that they will be his last weapon if blade and bullet fails. Over them the layers of clothing, and black hood over his head, covered him even further, keeping him safe from the winter’s light. He wondered, if someone saw him on the road, how human would he look? Might they even think such a soul belongs to the army of the dead.

Behind him stood his comrades, the people who he left with, and the only living souls that he had to trust out in the endless expanse of ruin. It was strange, in the city there were so many people, to see, to talk to, to be with, one had such liberty with who they were able to interact with, and hold comradery with. Yet when venturing out into the mainland there were so few people, so few that every single one was precious, some would forge great bonds over such circumstances, though it was likewise a breeding ground for the darkest of human behaviors. It wasn’t good or bad as much as it just was.

The first person he could see Gail, a tall and strong man with heavier armor than anyone else there, the steel plates so thick and padded that no protection was needed from the cold. Spikes lined his armor well, and blades and shotguns, and a massive shield, were strapped for his quick deployment. He was so ready for danger and potential death, and he had been outside the city for nearly twice and long as everyone else on the mission combined. Young as he was a face like his was doomed to never live to be old. His type knew they would die in the ruins, and in a way they cherished such thoughts dark as they may be to know.

Behind Gail was Ava, a younger recruit, with their helmet not fully covering their face, and radios and wires and computers well-worn and affixed across their body. Though they may not have been as well built to fight the dead or the living, they had communications technology in good numbers upon them, and would be the first to send out distress signals, or identify certain threats and allies. Though from their nature and face it could be told they would rather not leave the city again after such a situation.

The forth and furthest back in the order that they walked in was a new recruit, by the name of Gen. He wore well made green armor, with polished surfaces, and a thick trench coat over it, a gas mask covering his face, making his body entire obfuscated. A mechanical hawk kept watch on his shoulder, and in his hands was a long rifle, that from the looks of it, had a better form for taking the lives of humans then of members of the army of the dead. The eyes of his gasmask were backlit, with bright red shining from them in such an inhuman way. Eric would have given a lot for just one more pair of human eyes looking at him out there.

As they marched across the corpse of the highway, leaving fresh footprints in the white void of snow, they saw something in the snow. It was laying down but it’s head could be seen, rotten and skull like, with it’s mouth open, and a claw like hand sticking up. They back away at first, the image was so clearly of the army of the dead, so clearly ready to attack. And then they drew weapons, they were ready to fight it, and if countless more would be there they would fight them too. Suddenly they stopped, and Ava wordlessly tapped Eric on the shoulder, telling him to slow down, to check something. And meanwhile the body in the snow didn’t move at all. And when Eric looked at the photos Ava took of it he suddenly understood why. The body in the snow had fallen snow inside its eye socket, it had been laying there in that pose for days. The body wasn’t undead, it was simply dead, a corpse in the winter, that resembled the undead that stalked the lands around it.

Night fell, and they found themselves making camp. In earlier days Eric would have pushed his men to march on, but it was no longer in him to commit such acts. The sky above them was dark, but far from the city the stars could be seen, and to those new to the mainland they were a strange and eldritch thing. To Eric they were old friends, looking down on them in the cold of the night. Around them were pine trees, that would be sure to be good cover if the army of the dead did come for them in the night.

They used lights to find their way through the tangled remains of the world. It wasn’t like the city, you couldn’t see anything at night. It was a disturbing paradigm for those who had grown up in a world where the lights of the buildings and the streetlamps made it so they were never anywhere where it was too dark to see. The city lights could sometimes be viewed from the mainland, but they were too far to witness at this point. There was a dead mall in the distance, it could really be seen, just a massive black spot that blotted out the stars, as a dark reminder of a world that was lost.

As they lit the fires, and prepared for sleep. They began to retreat into their hobbies for the small time that they had. Gail prayed and then went to sleep, as he often did, not speaking in the slightest to the others. Ava was already in their sleeping bag, though they used a light to read an old copy of the works of Philip K. Dick.

Gen sat next to Eric, neither of them ready to sleep, the shock of the world around them keeping both of them awake for few minutes more. Gen looked up, an expression Eric would never know shooting at him from under the red eyes of his mask. He asked Eric, or perhaps told him, “I would love if we were doing this in spring you know.”

Eric replied, “I’m sure the undead would enjoy that too.”

Gen seemed legitimately confused, “What do you mean?”

“Many of their bodies are more fragile then ours, and they don’t have access to the same defenses against weather that we do most of the time. They have advantage during better weather. It’s why expeditions are only ever in the summer or winter. We try to go south for wintry expeditions and north for summer expeditions but I don’t know how much that matters. At this point I think they know they have to watch out for humans more during the very cold or very hot months, so they’re less aggressive.”

“They know?”

“What do you mean?”

“They know what seasons are?”

“Of course. They used to be human. They know when it’s colder and warmer.”

“I always assumed the undead were mindless.”

“No. Not mindless. Even when their minds are distorted and courted they can always understand the world around them. Even their lowest ranks, who’ve lost many of their higher functions, still are able to sense danger, and make tactical decisions. The undead swarm views bodies as tools to use for their own gain, they take away what’s not of use to them, and keep what is.”

“Are there any that are truly smart, the way humans are smart?” Though Eric couldn’t se his face, Gen seemed afraid.

“Some, the higher ranks, the swarm’s elite commanders, vampires and liches and the like. The lower ranks have their minds limited so that they’re easier to control.”

“You speak as if there is a will to the hoard.”

“There is in a way. The undead weren’t created by an virus or alien gizmo. They’re from humanity’s very own will. It’s like how a ghost is the will of unfinished business, or how a witch can use their will to cast spells, how even humanity’s civilization itself is our ancestors’ will to climb down from the trees and to strike back at the wolves and the big cats.”

“How can the undead be the will of humanity.”

“You’re young, you don’t have any living relatives who remember the world before it ended do you? Back before the undead there were more mundane ways that humans were turned into the living dead, offices, and schools, and prisons and army camps and all those things, hierarchies where people were made to be something other then human, where their freedom and their will to live was taken, and they were turned into a state of living death of sorts, into mindless tools for others to enact their wills. And when so many people began to feel as if they weren’t human, as if they had lost their lives as they still walked, that feeling echoes as a great wave of psychic power…”

“Were things better or worse before the undead came?”

“I can’t say that. It was better for some people… but death for most. It is not such a question that would be good for many to ask. Darkness fell, and some have built a better world where it did not touch them, one does not require the other.”

“At least most people live in the city where its safe.”

“But during the time of the fall most people died. The city only contains the majority of humanity after the dead rose. In the times before the fall there where six billion people on this planet, now New York’s ten million or so make up the majority of all souls.”

There was a silence for a time. It must have set in to Gen’s soul how much had been lost, perhaps truly for the first time.

Gen finally chose to ask, “It’s strange. Before going out here it was like the city was the entire world. And it wasn’t bad it just was. This was all just void, able to be entirely forgotten, it was like we could just think of the entire world as what we had, and not think about all that we had lost before it. And now that we’re here it feels like an entirely different realm. In the city I worried about the factions, about my relationships with other humans, about politics and about… human things. Here there is nothing to think about other than my own fate.”

“That is the way it is,” Eric replied, “and when you return you will never see the world the same way, and perhaps you will apricate humanity, and there peace that there can be between us, and the joys of existing as a human within a human life somewhat more.”

“I wish it did not take this void to know that.”

“It does not have to. One does not mean the other.”

“When we get home we’ll still have to worry about factions. I haven’t had a chance to think about it, but in the city we’ll be dealing with Incubus faction and Awakeners faction trying to gain new power over Terminous and our allies. Not to mention Elise faction favoring us less, our allies in Valerian favoring us less even. I’m worried I’ll be fighting there too.”

“You can rest. And when you return home it may be fresh, like a blanket newly turned upside-down.”

They slept, and let the cold of night wash over their warm shelters. Sleeping outside is not a skill almost anyone in the city is raised to have, so those venturing in the mainland had to learn quickly. They’d be awoken by the sun, and then they’d go from there. Eric assumed they’d be heading home soon, they needed to be home before March truly began, and then beyond that they’d be home soon, they needed it, nobody can take the world as a place to wander forever.

It was Ava who woke them up, tapping restlessly on Eric trying to warn him of something, fumbling his body into an awakened state he asked, “What is it?”

Ava replied, “There’s signs of human activity. I want to hope it’s someone safe but we should be prepared for whatever it might be.”

“Just humans, no undead?”

“No undead detected.”

“What faction do you think the humans are from.”

