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Sea wrote:Well this rapidly devolved into madness.
I shall be watching with interest.

Oh, this thing is flooring it with madness in the rearview mirror.

Chapter 5: MISHA AGONISTES
Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J2QdDbelmY

“BAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAA~!”

Misha cries like she laughs, with everything she’s got. Her sobs ring out, echoing in the gymnasium. Everybody always teased Misha about her laugh but I would give so much to here that laugh right now. She’s sitting down against a wall, with her head between her knees.

We’re all stunned at Shizune’s death. We’ve seen a lot of people die but Shizune was the one who kept us going when the world went to hell. I can’t do anything but I’ll do what I can. I go over to Misha and put my arms around her.

“Hicchan …” Misha shakes me off.“Oh Hicchan … I loved her! I loved her so damn much” Misha gets out between sobs.

“Misha, Shizune meant a lot to us all, more than we knew” I say.

“Oh shut up Hicchan! Don’t try to comfort me. You don’t know.” Misha looks up and shouts to the room. “Hey everybody! Ever wonder what my disability is? Misha’s great mystery? Why I got sent here? I’m a dyke! A lesbo! I like girls! That’s what’s wrong with me!”

“But … being lesbian isn’t a disability.” I stammer out.

“It is to my parents!” Misha takes a deep breath and says “Just let me get this out, OK? Tanaka Rei. That’s who she was. We fell in love when we were fourteen. My whole world changed. I knew who I was. We didn’t care who knew it either.” Misha pauses for a breath. “We should have had a clue. Everybody at school was merciless. Slut-shaming and homophobia – two great tastes that made me want to puke together. They said it was for our own good, that we needed to learn how to behave. I had no idea people could be so cruel! Rei and I loved each other and the more we were attacked the more we were determined to stand by our love. Until the principal told our parents. Said we were 'disturbing the school'.”

Misha looks up. ”Rei’s family moved away. No phone number, no address, I don’t know where. My parents tried something different. First, they sent me to a special camp to ‘Pray The Gay Away’ in California. That’s where I got my shirt! . After I got kicked out for being incorrigible – Go Me! – they sent me here. By learning sign and with the Hakamichi family paying me to be an interpreter for Shicchan we could afford the tuition. My family thought Yamaku would be a safe place for me until I ‘grew out of being gay’. They said who would fall in love with a crippled girl? Boys can have problems if they can still bring in a good paycheck but girls need to be perfect for their husbands. I didn’t want to come here but after my world had been turned upside down so many times I just wanted to make my parents happy. Maybe be someplace that I could just be by myself and not get hurt.”

Misha puts her head back down. ”When I came to Yamaku I thought I was coming to hell. I didn’t belong here but had to pretend I did. I had two secrets, that I was the only one with no disbilities and another that I liked girls. I shouldn’t be ashamed of it but I still hear all the voices from my parents and my preachers telling me what a bad person I am. And then there was Shicchan.”

“Shicchan was who I wanted to be. Strong, confident, making the world dance to her tune. She was all over me on every mistake I made but that’s just because she wanted me to be better. She was always fair to me and everybody. One day I finally got the nerve to confess to her and … she rejected me. But then she kept on being my friend, and I let myself believe it could one day be something more. When Lilly broke up the Student Council...”

“WHAT?” I interject. “Lilly would never do something like that! The student council broke up because nobody could stand the Silent Tyrant!”

“Don’t you dare call her that! Not now, not to my face!” Misha shouts, and then her voice gets quite again. “Oh Hichhan, didn’t you ever see it? Whenever you were with Lilly, you were doing what she wanted when she wanted to. Right?”

“… Right …” I say grudgingly.

