Chapter 18

If anyone wanted to know exactly what Frank was thinking while making his way up to the summit, where he overlooked the valley of death below, his thoughts would be simple. He would rather jump to his possible death below than ride in a helicopter again.

Even as he got to the summit, and looked out in the distance, there high in the sky he swore he could still see the dark spot in the air, that was all that remained of the still retreating helicopter that brought him here.

Some might have pointed out that that Frank was doing this as an excuse to likely try to see hope flying away. On the contrary though, Frank was adamant about not wanting to ever set foot inside a helicopter again.

The fact that he only felt surges of energy wash over and through his body with each rung he climbed only made steeled his resolve that he was doing the right thing.

Regardless of the crimes that were being heaped upon him, he would get them all erased by simply jumping off the wall, going down into the miasma filled plains below and walking to the next guard post.

As he looked, Frank saw off in the far distance the faint outline of civilization that sat off in the distance, a ridge of human innovation and ingenuity that somehow managed to survive the test of time.

With a pause, Frank realized that this was his first true view of the outside world, and it was beautiful. Off to his left, he felt the felt the warmth of the sun and realized that the stories he had read of this were true, though they failed to explain just how uplifting it was to feel the sun on your skin. Yes, there were UV lamps and grow bulbs down in the slums, but they all paled in comparison to the real thing that shown down on him now.

For a moment Frank took it all in, then looking down below at his drop realized that while it had only been forty feet up the walls on the inside, the outside walls and subsequent drop was a lot further. As he saw a sloping wall that angled away from the base of the wall, followed by what clearly was some type of hill underneath that kept the rows upon rows of barely moving rot infested corpses away from the prison.

Quickly Frank took everything, in realizing that it was forty feet straight down to what had to be at least ten more feet at a steep angle, and then another ten to twenty feet in a slow gradual slope that led to monsters. Then from there, he would need to follow the black road that pointed off in the distance to freedom.

Despite the fall being close to sixty or even seventy feet, Frank felt better about this fall than the one he would suffer from falling out of a helicopter. Turning his head up, and at an angle he looked and only managed to make out a faint dot in the background that was just now clearing the giant walls of the border city. Even still the helicopter managed to fly over the walls with relative ease, meaning they were far higher than these measly walls of protection.

Realizing that this was his chance to escape and be free of all punishment from Luther’s death, Frank decided to take his chance below.

Worse came to worse, he would die. Best case scenario, he would be able to cultivate the vast fields of dark energy below and make himself just that much stronger.

Pausing, Frank did a half turn back to find the Warden.

To his surprise the Warden never moved, apparently having nothing better to do that to watch the new recruit jump to his death. Apparently, this happened often, at least that was what Frank thought.

Making sure to still sign out as it were, he gave the two fingered wave that he had given the Warden when he mockingly welcomed here, to Purgatory.

With his note of recognition complete, he turned and cycled his life energy within his body, letting it strengthen his bones and muscles as he quickly plummeted below.

As he fell, he thought how fitting of a name Purgatory was for this prison. It was a literal Purgatory, one where people would wait to either enter Hell, or this land of the dead like Frank was now. Or they would have to wait until absolution came and their time served was met when they would be whisked away.

That was for others though, Frank realized that he was different. He realized that he was already cheating death, literally in his case by stealing its power and making it part of his body.

“GERONIMO!” Frank cried out, with glee as he felt his power course through him and felt many new sensations that he never experienced before. This was the war cry he read about, and now that he was experiencing the same sensations on his own, he was glad he let out the air from his lungs in what others might call a war cry, though he knew them for what they were, a thinly veiled form of panic.

Thud.

Then just as quickly as the sensation of falling happened, it ended as his heels landed first, then immediately falling backwards, while sliding down the steep slope of the second wall, Frank felt his healing life energy spark to life within his body. The energy instantly grabbed any pulled muscles or cracked bones and began infusing them with healing energy.

Slide.

Having landed on the steep slope, his body began gliding downwards, picking up speed the further he went, until finally he felt his momentum slightly shift as he was thrown forward.

Clop, stomp, clop, clop.

Frank kicked and flailed his feet wildly as he stumbled forward, trying to slow his momentum while keeping his feet under him as he began to start seeing rot infested corpses walking aimlessly near him. Being this close he could feel a strange dichotomy within the rot infested zombies. He could see and now even feel the way both life and death magic permeated the rot infested corpses before him.

Thinking on it though, the dichotomy almost had to exist. For decay and death energy could logically only be produced from the direct remnants of life energy. Meaning that for the rot to still be alive and festering within a walking corpse, there had to be some variant of life energy within that corpse still that the decay energy could feed from.

Realizing this, Frank wondered if he could work on cultivating not just his death energy, which he had expected to have available down here in abundance, but he also wondered if he could somehow cultivate the last of the life energy from these walking corpses. There wasn’t much life energy, far less than a normal living being would have, but there was enough, likely close to what Frank had received from the rodents, at least for some of the newer corpses. Though how exactly Frank knew which zombies were newer was not entirely hard to tell, as the more dark energy that had condensed within the body of the zombie, the longer they had been subjected to this state of rot.

