Zombie Apocalypse

DeeL · June 12, 2006, 09:42:19 PM

I opened the door to the cell carefully, quietly, but the second I was in sight the Captive went nuts, pounding himself against the bars to get at me. I looked the cage over; it was homemade, a cage in a cell, but transfering the Captive to an interrogation room/dining hall would have been too complicated. We didn't have those kinds of resources.

The cage was homemade, but it held. I stood just outside his reach, trying to find some trace of human intelligence in his now-lidless eyes. I failed.

I gave him the arm. Not my arm, obviously. It was the arm from Perry, poor guy, got his head bashed in while trying to steal supplies for his run for the border. We all thought about the fact that the revenants seemed calmer after they had eaten, even acting more sophisticated, and we thought about the fact that Perry wasn't going to be needing all that good meat on his bones, and when he didn't turn revenant, we decided to see how feeding would affect the Captive.

The Captive took the arm. For a second, he just held it in his hands, squeezing and shaking it with lunatic glee. Just like they do when they catch one of us live ones. Then he bit into it and began to eat.

He had cleaned most of the meat off the upper arm, almost down to the elbow, when the sounds he was making started to make a kind of sense. "Ohh, delicious, oh it's so good, so good, food, food, good food, oh it's so good..." Never bothered to thank me though.

I decided to try to engage him. "Good, is it?"

The Captive didn't stop eating, not for a moment, but his bites became smaller as his belly distended, and he became more articulate. He was actually talking to me. "You have no idea. You have food, and sex, and massage, and wind in your hair, and jokes, and tv, and showers, and faith and home and god and country and all kinds of pleasures, pleasures and more pleasure. Imagine all those pleasures rolled up in one experience." Then he glanced up at me as he chewed, and despite his eyes color, he looked almost sane. Almost. "That's what this is for me."

This was what we had been hoping for. A line into the revenants minds. "So why not eat it? I mean, your covered in it, for crying out loud. Why not chew on your own fingers?"

The Captive snorted a laugh around another bite. "Can't. Doesn't work. Zombie flesh is like grass. Or rock. Or dog. Just isn't interesting."

I must've frowned at that. "We've done chemical tests. Revenants - zombies - have human flesh. There's no difference."

The Captive was down the forearm now. "Oh, I"m sure. There's nothing in the chemistry. It's the energy. It feels different. Haven't you ever noticed that zom- that revenants, whatever, can tell the difference between a wounded live one and another zombie? It's not the smell. I can hardly smell anything, nasal membranes were the first to go. It's the feel. It feels different. Like when somebody comes back, the 'eat this' sign goes out. Once he starts moving again, you don't feel like taking another mouthful. No point. It's not chemistry. It's not even disease, although that's what it looks like. It's energy."

This was all new. I had to figure out if this guy was on the level. "Sounds like you know what your talking about."

The Captives words gabbled around the wristbones. "Oh yeah. I was a pretty smart guy when I was alive, and we zo- revenants have our moments of reprieve. When the belly is full, when the mouth is still wet with food, then we can remember, and think. We never feel anything very strong. I remember killing and eating my own mother, well part of her, before she came back, but we'd barely know each other now. We never feel anything very strong, except hunger, but if we were in the habit of thinking before, we can do it now. When we're not hungry."

He was shredding fingers now, tearing the hand apart even as he talked and talked - maybe he still had a bit of human feeling in there, or maybe he was like a professor, and had to tell someone about the things he thought, but I got the impression that he was deliberately pacing himself, trying to keep himself full long enough to tell me what was on his mind.

"I've been thinking about the fact that we don't do very well in water. We don't seem to remember swimming, and when we're in water we don't feel the presence of food. That's when live ones escape us easily, when we're in the water. Only time I ever lost someone on land was when he hosed me down. See, that's why I say it's energy. We sense the em signature of functioning human brain, and go for that. And the EM signature for our own brains, or whatever it is we're using to think with, is off limits. That's what the Pale Event did for us."

"You remember the Pale Event, right? When the sky went white in the daytime, and lightened a little at night. For just about sixteen minutes. For that sixteen minutes, anybody who died came back. See, I think that was the energy flowing over the Earth. Energy flowing into dying human brains, replacing the energy pattern of living people with a different pattern. That's why people have stopped rising, unless we bite them. We're the only sources of the pattern now."

The captive was down to the last fingers now, talking fast, munching on the bones. I could actually see his teeth splintering from his chewing. And talking. "One thing I can tell you for sure, your right about the chemistry. And that's the important clue. Zombie bodies dissolve the flesh we eat fast, so fast, it should be working with anything. It's almost nuclear. We should be able to eat our own flesh, or dog, or grass, but we can't. The one thing that would be unthinkable to us alive is all we can eat now."

