Chapter Three:

Collapse

Location: Ruins to the South of SafeHaven

Cathedral prayer tower

Time: 05:05

Date: 10th of October, 2147

David’s eyelids were held deep below the ocean of his awareness like anchors.

He would not remember his dreams when he was awoken by the violent explosion of the prayer tower he slumbered in. He dreamt of a memory. An oily black creature with rows of teeth and the body of a cloud. It bit the head off of a man as he sprayed it full of bullets that seemed to do nothing. David would not have wanted to remember it, his subconscious decided, so he didn’t.

David lost consciousness in one of the tallest structures for nearly half a mile.

A structure weakened by the Goliath’s thrashing down below and the RPG blast David recklessly fired indoors.

To top it off, the already abysmal structural integrity of the ancient building and its dry, dusty interior now contained all the explosives and firearms David recklessly allowed to be scattered about when his backpack was torn open. He unintentionally created the perfect cocktail for structural collapse… then lightning struck the cathedral prayer tower with disastrous consequences.

David’s dream shifted. He dreamt of a woman in a blue dress. A woman he knew for only a brief time. A woman he wouldn’t be able to recognize in his waking life, but in his dreams… she seemed so familiar. Was she bleeding?

The collapse sent David tumbling down like a rag doll along with the stone rubble and debris.

Decorations and furniture collapsed inwards, as what was once rock solid became significantly less so. Cement and mortar piled heavily onto the undead in the lower levels, eliciting shrieks that couldn’t be heard over the brutal crunching and smashing of stone colliding with stone.

Buried somewhere in the middle, pressed under heavy boulders, David lift the anchors of his slumber with herculean strength. His adrenaline-soaked nervous system dragged him into action.

As his brain tried to play puppet master with his flesh and bone, his nerves responded with explosive aches similar to growing pains, but far more severe and omnipresent.

He couldn’t really hear much, but he was sure he was creating some kind of sound with his mouth. It felt like he was screaming, in his throat. He could not discern the pitch or volume though. Sound itself seemed to be chaos as he left his slumber and entered the real world.

David couldn’t remember ever breaking a bone before, but he had never been crushed under a collapsed cathedral before, either. In his panicked and pained state of mind, it was hard not to think about the possibility he had just broken every bone in his body. It felt like he was literally smashed to pieces by the cathedral.

Meanwhile, a fire had started inside the prayer room when lightning passed through. The exterior of the tower was soaked by the first rain in months, but the interior was not so lucky. The rain had ceased, and the thirsty ground largely soaked up residual water.

The fire was not going to stop burning and David could already smell the smoke.

David felt possessed by a rage from deep within. His subconscious mind released all of his pent up confusion, anger, and frustration into intangible fits of muscular throttling. He was hysterically sobbing, but he couldn’t quite place why. Was it just from the pain? Somehow, he knew this wouldn’t be his grave site. He didn’t know how or why he knew this, but he was confident he would survive.

Tears mixed with the grime and blood covering his face, as well as his snot and drool. Lacerations and bruises covered his body. His legs and arms had been punctured multiple times, and his entire body was smashed between boulders. He shakily took a few deep breaths. His lungs struggled to fill with air.

The rocks entombing David spread weight heavily and evenly enough that he could only seem to wriggle his limbs a few inches.

If he were to escape, he’d have to start by lifting himself up.

Using his elbows and pectoral muscles he was able to push his upper back up into an arch. He did the same with his dorsal muscles and his knees. He essentially assumed a planking position, and as he did, some slabs, smaller boulders, and other rubble slowly slid off of him.

He began to rise up from the position like he was doing a weird, sloppily-imitated turtle yoga pose.

Despite its somewhat awkward appearance, the feat was gruelingly impressive, like watching a weight-lifter struggle with their maximum.

Any regular person would have just been crushed to death upon impact.

Any reasonable person would have just died from such an event.

David astonished even himself, he wasn’t even really sure why he fought so ferociously.