“They’re more likely scavengers. Most people from the city don’t make it this far out. Though if it is another faction I have to warn you I don’t think they’ll be any peace between rivals this far from the city. So we should be prepared for aggression if it’s Illumin, Awakeners, Incubus, Keatteal, even Newsoc or Mechanacous.”

“What do you mean don’t make it this far out, this route is…”

“Further then you may have thought. We made good time but it took more then we’ve gained. We’ve gone too far south and west, from my readings we’re quite far from the city, and far from any continental bases that might be in reach.”

“As for the humans, is there anything else I might need to know.”

“Scavengers this far out are unlikely to know about the city’s existence at all. We’ll have to deal with them assuming they’re from families that have had no idea there was any bastion of technology and safety left in the world. Be prepared for the best and worst of that.”

“I’ve done first contacts before, that I can handle.” He looked at Gen and Gail, they had their weapons so ready to attack, almost eager from experience and lack there of for something to go wrong, and for the superior nature of their technology to shine through. He told the two of them, “Remember, it’s better to have peace then war with the scavengers, they may not be the same as us but we are reclaiming this land for all of humanity, not just for ourselves, they are allies to the mission of Terminous faction.”

Ava ominously pointed their hand at the mall, “Well, whoever it is, they’re over there.”

Eric looked at where they were pointing. It was the great abandoned mall. A place which he dreading going. Those places tended to be dens of something. And, though Eric would never be the type to admit it, there was the much more simple reason why it made him shiver; those places always creeped him out, they were ghostly ruins of a dead world, the most explicit and disturbing reminders of what the world looked like before the swarm of the dead attacked. Before they walked ahead Eric told Ava, “Damn your computers” it was meant to be playful but it was likely less so then he thought. He could never read Ava’s expressions though anyway.

The abandoned mall, like most structures of it’s kind, was surrounded by a massive empty lot, filled with the corpses of cars. The fact that the cars weren’t removed implies that it wasn’t evacuated when the dead attacked, perhaps the ruins of a scavenger colony existed in there, or perhaps they were turned undead early, and signs of a slaughter would be there instead.

But beyond it’s signs the empty lot was… disturbing. It was the size of entire neighborhoods, yet at the same time it was essentially nothing, just this vast void of concreate. The cars were these strange corpse like dead machines that repeated endlessly, there being more of them in one place then one would think possible. And beyond everything else it was just empty. It was a sign of neither nature nor civilization, a place where nobody lived, where no human history existed, but at the same time somewhere where nonhuman life had no place either, the plants struggled to penetrate their territory into cars’ lots even when they could overtake most ruined structures. It was just nothingness, deep nothingness, so cleared of life that no human nor biome had been able to conquer it years after its destruction.

He had hoped for something in the lot, some sign that someone over the decades of it’s ruin had touched one of the cars, had done something to make them somewhat human. Even that some animal had made them its nest. But there was nothing, just these endlessly repeating metal structures, more and more of them, all so much the same, one after another. One could taste the void there.

The mall itself stood similarly strangely. It was massive, and looming, though not taller than many of the buildings in the city, it was certainly quite wider and longer then any of them, if it had been within the city its footprint would have eclipsed multiple blocks. The best comparison in the city would have been a structure such as the Oculus or Grand Central Station, but even those were likely smaller, and even those had things surrounding them, this just existed alone, as a single fortress in the middle of an empty lot in the middle of the forest. The malls of the world before the fall must have been like islands of civilization in a sea of nothingness, a disturbing and unreal break of all humanity’s patterns of construction. No signs of human civilization existed around it, only the forest, only the lot, only nothingness, though it would be filled with stores inside one wondered who would have traveled so far to come to them.

They slowly crept inside. Even with the sky at its bluest blue above it was dim inside, and flashlights helped them navigate. Snow had fallen through holes in the roof to coat some areas cloaked in light, while others parts that lay in darkness were entirely dry. Once pristine bright colors had faded into chipping paint, yet even centuries onward one could tell it was incredibly garish. The entire place felt inhuman, as if it was built without culture, without community, without humanity. They passed stores that had existed when the mall was still functioning, though mold and rot had effected them they mostly stood as they did then. Advertisements, signs, sales, the sweet glowing allure of consumption calling beyond it’s grave. The fashionable clothing, the newest products, the upcoming movies, of the days before the fall were all preserved there forever. The place was built as if there was no outside at all, it was such a massive labyrinth that it felt unground even when one could see the cracked windows and the snowfall. Eric almost hoped to see something, a raider, a wolf, even an undead, something that wasn’t so very dead, and so very preserved.

Ava snapped him out of the cynical contemplation of the dead, telling him, “I’m getting readings of human warmth a few stores down from here, near the south edge of the mall.”

Eric replied simply with, “sounds good.”

Wandering to the south edge, past the huddling roaches, and past the shining silicone signs, and advertising calls to do what could no longer be done, stood one of the larger stores of the abandoned mall, white and pale, with red circles marking it’s sign, and what seemed to be an inventory of goods of all varieties. It was well preserved, despite the rot and decay and the obvious lack of light, it wasn’t hard to tell exactly what such a store looked just from seeing it’s most fall state.

Inside the human activity was quite obvious. People had recently looted it. It wasn’t an act to be condemned, there was no person alive in the great hall for it to be stolen from. But it was clear, they had taken things, canned food, sporting equipment that could be used as weapons, clothing, a lot of clothing. It had to be scavengers then, anyone who had been to the city would have had higher quality options for all those things. For someone to want to take clothing that had been rotting there for so many decades they would have had to have had so few better options, cold as the weather was.

They saw the first hint of a scavenger running from them, far across the store but they had spotted them. Eric didn’t get a good look at them, it was just a shadow in the darkness running from them. Though Eric could easily see that this person was in no fighting condition. There had been a few scavengers who could truly stand up to the city’s troops, often those close to the city who were able to raid arms and rations from them. But these would not be them, they were to skittish, and likely too far from the city to be at all prepared to deal with such beings.

Ava looked at their readings a bit more, “There should be a couple of them down there, do you think it would be a good idea to approach with how they seem to be acting.”

Gail was the first to speak, “We’ve delt with far worse odds, I see no danger.”

Eric replied, “We must make sure not to come towards them as an enemy. If these people know not of our world, then it would be a tragedy for them to learn of it through violence. It may have been before any of us were born, but remember that these people were once of the same nation as us.”

As they walked deeper in they got the first look at the scavengers. They clothed themselves in the ruins of the old world, with most of their clothing being from abandoned stores rather then from their own creation, likely what survived within plastic wrapping, with the occasional leather from the flesh of an animal supplementing them. They wore backpacks, and sacks and containers, and other things to carry things on their persons, the only way they could possess anything it seemed. And though they lacked armor or much in the way of proper firearms, they wielded makeshift weapons, forged from pieces of metal and wood, baseball bats, and crowbars, and knives mounted to sticks. They appeared like apparitions at first, their state of ragged dress the first feature that could really be made out about them before all else could be surmised. And their thinness, he could see their thinness, they looked as if they had to reliable source of food out in the ruins.

Getting closer Eric could see the scavengers faces. They were pale skinned for the most part, with long uncut hair, and forlorn looking eyes. There were six of them, the oldest being about thirty, and the youngest likely being younger then a teenager. They were shivering, all standing with the less experienced members of their band standing behind the more experienced members of their band as some sort of system of protection. In the front stood a tall man with a black beard, a woman clinging to him with a long makeshift spear in her hands, and a second man with a missing eye and face marked with deep scars. Even those defending seemed so afraid, shivering and staring into the darkness and into the light of the flashlights.

Ava, who at that point was probably the least threatening of Eric’s group (though all of them would have seemed threating to people who had likely never seen any people other than scavengers in their lives) walked up to the scavengers, their weapons to their side, and their face visible, extended their hand and asked the group, “Greetings. We are a party of explorers from the city. We are searching for knowledge, resources, and further victory in the battle against the undead.”

The long bearded scavenger asked them, “Who are you, and where dose your band come from?”

Ava replied again, “From the city… from a place where humans are safe, and retain the resources and technology from before the fall of the last world.”

The scavenger replied, nearly yelling, with a strange sense of anger at the suggestion, “Where! We’ve never heard of any such thing! Never heard of any way that humans could weather such a fell storm!”

Ava went on to explain, “We’re from what you would have called New York. We blocked off the bridges and tunnels to escape the swarm when it first came, and then we started rebuilding. We have technology now that surpassed even that of the old world.”

“What are you doing out here, what do you want to do with us?”

Gail interjected, “Slay the dead. Gain knowledge. Gain resources. Closer to the city we defend and take territory from the army of the dead.”

