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Chapter 1: DIES IRAE


Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVjDP0vlem4
(This is one to turn up loud, especially if you're got subwoofers that can set off seismic monitors.)

The worst week in my life starts just after the best. Lilly, Hanko, and I had gone up to Hokkaido for a long weekend; Lilly and I had confessed, accepted, and consummated our love there. I felt like my life was finally getting to where I belonged. The three of us made our own small family and I could see our future opening up before us. Then it all goes to hell.

The three of us are spending a Sunday picnic in the woods close to the school. I had assumed that after the weekend in Hokkaido Lilly would want to pull back on our relationship, what with all her school duties. Frankly, I still can’t believe that she is in love with me and I don’t want her to come to her senses. Instead, she wants to spend every possible minute of the day and night together – like she somehow knows our time together will be short. This Sunday Lilly is being very much the proper lady, sitting upright in the woods with just our fingertips touching. That touch is all that I want in the world.

We’re chatting and laughing about nothing and everything when suddenly squirrels scamper past us and the birds stop their song.

Lilly suddenly stiffens. “What’s that?”

I say “I don’t know, the squirrels are going nuts”.

Lilly says frowning “No, that moaning noise. And it sounds like people are coming through the woods”.

Now I can hear it. I can't place the low, soft noise. It sounds like it’s coming from all around us.

Hanako’s eyes suddenly pop wide and she points “T-There!”

I look at where she is pointing and --- my brain throws a rod. The part of my brain that has spent years steeped in the rational, scientific tradition collides with the part of my brain that has spent years steeped in cheap horror, animation, and shooter games, and large parts of my mental transmission drop on the floor.

Zombies.
But zombies can’t exist.
Zombies!
But zombies can’t exist!

I see a crowd of people walking in a stiff shuffling gait, their flesh ripped, their skin the color of tallow candles, blood dribbling from their mouths. Is this a practical joke?

The crowd suddenly jerks up and switches from a stiff shuffling walk to a stiff shuffling run. Their moaning becomes a high keening wail. That snaps me out of my freeze. Whatever they are I don’t want to find out what they want. I grab Lilly by the shoulders and shout “Run!”.

Lilly. Oh god Lilly. The crowd (I still can't quite bring myself to say zombies) isn’t that fast but Lilly keeps on tripping and stumbling in the uneven ground. She knows how to navigate walking; in a mad run with two other people shouting at her to somehow go faster she’s overmatched. I grab her arm, sling Lilly over my back in a fireman’s carry, and take off with long loping strides.

We’re getting away from the crowd when --- Red. Pounding. Fluttering. Pumping out of control. My heart! The thing that brought me to Yamaku and Lilly suddenly reminds me of how fragile my life can be. I stumble and pitch forwards, dropping Lilly hard on the ground. I almost pass out. I breath, I think about relaxing, I think about the keening getting closer.

Lilly and Hanako grab my arms.

“I’m not losing you! I’m never letting you go!” Lilly shouts as she’s pulling on my arm.
“G-G-Get Up! Th-They’re C-Coming!” Hanako gets out as she tuggs on my other arm.
But my legs just won’t work. My heart won’t calm down. “Run! Leave me!” I croak.
“I’m never leaving you! I can’t lose you!” Lilly shouts. Then she screams. The crowd has caught up to us.

They went after Lilly first. Fists pummeling and grabbing, teeth biting deep and hard at anything. The crowd takes her.

*CRACK* *CRACK*

Hanako kicks at a bench and breaks off a plank and wades into the crowd.

She is a Morrigan, a Hysminai, a Durga. Her movements flow like water, her hair whipps around her like a halo, for the first time her scars forgotten. She swings the plank against knees, elbows, jaws, faces, breaking bones and incapacitated the crowd.

My heart slows down. I stand up. Then one of the crowd gets behind Hanako and grabs her, binding her arms and then bites deep into her throat. Hanako stiffens and screams, her voice rising above the keening of the crowd. The keening of the zombies.

A better man would have kept in shape so he could save his friends and not doom them. A better man would take up the plank and die defending the woman he loved.