As Frank drew closer, the monsters apparently sensed Frank’s vitality. Or at least they sensed something, as many began turning in Frank’s direction.

That was enough of a threat for Frank to instantly revert to his giant rodent killing ways. Without even having to think about it, bright green life energy fused its way into Frank’s feet and hands. Causing the zombies that had just been glancing towards Frank to suddenly spark to life as their darkness controlled brains saw the life energy that Frank was producing and began to charge towards him. Well charge was too strong of a word, as they mostly shambled their way towards Frank. Working more as a wall of inevitable doom, than as a barrier of speedy monsters that worked in coordination with each other to pin Frank to a wall to apply one fatal bite that would ultimately lead to Frank’s death and subsequent joining of the zombie horde before him.

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Slash strike, heel sweep, palm jab.

Frank moved like a master level dancer on stimulants who danced gracefully dodged and weaved his way through a gaggle of overgrown, morbidly slow children who tried to mimic his own movements, but failed.

He dodged under outstretched arms to deliver powerful strikes to the chests of zombies. Frank tried to aim higher, but he was still growing, and not quite the size of a full adult, unlike many of the zombies he now faced. All of whom seemed to be adult sized.

Splash-squish.

Only after landing a lethal strike to the chest of the third zombie who was but one in a string of shambling bodies that had come towards him did Frank feel something soft and squishy explode from his strike.

Pausing for a moment, Frank looked down at the last corpse, only to see long stringy hair on a gaunt looking face. Then looking down he saw what was clearly a bright tank top that a female at the beach might wear, and then right over the heart area was a giant sunken hole in the chest cavity. Frank had punched the zombie hard, and with his life energy infused fists, he had managed to easily carve his hand into the chest cavity of the rotting monster and caused it to collapse from an explosion of the heart.

The heart was what Frank had hoped the squishy sensation was that he felt in his hand, though he knew that was not correct as the hearts he had exploded with his strikes to this point. Nope, deep down in Frank’s mind, he knew what he touched, and he felt horrified by the sensation as he inadvertently shook his hand wanting to keep any fluids of the contact off his personage as quickly as possible.

Did I just get to second base with a zombie girl?

Wincing to himself, Frank felt scarred for life, realizing that he had inadvertently touched a zombie girl inappropriately. Frank was about to let his thoughts spiral out of control over whether what he was doing was bad? Should he try to avoid hitting female zombies there? If not there, then where and how could he hit female zombies? Should he hit a female zombie at all?

Rustle.

Fortunately, his mind heard the next zombie drawing closer from behind and rather than thinking about the consequences, Frank’s body moved on its own. This was the same way his body recognized the threats of the giant rodents, when he just went into mental survival mode. His next time fighting a female zombie, he found his fist angling just a smidge higher to avoid the sensitive area, while still managing to drop the zombie in one strike.

Figuring that this would have to be his work around for now, until he found an alternative method for dealing with zombies as a whole, Frank continued to fight his way through the hordes of zombies that plagued the base of the prison.

With each strike, and death of the zombie he was facing Frank felt a stream of both life and death energy fill his body. Just as he would start to feel tired, the crisp burning sensation of death energy would fill his meridians, sparking his mind to life with the agonizingly sweet sensation of pain. Then just as quickly as the pain would course through his body, a quick calming stream of life energy would follow immediately afterwards, healing any damage caused by the death energy and restoring Frank’s body back to its peak form.

Like this, Frank made his way forward, constantly fighting his way through shambling zombies.

Frank looked ahead, seeing the road that led to salvation being lit by the dwindling lights of the sun. Fortunately, despite the sun setting Frank knew he would be just fine moving forward, as his Energy Sight was already taking over, illuminating both the pathway and highlighting the more powerful zombies that all moved slowly, until Frank got in their radius of detection.

Now that the immediate threat of zombies was clear, Frank used the moment to scout around and see what lay in front of him. While he had fears that the zombies would have giant weapons that they wielded in life still gripped tightly within their hands, fortunately none that he saw managed to have such weapons.

Though, scouting ahead Frank saw an image that would forever be burned into the deepest depths of his nightmares. An image so foul that he swore to himself that he would never admit seeing this to anyone.

The image that forever changed Frank was of a moment he had hoped for hundreds of times while growing up. Something so pure, an image, a moment that Frank could momentarily use to get along with any boy in his class had been ruined.

For while Frank looked on with the dying rays of the sun to aid him while looking for zombies wielding weapons or unfathomable powers, that is when Frank saw it. And like a moth to the flame his eyes saw the image, doubted the image, then confirmed the image was genuine, while deciding to stare at the image, despite the horrors that it was inflicting to Frank’s mind.

There, off in the distance, was a female zombie. One who had been particularly well endowed in life, at least that was what Frank’s mind managed to put together, for in death the tight halter top that had been stretched tightly around her chest had ripped and torn away with time, revealing one large bare and extremely necrotic breast dangling wildly in the air.

Yes, Frank’s first glimpse of a female boob had forever been ruined by zombies.