Ava added, “And to contact people like you!”

The scavengers with scars on his face asked them harshly, “And, what do you have for people like us.”

Ava replied, “We have resources to help you. And if you wish you could travel with us, even return to our territory. We need as much of a population as possible. We can give you warm clothing, or better weapons and armor. As part of our mission we are invested in the survival of any human against the dead…” they spoke as if their faction was the entire city, ignoring on purpose that most other factions had far different views of scavengers, “…We can give you food.” They reached in their coat for rations specially set up for such situations such as this, “Here, take some. Salt water taffy, and sweet bubble tea, and salmon’s meat.” They made their voice enthusiastic, perhaps to calm the scavengers, perhaps because they were excited to make first contact.

The scavengers, all of them, looked at the rations. Alien things to them. None of them had seen such food before it seemed, living off mostly what they could hunt it seemed. Only of them, the women with a long spear picked up the can of bubble tea, and began inspecting it before drinking it. It must have been like one of the greatest things in the world to her, she looked as if just nourishment alone was a gift to her, and this was meant to go far beyond mere nourishment. The bearded man ate some of the taffy, likely never having had true candy before in his life, and gave a look of concerned ecstasy as he ate.

One of the scavengers, the bearded man, told them, “I think it’s best if we are allowed to discuss this among ourselves now.”

Ava nodded and walked back. The rest of the group gave them their space. Walking into a different section of the broken down stores, between different shelves but still close enough to hear, as the scavengers discussed what to do with their new information.

Gen asked, “What are they going to do.”

Ava tiredly replied, “Their best.”

From the other side of the shelves they could hear the scavengers arguing among each other. The voice of the scar faced man cried out, “How can you trust them? They’re strangers, wearing strange clothing, with strange masks on their faces and metal on their chests, they have no reason to care for us? I know you’ve wanted this kind of rescue before Ron, but there guys are probably going to kill us.”

The voice of the bearded man replied, “And how is this better? We’ve lost so many already to the ghouls, we’re going to lose more. Maybe if we go with them we can at least have a chance of survival. Even if there was as much a chance that they kill us as that they don’t, it would be a better chance then we have out here. Even if they were cannibals it would be a less humiliating death then to be turned into a member of the dead’s army.”

The other voice replied, “We’ve survived out here for generations and you’d give it all up for this! What would your parents, your grandparents, who carved out life and tradition in the ruins think? Don’t think they’re going to be like us just because they’re human. Don’t think they have honor!”

A woman’s voice added, “It was God that sent the dead, don’t think those who avoided them through trickery are beyond His judgment!

The scar faced man added, “And that man… or perhaps that woman who handed us food, his hair, his tattoos, his makeup, would you let a degenerate like that hold your life in his hands. If one of us looked anything like that we wouldn’t let him walk with us, much less put our lives in his hands. These are degenerates, sodomites who bare the sins of the old world…”

Ava seemed to cringe to hear such words. But their reaction didn’t last long, as the technology they held began flashing red, as an alarm began to play.

The noise sounded throughout the massive room. “Undead in area. Undead in area. Undead in area. Undead in area. Undead in area.” Ava clicked it off before the sound got louder but the message was quite well received.

Gail stood up and broke down shelves to speak to the scavengers, “The undead are here, either fight with us or help us protect you.”

The bearded man looked at Eric’s group, and asked, “We don’t have an alliance with you yet?”

Eric replied, “In the face of the undead there is an alliance between all humans. The factions of the city fight each other, yet when those creatures appear there is a truce between even the most antagonistic of factions.”

The scavenger replied, it seemed his people had a similar understanding among each other, or at least they understood well enough what would be a good idea to do in the moment.

Like any confrontation with the undead, preparation was the most important factor in determining the ability for humanity to succeed. Gail stood in front, alongside the scar faced man and the long speared woman. Meanwhile the group built up a makeshift fortress out of the shelves that laid around them. Gen, Ava, and the bearded man camped behind the barricade of shelves with ranged weapons, ready to use them to defend the main group of fighters. Meanwhile in the back, Eric stood guard of three younger scavengers who would be the easiest targets for any undead breaking through.

Ava spoke to the group before the undead had a chance to show themselves, “Stay in positions, don’t be afraid to go into melee if the undead get too close, protect those around you. Remember, every undead is a threat, but their largest threat to humanity is their numbers. If their force is too strong don’t be afraid to fall back.”

The scar faced man added to their comments, “And remember, aim for the head and limbs. You’re more likely to kill these fuckers with a blade then with a gun, but anything to slow them down. Don’t die. Don’t let your friends die. And being alive makes you a friend at the moment.”

There was a long moment of tension between when they stopped talking and when the dead arrived. Nobody could know when their fate was to come walking in. And it felt like perhaps it wouldn’t. But if they moved at all they could doom themselves. And soon every shadow passing by them felt like a ghoul.

But then they saw them, slowly walking in, stalking the grounds like hunting animals. The first of the dead to come were human like, and numerous, heralding them the eternal buzzing of flies, they looked like humans at first glance yet there was something deeply wrong with their bodies, stiff and plasticky, and dead eyed. The wore the clothing of past memories, of those who died in the fall, and others of those who died hunting the dead, from lost peoples of the world after the fall, and lost generations of those peoples who still existed. Some of them still held weapons, crude yet effective things like batts and pipes that they could have picked up discarded from the grounds of the places that they wandered through. It took coordination to not attack the first group, but it couldn’t be done, there was too much about the attack they didn’t know yet.

The next group of undead to walk in, following the first group, were far more monstrous. Their heads were twisted and disfigured like a body killed in a terrible accident, their heads forever open and bloodied, with wounds that no human would survive, looking almost like raw meat in some parts. What eyes they did have were shining and silver. They were tall and large, naturally proportioned in some way, as if they had been changed by the curse of the living dead to make them better at committing acts of violence. Their clothing was eternally covered with blood, and pieces of metal were bolted onto them, over even their clothing, as permanent armor, and in their hands were weapons taken from the rangers of the city, halberds and swords well made to kill. There were only three of them it seemed, unlike their weaker more humanoid comrades, but they were more aware, not stumbling or bumping into anything, and moving with exact militant purpose, even herding the weaker undead at times. Everywhere they walked they seemed to leave stains of blood.

The final one to walk in was somewhat humanoid, pale, with her only largely inhuman feature being her arms which were far too long for her body, with even longer clawed fingers. Her skin was inhumanly white and plasticky, but held no visible wounds or rot. Her eyes, shining red as they were show intelligence, as did her movements. She had weapons on her, high quality, either forged by the undead or taken from newly killed warriors of the city. Her clothing was all black, and looked at if she acquired it after joining the undead swarm, and alongside it were human teeth and fingers that she wore and jewelry. She stayed back behind the others, commanding them perhaps, or at least waiting to see what happened.

The time for waiting was over and the bearded man and Gen took initiative, shooting one of the massive blood-soaked creatures. The bullets didn’t significantly slow the creature down, more wounds being added to it’s twisted body was of little concern for it, but it did cause it some sort of primal anger, turning it’s mutilated face to look at the makeshift fortress, and running with its polearm in hand. The lesser undead that it commanded following behind it.

The lesser undead were able to be mostly held off by Gen, Ava and the beard man’s bullets. Few of such creatures would die in one shot, but it made them have difficulties walk forward, a few even being wounded enough that they had to retreat. Though for the stronger one, running with blood sloshing off its back, bullets may have weakened it, but it had no intentions of turning back.

Gail and the blood creature clashed as they stood together at the front of the fortress, the long speared woman and scar faced made peppering it with lighter attacks, as Gail and the creature’s polearms locked. Gail was relatively more agile, able to dodge and parry attacks, meanwhile the undead he fought could take nearly any hit, even on the parts of it’s body that didn’t have armor bolted to them.

While they clashed the undead spoke to Gail, in a voice that sounded like it was choaking on it’s own fluids, “You fight only for your only doom little man… we have achieved eternal life.. All you fight now is progress, join us and you will never feel sorrow or pain…”

Gail gave no reply as he sliced off the creature’s head. Finally bringing it to it’s doom.

However, as the larger creature died, countless of the smaller less sentient ones began pouring in, destroying the fortress with teeth and clubs and hands. Ava gave the signal, “Overwhelming force, abandon the fortress now! We’ll see if we can fight them in one of the small stores.” It was a good plan, if Eric had the chance he would have given the order himself, the undead tended to hold a larger advantage on an open field where their numbers could mean as much as they could. As soon as they could everyone ran, as the dead became so numerous even the stores seemed to fade behind them into the eternal swarm.