"Do you see it? There is no accidental way we could be cannibles! Humans don't have that urge! No psychology would account for it! No culture countenances it! We are an army of zombies, being raised to wage war on the living! We are bioweapons, or maybe necroweapons! SOMEBODY MEANT FOR US TO BE THIS WAY!"

As he began to shout, I belatedly realized that he was no longer chewing. He was out of food. He had eaten it all, and I could actually see his belly beginning to shrink.

The Captive pressed himself against he bars. "Give me more. Please. More. I know you have more food for me. I can see it, right there! Your blood is pouring through it, your breath is making it go, you have so much food for me! Give it to me! Now!"

Thnking time was over. He slammed himself against the bar, his 'give me the food!' dissolving into inhumans screeches of renewed appetite. I backed out the door, closed it behind me. We, the other survivors and I, needed to talk about what we had learned. Then maybe we would give the Captive a slug in the head and be on about our business.

Or maybe Perry, hanging neatly in the meatlocker, could make another contribution in the name of science...

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This little vignette was my attempt to deal with the various irrationalities inherent in the Walking Dead genre. The fact that even the fast ones in the Dawn of the Dead remake can't seem to deal with an ordinary mall fountain could be put down to careless flimmakers playing the 'dead guy in two feet of water' thing for laughs, but there could also be an in-story explanation.

The big irrationality, of course, is the whole idea of the walking dead being interested in eating human flesh. See, before Mr. Romero did his thing, zombies were merely servants - and very faithful ones, right up to the point where they ate salt in their food. But Night of the Living Dead introduced the concept of obligate cannibalism into the mix, and no such movie, no matter how much technobabble they introduced, has come close to an explanation. (I am particularly annoyed by the Resident Evil line - 'the virus erases everything except the most basic of needs, the need to feed'. If that were the case, we would be expecting the reanimated dead to ambush every fruit tray in Raccoon City, but noooo...)

My Captive explains my thoughts on the matter, as far as they go. The walking dead would not be as they are without someone intending it. Would anyone else like to add their reflections on the subject?

CYMRO · June 12, 2006, 10:05:46 PM

That's a finger-lickin' bit o' zombie lit'rachoor!

I like your zombie logic! A lot!

Numinous · June 12, 2006, 10:15:23 PM

Go zombie fiction! Zombies really aren't my thing, but I may be acquiring a taste now... I like how you rationalaized everyting, and if you have any more stuff, do share!

Xathan · June 12, 2006, 10:18:03 PM

Same here, the logic is sound and very interesting. It also adds an element of horror the Zombie genre seems to have been lacking...after all, who intended this?

Túrin · June 13, 2006, 08:18:10 AM

Very good. Thanks for this explanation! :D

DeeL · June 13, 2006, 07:03:51 PM

Thank you all very much. I meant what I said though - I was kind of hoping that someone would add their own fiction to this thread, as a way of explaining this nonsense. The Captive vignette addresses the big mystery inherent to every Walking Dead story, but doesn't even come close to solving it. So? Turin? Crit? Anybody want to climb into the Mystery Machine and find out just who is responsible? (I'll bet it's that Old Man Smithers...)

Túrin · June 15, 2006, 08:43:52 AM

I think I like it better this way, actually. Not that I won't read what anyone else comes up with, but keeping things open ended seems better. Especially on such a widely effective topic as the origin of zombies.

It's still somewhat tempting to come up with somewhat, but I feel it would turn out cheesy.

Xathan · June 15, 2006, 05:54:08 PM

I've tried playing with the possible creator, but I can't think of one yet. I have a couple cheesy answers...if something good occurs to me, you'll see a short story about it.

DeeL · September 21, 2006, 11:56:00 PM

Sam had been called 'Silent' from way back. It was just the way he was - he rarely spoke to more than one person at a time, rationing his conversation in bits here, pieces there. He preferred listening. And he liked listening to places where there were no people best of all.

He found himself out in the field out back of his house. The field was rich in golden wheat. He alone at first, but after a few moments he became aware that there were women around him. Naked orientas, their long black hair rippling past the wheat. "Are you faithful?" one of them asked. And then his clothes were gone, and they were brushing up against him, their skin seething to be stroked, long hair aching to be grasped.

"Come on, come on, come on, how can you not be faithful on a bright day like this?" Her voice was ugly, though. Like the cawing of a crow.

But they were so lithe and lovely, unclothed as he was, and the day was warm and inticing, and he lay down and they followed him down into the gold...

...and then the sky turned white and cold, clouds dark as tumors against the new brilliance. It didn't last long, but when it turned blue again the grain wasn't gold anymore. It was white, and the women had begun to lose skin, lose muscle, and yet they were strong and heavy, holding Sam down, beginning to bite, beginning to eat of him.

Pieces of Sam started to disappear down their throats, reminding him of how children eat a gingerbread man, each bite leaving a painless bleeding crescent but adding nothing to his devourers. It seemed that the more they ate the less there was of them. By the time they reached his head they were little more than rinds of flesh barely holding their bones together.