“Lilly always wanted to be in control, and was very, very good at it. When Shicchan became council president, Lilly wasn’t in control any more, not even in the behind the scene way she loved so much. Whenever anybody on the Council had a problem with Shicchan, they always went to Lilly. Lilly had a duty to the Student Council to make sure that people stuck it though and supported Shicchan. But Lilly didn't do that! She told them to 'follow their own conscience' and then they always left. Soon the Council was just Shicchan, me, and her, with Shicchan and I drowning in work. Shicchan thought Lilly was her last faithful ally, but then she found out what Lilly had been doing. When Shicchan confronted Lilly about her failure, that's when Lilly finally left. Lilly had a chance to keep the Student Council strong but let members go instead. That’s why there was so much bad blood between them! Lilly betrayed Shicchan!”

Misha looks up smiling. “Then the Student Council was just Shicchan and me! Everybody was waiting for us to fail. But we never did! It cost me so damn much. I couldn’t make other friends because I had to work with Shicchan all the time. My grades got nuked because I didn’t have time to do the classwork. But it was all worth it to spend time with Shicchan and making sure she won.”

Misha puts her head back between her legs. “And now Shicchan is gone. Hicchan, please. That’s all I’ve got in me. Let me go.”

We spent the rest of the day like that. At least our messengers got off. The next day brought something we had all been dreading: the vending machines ran out. No more bottled water, no more Cyasyuu Onigiri.

The Nurse got up in the middle of the room and said “We all know what just happened. No food, no water, it doesn’t matter what the zombies do we will die anyway and die badly. We know Emi and Miki are out there getting help, and they’ve never let anything stop them. We just have to stay alive long enough to let help get here. The best source of food and water is in the cafeteria. We’ll need a lot of people to go out there, grab what you can, and get back. We’ve got a lot of backpacks we can stuff. Do I have volunteers?”

We all know the stakes. Everybody that can stand, stands up.

“You know the drill. Already bitten in front, to minimize new casualties. Help each other. Stay in a group. Move fast. And good luck.”

The raid goes well. We burst out the doors with a few left behind to close them behind us. The zombies start screaming as soon as we run out but there aren’t that many of them. More coming soon, though. We hit the cafeteria. I never thought stale curry bread would look so good. Grab everything, stuff it in sacks, packs on backs, lots of water, we’re almost done …

“MISHA, NO! THAT’S NOT SHIZUNE!” I shout.

We all see a zombie that used to be Shizune yesterday coming towards with that trademark grin on her face, that grin she got when she was going to beat you at a game after betting a week’s service to the student council.

Misha takes her axe and plows screaming through the zombies, straight at the Shizune-zombie. The Shizune-zombie … stops? Points back at us? Pushes Misha away? Then dies again as Misha’s axe splits her face, her chest, takes her head off.

“YOU BITCH! YOU KILLED HER! YOU TOOK SHICCAN AWAY FROM ME!” Misha screams.

Then Misha grows quiet and said “You never loved me, Shicchan.”

Then the zombies swarm over Misha.

The zombies are coming now. We take our food and water and get back to the gymnasium. Leaving Misha. We have what we need but another of our best is gone.

+-----------------+
'Agonistes' is Greek; 'Misha Agonistes' roughly translates as 'Misha the Stuggler'.

Chapter 6: THE MANLY APOCALYPSE
Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9TmQQQGddQ

Day four.

There’s not much to say. A bunch of people sitting in a big room, waiting for either deliverance or destruction. At least the restrooms are OK. We can’t drink the water in the pool but we can use it to flush. Anyway, situations like this aren’t condusive to small talk, or large talk either.

Who knew the apocalypse could be so boring?

It doesn't help that whatever medication I had still in my bloodstream is long gone. Anything more than a slow walk is right out.

Day five.

More of the same.

Then the Nurse stands up. That gets everybody’s attention. He’s the last real authority figure we have, and the only one that might have a clue as to what’s going on.

“Can I have everybody’s attention? We’ve got a lot of hard decisions to make. I was hoping it wouldn’t to this but it has. Our phones are out, the internet is out, we have no way of contacting the outside. We’ve got messengers out but we don’t know how they are doing. Look, when we had the web up I was able to get to the WHO forums. They had some ideas about the zombie plague. I didn’t want to share it because they weren’t certain, but it’s the best we have now. This zombie stuff is a bacteria. Standard anti-bacterial stuff can keep it in check, and that’s what I’ve been giving people that have gotten bit. The anti-bacterials ran out this morning. What’s going to happen is … what’s going to happen is …” The Nurse is chocking on his words, not able to get the next part out. “What’s going to happen is that in twelve to twenty-four hours, everybody that’s been bitten is going to turn into a zombie.”