While the group fled Gen took charge to try to take out one of the larger undead perusing them. Having the least experience with the dead out of all of them, he didn’t seem to realize just how little his bullets would do against a creature that tough. Thinking he was brave he shot the creature again and again. But it didn’t make him a hero, it slowed the blood soaked beast, and almost certainly gave it quite a bit of anger, but he did nothing to protect a single soul.

Eric tried to call out for Gen, screaming his name into the winter’s halls, and waving for him to go forward. But the soul didn’t hear, he must have thought he could fought the creature and then come back, must have thought himself a type of hero that exists only in song.

Gen tried to step back but he didn’t know the creature’s reach, as one of the bloodstained monster’s swords cut into the poor soul. Gen saw himself fall to the ground before he was struck by the blade again, taking his head. Eric wished he could cry, wished he could take the body and mourn, wished it would do anything other than stay there forever and rot. He wished he could have reminded Gen not to be a fool before. He wished they were safe in the city, somewhere warm where none would live in such fear. But there was only the winter, and there was only blood.

They fled through the dark hallways, the cold eating at them as the place seemed to swarm with more and more undead. Soon they could see nothing behind them, and there was only what was ahead of them. Eric soon realized that he was the slowest to move, and the one likely in the back of the group. He kept thinking Gen was in the hall behind him, but of course…

As he failed to catch up to the rest of the group, slowed by grief, Eric felt a long cold hand on his shoulder, and as he looked behind himself he saw her, the pale skinned woman who seemed to be commanding the rest of the group. Before he could think to draw a weapon he was frozen in place. She told him, “You will not regret this.”

Her head dove near him, bit into his face, he could feel his doom as the fangs stuck into his head. Then she skittered off into the darkness, too fast for him to reach.

The world went black around him, he didn’t know what he was looking at. He didn’t know weather he was falling asleep, or feeling something else. It was almost like being high, but not quite. Sick perhaps. He felt the need to lie down but he realized his legs were still walking. He felt cold. He felt cold.

Eric woke up out in the snow. Inspecting his surroundings. Anyone who he was with before was gone. For a moment he thought he had seen Gen but… he didn’t. There was blood on the snow around him but he wasn’t actively bleeding. That could mean a lot of things. He looked further towards the landscape around him, and realized how far he must have gotten. He was deep in the forest, with black trees sticking up from the earth at every side, and snow below him. Meanwhile he could see no sign of the mall of the lot that it was in the middle of. He had gone a very long way without remembering it, or someone or something had moved him, neither of them being a good sign.

Eric felt as if something was very, very wrong, but had no way of telling exactly what it was.

He stood up. He expected it to be hard but it was disturbingly easy. He felt no resistance from his body at all, not even the type that one would expect from getting up from a well-rested sleep. He could just so easy stand as if he had been lying down completely conscious for the entire time.

Of course, there was a distinct and horrifying possibility.

Eric tried to think back. He could remember going to the mall, fighting alongside the scavengers, what happened to Gen… and then nothing. It was like there was something missing. There was an undead with her hands on him but he couldn’t remember what she was doing to him or how he had fended her off. He couldn’t tell what was happening, it was like his brain couldn’t accept it.

Eric started walking forward which felt so unquestionably right. It was as if there was a little voice in the back of his head that was telling him to keep moving. But he couldn’t hear the words at all. It was as if there was a god who would not allow itself to be prayed to. He kept moving. He kept moving.

While walking at first there was shaking, not the type of weakness he ever had when he was tired, it felt as if sometimes he would just randomly shake or shiver. But that was it, outside of that single defect he felt the perfect image of health, with no sense of tiredness or even really pain or reaction to the cold. He found himself uncomfortably fast. The woods around him felt strangely normal, the feeling of loneliness didn’t even have a chance of catching him in any meaningful way. It wasn’t as scary as the danger that he knew to be there, it just was, he felt excited.

He walked and walked, realizing just how far he was from any familiar land. He had been to the continent many times but he had never seen that specific part of it before. And for all the talks of ruined structures, and undead, and rival factions, and scavengers, walking through the forests of the mainland could give an idea of just how much of it was unclaimed wilds.

He must have been walking for hours, no days, time felt strange. The sun was his only ally, it would have been about a day from walking from that. Twenty four hours. Time felt strange. Days didn’t exist when there were no other people around. He hadn’t eaten in the entire time but felt no hunger, it didn’t bother him in the slightest.

He saw undead, he passed them, but they were disturbingly passive, none of them did anything to attack him. They just looked at him, twisted and mutilated, marking the snow with the colors of gore, but they didn’t seem to see him as a threat… they didn’t seem to see him as a human at all…

No… it couldn’t be possible.

He eventually saw in the night a house with the light on, the snow whipped off of a path in front of it. Something inhabited by humans. He walked towards, it, it was as if some primal instinct was giving him instructions, giving him orders, true orders like the ones people were given before the fall to go there, to go to humanity, to seek humanity out.

Looking closer at the house it was a pre fall home, though it looked as if it had been reclaimed. It was blue, well built, could have been hundreds of years old, with twisted brown vines on it that he knew would have been a lovely green in the warmer months. And though not large for the ruins, it would have been massive if it were in the city. He could see the shoreline behind it, the grey green of the Atlantic marking the map’s edge, the sun was rising, it would have been beautiful if that clouds had allowed it to be. It made the world feel small enough for him to be in.

At the house’s steps he knocked on the door. It felt weird to knock, as if his hands weren’t made for it. As if something within him was yelling to break the door down.

When someone answered they answered with a shotgun. A human in scrappy power armor that looked like it had been repaired out in the ruins, and a shotgun in their hands. Far from the city as they were they held symbols of Mechanacous faction on their person, a proud red and gold emblem of a hammer and gear. The machinery and rivets of the armor clicked into place as the human stared him down. At least it was a human.

Eric raised his hands to the person and told them, “I am no threat to you, I too am of the city, I seek only refuge from the cold and darkness.”

The person in power armor replied, “You’re human?”

Eirc frantically replied, “Yes, yes, I’m very human. I was attacked…” he wouldn’t say he was attacked by an undead, just attacked, make it sound like it was nothing, “…and separated from my group. I am a ranger of Terminous faction, a loyal soldier to humanity.”

The person was confused by him for a few moments, looking him over perhaps, but eventually said “I’ve seen faces wounded similarly by human weapons. It’s possible. Come in and I’ll patch you up as best I can. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to talk to another human, there aren’t many in this area of the mainland, and most of the local scavengers wound just try to raid this base.”

When Eric walked inside he was surrounded by half forgotten wood and hoarded memories. The person in power armor had only somewhat changed it from its original function, filling it with anti-undead and scientific equipment, but keeping elements of the original decor and furniture. Light and electricity was functioning, probably from a generator somewhere outside, meaning the base was at least somewhat permanent. It all seemed so strangely comfortable.

Eric asked, “How long have you been here.”

The person replied, “Longer then most. It’s been about three years since I’ve seen the city.”

“Long term expeditions like that are rare.”

“I know. Mechanacous was experimenting with them a few years ago. But they never work. Better to stay near the city and only leave for a few months, or else you lose too many to the dead in the end.”

“And you stayed out here.”

“Yes. The others died or left. But I decided that my place was here, alone, with my computers and my tools. I never did people well.” Eric looked at the person, was it possible that they were undead. One could distort it’s voice and hide in power armor, some might be shambling and mindless but it’s been well proven that not all of them are. This would be the perfect trap for it, the perfect way to get travelers from the city.

He asked, trying to figure out what they wanted with him, “Would you like to know anything about me?”

“Might as well.”

He wouldn’t give anything to make himself an easy target, maybe even puff himself up a little, “I was born and raised in the East Village. I’ve been a member of Terminous faction basically all my life. I’m quite dedicated to the destruction of the undead, having been on five missions outside the city, not including the one I’m on now.” He wanted it to sound personal, tough maybe, something that showed them who he was, but it felt oddly mechanical as he listed his aspects off. When he thought about his past, when he talked about himself, it was like he was looking at another person’s life. Still worried the person inside the armor was somehow undead, he asked them, “Would you take off your helmet, it would make me feel more secure to see your face.”

The person in the armor agreed, pressing a button to cause their helmet to lift up. He saw their face, female, somewhere between age thirty and fifty, light skin, curly hair, some major scaring on her forehead and cheeks likely from power armor malfunctions, a few monochrome black tattoos on her neck. Certainly not undead. He noticed how mechanical his perception of the person’s features were, like analyzing a battlefield. After an odd moment of silence the person in armor told Eric, “Hanna, she/her.” Eric didn’t fully get what she meant by that, what those words meant, but felt like he should have, felt like he would have a few days ago. Eventually the person in armor asked him, “Do you have a name?”