I run like hell.

Notes:
No, I hadn't read Comrade's zombie stuff before writing this. I finished it and then found out about it. Fortunately, the two stories are *really* different.

Liminaut wrote:Notes:
No, I hadn't read Comrade's zombie stuff before writing this. I finished it and then found out about it. Fortunately, the two stories are *really* different.

That was my first question, see as he's already into this (Although hasn't worked on it lately, because he's terrible.)
I do like your rendition, aside from it being terrible and destroying all happiness in the universe, but ya know; who needs all that stuff?

Damn. I'm almost done with my version of a zombie ks fic, and was hoping to upload today but we can't have two zombie stories start on the same day. Now can we?

Anyway. Interesting start. Let's see how you handle a guilty Hisao in a zombie apocalypse. Although it does seem a little to short, and hanako went a little to bad ass at the end, but hey. That's just my opinion.

Sea wrote:

Liminaut wrote:Notes:
No, I hadn't read Comrade's zombie stuff before writing this. I finished it and then found out about it. Fortunately, the two stories are *really* different.

That was my first question, see as he's already into this (Although hasn't worked on it lately, because he's terrible.)

;(
Well, i suppose now I'll have to get to it soon.

Thanks for the comments! It took me a couple of hours to work up the nerve to post the thing, worrying that people would hate it. I finally decided I'd feel really silly not posting after actually having written it.

@LorSquirrel: This work isn't that long, ~7000 words, and I'm going to be making daily posts, so if you want to hold if you won't have long to wait. OTOH, it looks like Comrade is re-starting his, so we might want to make it a zombie-fest.

And yes, this is a GrimDark apocalypse, not one of the happy, smiley, survive-y ones like Comrade is writing. I will say there will be more survivors than in "Night of the Living Dead".

And on that note ...

Chapter 2 - A LITTLE BATTY?

Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYeDsa4Tw0c

I run and come to the track. Emi’s pounding out laps faster than anybody with legs. She sees me and stops.

“Hisao! How’s it going? Are … you … OK?” Her voice changes from her usual chipper nature to a more serious tone as she saw the state I was in.

“Zombies!” I gasp. “Zombies! They got Lilly and Hanako! They’re coming!”

“Zombies …?”. Emi’s eyes grow wide.

“Zombies! They’re real! They’re coming!”

“Hisao … of course zombies are real”. Emi slowly nods, with a forced smile on her face. “Let’s get you to the nurse. He’ll know what to do”.

“I’m so glad you believe me. Yes, the nurse will know what to do. He’ll know how to handle the outbreak. But we’ll need to defend ourselves! Baseball bats! We can use baseball bats! Get the shed open, Emi!”

“Hisao,” Emi says carefully, “we don’t need baseball bats. We need you to get to the nurse now.”

“No! Baseball bats first! We’ll need all of them! Then the nurse! Come on!” I said, dragging Emi towards the athletics shed.

“If we get baseball bats do you promise to go to the nurse right away?”

“Yes!”

Emi opens the shed and I grab all the bats I could, making Emi carry an armload as well. Then we head off to the nurse. For some reason Emi is keeping a close eye on me and slightly out of reach.

When we get to the nurse’s office I kick open the door and dump the baseball bats on the floor. The Nurse jumps up from the noise, his eyes go wide, and he backs up a little.

“Hisao … are you alright? Is there anything you need to talk about?” Nurse says.

“Zombies!” I gasp out “They got Lilly and Hanako! They’re coming!”

Emi comes in and sets her bats carefully on the floor. She speaks with uncharacteristic care. “Nurse, Hisao came out of the woods north of the school shouting about zombies. He insisted we get the baseball bats for self-defence. He’s been quite agitated the whole time”.

“Zombies got Lilly and Hanako? I see, that’s serious.” The Nurse says. “Sit down and I’ll find some anti-zombie medication … for the infection, you see … and I’ll call the police”.

“Yes! The police! That’s great! And I didn’t get bit but every chance helps!” I say as I jump up on one of the exam tables.