David picked himself upright and let out a terrifying howl as he shifted under the heavy weight. His voice cracked as a shriek tore through his throat. He didn’t need to hear it to know it was happening. A mixture of primal emotions fueled him as raised off of the ground.

His body was in agony, and all he could do was stand there, breathing shakily.

He was still alive… For now.

He tried his best to assess his surroundings. Most things seemed still and dark, save for the dim light of the slowly growing fire. This light, David suddenly noticed, illuminated an absolutely massive charred mass covered in rubble nearby.

Large stones rolled away as a silhouette began to emerge from the rubble. The silhouette released a low, gasping groan as it sensed David. What the silhouette lacked in auditory volume, it made up for in nightmare fodder and physical mass.

It rippled its massive muscles and slowly lift itself upright less than a meter away from David.

David was staggering backwards, his mouth hung open and his tongue lolled. He was filthy, dazed, and his hair was matted. Every bone and muscle in his body was sore and injured. He absolutely wasn’t ready for a fight, but it seemed he had one.

He felt around for his knife, he knew he still had to have it, right?

This was the surviving Goliath from before. It obviously never forgot about David’s presence. Furious as ever.

The left half of its face and upper left shoulder were completely blown off. David could see the creature’s exposed thick skull where its face was missing. Its jaw hung loosely by only the right side. Its right arm was shredded by bullet holes and appeared to be beyond use, finally done in by the rubble.

The Goliath bellowed and gurgled at David, struggling to make coherent noise without a jaw.

David’s instinct immediately recognized that moment as his opportunity to strike. He found his knife in its holster right where it belonged.

He clumsily lunged at the Goliath which hissed and swung at David with its broken right arm.

David ducked out of the way and swiveled under the Goliath’s wide swing to get behind it. He struggled to maintain his footing on the rubble, but managed to get into position. David summoned as much energy as he could muster and jumped up to stab at the Goliath.

His knife cleaved into the back of the Goliath’s neck and it attempted an agonized scream. The scream was cut short by a bubbling of dark fluids leaking into its esophagus and out of its unclosing mouth.

The Goliath reached back with its functional left arm to try to grab at David. Its hulking back muscles made it impossible for it to reach far enough behind itself to grip him, but the initial action it took to swing at him sent David flying off of the Goliath’s back.

He was too weak to hold on, but his knife remained stuck in between the vertebrae of the Goliath’s spine, spilling blood into the Goliath’s airways and severing the brain’s connection with the rest of the body.

David fell onto the stone rubble painfully, disarmed of his knife. He recoiled in pain and yelped as his back landed on a jagged stone point.

The Goliath frantically reached towards the knife in its neck but it was too clumsy, massive, and injured to get any solid grip or leverage. Its movements slowed until it was frozen in place and fell forward heavily. The Goliath was now permanently on the ground, twitching residually.

David’s head was swimming and his eyelids felt heavy. He didn’t want to fight or run anymore. He had 6 bullets in a silenced pistol. He could just end it right there and save himself the trouble of suffering or turning.

He could just let sleep take him and let fate run its course.

He closed his eyes.

David heard hissing and groaning coming from behind him. The scent of smoke indicated the fire was growing.

David opened his eyes as the fire began to cast silhouettes in front of him approaching from the north.

David wanted to just cry and give up, but a great force inside him pulled him to his feet. His whole body was sore and burning. Every movement he made was Sisyphean. Every breath he took was a struggle of epic proportions. Something was definitely going on with his lungs. He felt the urge to cough, but even the thought of coughing hurt too much to attempt it.

He trudged south, away from the groans and growing fire.

Away from SafeHaven.

The sun would be rising very soon, and time was slowly approaching when SafeHaven had scheduled to make radio contact with David. When he didn’t answer, surely that would spark alarm to come searching for him. The fire, damaged cathedral, collapsed prayer tower, and slain Goliaths would surely indicate to a search party his whereabouts.

That kind of carnage had David Cypress written all over it.

He just needed to survive.

That was what he was best at after all.

Even after all of that, here he was, surviving.

Surely he had seen worse,

Right?