“Eric… he/him… sorry I’m still a bit messed up from the attack.”

“Looks like it. Let me run some medical tests, could you just sit here a moment.” She pointed to the couch, it felt like a fine enough place to be.

While she was out of the room for a moment he looked at a painting she had hung on the wall of the city. What looked like a specific street though he couldn’t tell which one. Massive art deco architecture shining with polished brilliance, contrasted by plants growing alongside it, red with the autumn glow. He didn’t understand why it felt so distant, as if before he would have had such an affinity for the image, the nostalgic glow had worn off, and he had a harder time connecting with it then he should have been. It was as if part of him knew, as if there was some sort of sinking yet sure feeling, that he’d never be there again in his life.

When Hanna came back to him she asked, “Can I have your arm” in a detached way. She wasn’t wearing her normal armor, she had changed into a work uniform of some sort, grey, as an engineer would use, stains from some sort of red liquid on it. She put some sort of medical device on his wrist and took some tests. He told him, “You’re very cold, I need to make sure you’re as healthy as you look before I try to clean up your wounds.”

Eric tried to joke but it seemed to hard, as if there was a weird sort of tension in the air, “You know, the last time I had a piece of metal strapped to my arm it was under less friendly circumstances.” He wondered what he was even implying those circumstances were, armor, something involving a kink, maybe handcuffs but there wasn’t any practical use for them outside of a kink in his lifetime.

Suddenly Hanna said in a foreboding voice: “Oh god.” She wasn’t reacting to what she was saying she was reacting to what she was seeing on screen. Within the culture of rangers ‘oh god’ was a specifically bad warning, variations of ‘oh fuck’ or ‘oh shit’ were mundane, for harmless mistakes or bad news. ‘Oh no’ was slightly worse. But ‘oh god’, that was serious and dire.

He asked her, trying to sound frantic feeling strangely unable to switch his voice’s tone away from humor, “What happened to me?”

She asked him, “Would you consider yourself a man of honor?”

He thought about the question for far longer then he should have. “Yes.” It felt weird to say yes to.

With a dark nervousness in her voice, she spoke to him, “You’re undead. Obviously not fully undead but you’re in the early stages. Usually people turn more quickly but you’re… determined. There’s no way you can resist the infection for much longer, and no way you’d ever be let in the city. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know I just met you but it sucks to have to say this to someone who seems, so very human. Your life will be over soon, but if you want to make sure there isn’t one more undead in the area…” She handed him a small pistol. He understood exactly what it meant. It would be the honorable thing to do, to take his life, and take down one last undead. He wanted to. He held the dagger and knew that it was the right thing to do. If he didn’t feel so… strange he would have done it without another thought.

He felt a voice in the back of his head, in the back of his neck, telling him that if he did survive, did become undead, he would live forever. There was some part of him that desperately wanted to live, a primal survival instinct that believed in death before dishonor. He raised his knife and looked and Hanna standing before him, unarmored. And there was a voice in the back of his head telling him survive, survive, survive, survive. There was a feeling within Eric that he had to survive, that he had no other choice, that he would live weather he wanted to or not.

Survive…

He could barely recall what had happened to him. Not if he recounted it action by action, moment to moment, like comic panels marching on.

He looked down. The house in the night. The blackness of the windows outside. Blood. Blood everywhere. Hanna’s corpse below him. It looked beautiful. It looked so sad. He was so sorry. It looked tasty. He wasn’t supposed to think of human bodies as tasty. Not yet at least. He didn’t want this to be who he was that night. Though he knew he had no other choice, he didn’t want to have died there, didn’t want to die at all…

He looked at his hands. They weren’t fully dead but his skin was greyer, and red veins showed underneath, his fingertips slowly turning black. He couldn’t even feel pain in the wounds on his face anymore.

His eyes shouldn’t have been able to see the beach, it should have been too dark. But they could. They could. The sky was black yet he could see the water flowing in and other, the sands below his feet, the ruined and overgrown boardwalk rotting below a dark and dim moon. The seagulls flew away when he got close to them, seeing that he had become something unholy. He walked the sands, thinking of what would happen to him. For a moment he thought he had stopped feeling cold, but he did, the cold flowed through him, and nothing inside him was warm at all, and for that he felt as if there was no more cold, as now there was no more contrast. There was only the night and there was only inhumanity.

He saw another figure in the distance, a woman, with long arms and pale skin, he realized it was her. It was her. The undead who had bitten him. She didn’t feel undead when he looked at her, she just looked like herself, like someone she knew. All the unnaturalness, and all the disgust was gone. The idea that she had taken the lives of human, the idea that she took his life, that she took Gen’s life, it didn’t mean so much anymore. She seemed almost beautiful. Not in a lustful way but like a beacon. Like if even he had neither freedom nor honor he may at least have duty, have purpose, have a place in the world and a power within him.

He walked up to her, almost expecting to attack her, but his body did not. He spoke, he had a choice to speak, but it felt as if he was reading off words that were already in front of him. “Sire. Creator. What words may you have for me dear friend?” Why did he say those words.

She replied, “Near friend, dear friend, you are but so young in your creation.” Her dead eyes shown like the most radiant of all stars.

He then felt as if he could speak for himself once more. “Who are you? What do you want? What are you doing with me? What have you done to my soul?”

“You know what has happened to you, but you do not want to say the words. In her doom she told you. And you knew before that? How could you not know?”

“I don’t want to be this.”

“That is not yours to decide. Progress is nobody’s personal choice to resist or to not. It will become you. There is only the choice of acceptance, the choice of power. Or the choice of failure and desolation.”

“It doesn’t seem as if there’s a choice at all. No choice but two deaths.”

“Oh. They didn’t tell you? Did your scholars never find out?”

“Find out what?”

The undead laughed, her fangs shining in the subtle light of the night. “When we embrace humans into our kind, there’s a reason why some of us keep our minds, our ability to think, to reason, while others are mindless and shambling.”

“What is it‽ What do you mean‽”

“Those who submit willingly, who let the infection do what it does, when they become the swarm’s loyal servant, are allowed to keep everything that they had as a human. But when someone resists, the infection has to remove parts of the person’s mind until they’re able to submit. It’s a brutal process. But everyone is satisfied eventually, everyone happy within the swarm, even if they need the tragedy of being forced.”

“I didn’t expect this cruelty even from your horrid kind.”

“From our horrid kind. And it’s not cruelty, it’s mercy. It would be wrong to force someone to be something they didn’t want to be. So we turn them into things that will accept being undead. Even if it takes some modification.”

“I don’t want to be lobotomized‽”

“Well there’s a pretty simple solution to that isn’t there.” She reached out to him and held his face, tenderly, like a lover, a mother, a goddess? But there was cruelty, as she had not life to give such tenderness with. Her hands were so cold, they were like weapons, in a way they were weapons, but they wouldn’t want to hurt him, not anymore. “Join us. Don’t resist. Few of us have kept as much of their minds as I have, but it’s quite possible. Be someone the swarm doesn’t need to take anything from to become part of it. We could live forever. Humanity will die out, it’s inevitable. And then we’ll have a perfect future, nobody will die, nobody will be born, we will be an unchanging race for thousands of years. Nothing will matter and there will be no more progress to be made, and no way the light of progress can be reversed. It will happen. Choose where you will sit within that future.”

Suddenly the beach was full, and countless undead were around him, but they did not attack. He had only before seen the undead as twisted parodies of soldiers, yet these were twisted parodies of worshippers, creatures that rejected spirit in favor of flesh worshipping their rejection. If not killed they’d live forever, and rejected all comforts death could bring, cast out of Christ’s heaven, and Buddha’s endless cycle, of the kingdoms of Hel and Hades, of even the sinners hellfire and the rationalist’s oblivion. They had rejected all of humanity’s feasts of death for something darker, something eternal. They marched onto the beach, dressed as they did in life. Though some seemed like they could have been the city’s scouts or scavengers, the vast majority of undead were turned at the moment of the fall; businessmen in ragged suits, highschoolers forever in their uniforms, policemen and soldiers with their ancient kevlar vests still hanging off their bodies, service workers whose tattered uniforms were still marked with long dead corporations’ symbols. Some who were once tourists still carried merchandise for the sate of New Jersey, and others still carried political symbols, advocating for forgotten candidates in an election that would never happen. Their bodies were inhuman in different ways from each other, some were wounded, deformed but not in a way a human ever could be, they bore wounds that would never heal, but would never kill them either, eternally in a state of gore. Others had become monstrous, and looked as animal as human, with sharp teeth or claws, long tongues and red eyes, like living weapons ready to kill. And others yet were truly dead looking, corpses either fresh or desiccated still standing, refusing to go into that great beyond. Yet the majority of them weren’t that way, at least half of them had their distortion be more subtle then that, they looked like they did in life, but drained, expressionless, and ridged in their movements, neither asleep nor awake, their eyes dead, and the color drained from their cheeks. Recognizable, yet without personhood, their higher selves, their place outside the massive swarm of the dead, gone.