There are gasps and murmurs. Everybody looks around. There are more people bitten than not.

“We have a couple of choices. We can do nothing, and watch these people turn into zombies one by one, and kill them as they turn, and hope they don’t overwhelm us. Or the bitten can leave.”

“I’ve got more bad news. Zombies aren’t all the same. Some of them are smart and malicious. When Misha went down, she left a fire axe out in plain sight. We've got tough wooden doors that the zombies can't get through. When a smart zombie gets that axe, those doors are coming down. And everybody here becomes a zombie.”

“All I’ve got is this. The healthy ones can try to make a break for it and fight our way to a safe area. It’s slim but all I’ve got. If the infected can leave in a different direction and draw the zombies off, we’ll have a little better chance.”

“That means leaving a lot of people behind. We’ll leave you with food and water and prayers. Hisao, Kenji – we can do a little better for you. Hisao, with your heart you can’t come with us – you won’t be able to keep up the pace. Kenji, your eyesight isn’t good enough, You won’t be able to last in a fight. We can do this for you. You two can at least get up the stairs to the roof. You can lock the doors behind you; that will put two more steel doors between you and the zombies. There is some hope; it seems like zombies aren't that good at taking care of themselves and might collapse after a few days. They're still living people, not walking dead.”

The Nurse pauses and then finishes with “That’s everything we can do”.

Ito Yumiko gets up on her crutches. “What’s this ‘we’ you say. None of us here made this call! This isn’t what civilized people do. Civilized people help each other, they don’t abandon the weak, they give solace to the last instant. Don’t do this!”

The Nurse looks and Yumiko and sadly replies “Ito, this isn’t about civilized. This is about trying to get a few people through this”.

The trouble is, both The Nurse and Yumiko are right. This isn’t what civilized people do but this isn’t about being civilized.

The infected dash out the side door. The last one out, a tall muscular boy from 2-2 with numerous bite wounds from wading into the zombies, turns around and spits on the floor. “Fire axe? Thanks for telling me how to get rid of the rest of the crips when I go zombie.”

Kenji and I barricade the doors to the roof and walk up on the top of the roof. I can feel my heart straining from the stairs. Nurse was right; I'd never survive a running fight. We’ve got food and water for a few days. Then three more days after that until we die of thirst. The goal is to try to outlast the zombies.

Looking down, if I squint a little it kind of reminds me of the Yamaku Festival. People milling about. I see Hanako and Lilly, still together. It looks like Misha is walking with that woman -- what's her name? the one with the two-colored eyes? Except it's not really Hanako, Lilly, and Misha any more.

Kenji speaks up. “Here we are, Hisao, the last sane men in an insane world. Hey, I’ve got something special.” Kenji opens up the bag he’s been carrying and pulls out some pretzels and a bottle of Scotch. Speyside – the real thing. Kenji opens it, takes a slug, and passes me the bottle.

I take the bottle but say “Kenji, do you really want to be drunk for this? What happens if we need to fight off zombies?”

“Hisao, whatever happens do you really want to be sober for this?”

Damn. Kenji is starting to make sense.

"Kenji, do you think Emi and Miki got through?" I take a drink and pass the bottle back to Kenji.

"Bro, think about it. All over Japan people have been panicking for days, getting into their cars and driving like hell, getting into traffic accidents and causing traffic jams. Then getting swarmed by zombies. Sooner or later the girls are going to get trapped in a mess of abandoned cars. Then they'll have to abandon their own car. Then they'll get swarmed." He drinks and passes me the bottle.

"Kenji -- you thought that and you still didn't say anything about letting them go?" I drink and pass again.

"Hope, bro. Hope. Even slim ones". He drinks and makes to hand me the bottle but I wave him off. "But if they got though we'd probably know it by now".