David drew his pistol and dragged his feet forward, one in front of the other. He could barely keep his eyes open, and his body involuntarily swayed with each step. Yet it did not fail him. His legs stood defiantly against the collapsed cathedral’s remaining shards.

A horde of undead was amassing behind him. He couldn’t look back without risking a slip on the rubble, but he could feel their numbers growing. The shrieking and howling was growing more intense. He could hear the excitement in their voices. They sensed their next meal was going to be very soon.

David was moving south through an alleyway in between buildings behind the Cathedral. Amassing zombies blocked the path behind him, and a lone, middle-aged, bald undead man wearing khaki shorts and a Hawaiian button-up hissed in front of him.

David would have to deal with the bald, khaki-short-wearing zombie to get out of the alley. He didn’t know if he could stop walking, because he couldn’t tell how far away the growing group of zombies behind him was. He was moving very slowly, and most zombies he dealt with could run. They likely bottlenecked into the alleyway and slowed themselves down, but it wasn’t going to stop them completely.

David’s eyes fluttered closed as he stumbled into the Bald Khaki Shorts Zombie with his arms outstretched forward, aiming for the zombie’s shoulders. They were both reaching for each other, but David’s body had superior reach and more purpose.

Bald Khaki Shorts Zombie’s rotten mouth was dry and cracked. The wisps of a goatee clung around his lips and chin, stark black lines against an impossibly pale canvas.

David and Bald Khaki Shorts Zombie collided. David continued moving forward, but stumbled a bit as he shoved the khaki-shorts-wearing zombie to the ground. He dodged its grasp by redirecting its arms, and the zombie fell onto its back, grunting with an oof that sounded all too human. Bald Khaki Shorts Zombie was slowly getting back up and David continued his lethargic pace.

David meant to kill the zombie to indicate the path he took from the cathedral so he could be more easily found. Since he just got up and continued to follow David down the alleyway, no corpses would be left there to indicate which direction he headed. All of the undead would follow him indefinitely, and their tracks would quickly be covered by the desert winds.

In David’s experience, leaving an obvious trail was often the determining factor in being discovered by a recovery team or not. Uncle Tío was the best tracker at SafeHaven, but he didn’t openly share his knowledge, and no one else came close to his abilities. Knowing the point of exit from The Ruins would help the recovery team narrow the search to a more manageable area.

He needed to kill at least one zombie here and now.

David stabilized his footing and continued to the end of the alleyway.

The alley opened up to a large four lane road that was occasionally used by SafeHaven for trade or supply acquisition. It was run and maintained by the South Wall Squadrons of SafeHaven. SafeHaven’s power and influence allowed it to keep sections of highway clear and usable, for the most part. Raiders were inevitable, but the death angels handled them swiftly and efficiently when they reared their ugly heads.

David frequently worked with the South Wall squadrons, because of where his housing unit was. Not that any of those relationships really mattered at the moment.

On the other side of the highway was a seemingly ever-expansive desert.

David had only been outside of the SafeHaven ruins for specific missions in the past, and he was always accompanied on those missions by many other SafeHaven personnel. He didn’t really know what existed beyond the desert, but he knew other places were out there, somewhere… Just not how to get to them. Part of him was anxious about leaving, but it wasn’t like he had a choice.

David knew the roads used by SafeHaven were not frequented very often, so waiting here on this highway for a recovery was likely fruitless. He also had very little knowledge of this road and its routes. It could take days for anyone to get anywhere near this point without specific intention.

Besides, there were no defensible positions on the highway. It was cleared of all vehicle husks long ago by SafeHaven.

When he reached the far edge of the highway he turned around and raised his pistol.

He had 6 bullets.

He just needed to kill one singular zombie. No sweat.

The highway, Interstate-25, encircled most of The Ruins surrounding SafeHaven. Leaving a corpse here on the street would indicate to anyone looking for him which direction he went. If he could kill something, he could just keep walking in one direction instead of needing to stay near the road while waiting to get rescued.

He’d just have to make a straight shot away from The Ruins until he reached a landmark. Then he could find his way back and forth.