They bowed to him, looked at him, they worshipped him. That’s what they worshipped in this new faith, this faith of the dead, endless expansion, endless conquest, until nothing was left. They were the apocalypse, and they worshipped their own apocalypse, worshipped growing forever until they had taken everything, all humanity until there was nothing left.

He stepped back, but they reached out their hands, like a congregation begging an apostate to return. Their dead eyes staring him down.

He yelled to them, “I am a human! A mortal human!”

The pale woman who had bitten him spoke again, laughed, and asked him, “Not for long. Do you even remember your name anymore little one?”

He yelled back, “Of course, I’m E… Er… Eren? Erel? Ervin?”

“You don’t even remember, soon they’ll be nothing left. I’d recommend submitting now, you haven’t lost that much of your mind, there’s still a lot more to lose. We’ll need a name for you though? Since it’s your face that I sired you with is face a good name?”

He had no name. Had no place to run. Had only his voice, his fading memories. He prayed, but felt no peace, so there was no peace. He yelled to the sky, “Old gods hear me, and see my voice. Great Zeus spare me from these creatures of darkness, and Poseidon let the great Atlantic swallow them whole. Sekhmet and Thor let your wrath burn them and boil their blood. And great Anubis, Lady Hel and Dread Persephone destroy these creatures that have rejected your great kingdom! If any god exists here may you give these demons no mercy!” The yelling hurt his mouth but it healed so fast, and became even more inhuman, by the prayers end his voice sounded nothing let in did in his mortal form.

And suddenly there was rain.

It began slowly, but the clouds hung high above the beach, and drops of water began falling, faster and faster and faster, and thunder struck, and the Atlantic churned, and undead looked in fear as if there was an invading army at their feet, and they fled as if death itself threatened them and they feared for a moment that they were being called to the home that they had been denied by the swarm.

As the rain fell they were soon all gone, to take shelter from a storm that could destroy their broken bodies. And he realized that he was of the same fate as them, he too had to flee, his body likewise weak to the storm.

He stepped into the dark woods, they seemed so comfortable. Decided that it was time for him to sleep. Sleep would be good. Sleep would protect him.

He did not know how long he slept. His sense of time was off, and he had not dreamed at all. When we woke up it was midday, but that was all he could know. He tried to remember his name, he had to have one. She had called him Face, face would be his name for the time being. He tried to remember his old name, the best he could do was remember it started with E.

Looking at his arms was shocking. As Face got up he noticed his arms had changed, or at least they weren’t what he expected them to be. Face’s arms were grey, with their veins very visible, and black fingers like a body dying of frostbite. There was skin flaking off them, in tiny pieces, and it wasn’t even red on the inside. The cloth that covered some of his body was also different, ragged, and already showing signs of age, he realized he had been wearing it for many days without even taking it off. He neither urinated nor defecated, he hadn’t since he was bitten, so it didn’t really come up. Face tried to feel his face, his mouth had changed, it had healed so strangely, his mouth was twisted, not really shaped like a line anymore, and some of the teeth in the front were sharp and long like a bat’s. He didn’t think he teeth used to be that way.

He started walking. The rains had washed away most of the snow, but it would still be weeks (at least assuming he hadn’t been asleep for weeks) until anything began to bloom. It made the entire landscape a grim place, with no snow capping them the trees were just these black and brown wires, leafless and crooked tangles of branches. The sky above the forest was blank, white and pale but with few visible clouds. Or maybe it was all clouds. Either way the entire thing was not the most pleasant sight in nature. But once again Face started walking, it felt like what he was meant to do, he had been walking for a while. He was probably walking before he was bitten. He didn’t remember much of the day he was bitten, like that specific day was hard to remember for him for whatever reason. He realized he seemed to be able to remember less and less as time went on.

He walked further. The trees all looked the same. Occasionally he’d be greeted by the mercy of an evergreen, the only type of tree that still looked like a tree. The sweet mercy of autumn was so very far, any reminder of it was a kindness. Though the winter was only grey now, the coldness had faded, or more specifically Face could no longer feel any pain from coldness, he felt the coldness, coldness that could kill people, coldness that did kill people. But that coldness gave him no pain. It was around the time that he was thinking about his lack of pain from the cold that he noticed that he had stepped on a spike and it was now sticking out of his leg. It didn’t impede his walking at all, nor did it hurt, he realized he didn’t care at all. It was never a very pretty leg.

Occasionally he would see a ruined house, or road or rest stop. They were all dead. All signs of dead things, the animals alone found them to be good shelter in the state they were in. Perhaps some members of the swarm, or even a few scavengers had utilized such ruins, but he didn’t pass any ruins with such signs.

There was a pack of wolves at one point in his journey he saw a pack of wolves, eating the body of a large animal that he had forgotten the name of. He forgot how much bigger their bodies were compared to dogs. They were small in numbers when he was young, but as humans became rarer and rarer on the mainland their old rivals who had not been entirely driven to the grave had slowly regained their old populations. Wolves again roamed the woods, and sharks once again were a common sight in the Atlantic. These wolves were thriving, well fed, strangely real, blood on their mouths. He stood to admire them for a moment.

For some reason, Face began to feel something other than admiration for them. Jealousy, a desire to feast on that large creature he had forgotten the name of alongside them. No instead of them. That was his red stuff to eat. These wolves had nothing that he couldn’t claim. He jumped down and screamed and hissed at them. Oh the noises that his mouth made now. The wolves looked at him with yellow eyes of fear, as if they were looking at something deeply unnatural. They didn’t bother to fight. They knew to run. They knew he outranked them.

He began eating the creature whose name he forgot. It tasted good. It had a hard shell that was hard to penetrate, but it had a bunch of meaty bits on the inside. It wasn’t the wolves that killed it, it looked like it had been dead for a few hours, maybe days before the wolves got to it. He realized he wasn’t eating like he did when he was human, he felt neither hunger nor any satisfaction, just an intense desire to eat what was in front of him. It was almost like he wasn’t eating at all, like he was just observing the act of eating happening with his body in front of him. It was the same way he’d watch an illness overtake his body, like he was looking at the symptoms, it was something his body did but that his mind and his soul had no part in. He would just eat. He would just eat.

It took less time to eat then he expected. He just ate and ate, with the only breaks being to find something else that was edible within the creature, and his definition of edible seemed to have become far more open.

Suddenly he noticed himself coughing, choaking on something. As if by instinct he didn’t bother trying to remove it from his warped and distorted mouth. He ripped open his neck to pull out whatever he was choaking on. It only dawned on him just how brutal an act it was to his body after he had done it. Didn’t hurt very much.

Though what he found he had been choaking on was more terrifying to his soul. It was a dog tag, a badge of NewSoc faction rangers. How could whatever he was eating have one of those? But when he looked down at what he was eating it wasn’t a creature, it was a vehicle, a crashed jeep. It must have crashed and then the wolves started eating the corpses of the people inside… and they he started eating the corpses of the people inside. He had done it. He had eaten human flesh. Those fleshy bits he had gone after…

For some reason he was less shocked then he felt like he would have been. Maybe he always knew it would happen. They weren’t alive when he was eating them. He didn’t kill them. He would try not to eat dead human bodies again, it seemed like a bad idea to do.

He walked more. It took time but the time didn’t feel like time, it just was. The sun set. The sun rose. The sun set. The sun rose. Though he had no desire to keep track of the days, didn’t even know if he could keep them in his head if he needed to. But they passed and there were a lot of them. At least a week it seemed, maybe more. The forest grew thicker, and it started to snow again, more harshly then before, to the point where he could see the horizon fade, and the precipitation pile on the ground as he walked further and further. Yet still he walked, still he walked, for there was nothing else he could. The alternative would be just to sit, and he knew that would somehow be more painful.