The nurse picks up the phone and dials a number … and waits. “That’s funny, the police aren’t answering. Let me try the hospital.” Same result. Nurse tries calling the Yamaku president. No luck.

“Well, the phones seem to be OK but no-one is answering. We'll get to the bottom of this soon. You should take this anti-zombie medication.” Nurse hands me a pill and a cup of water.

“Nurse, I can see the bottle. That’s a sedative” I say. He was going to knock me out just at the worst time.

“Yes, it’s a sedative but it also has strong anti-zombie properties. Take it – nurse’s orders.” He smiles as he pushes the pill towards me.

"Nurse, I can't take those! I need to be at my best when the zombies come!"

"Hisao -- what zombies?"

“Nurse – THOSE ZOMBIES!” I point out the window. The zombie horde had just appears out of the woods, shambling towards us.

Nurse’s jaw drops. Emi screams. Nurse suddenly grabs a backpack and starts stuffing it with supplies.

Emi says "HOLY CRAP THEY'RE REAL! I THOUGHT YOU WENT CRAZY AND KILLED LILY AND HANAKO!"

“Hisao! Get out there! Warn the students! Emi -- Get another back pack and stuff it with --- I don’t know – grab everything! Go!” Nurse shouts, panic rising in his voice.

Emi says “Nurse, are those really zombies? They can’t be!”

Nurse replies “I don’t know. I don’t know anything! But if they killed Lily and Hanako they’re bad news! Now go!”

I grab as many bats off the floor as I could and start running down the hall. Where to go? It’s still lunchtime so there will be a lot of students in the cafeteria.

I burst through the doors, bats in hand. The lunchroom is half filled with students; many are taking their lunch out on the lawn in the spring sun. I could see the zombie horde in the distance.

“Zombies!” I shouted. “There they are! Take these bats. Defend yourselves!”

The lunchroom crowd stres silently for an instance, and then roars into laughter. Tsukuda, a student from class 2-3, speaks up.

“Nakai, can’t you recognize a practical joke when you see one! This is just like that fake dinosaur! Have a sense of reality!”

I shout “They killed Lilly and Hanako! This is no practical joke!”

Tsukuda laughs back “So you’re in on the joke too, Nakai, but you’re doing a terrible job of selling it! I can see the cameras hidden on the rooftops!”

Tsukuda says “Let’s go prank the pranksters! Come on, let’s all run out to meet them!”
With that Tsukuda starts shouting nonsense words and ran out the door towards the zombies. A dozen of his classmates follow. They run towards the zombies shouting and waving their hands in the air. The zombies suddenly change from moaning to the high keening scream I had heard before and start running toward Tsukuda and his classmates. The students in the caffeteria are laughing and cheering Tsukuda on. Tsukuda runs laughing into one of the zombies . Then he and the rest of the dozen students that followed him start screaming as the zombies started biting and pummeling them.

The students in the cafeteria are stunned into silence.

Liminaut wrote:Chapter 2 - A LITTLE BATTY?
Emi says "HOLY CRAP THEY'RE REAL! I THOUGHT YOU WENT CRAZY AND KILLED LILY AND HANAKO!"

I laughed at that line for a good three minutes.

Anyway. Seems to be going decent so far. I like how they thought it was a prank, and basically fed themselves to the zombie, and the dialog with the nurse.

LorSquirrel wrote: ..., and hanako went a little to bad ass at the end, but hey. That's just my opinion.

Hanako went absolutely screaming beserk. Absolutely nutzo. Bad ending Hanazilla turned to eleven.

Is there a way I could have gotten the point across in the story better? Perhaps describing wild eyes, things like that?

Liminaut wrote:

LorSquirrel wrote: ..., and hanako went a little to bad ass at the end, but hey. That's just my opinion.

Hanako went absolutely screaming beserk. Absolutely nutzo. Bad ending Hanazilla turned to eleven.

Is there a way I could have gotten the point across in the story better? Perhaps describing wild eyes, things like that?

She needs to burst into flames as those weird anime lines ( believe that's a trope ) behind her shouting nonsensical things and random Kanji flashes around her. Then do it twice.