It felt good to have a plan again.

The sound of the groaning was immense, but David could hear the hints of another noise. One that was faint at first but would soon grow into a roar.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

David’s mind was hazy.

He was seeing double and could barely stand up or open his eyes.

He just had to kill one of the zombies.

Or he could kill all of them.

He squint by habit as he aimed, but it did not help his vision focus even slightly. If anything it made it worse.

Zombies were crawling over each other and approaching David at varying speeds. It kind of helped not to see too many of their grotesque details.

The background noise was slowly growing over the horrific sounds of the undead. David vaguely recognized the noise. It was almost like a mechanical roar.

He didn’t care.

He needed to kill.

He fired his pistol into the group of undead piled into the alleyway, led by the khaki shorts wearing Goatee Zombie.

His silenced pistol made a hushed ~tunk~ noise.

Then it did again five more times as David unloaded his remaining clip into the horde.

He was out of ammunition.

The mysterious noise was all David could hear now, and boy was it a familiar sound.

It was the sound of engines.

There were jeeps close by, but David didn’t have the energy to look around for them. He couldn’t find them and call for help.

He just had to survive.

He had to kill the zombies in front of him.

They were so close now. Hundreds of them.

He had to kill them.

He had to kill all of them.

He tossed his pistol into the crowd. It didn’t seem to do much.

David tried to draw his knife. His mind was flushed with a searing crimson red. It wasn’t in its holster, why wasn’t it in its holster?

The zombies approached him, and the sound of the jeeps grew ever louder.

David wanted to approach the zombies in front of him. He wanted to raise his leg and take a step forward and charge at them and destroy them all.

But he couldn’t.

So instead he stood there.

Frozen.

The zombies continued to approach and David tried to raise his arms up to fight back. He hoped to at least put something between himself and the approaching horde, but he could not.

His arm twitched slightly, but remained largely motionless.

David’s eyes were shut heavily and he could tell he was only standing upright because his body was balanced and rigid. He could feel himself beginning to fall slowly backwards.

He couldn’t fight.

He couldn’t move.

He had finally crashed.

David’s head began to fall backwards and he had already let go.

He was no longer conscious. He was completely out of energy.

What was even the point of fighting anymore? He was done.

Powerful arms reached out of a passing jeep and snatched David before he could fall into the path of the rest of the oncoming convoy. The timing could not have been more perfect.

He was whisked off of his feet and pulled into the jeep by an individual David wouldn’t know even if he was aware of his surroundings.

The man grunted and remarked that David was surprisingly heavy as he dragged him aboard. He was dark skinned and wore a sand colored military vest, with matching combat pants.

“Like, he just looks kinda thin, ya know? Didn’t expect it to feel like I was pickin’ up a sumo wrestler. Maybe he’s got some heavy gear or some kind of weighted clothes or somethin’.”

“Heh, yeah, or maybe you’re just scrawny.” Replied the driver of the jeep jokingly. He wore dark sunglasses and a trucker cap. His shaggy sandy blonde hair hung out of the back of his cap messily.

The first man scoffed.

“You remember who you’re talking to, Skeeter?”

Skeeter laughed.

“Now Walker, remember, you try something, and I’ll crash this car right here, right now, baby on board and everything.”

The rest of the pursuant convoy unloaded a fair share of rounds into any zombies from the alley that got too close to them, as they sped off into the desert.

Walker lay David on the floor of the Jeep, which was designed to transport troops and had plenty of space. Another man knelt down next to him and yelled in order to be audible over the jeep engines. He was older than the others, and his face reflected multiple lifetimes worth of experience.

“Hey! Are you okay?” The man asked.

Walker softly pat the side of David’s face, hoping to stir his eyelids.

David’s eyes moved but did not open, and his arms seemed to twitch slightly.

The men looked at each other.

Walker said, “Well, I don’t think he’s dead, but he is not looking good.”

The older man nodded in agreement. He sighed exasperatedly and took a few seconds before replying. He pressed his fingers against his brow in thought.

“Well then, let’s fix him up! Is this not what we came for?”

