I was a bit cagey by the time it got all settled, I guessed that it had something to do with her oversharing what I had told her with whoever was responsible for pointing the rifles at me before. For my side I cracked the shotgun in half and rested it on the crook of my arm. It wouldn’t take long to close and fire it if I had to but I only had 6 shells and, I hadn’t counted lately, but something like 17 rounds of .38. Besides that, once I was feeling more calm, I had a zombie problem to worry about, I didn’t need a shoot-out problem as well. And an animal problem.
Plus, I was actually starting to hurt.
As promised, no one pointed a gun at me, but I was sure that would rapidly change if I made any movement that they deemed suspicious. They must have had bad experiences with someone to be this edgy and I reaffirmed that I would absolutely take my chances punching 12-gauge holes into people if they tried the hostage/steal shit approach.
“What do you want, stranger?”
If there were semi-immortal ghouls, I would absolutely lose my mind.
“My name’s Tom, so now we’re not strangers.”
“What do you want, Stranger Tom.”
“Look here motherfucker,” I kept my voice low and steady, “I’ve had enough shit in the last week and that was before having to deal with a pack of wolves and an entire herd of cats, I don’t need your hick-ass ‘fuck you foreigner’ bullshit on top of it. I don’t want to do shit with your town besides having a place to sleep for the night and hopefully being able to trade some of my stuff.” I didn’t mention the shadow-nemesis-wolf that might decide to try and kill me and other people near me while I was sleeping. If I wasn’t worried about that fact, I would have just chosen one of the shitty buildings around ‘town’.
The old hick nodded then spoke to… what was her name? Leia? Lena. Lena’s old man. They figured something out then nodded.
“You working with the Mortician?”
My face must have communicated it, but just in case it hadn’t, “Who the hell is that?”
Some of the strain seemed to have drained from them as they decided to believe me. I guess my acting was convincing, and considering that I legitimately had less than zero idea what they were talking about then yeah, that made sense.
“Alright, come on in.”
It didn’t feel suspicious, like they were planning on doing anything shady. It wasn’t totally welcoming either though, everyone I’d seen was on edge.
They had me climb up a fire escape and, after declining to be searched because, “I’m not ISIS, this isn’t a plane, and you aren’t the TSA,” which surprisingly, worked better than I had been expecting, I walked down a hall and struck up a conversation with Lena’s old man.
“So Gramps, what the hell is up with all of you? Why’re you so suspicious?”
“Well, boy, Mortician young, like you. Well, likely a bit younger than you. You shaving yet?” I gave Gramps a flat look until he continued, “Anyways, the kid broke bad. Found him controlling zombies, playing around with em. We chased him off outta town.”
“That’s… that’s it?! He makes a few slow zombies… what? They are going to attack you anyways.” One person turns bad, or finally reveals themselves to be bad, and plays with a few zombies and this is the level of response?
Lena came up on my other side and gave her grandpa another flat look, she finally explained, “Johnny Morgue is what he was called.” She shuddered like that name explained everything, “he was always kind of creepy, but that’s not what’s dangerous about him. Most zombies are slow, but the ones he controls are fast, really fast.”
I hid the realization that just struck me, I could barely hear her words. The cemetery, I had fought a fast-zombie. Shit that thing was dangerous, especially in a pack. I mean, the regular zombies were dangerous enough too, but being slow and ‘zombie-smart’ was way preferable to fast and controlled by someone that was human-smart.
The rest of her story essentially tried to gently word its way around the fact that the Mortician had killed most of the townsfolk that had tried to rescue him from his house during the peace and then used their bodies to kill more townsfolk before they managed to drive him away. Basically killed the last of the young people. Ah.
In short, Fuck That. I was not getting in the middle of a rural townsfolk/zombie-legion war. Fuck, absolutely-hell-to-the-no was that happening.
“Do you guys keep people on watch after dark?”
“Not outside, but bat swarms can show up at night… they are dangerous.”
I nodded, I was definitely getting out of here.
Eventually, I was led to an empty classroom on the second floor and left alone. I found out that most people slept together in the auditorium during the night. No surprise, most people here went to sleep early and woke up with the sun. After I was alone, I knew there was no way I could sleep comfortably out here. I wasn’t even talking about there not being a bed. I moved into the classroom closet and shut the door, tying it tight with a paracord and securing it around the edges of shelving and whatever else looked sturdy. I felt a flash of anxiety on the back of my neck, but it was far removed. Besides, I’d be happy if my Nemesis wanted to come try me here surrounded by edgy rural old-timers.
I cranked up my dying flashlight again as I fought off sleep. I had to treat my wounds, I didn’t really have any friends here so being laid out while fighting against an infection for a week wasn’t a realistic survival scenario.
Most of them seemed to be healing surprisingly quickly. I mean, clothing still hurt when rubbing against them, but even my shoulder had settled into a dull ache. When I rubbed my hand across it, the bandage felt dry so I decided to leave it.
The wound that really concerned me and didn’t hurt at all, was my ankle. The bite mark was clearly made by teeth and it had broken my skin. The fact that it didn’t hurt was more alarming than extreme pain would have been. It meant that some apocalypse magic fuckery was afoot and I didn’t care for it for a second. I thought about it a bit more, more likely than magic-fuckery was curse fuckery. Suddenly, regular ol’ magic fuckery didn’t sound so bad.