He thought he saw things, but they weren’t there, hallucinations and visions and whispers in the dark that existed in his mind alone. Like some part of his mind was trying to see things he would never see again. He saw false images of people’s faces, soldiers, rangers, of some sort, people who he felt he had once traveled with, but who now were long gone to this world. And then they disappeared, as he realized they were nothing more then visions, nothing more than suppressed memories. He saw a young man who he knew was dead, and wished to call out his name, even though he knew the man was merely a hallucination, merely a construct of his depleted mind, he wished to call out a name to place upon that face one last time. But it was too late, he remembered nothing.

He saw for a moment, a street from his childhood, a part of the city he had once known for so long, with old stone buildings, and murals on the walls, and pigeons resting on the windowsills. It was autumn there. Early autumn. Warm autumn. He was no fool, he knew it was a creation of his mind, knew it was no more real then a dream. But he ran towards it, ran towards the hallucination because he knew that such a vision would be the only way he could stand there again. But when he came close to it, it was gone, and he saw nothing but the forest around him. And soon he didn’t remember those streets at all, and there was nothing left for his mind to fool him with.

All hallucinations ended. And he could see no more human face to be familiar with. No more sweet memories.

After further days of travel Face found himself spotting humans again. It was snowing harshly, the sky white, and the snow half hail and half rain, falling almost sideways, Face feeling it within his wounds. But he had found humans, hadn’t gotten a chance to see them but he saw the light of a fire, the type of bonfire rangers used to keep warm, or perhaps scavengers trying to just survive the night and day. If they were warm, he could be warm, he forgot exactly why he wasn’t traveling alongside other humans, or why he couldn’t create fire for himself. But he needed to go closer. As much as his body didn’t want to be cold, he was cold nonetheless, it wasn’t painful be he understand the lack of benefit for his twisted form’s dear health.

Yet as he approached the human flames a vision struck him, not a hallucination, for his mind had lost that ability, but a vision of the divine, an experience mystical. A tall and powerful god, with fiery eyes and a long beard, and a hammer in his hands, Thor great protector of humanity. The spirit turned to him, and for a moment Face felt comfort, for this spirit had protected him before. But this time the god did not protect him, Face felt the gods power turning him back, the howling winds picking up and sending him further and further from his path, hoping to destroy his body, hoping to make him suffer more. And Face understood, he understood that he was no longer a creature that such a deity would protect, he was now a being that such spirits must protect humanity from. His dearest gods were no longer his to prey to, now others prayed to them to protect themselves from him. And he understood. As much as he wept he understood too well. It was a rare night when such invocations worked so well, and when face turned away from the fire, the vision ended, and the people who needed such protection were safe.

There were no friends, no gods, no glory upon Face’s new path. Only the winter and the forest knew him, for he was of the winter, and he was of the forest. There was no going back for him now.

He walked through a strange sort of snow. He began to feel nothingness. Days meant nothing. Weeks meant nothing. Time meant nothing at all. He would just march on, towards his death. But he would never get a chance to even die. He just walked. He just walked.

He thought for a moment that he could protest, resist the curse of the dead, refuse to join the swarm. But that’s what most did, and most lost their mind, their reasoning. He would join the swarm, that was predetermined, it was up to him if the swarm forced him to or not.

There was nothing for him to get back to anyway. He would never be let back into the city. He barely remembered what the city was like. He would never again know again what it was to feel pain, to fall into a warm bed and feel it’s graceful comfort, never know again what it meant to taste sweet wine on his lips and chocolate on his tongue, never again make love, never again cry. His body was not human. He was cold now, he had realized there was no more internal heat within him. His blood was cold and black and as thick as honey. And it was always dripping behind him now, yet never running out. He had no more humanity within him. When he felt the shape of his own face it no longer resembled anything human, it was twisted, with teeth everywhere, eyes where they shouldn’t be, a mouth that opened in a way mammals jaws weren’t meant to, twisted and strange. And for some reason he wasn’t scared. Face tried to remember his old face, his human face, with a name that started with E. But he didn’t know how it looked. If his eyes still could weep they would have, he didn’t even remember his human face, didn’t remember his mother or father, he knew there was someone waiting for him at home but didn’t know who they were. There was only the forest, and there was only the now.

He decided he didn’t want to walk anymore. He found and old stone church, a human structure still standing in the winter woods. He lay down and started sleeping. Not really sleeping, just laying down and trying to think of nothing. It was no rest. But the snow began to cover him, and it felt as if he barely was anything at all.

The snow fell and it melted, the church roof long gone. There was no more freedom in his heart. He was just there. And that was just his fate.

He thought back to memories watching them fade as he slept, seeing their last resolve. Seeing the memories that stayed strong. A black and white poster placed up by Terminous faction in the west village, saying over a printed illustration of a ranger the words “humanity is not dying, it is being murdered. You can defend it!”. Singing with friends his last night before leaving the city for the firs time, the hope and fear in their eyes, not knowing if they would die. Seeing the view of the city surrounding him, on the hill of Sunset Park, seeing the entire city, a human life in every window, a world that looked so massive, all the humanity he needed to protect. A kiss, someone he cared about, below the above ground rails, they told him to stay safe, told him not to die. He told them he wouldn’t. He didn’t know he lied. He begged the void. Begged for forgiveness for betraying such a sweet voice.

He realized he was gone. There was no more denial. His body now a corpse.

There was only sleep.

And suddenly he woke up. It was the edge of spring. Still winter but the first hint of warmth of spring barely peaked through as the snow melted. It was right when, yes, right when the rangers would be preparing to see the city again. Perhaps a few of them have already stepped through the city gates. And then he remembered, he wanted to die as he remembered, he would not be going with them.

He sat up. His body feeling mechanical in its movements, it was flesh but not living flesh, it didn’t move with that animating force of breath but instead an uncomfortable supernatural power. He looked around him. Other undead looked at him, they must have woken him up. They were what Terminous would have called standard ghouls. Withered, almost skeleton like, with sharp teeth and claws, and glowing white eyes. There must have been an entire pack of them looking down at him. They would have lost parts of their minds, but they wouldn’t be entirely drained for sure. Smart enough to hunt and plan like cats or wolves at the very least.

They looked at him. They didn’t help him up. It wasn’t in their nature. They were wondering weather he could walk with them or not it seemed. Wondered if he was fast enough for them, if he was strong enough for them, if he could get up at all. And he could, and he did. And when he stood with them he just started walking with them, the same type of walking, but suddenly in a group.

For a few hours he was in a larger group, but as they split, likely to try to increase their chances of finding humans, Face ended up in a group with just three others. It felt almost like a group of friends, or coworkers. But it didn’t truly. For one none of them could talk, Face and another one, in an Incubus faction ranger’s armor, with him had no ability to talk it seemed, likely both because of mouth shape. Another could only seem to repeat the same phrase over and over again, “we’re reducing prices by fifty percent this holiday weekend”, judging by his pre fall suit and tie it was a phrase from his old life, echoing as the last memory of who he once was. The third that was traveling with him, never spoke, but sang, her song being rather beautiful though rarely intelligible, taking bits and pieces from music she once knew. By her dress it seemed she had been a high school student when the swarm attacked, still wearing her old school uniform.

They passed by a sign that said, in vivid yet rotting letters, far bigger then the human scale but perfect for the now dead and rusted automobiles, “Garden State…” the rest of the words rotted off. The sign should have been humorous in such a harsh winter. But winter as it was, February showed the first signs of winter’s end. As he looked upon the frigid landscape he could see the first budding flowers, hear the first songbirds coming up from the lands to the south. Spring would come, and he thought that if he was to be undead it would be good to at least be undead when everything was in bloom.

There was no kindness between the dead who traveled together. They were not friends. They would help each other. Those who had been rangers helped navigate the woods. They pointed out targets to each other. But they helped the swarm, not their friends. Face once saw the suit wearing ghoul start hitting the uniform wearing ghoul as she was distracted by something. He wanted to yell out “she’s just a kid” but he had no mouth that could scream such things. She was fine, the singing, and the repetition of “this holiday weekend” did not end at all during the whole interaction. It wasn’t in their kind’s nature to have mercy on each other. It wasn’t in his kind's nature to have mercy on each other.

They found an old man caught in a simple leg trap. From his age he had to be a scavenger, there were no rangers that old, if he’d been from the city he’d have been in the city, layers of coats from a lifetime out in the ruins were on his back. Face wondered what a man like that would be like, proud, he would be proud, having avoided the swarm his entire life. He would have been one of the few humans old enough to have only known the undead as an adult, to have truly lived in the pre swarm world before that. He may have even been one of the few people alive to remember the 20th century. He’d have learned as a grown man to fend off the dead, and had years and years of stories of surviving as a scavenger… one could even imagine him sitting around a scavenger campfire, telling stories of the old world and of the first days of the swarm to his children.