Walker laughed.

“Clinton, I mean, c’mon… We’ve helped him enough already. We don’t need to give him any of our medicine. Is this not the motherfucker who killed our guys?”

Clinton stared back at Walker with icy blue eyes. Walker’s smile reluctantly faded.

“Clinton, man, I don’t know...”

Clinton went back to studying David’s nanofiber overshirt. Even as he watched, the rips and holes the shirt received were slowly healing themselves.

Death angels were given specifically unmarked civilian passing uniforms in order to not give away any information when captured. Their position was classified so it only “officially” existed outside of the typical military hierarchy known to SafeHaven. Even those who knew the inner operations of SafeHaven extremely well likely knew nothing of the death angels. They didn’t have traditional officers or lieutenants, just death angels class one through five. They were all hidden in plain sight as athletes for the Blood Games, and members of the SafeHaven security and military. A couple even operated as scientists.

David was a class five death angel, considered the most dangerous.

He became the youngest class five ever when he was instated and that margin was not close. He officially became a Death Angel at eighteen years old, and the youngest previous to that was twenty-seven. While the job only “existed” to a few select individuals, it was incredibly grueling and prestigious in its own right. Those that did know about it typically only whispered of it behind closed doors.

There were only three other class five death angels that David knew about, but again, that information was extremely classified. For all he knew, there were hundreds of class five death angels kept entirely secret.

He himself had helped train some of the lower classes of Death Angels. He was acquainted with most of the class fours and below, but the other class fives were pretty speculative.

One was someone David had never seen, but heard of often referred to as “The Phantom”. The other two were individuals David had only ever seen wearing an Exo-suit, which not only gave them a significant fighting advantage over any human or zombie, but also obscured their identity.

During a rare death angel meeting, David met a mysterious figure who went only by the codename Wolf. His Exo-suit was presumably painted to reflect the appearance of a wolf, not that David had ever seen a real one. The other went by Baron. His suit was red, and seemed extremely aerodynamic.

David was under the same anonymous conditions, as they were required by all attendants of the meeting, but he wore a plainclothes disguise instead. His codename was Eagle, a reference to the scar on his back.

Clinton finally spoke to Walker.

“His outfit isn’t one I recognize, but it looks like it was produced at SafeHaven. This is some pretty new nanofiber, and the style is suspiciously similar to military fatigues. It sure is a long way to travel alone on foot from where we found him, and through a war-zone no less. We were, what, ten miles out from SafeHaven when we found him?”

Walker groaned and plopped down into one of the seats.

“Yeah, I’m tellin’ you he’s the guy they said was appearin’ out of nowhere and snappin’ people’s necks and shit.

Clinton shot Walker a quick glance, then continued to inspect David’s face. Black stubble was starting to surface in patches near short hairs already grown on his face, indicative it had likely been a few days since he had last shaved. There was a scar above David’s right eye and another one on his upper left cheek. They were both from shrapnel and Clinton could tell. Probably not from the same event though, judging from angles he assumed the wound would have been received. David’s clothing was torn in random places, and he was absolutely covered in superficial wounds and abrasions. Nothing seemed fatal or severe though, which felt surprising given the circumstances they found David in. He seemed to have been in worse shape when they hauled him in mere minutes ago.

“We can’t know that for sure, and Randy sent us here specifically to get some kid named David. You know as well as I do that when Randy says ‘this shit is gonna happen’ then it’s gonna happen. You want to argue, or you want to survive?”

Walker grimaced.

“Randy probably set us up in the first place. I’m never going to trust that dude, he ain’t a good person, I can fuckin’ tell.”

Clinton looked back at Walker, this time much colder than before.

“Okay, so, are you questioning my mission or my judgment then?”

Walker’s face tensed up.

“I-I mean, neither, I’m just expressing how I feel...”

Clinton shook his head.

“What you’re doing is questioning your superior in a war-zone. If you have reservations about the politics of who we do and don’t kill, or who’s advice I listen to, you can take it up over a dinner table, not over the potential corpse of the guy we just launched a whole damn mission to retrieve.”