I awkwardly tried to get a close look at my ankle and as my eyes moved closer, I felt dark, mumbled whispers close in around the edge of my hearing. It pulled me closer until the awkward angle I was holding my ankle at caused a leg cramp.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
That was… creepy. Shit, definitely apocalypse-curse-fuckery. Was I going to turn into a zombie? I popped somewhere between three and four amoxicillin and lamented that I only had a handful of pills left, I disregarded the fact that the count ended in an odd number. I was tired, but it wasn’t time to go to sleep.
I settled myself with a tried and true crisis-management solution, Order of Operations.
Trade for supplies. I need 12-gauge and .38 using my .45 surplus.
Get more medical supplies. Ideally at the pharmacy if that wouldn’t create too much of a problem with the locals. I’d go to the animal supply store first then the pharmacy as a backup, if I had to.
Raid the town for supplies.
Get the fuck out of here.
I sat uncomfortably in the closet as I reflected over my ‘OoO’. I almost took out the Bible, but the day, and the last few along with it, caught up to me. The dusty, child’s sweater I had rolled into a pillow was too soft, the uncompromising linoleum floor, too comfortable.
----------------------------------------
I woke up in a start and flailed, as usual. Thankfully, nothing hurt too badly, though when I tried to stand up my left foot felt numb. Eventually, the feeling returned and I could control my ankle again but it wasn’t a reassuring sign about the bite. My watch read 6:15 and I looked at my ankle, it definitely didn’t look better. Staring at it produced clearer voices than last night which meant that they were real and I hadn’t been imagining them in some sort of tired, stress-based fugue.
Weird, eldritch curse-shit from a zombie bite concluded itself in only one way and it was probably beyond what normal medical treatment could provide. It was definitely beyond my own medical capabilities. Penitent System bullshit meant… Guess I wasn’t going to be waiting a week.
“Shit. Display Status.”
Just from a brief glance, the math seemed like it was getting wonky and from that brief look, very likely to really, really piss me off. I’d go over it in more detail after I got out of the closet. I opened the door and stumbled out to a rifle pointed at me. Gramps gave a dry-chuckle and dropped it.
“Old bastard.”
He grunted in response and I sat heavily in a chair and looked out the window as I took out the coffee thermos and poured myself a lukewarm cup. Annoyed it wasn’t hot, I was also somewhat impressed that it kept any heat after an entire day.
“Got any for me?”
He shamelessly pulled out a tin cup, probably from ‘the war’ or somesuchshit, and committed to saving my energies for fights that mattered, I poured him some. He continued to hold his cup out expectantly and I relented to fill the cup the rest of the way. He took a sip and smacked his lips in satisfaction.
“Could be hotter.”
“Ya know, no one forced you to bum coffee from me.”
He nodded sagely, or at least in his own shameless old-person way.
I reviewed my status while we drank coffee. Law of Averages was a bitch. And so was Gabby while I was on that chain of thought.
Doubting Thomas
Class: Basic B+
Advanced!
Rank: exceedingly average Human+
Slightly Above Average Human!
Level 5/ 5+
Additional Experience Pending
Earned Feats:
Bonus Feats:
Unspent Feat Points: 0+ 6!
Body
5+ 6!
The Strength of your Body.
Fight and Rage: 1
*Feline Bane: 1
*Cat Shepard: 1
Mind
5+ 6!
The Strength of your Mind.
*Trap n Burn: 1
*Distract the Doggos: 1
Soul
5+ 6!
The Strength of your Soul.
Mercy on a Poor Soul: 1
*Zomboi: 1
External Will
2+ 4!
The inner spark of Man manifest, the Will to Shape Reality
I’d rather Die than Lose: 1
Internal Fortitude
7+ 6!
6/6
How do you carry on when all is lost?
Tis but a scratch: 1
*Found a Reason: 1
Back from the Brink: 1
Divine Spark
0
Do you believe in miracles now, heathen?
N/A
Luck
4+ 6!
To clarify, Humanity has an average luck of 20. Losing His Favor was your choice but regardless, you can't call that 'good' luck. Humanity’s luck reset to (0)
Right Lady, Wrong Time: 1
Fortunate Son: 1
*MisFire: 1
Potentiality
-9.98 →
-9.94!
Ranges between (-10 and 10). Losing Status as Most Favored is pretty bad on a potentiality curve, don't tell me that surprises you?
N/A
It looks like Feats weren’t impossible to earn, if anything somewhat easy. That is, if getting into life-or-death struggles could be counted as ‘easy’.
Bad news, it seemed like the ‘Law of Averages’ really screwed me over this time. I earned two Feat points into Body and Mind which both had been reduced to a bonus of one. Soul had gained one and managed to stay up there, while External Will had gained two. Luck had also gained two which was nice but Internal Fortitude had been reduced by two to down to 6.
After some, in retrospect, fairly easy math which took me entirely too long to figure out, I had lost 4 points and gained 4 points. Average. Which annoyed me further. My mood took an even more sour turn when Lena appeared and rummaged out her own cup to bum coffee off of me. It soured further when her next words were, “Could be hotter.”
I ignored her next words and focused on the alerts on the bottom of my status.