Chapter 3: HER FINEST HOUR
Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JqoHZKPtpY

Misha’s voice boomed out. “Nakai is right! Whatever they are they are bad news and Yamaku will stand firm against the threat!”

Shizune and Mish had jumped up on a table and are shouting out directions to the students. “Big boys! Get bats, get chairs, get anything and make a fighting line! You, you, you, you, run and get the fire axes! Go! We can’t stay here – the zombies will break in through the windows! Head to the gymnasium! That doesn’t have windows! You table – get to the boy’s dorm and get them out of there! You table – get to the girl’s dorm! Go! Go! Go!”

I pass out the bats. We get kitchen knives, frying pans, whatever we could use. We get a convoy of wheelchairs into the gymnasium. No matter how many we take out there is an endless flood of new zombies.

We head for the gymnasium. I saw Nurse and Emi. Emi’s lithe, powerful body is whipping her prosthetic legs in lethal arcs. Somehow Kenji is with her. I guess raving paranoia has it’s uses.

There are just a few dozen of us in the gymnasium -- maybe 40. We've got a rear guard by the door, smashing zombies and letting students through. We tough it out as long as we can before we close the thick wooden front doors. We can still see a few students that don't make it.

We have the gymnasium, the swimming pool, and the locker rooms behind locked doors. We have a stairway up to the roof. We have a maintenance room and a whole bunch of vending machines. And that is our whole world.

The Nurse has Emi passing out medicine to the people that had gotten bitten. Nurse himself was working with Haruhiko. Haruhiko had gotten badly bitten in the neck and the bleeding Just. Wasn’t. Stopping. Haruhiko has medicine for his hemophilia, of course. It’s in the same place as my heart medication and Ikuno’s insulin. In another building, a million miles away. I see Nurse give Haruhiko a frozen smile, pat him on the shoulder, then get up and walk away. Triage. Haruhiko is slumped into a corner crying silent tears as he presses a cotton pad against his bleeding neck.

I don't see Rin. She had a special tree, in the woods where the zombies came out of.

I walk over to Kenji. He’s got a crowd around him; he’s doing some kind of computer stuff.

“AHHHH! Don’t sneak up on me! Who are you? OK, it’s Hisao. Glad you made it, guy. Don’t bug me, I’ve got to hurry while we still have electricity. The grid runs on autopilot but who knows. Plug this phone in over there, it’ll make a hotspot that gets around the school net. Now put in this floppy and thumb drive and CD and I’ll be able to jailbreak these lame laptops we get from school into Linux without leaving any trace on the hard drive. Stick it all in, reboot, and boom! A non-lame system! “ My god. Kenji has skills. Paranoid skills.

“OK, skip the lamestream media. Let’s see what the Anon boards are up about … Russia, California, China, Bangalore, shit it’s worldwide. The US gundementalists are in hard-on heaven. Tokyo says the army has been called out and is establishing a safe zone in Harajuku – save the hipsters I guess. GODDAMIT! I”VE BEEN BURNED! IT WASN’T THE FEMINISTS IT’S THE REPTOIDS!”

“The who?” I say.

“REPTOIDS! SIX-FOOT SPACE LIZARDS FROM SIGMA DRACONIS! ICKES WAS RIGHT! AGGH! DON’T YOU PEOPLE PAY ATTENTION?”

A crowd was starting to gather around Kenji’s shouting. “Six-foot space lizards?” I say, trying to be a gentle as possible. The boy has completely lost it. We may be trapped in a gymnasium with a raving paranoiac.

Kenji takes a deep breath. “Look, think it though. Neurons on, OK? I thought you’d be brighter than this. OK, this zombie thing isn’t starting in one place but all over the world. That means it’s an agency, and not a natural cause? Nodding, nodding is good. Yes. Now, whatever’s going on is pretty heavy, so it’s not standard tech. So it’s alien tech. Good, still with the nods. Now, there are pockets of successful resistant forming all over. If this was an alien invasion they’d just hit us all, wipe out the whole place clean slate. That’s not happening, they don’t want to get rid of humanity just purify it into the fittest …”

Kenji suddenly goes silent. “They want to get rid of us" he says quietly. "Anybody with disabilities that can’t survive. Some people are going to survive, but we’re not supposed to.”