Walker averted his gaze a bit and lifted his palms outwards.

“Aight, my bad, sir.”

“Just give him the damn medicine.”

Clinton raised a radio receiver to his mouth.

“Attention primary task force, we’re taking assets back and administering medical treatment. Our passenger matches the description of the target. No bites, but something is definitely wrong with him, and we need immediate medical attention. No more stops, we make the rendezvous by nightfall. Over and out.”

Clinton didn’t ask for a reply or need one. His men were listening and his orders would be carried out. His word was final.

Walker was likely the most defiant soldier he had, but his defiance really came from familiarity. Clint was a chill guy you could drink some beers with. Clinton was a no-nonsense war-time general. Walker sometimes forgot which one he was talking to.

Clinton moved from the back where Walker had started tying up David. He sat down in the passenger seat with his eyes fixated keenly forward. His jeep was the leader in a convoy of eight total. Typically Clinton rode in a truck further back in case of IEDs or other road hazards, but they all knew this route was clear.

Their biggest potential threat now were the massive hordes of zombies they had lured into The Ruins in the first place, but they largely seemed amassed around SafeHaven.

Clinton was to relay orders to the other jeeps if they had to change roads for any reason. He also had immaculate aim from a moving vehicle, should they run into any situation that required that skill.

The lead driver, Skeeter, sat next to Clinton in the driver’s seat. He was from a different group of survivors than Clinton’s.

Clinton didn’t really know much about him.

Clinton had observed that he wasn’t very talkative, except with Jade, and he typically responded quietly with short and/or snarky responses.

Clinton kind of preferred it that way, Walker talked enough, and Clinton enjoyed silence. He didn’t need another chatterbox.

All Clinton really knew about the driver was that he went by the name Skeeter and he seemed to wear a dark denim jacket at all times, and sunglasses any time he could.

Skeeter’s group of survivors praised him as “the best driver on the planet”, and spout tale after tale of incredible feats accomplished by him behind the wheel. Jumping over ravines, escaping zombies and pursuers with ease, and tales from his youth where he performed miraculous feats even before the apocalypse.

They spoke of robberies, jailbreaks, escapes from terrorists and foreign adversaries. Stuff that was pretty hard for Clinton to believe, even with the living dead walking around.

He couldn’t have been legal driving age back then, judging by his relative youth. Clinton wasn’t sure he believed all the rumors Skeeter’s group told, but he definitely observed that Skeeter was an amazing driver.

Skeeter would play a lot of loud, difficult to understand indie alternative rock music on CD’s he had from the early 2000’s. They were all over one hundred years old but in shockingly great condition. Perhaps he had located some nanite disc repair spray. Clinton assumed Skeeter must have found a secret stash of CDs at some point during his travels, but the truth was that Skeeter had them even before the apocalypse. They went everywhere with him.

He insisted on playing them on drives. He refused to drive without them, which Jade reported almost got them killed more than once.

Clinton honestly thought the music might be to deter conversation, which was just fine by him. He found Skeeter’s music taste to be intriguing and “not bad”. It was sort of similar to the music his daughter used to listen to.

The thought saddened him slightly, but he appreciated the feeling of proximity to her that Skeeter’s music taste could bring. Missing his child was still a connection to her, and any time he heard a song she used to sing when she thought he wasn’t around or listening, was a gift. She was absolutely awful, and shy about her inability to hit the right notes, but Clinton never minded. It was a shame she didn’t get her mother’s voice.

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Clinton’s group and a few other independent bands of survivors had been planning an attack on SafeHaven for a long time. Clinton knew they still wouldn’t be able to penetrate the walls with their current mission, but he had hoped to find a weakness or possibly make one.

Despite Clinton’s history of hands-on approaches, where he prefers to be right in the middle of the action, Randy made it very clear that things turned out better for everyone if he hung back this time and focused on the recovery of a soldier named David who would be invaluable to their efforts in attacking SafeHaven on a future date. It was a tough choice, but Clinton knew to trust that when Randy said something, it was correct.