But it would be best for Face not to imagine. Because he knew what would happen to him. The old man screamed for help, his bearded withered face crying into the woods, hoping that a human of any sort would come. But it wasn’t a human that was coming. Face and his fellow ghouls slowly walked towards him, looking only to make sure he was properly restrained, harmless, of course he was, the trap had broken his leg, left him stranded there. There were people who could help him, but they wouldn’t find him in time.

Face tried to distract himself. Looked at the trap as if it helped him any. Black metal, well made, too industrial for the swarm or the scavengers to have laid. Rangers, not from Terminous though, his people would have never put down something that could so easily harm a random human. Perhaps a rival faction such as Incubus. He thought that as his new people prepared to devour a human alive, for a moment Face realized just how far he’d fallen. He’d gone all the way from being a defender of humanity to something that attacked humanity at it’s weakest. He realized he shouldn’t have thought any more of such things, else the curse of the undead would take that from him too. He’d let himself ignore rather than forget, evil as it seemed.

The old man began to scream as the creatures began eating him. They didn’t bother to do anything to make him dead first. They just chewed his flesh, barely bothering to taste and swallow. There was no distinction between what was eaten and what was spit out, the instinct of the swarm was to destroy over all else. It didn’t matter if it could be utilized, it mattered that it could be conquered, that it was the swarm’s and not another free being’s.

Everything within his body told him to join, it was like the deepest hunger, the most ravenous lust, the most pressing need to sleep. His mouth wanted to chew flesh, his hands wanted to feel it being torn between their fingers. The last of his mind knew that it was wrong, that it was so very wrong, but his body wanted to more then anything. He was so far beyond doing anything to stop it, but he felt if he could just look away, just stand there and watch it would mean something. But then he felt it, then he felt the force of the swarm telling him that he had to partake, that the swarm would take as much of his mind as it needed to until he could no longer resist eating that flesh. His time of standing on the sideline had ended, he would submit or he would be forced to submit.

Better to keep his mind and eat then to lose his mind to eat.

He ran towards the old man, let his body take control, as he sunk his teeth into that succulent blood filled neck, tasting the organs on what remained of his lips, feeling the death between his hands, smelling the moment the old man died. And it smelled so good to him now. A few minutes into the feast he didn’t think about the morality of what he was doing anymore, he just was. His actions all became things to be said in a passive voice. He wasn’t eating anyone. The undead swarm wasn’t even eating anyone. Someone was being eaten. It’s not like there’s anything he could do about it.

They walked on, left the old man’s bones to dry in the sun. Perhaps help would finally come for him, only to see him nearly entirely gone. There’s was something almost funny about it. And once to eating was done, the singing began again, and once again was “this holiday weekend” continuously repeated.

He wondered as he wandered, what would happen if he died of natural causes, some sort of disaster, at that point. Would his body be identified as his own. Would he have a chance to be known as himself. Would anyone get a chance to see him, or would he just be another body in the melting snow. He thought he knew the answer too well. He hoped no ranger would see and recognize him at all, then perhaps his legacy would be nice and pure. He wanted to say nobody would blame him if they knew what he had become, but he couldn’t say anything at all.

There was some peace to the forest when he was alone. With other ghouls near him it lost the little charm the frozen ruins ever had. But he didn’t have a choice. He realized he didn’t have a choice when it came to anything anymore. The storm wouldn’t permit it, even if it made him desire what it forced him to do. All that happened simply was. And in his final moments, as he realized the last of his humanity was gone from him utterly and completely, there was no more difference between the things he did, and the things that happened to him.

He could fantasize, think about attacking one of his fellow undead, taking them out, and the swarm let him fantasize, as he was so utterly submissive to it that it was like fantasizing about growing wings and flying. No part of him would act against the swarm, and even if he did kill his fellow undead, he would not stop being undead himself.

Eventually, as he was walking along, he realized he was very close to the city. The amount of ruins, and how clearly they’d been touched by rangers made it obvious. He could almost see the hint of the skyline on the horizon. He knew he couldn’t actually go much more near it, any undead who was close enough to threaten the city walls would be destroyed by the forces of the city. But he could just almost remember what it was like to see the first hint of the skyline all those years ago. He felt the city close to him, as if he could almost be there again, but he knew he never would. As close as his body was it was too late for his poor little soul.

Suddenly he heard gunshots. To his undead mind the sound of a gun no longer seemed as though it was from a natural yet brutal weapon anymore, but it seemed like something of cosmic horror, barely understandable, and so very alien to the form he had taken. Everything the weapon represented, every person such machines had killed, and every person such machines had saved, were all in qual parts alien to Face now.

The undead around him didn’t have much to do when hearing gunshots though. It was not in the swarms plan for them to scatter, but they didn’t see what they needed to fight yet. They just merely stood, knowing something would happen soon…

And then suddenly it happened. That repeated phrase that Face had been forced to listen to for so long finally ended forever. “We’re reducing prices by fifty percent this-“ The ghoul who had been saying it again and again stood with a bullet in his head, standing upright longer then a human would, stumbling back, and then being hit by two more bullets from what must have been a vantage point in the woods.

There was a fear between all three undead as they walked into the woods. There was something all undead seemed to know, that perhaps none of them could admit, that would be unseemly to admit, that humans were terrifying. Humans who could fight back, who were good at fighting back, were truly terrifying. Most humans were prey, it felt natural for them to be prey, which made it so horrifying when they fought back, and reversed such relationships. Face realized he knew what the lions and wolves must have felt when they first saw humans mastering fire and holding spears and clubs, what it must have meant to see humanity reverse it’s place in the food chain, and tell the world; no hierarchy is sacred. In past tellings Face had been on humanity’s side in such a parable, but he saw them now from the other side, and wanted his natural and genetic superiority in tact and the end of the day.

Then suddenly a human could been seen running out from the woods, a fully armored one, his actions so fast, so deliberate, so full of life, nothing about him could be confused with an undead’s equivalent actions. And suddenly Face realized that it wasn’t just a human warrior coming out from the woods, in was a human he had known in life, it was Gail. Face wanted to hide his appearance, to make it so they wouldn’t know, wouldn’t seen what he had become. He just hoped his body was too distorted for anyone to tell his human self.

In a moment he saw one of his undead companions destroyed by Gail’s polearm. It was so fast there was no hope of survival, like a wolf pouncing upon its prey. Face knew to just run. He wondered why he remembered Gail’s name but not his own, maybe his name just wasn’t worth remembering, or it was worth too much to the swarm.

For a few moments he ran through the woods, and there was nobody but himself. Only the singing ghoul near him could be seen, and her voice always heard even as she felt the fear of destruction. There was only her song, and only destruction.

Then suddenly the song ended, and he could see the human that had shot her. They had tripped! The human who had shot her had tripped, he had the perfect in the attack them. He ran over to the fallen human, ready to strike.

His body was so very hungry, he saw the human who had been shooting at him, who had shot his fellow undead. Their body was small, slight, easy for him to overpower just by jumping on top of. He held them down, touching their soft living flesh, thinking about how nice it would be to bite into them. He was so very lucky that they had tripped. And Gail was nowhere to be seen.

But then he saw their face! Oh god he saw their face! Ava! It was Ava, somehow he still remembered them, still remembered that even if he had lost his life they didn’t have, and suddenly mourned that they would, so certainly would as long as they were below his body. He wished so desperately he had not those urges, that they didn’t trip, that it could have been anyone else to fall that way. He hoped Ava did not know it was him, hoped they could not know that he was the one who was going to kill them.

He looked in Ava’s eyes, their crying face, he didn’t expect it to hurt so much to see them crying, and realize that he couldn’t comfort them, couldn’t protect them. He wanted to hug them and say it was ok, but it wouldn’t be, his body needed to eat flesh, and their flesh was there.

And then he realize he could protect them. Even if the swarm would destroy him for it.

He jumped off of them, Ava looking shocked as he did. Of course they did they had never seen the undead spare someone before. And he did, he knew the swarm would turn him into something that can’t spare soon, take away everything that made him himself until he didn’t remember an Ava to spare. But it didn’t matter, he wouldn’t last that long against them. He could see Ava raising their gun again, to give them more time, as he felt himself forgetting, felt the swarm rotting his frontal lobes away, he tore himself apart, ripped off his jaw, ripped off his arm, broke his legs on the stones below him, made himself harmless to Ava as the swarm made him forget who they were. He would stand back no more, he would not be complicit in another human’s death, even if it killed him.

The last thing his dead eyes saw was Ava raising their gun towards him, and firing their shot. He was rapidly forgetting who they were, but he was proud of them, he was so very proud.

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