I go over to the fence and look over Yamaku. It's not fair. It's not fair! What did any of us do the deserve this? I'd just started getting my life together. That's so true of so many of us here. I start shaking the fence back and forth in frustration, harder and harder, and

Something gives.

The fence falls away from me.

I can't get my balance back.

I fall.

I hit.

Chest first.

At least I left the whiskey with Kenji.

EPILOG - HOW THESE ZOMBIES WORK
The zombie bacteria does not kill. Instead, it infects the brain and radically changes behavior. The subject wants to bite open flesh, transmitting the virus. The subject also wants to rip clothes to expose more skin, grab victims so they can’t get away, and punch victims so they drop and can’t go any place to get treated.

The virus has a number of other effects. The jerking zombie movement is from the damage the bacteria does to the nervous system. The skin color changes to identify zombies to other zombies. Also the mouth cells are working overtime to produce bacteria for saliva, so zombies bleed from their mouths.

Zombies communicate through sound. They have two modes: low moaning and high keening. The low moaning lets zombies know where each other is, and they want to stay about 12 feet away from each other. This pushes the zombie horde out over a distance but makes sure the zombies are still dense enough to make getting away from a horde difficult. The second mode is keening. When a zombie identifies victims they start keening. Zombies will run towards a keening noise attack, and will start keening themselves. After about 30 minutes the keening will shut off.

During all this time the original personality is present (!). It’s like you are still you, but with an overwhelming urge to shuffle around biting people. Different people react in different ways. The vast majority of people mentally curl up into a fetal ball. Some exceptionally strong-willed people fight being a zombie. And others embrace zombiedom, coming up with inventive ways of getting at victims.

In terms of zombie behavior eating, sleeping, and drinking water are not high on the lists. Unless the person is exceptionally driven a zombie will not take care of these basic functions unless it is very easy. Often, this means if you can last three days the zombies will die of thirst.

You really shouldn't have tried to rationalized zombies... You are taking away the last illusion that just maybe there might have been a way for it to make sense after all.
I'm not going to take apart that that Epilogue of yours, because I'm not in the mood to write two pages worth of why it is silly.

I'm just going to say that "author's notes" (not enough quotation marks exist to properly express how many I would add) are getting to be a scourge and the equivalent of writing suicide on these forums.

I usually don't nit pick but one thing in this fic really bothered me. Why did they take the girl with crutches that could run less then Hisao yet leave Hisao for mobility and heath reasons?

monkeywitha6pack wrote:I usually don't nit pick but one thing in this fic really bothered me. Why did they take the girl with crutches that could run less then Hisao yet leave Hisao for mobility and heath reasons?

Bad writing on my part. I thought it would be obvious that she was being *left*; clearly it wasn't.

Thanks a lot for pointing out this problem.

I don't know why, but I was half expecting Mutou to save the day with some surprise appearance

I can imagine him bursting through a window, Assault Rifle in hand, and mowing down a crapton of zombies. The mental images are glorious.

Munchenhausen wrote:I don't know why, but I was half expecting Mutou to save the day with some surprise appearance

I can imagine him bursting through a window, Assault Rifle in hand, and mowing down a crapton of zombies. The mental images are glorious.

Like this?

Steinherz wrote:

Munchenhausen wrote:I don't know why, but I was half expecting Mutou to save the day with some surprise appearance

I can imagine him bursting through a window, Assault Rifle in hand, and mowing down a crapton of zombies. The mental images are glorious.

Like this?
[badassery.jpg]

Yes.
All of my yes.

I've got mixed feeling here. Until the chapter where Misha bit it, the story seemed more silly than serious, despite your attempts otherwise. Even then, things moved along as much to fast of a pace to really build the mood you were probably going for.

The explanation at the end really didn't help anything either. Rather than using an author's note to set things in stone, it would have been better to have the characters trying to rationalize it (or argue about it) themselves. For one thing, it gives you some insight into how the characters are thinking, another it gives you an excuse for any errors that you might have.