David remained completely unconscious the entire ride. He was dreaming again of the woman in the blue dress. She was sitting on a bed with white linen sheets and a brass frame. David sat next to her with his head in her lap.

She had a beautiful face that seemed vaguely familiar to David, but he couldn’t quite place it. They started intently into each other’s eyes for a moment. David could sort of see through her, as if she were a hologram or a ghost. He didn’t know what she could see in his eyes, but he could make out one obvious desire painted across her face. It was hunger.

Her mouth opened up to speak to him but her scattered teeth were rotten with decay and she had no tongue. Dark, viscous blood dripped out of her mouth and onto his face.

David attempted to lift his arms up to defend himself.

He attempted to do something.

Anything.

He couldn’t scream or cry or move. He couldn’t put up any sort of resistance.

She slowly inched towards his ear and put her hand on his chest. She whispered and cooed in his ear.

“It’s okay baby, you’re safe now. This is just the beginning.”

Something about her voice both deeply comforted and unsettled David. He wanted to shove her off, but he also wanted to hug her tightly. He settled for doing neither since his muscles still completely refused to function.

She wrapped her arms around David and pulled his face into her chest, squeezing him so tightly he felt like his head was being pressed by a vice. There was nothing soft or comforting about the action.

Her laugh, somewhere between playful and malicious, echoed throughout the dreamy bedroom as she released him from her grasp.

He was still being held down by an invisible force. His entire body felt like it was trapped deep underwater.

She pressed her hand gingerly onto David’s collar bone and neck. The supple skin she touched began to darken. The veins under began to turn a dark blue and then black. They started to slowly spread throughout his body. David could feel it spreading, every nerve burning as if acid was pumped into his veins as the color passed through it.

The touch filled David with an insatiable rage.

David paid little attention to the growing infection under his skin. He wanted to tear her hand off for touching him. He wanted to destroy her, leaving nothing but a bloody pulp scattered throughout the room.

The rage he tapped into was one barely accessible to his conscious self. One that was nearly foreign to his conscious mind, but pure. There was no empathy or compassion in it. No human vision or thought. Not even cohesive concepts of revenge or passion, just rage.

Only rage.

He would not remember this dream, as he had forgotten so many others.

David was unable to move. He sat on the bed and she lowered her head down towards David’s neck. She slowly started to make a low growl. The black veins overtaking David started to grow through his neck and towards his face. His pupils began to dilate until they overtook his iris, then his sclera, blackness spreading throughout the entire eye.

The woman pressed her lips softly against David’s neck, which sent another surge of somehow even more powerful anger throughout David. How dare she touch him in this way? How dare she hurt him while pretending to be gentle with him?

She then opened her mouth and bit David’s neck harshly. David’s mouth opened to scream, but something strange happened instead.

He exit his body. Like a spirit or an astral projection, David rose out of his body and watched himself scream in agony as the zombie in the blue dress bit into his neck and blood poured down her throat and all over her face.

As he separated he felt himself removed from the rage and the pain. He was simply an observer, devoid of emotion.

David’s body was moving again, but David could not feel it. He only watched.

David stood up urgently and grabbed the zombie girl by the throat. He picked her up, using her throat as a handle and squeezed tightly until he heard a crunch. The girl struggled for a short time, but ceased after David crushed her wind pipe. Yet, she was laughing the whole time.

Even after the crunch David could hear her wheezing cackle.

David float motionlessly as he watched the events unfold. He threw the girl to the ground and blood continued to run freely from his neck down his arm and shirt. She seemed thrilled as he lift up his boot to crush her skull. He pounded her face over and over with his heel. The laughter continued long after her facial features became an indistinguishable pulp, and it was logically impossible for her to actually make a noise. Cackling seemed to echo off the walls as the viscera continued to splatter onto them.

David felt vaguely sick watching, but mostly detached.

It wasn’t him.

Not anymore.

It couldn’t be.

He was dead.

Clinton, Skeeter, and Walker would make it back to their rendezvous point without a hitch, with David as their unwilling passenger.