“WAHAHAHAH~! Don’t say that Kenji! Of course we’ll survive! We’re too pretty not to! I am, anyway!” Hello, Misha. "Hey Kenji, you have internet running? Can I check my email?"

"NO! Are you in league with them or something! This needs to be saved for important communications! Only official stuff" Kenji snaps back.

"Not even for important student council work?" Misha says, smiling sweetly.

"Especially not for student council work!"

The Nurse breaks in on this point. "I'm agreeing with Kenji on this one. Kenji, can we get to the CDC web sites from here?"

"Why, do you think there will be anything actually useful on them that's not in the National Enquirer?" Kenji replies with a bit of a smirk.

"The public sites, no. The dark areas, yes. Bring the laptop over there where we can be private and we'll see what we can get" Nurse replies. With that Nurse and Kenji go over into a corner.

I look around and see Shizune slumped against a wall, tears streaming down her checks, trembling. Shizune! We're depending so much on her. If she's breaking, who's left?

I point Shizune out to Misha and we run over to her. Mishs gently touches Shizune's shoulder. Shizune looks up at us with red, wet eyes and hands us her Blackberry. There's a stream of text messages on it.

HIDEAKI: trapped in house

HIDEAKI: zombies all around

HIDEAKI: J went out to with sword whimpered ran upstairs hiding in closet

HIDEAKI: think J wet himself

HIDEAKI: J weeping now

HIDEAKI: S what do i do?

HIDEAKI: you're the strong one the tough one

HIDEAKI: please tell me

HIDEAKI: zombies breaking glass

HIDEAKI: zombies breaking in

HIDEAKI: they are coming

Misha and I hug Shizune tightly. Shizune is stiff with shock. For once we are all equally silent. There are no words now.

All over the auditorium this scene is being repeated. Everybody has cell phones, but few people can get through to anyplace. Some are getting last texts or voicemails from their families; a lucky few hear that their families have escaped. It's a long night.

Waking up in the morning seems like a really bad idea. I'm lying on some gym mats with my jacket rolled up as a pillow. In other words, about the worst place I've ever slept. It even beats camping when my parents forgot the sleeping bags. But as long as I can pretend to be asleep I can pretend that I'm not here waiting for zombies.

It could be worse. The bathrooms are still working, and we've filled everything we could find with fresh water. We've got the swimming pool filled with water, but it's chlorine of course.

SCREAMS. Coming from from the girl's bathroom! And then we hear that horrible keening and ...

a zombie coming out the door of the girl's bathroom. My heart sinks. I'm paralyzed. There's no place left to run. They're in. There's nothing left to do but die.

Misha's voice booms out "ATTACK! GET THEM, GET THEM, GET THEM!"

Shizune and Misha are grabbing people and pushing them towards the zombies. Into the fear, not away from the fear. Everybody with an axe or a baseball bat is being grabbed and now we're waking up. There are just a few zombies in the main room so they are easily contained.

We can still hear screaming coming from inside the bathroom. Those poor girls!

Misha yells "INTO THE BATHROOM! WE'VE GOT TO STOP THE GAP!"

I'm not in the front ranks, I can only watch. It's a brutal fight, forcing our way past the door and into the bathroom itself. The front ranks are killing zombies but at the price of getting heavily bitten themselves. I can see how the zombies are getting in. There's an open window near the ceiling of the bathroom and the zombies are getting in there. Fortunately, only one at a time. Once we get past the door we can spread out and clear the bathroom and get the window closed. The zombies are clawing at the closed window; we find wood to barricade the windows to keep them out.

The two girls in the bathroom, Inoue Sumiko and Yamashita Kyou, are sobbing and trembling when we finally get to them. They're still alive, but they were surprised by zombies at the worst possible time and were horribly mauled.

Then there's the clean-up. There are bodies all over the bathroom, and everything is soaking in blood. We've got to clean this up, and search the rest of the building for any weak spots.