And then he awoke. Shivering. Sweating. The bunker had not been breached. He was still safe.

He threw on his breeches and a tee, and headed for the dining hall. He brewed an entire pot of coffee. Rarely was there just one person sitting vigil.

-------------------------------------------------------

In a different dreamscape, only a little behind Sams, Key was playing catch with a few friends of his, his dad watching from the porch. He was twenty for this dream. So were his friends. In the dream, his muscles propelled his body lightly, wonderfully. It had been six years since he had moved so free from care. As he caught the ball, he wondered where those six years had gone...

...and the sky whitened. Veins of carious argence savaged the blue, clawing silently at the natural order. The game of catch turned into a different game.

The others started running toward him, at him, hands outstretched. They weren't asking for the ball. Their mouths were open. Their skins were pale and bloodless.

Key looked up onto the porch, hoping his dad would see and call off the others. But his dad was dead, flesh decaying, eyes hollow, looking on with impassive amusement as Key was dragged down...

...and Key awakened. Gasping. Then calming as he remembered where the previous six years had gone.

Shrugging, he headed for the dining hall. He could already smell the coffee.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Key and Sam poured cups for themselves, then sat at the lone table quietly. Neither of them were big talkers, but after they got themselves settled some sort of conversation was inevitable.

Key began. "The one that woke me was a Pale Event dream. You?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah, me too. Wonder what Freud would make of it."

"He'd probly say we were plumb crazy."

"Yeah, but he'd say it in german."

They chuckled at that, then let the silence swell. Then Key spoke. "When was the last good dream you had?"

Sam found this such an interesting question, he actually thought about the answer. "Well, I guess it was kind of the one I had tonight only it was interrupted. The alarm went off when those lurkers got in, you know? And I woke up before the girls flesh started falling off, when they were still sexy, so I guess you'd call that a good dream. You?"

Key didn't bother to ask for more details about the 'girls', or about how sexy they were. Something told him that the usual order of this dream was that the sexiness was a prelude for something uglier. He simply thought about his own experience.

"I don't remember it. I just remember waking up last year, after a whole nights sleep. My face felt funny. Like it hurt, but not. It wasn't until I checked myself out in a mirror that I realized I was smiling. I don't remember the dream, but I woke up smiling. So I guess it was a good dream."

Sam turned that over as he sipped his joe. "Yeah. Good dream. Hell, I'd give up remembering my dreams if I could wake up smiling once a year."

And so it was that the two sat vigil. And in the bunker, the other surviving humans slept. And the night passed.

And outside the bunker, the puppets of the Pale Event shambled and staggered and slouched and slithered, their appetite for living human flesh stoked by deprivation.

SA · September 22, 2006, 04:13:26 AM

OMG.

Conceptually, your fisrt vignette is possibly one of the best pieces of zombie fiction I've ever read. The literary quality is average, but your vision is superb.

The scenario reminds me of the anophelia (I think that's the name) from the novel The Scar. They're mosquito people, and like mosquitos, the men are docile herbivores and the women are mindless carnivores who kill blindly to slake their literal bloodlust. However, when they've fed, they are quite sensible and good natured. The only problem is, they spend most of their time consumed by bloodlust, and therefore never have the opportunity to learn how to communicate.

Is this fiction part of a setting, or does it stand alone?

DeeL · September 22, 2006, 07:05:36 AM

It's all part of a single setting, although so far it is comprised of only 2 samples, the two above. There's more coming, though - the people in the bunker have already had more adventures in my head. And the zombies have deeper secrets...any specific improvements you would make to the writing above? Constructive criticism is always welcome. As are additions to the cycle of stories.

If your interested, I suspect that d20 Modern might be appropriate rules for creating this setting, although I'm not sure I'll ever get around to it.

SA · September 22, 2006, 09:22:29 AM

I've never found d20 modern to be an effective simulation of the zombie genre. It's nowhere near gritty enough to supply the paranoia and horrified alienation that comes with living in a world full of stenches.

Something with a more conservative hit point allocation system (like GURPS of World of Darkness) would probably suit the genre better.

beejazz · September 22, 2006, 06:16:37 PM

I've got my ideas, but I have no way to funnel them in through short fiction yet. I have no idea how our hman characters would find these things out. That said,

"We are coming. You thought you could end us. You thought that you could replace us. But we have been here all along. We have waited for this day.

And now it is your turn. Like us, you will sink into the waters beyond the world. Like us, you will fall victim to DELUGE.

We are coming."

Anyway, like I said, I've got my ideas but I suck as a writer. Especially in fiction. I guess I'll PM an explanation to anybody interested.

SA · September 24, 2006, 11:08:29 PM

Angel is interested.

beejazz · September 24, 2006, 11:20:39 PM

Meh... I've passed on my thoughts to DeeL. He'll implement them (or not implement them) better than I ever will.

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