Shuddering to himself Frank turned away, then tried to go through the stages of grief. After he turned away, he denied what he had seen, figuring that it was just the bra was gray and extremely clammy. That would have been fine, but unfortunately Frank had to peer back and look again, only to realize that it was still a fully exposed zombie boob, that the zombie seemed to have no care about showing to the world.

After that, Frank moved onto the second stage.

“How could you ruin that for me!” Frank screamed, as his feet moved quickly towards the zombie. For her part, the zombie only barely recognized the giant glowing fist that came straight for its face.

Splat.

This time Frank’s fist felt a cracking first, followed by a splattering of organs as his fist punched through the brain of the zombie. Slightly twisting his wrist as he pulled his hand free, Frank spun the body of the zombie away, so that it landed with its back up towards Frank.

Looking down, Frank felt slightly better knowing that the image that had been seared into his eyes was now gone.

“And wear some freaking clothes!” Frank found himself talking to the unmoving corpse at his feet.

That’s when Frank went onto the next stage of grief, “that did not happen. Nope, never happened. I did not see that.”

This mantra was repeated as Frank found himself once again fighting his way through yet another cluster of slow moving zombies. Once again, Frank used this time to let his mind relax and try to discard the horrors that he had seen and experienced today.

Mentally he knew that he would survive this, but he would never speak about what he saw or did here to survive. It was all so horrible, that he never wanted to be sent here again. As he moved, he wondered if it would have been better to just wait for a possible helicopter to come and rescue him, versus having to continue making his way through Death Row. The thought about it, then shaking his head realized that despite how unclean he now felt, it was still better than flying, but just barely.

Though Frank made it a point to not lose any other firsts to zombies, or the undead. That was a promise he made to himself, and one he was positive he could and would keep.

Little did he know about the future horrors that still awaited him on his journey. Future horrors that would make the ones he saw thus far look and feel like seeing a rainbow for the first time. Not that Frank had a chance to witness a rainbow, but it was currently up there on his list of things to see, and he was fairly certain that there was nothing that a zombie could do to ruin that moment. Or so he thought.

***

(The Warden)

“What do you mean he is not on your books? He did fly to your prison and you did sign for him did you not?” General Graves demanded.

“I did, but then he removed himself from my books.” General Devah “Warden” Ganos stated.

“You let him commit suicide?” General Graves asked incredulously.

Pausing at that, Warden thought about how to answer, then figured to go with the truth. “In a way,” Warden began, and continued before he could be cut off by General Graves. “I let him take his leave via Death Row.”

“You what?”

“It is his right of self-appeals. Prove himself by going through Death Row and earn an exoneration of guilt. In fact, I have already put in the paperwork for it, and he has already been cleared of all charges against him.” The Warden stated.

“Have you seen him? Tracked his movements?”

“What no, he entered Death Row, didn’t you hear me?”

“You fool, all that time you were waiting to die in that prison as the death energy slowly at you away from the inside, but you didn’t even look at the records of the individual you signed for.” General Graves stated.

“What use does it matter, even the best healers can only buy me time.”

“Fool, yes he has the ability to heal, but you never checked out his second affinity.”

“Second affinity, the kid was barely old enough to awaken.”

“That might be, but you might want to spend a second to check out what his secondary affinity is. Then reconsider sending out resources to find and monitor him.” General Graves stated.

“I told you, he is as good as dead.”

“For your sake, you should hope not.” General Graves said, then ended the communication with the Warden.

Pausing for a moment, the Warden stared at the blank screen of his oldest friend and the only person who still took time to check in on him.

Letting out an annoyed sigh, Warden closed out the meta data of the call. Then pulled up the prisoner transfer file of the soldier who was now listed as deceased, Frank Fotos.

Looking at the readout Warden saw what he expected, the primary affinity was life energy, which only served to make him twice as dead out there. As Warden knew that the zombies were especially drawn to life energy wielders as it was like a drug for them. For death energy had been proved to both require life energy to burn brightest, and would continually be able to keep zombies alive the more life energy they consumed. There were even rumors of zombies who had consumed enough life energy who were able to make an evolution into higher states, though those were just rumors, they spread like wildfire out here in the prison. For his part the Warden did nothing to squash those rumors, mainly because they kept most of the anxious inmates in line and kept others from risking their lives in Death Row.

Letting out a sigh, Warden wondered once again why the boy who had his whole future ahead of him would risk his life on something so foolish.

Then he saw the markings for the awakening Tier that the boy allegedly had.

“Tier eight? Like I’m going to believe that.” Then the next line got him, as he read something that seemed impossible.

There in bright lines were markings that showed why General Graves had ear marked the boy for favorable conditions. Then had immediately called to check in on the boy, for there in lines that were clear as day to read were words that seemed completely impossible, but if they were true, they could change the whole world. Or at least Warden’s world.

Secondary Affinity: External Energy slot: Dark Affinity.

There it was, not only did the boy allegedly have Dark Affinity, but he had it in an External Energy slot, meaning what?

Seeing that, Warden found himself involuntarily calling back General Graves.

Ring.

Right after the connection was established General Graves picked up the line, as if he had been waiting for this call. Before Warden could say anything, his oldest friend spoke first.

“I take it you have seen the file?”