Suddenly chlorine is sounding like a marvelous idea.

Once again, Shizune has rallied us, given us leadership at the right time to let us survive.

No, I am not worthy to write Rin.

Liminaut wrote:No, I am not worthy to write Rin.

Somehow I can imagine Rin calmly walking through the zombies and being miraculously untouched. While writing her state of mind and dialogue may prove challenging, I'm sure you can do it if you tried.

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

Chapter 4: FASTEST THING ON NO LEGS
Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdcOk7NuEsQ

Midway through the morning, the lights finally go out. I check my cell phone -- no signal. The walls are starting to close in. We've got some skylights and a few boarded-up windows, but it's not much.

A few hours later, I see the Nurse talking with Misha, Shizune, Emi, and Miki. Somehow Misha is keeping her voice down. Must be bad.

Later, Nurse comes out and loudly clears his voice. He has our worried attention. "I don't need to tell any of you how desperate our situation is. We're a small part of a worldwide catastrophe. And I don't think anybody knows we are here. We've sent out emails and text messages, but with no reply from authorities, no reply from somebody that could come get us. We haven't been able to get a call in, either. If we don't get rescued we aren't going to last much longer."

Nurse takes a deep breath and continues. "We need to send out messengers to try to get through. From the last word we got, in many of the larger cities safe areas are being formed and people are starting to win. Sendai looks like our best bet. My car is about a mile south of us and has a full tank of gas."

"Emi and Miki have volunteered to make a run for the car." With that both Emi and Miki wave to all of us with big grins. "But even for these two, a mile is too far right now. We need a diversion. We are asking for volunteers to make that diversion, We are looking for a group to head out north, to draw the zombies out and to give our runners a fighting chance."

"There's one last consideration. The CDC has figured out that this is a bacteriological disease, and most antibiotics are temporarily effective against it. We have a limited supply of antibiotics. The next thing I have to ask is cold, but we are all in this together. I'm asking those that are already bitten to go, and to protect the unbitten students from the zombies."

"Shizune will be leading the raiding party. Do I have other volunteers?"

We all raise our hands. My heart medication still in my blood should be good for a little while more, and I'd rather die fighting than cowering waiting for the end to come. I owe them for Lilly and Hanako.

The Nurse selects the raiding party and passes out weapons. "I'm going to be up on the roof. Our cell phones are out, so we'll have to shout and use messengers. We've got an old megaphone, at least. I'll give the signal when it's clear for the runners; I'll give a second signal when they are way and the raiding party needs to come back. "

The Nurse takes a breath and says solemnly "Good luck".

We line up by the door. We've tested our phones to make sure that the short range still worked. Shizune has a pair of hammers from the maintenance room; the rest of us have fire axes or baseball bats. Emi has a baseball bat and Miki a large kitchen knife somebody grabbed from the cafeteria. We head out.

There are a few zombies around us. That's what we needed - zombies to start their keening and to bring the rest. We're moving fast, hitting zombies before they can really build a mass.

But that's the hard part. We aren't trying to get someplace or do something; we're trying to attract as many zombies as we can without getting ourselves killed. Delicate balancing act, that.

Shizune is in the lead, of course. Smashing heads, then dropping down to break legs. It's good for us to have loud but crippled zombies to attract more. As scary as the idea of more zombies is.

Zombies are starting to come faster now, with their jerky run and their bloody foaming mouths. We're all getting scared. I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this when we hear shouting coming from the rooftop.

"The girls are away! Come back in!" We see the nurse shouting and waving from the roof. We all gratefully head back to our home ...

We didn't all hear it. Shizune didn't hear it. She was facing away from the roof. She was still plowing into a group of zombies, knowing we'd all be right behind her. Except we weren't. We had started retreating. It was just for a few seconds before we realized our mistake but that was enough. Shizune was swarmed by zombies.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHAAAHHHHHHH" Misha screams and starts to make a dash for the pile of zombies with Shizune at the bottom. It's too many and more are coming. A couple guys grab Misha and drag her away screaming.

Emi and Miki are away. They won't let anything stop them.