This story is for my dear friend Briana, who really wanted a zombie story. She also helped me out with a lot of the ideas, since she is much more knowlegable in zombie lore than I. xD So, thank you Muffin, for all your help, both with this story and without. You are a wonderful friend.
I'm trying something new with this story, obviously. I decided to try to follow the manga fairly closely, so we'll see how it goes. I may get tired of that though. xD At any rate, please read and review, and I hope this is enjoyable to at least a few people! Also, keep in mind that this is a zombie story, so there will be gore and cannibalism and all sorts of things. It's not too bad in this chapter, but if that sort of thing bothers you, I'm not sure I'd recommend continuing.
...
The Black Order, consisting of people possessed of technologies capable of destroying the living dead, is a new organization in the world. It exists to destroy the monsters, and its members' mission is to avert the coming apocalypse. For they know that the apocalypse is coming, and they know also that it will not be accompanied by a divine judgment and the salvation of the "true believers," but that the true end of the world as we know it will be at the hands of the zombies.
--
Officer Moa Hesse studied the old rundown church in consternation. There had been many disturbing reports about the church, and, though she was not a superstitious person, the place gave her the chills.
"Officer Moa, are you really going in," her partner, Charles, asked in a worried tone. She sighed. Charles, unfortunately, was superstitious, and the old, supposedly haunted church wasn't boosting his morale much.
"Yes, of course," she replied. "There've been too many complaints for the police department to just ignore it."
"But Moa, anyone who goes in disappears, and the townspeople have reported strange noises coming from inside whenever someone approaches!" Charles objected. "It's haunted!"
"Charles, this church isn't haunted. There aren't any such things as otherworldly creatures. You and I are armed with guns. We're members of the police force. We don't have to fear anything that could be hiding in here, because it's undoubtedly human." She replied patiently. Her partner's trembling calmed just a little at her words, and she took that to be a good sign.
"Actually, you'd be wrong there," said a voice from behind them. The two officers whirled around in surprise.
The voice belonged to a man who was standing in the concealing shadows beside the gate. He had an affable face and was smiling at them cheerfully.
"Forgive me for overhearing, but you do need to worry about what's in that building," he told them, coming forward. As he drew near, Moa realized he was little more than a boy. He had white hair, giving him the appearance of being elderly, but his eyes were a clear blue and his open face young and innocent. Nevertheless, he was in a suspicious area and seemed to have knowledge of the equally suspicious happenings. She pointed her gun at him.
"That's close enough," she told him. He stopped, looking at her gun apprehensively. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"I'm Allen Walker," he replied, still eyeing the gun. "I'm a traveler. I'd heard that many travelers through this town stay at this church because it's free of charge, so I came here. I didn't know it was supposed to be haunted until I got here and saw the place. I've encountered this sort of phenomenon before; I know what causes it."
Moa continued to stare him down. He backed up a pace from her gaze.
"I really am just a traveler!" He said to her, sounding slightly defensive. "Really!"
Moa ignored his assertions, and instead asked him about the 'hauntings.' "What sort of phenomenon have you encountered before?" She asked him, but was distracted by a sudden sound from behind her.
She turned. Charles, his face white, was staring at the church before him. His mouth was wide open, and he was mumbling incoherently in fear.
"Charles, what is the matter?" Moa asked him in irritation. She didn't appreciate being interrupted.
He raised a trembling hand and pointed at the church.
Moa turned, and the sight that met her eyes almost stopped her heart.
"I think you'd better let me handle this," the strange boy said. He stepped in front of the two terrified police officers and took off his jacket.
Moa gasped when she saw his arm. It was almost more startling than the horror standing in the church doorway.
As Allen's arm became visible, Moa could see that his hand had been chopped off at the wrist at some point in time. The severed limb ended in a steel cap, and Allen held (in his good hand) a long blade attachment for that cap. He screwed it in as the creature shambled out of the doorway toward the three humans. Moa drew back in horror as it moaned, a lifeless, hungry sound that sent a shudder down her spine. She backed up a few steps in fear.
Allen showed none of the horror or revulsion that marked the two officers. In fact, he seemed to pity the horrifying thing. He looked at it solemnly.
"I'm sorry you had to go through this," he said to it apologetically. "Fortunately, this life you have been brought back into will end soon, and you may rest in peace. First though, you should have your friends come out."
The zombie didn't reply at all, or even indicate it had heard him. It merely continued to shamble forward, the desiccated legs struggling to move even after blood had stopped flowing through them.
Allen sighed. "Well, I suppose I'll stop wasting time so you can go back into peaceful oblivion as soon as possible." With those last words, he sped forward, holding his blade-arm low. The zombie reached for him hungrily with its pale, lifeless hands, but Allen was too fast for it. The zombie stopped moving abruptly as its head flew in a large arc to land behind it, and its body collapsed onto the ground. Allen stopped and surveyed the corpse. Then he looked at Moa and Charles.
"Zombies don't usually travel alone," he told them. "The Maker creates them by using someone's need to bring them back to life; after that process, the zombie kills and infects whoever brought it back. Since there were a few travelers who disappeared in this church, I think it's safe to say that we are dealing with a group of four or more."
They stared at him, still in shock.
"So what do you propose we do about it?" Moa asked him finally, after she had regained some measure of control.
Allen smiled grimly. "Hunt them." He turned to go inside the dark church. "You two might want to go home," he said over his shoulder. "You have to decapitate a zombie in order to kill it again, and neither of you are really equipped for that. Besides, if you've never dealt with zombies before or been trained to kill them, going up against one is a risky undertaking." With that, he walked straight into the church, vanishing into the darkness.
Moa looked at him. She looked at Charles, at the gate, at the street beyond. Then she made a decision. "I'm going after him."
Charles stared at her. "What?"
"I'm going after him," she repeated. "This was our job to come solve the problem at this church, so we can't just walk away and let some kid do it for us. And you saw how easily Allen killed the other one; we have guns. We can probably slow them down so he can decapitate them at his own leisure."
Charles gulped. He stared at her wide-eyed, and then nodded. "Y-yes," he stuttered, trying to gather his courage.
Moa smiled at him. "Alright then, let's go." And she followed Allen into the rickety old building.
She stopped just inside the doorway to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. It smelled of dust and wood rot in the building, but there was a definite overtone of carrion as well. She supposed that was the natural smell of zombies; after all, they weren't much more than that. She tried to comfort herself by thinking that. After all, who should be afraid of a piece of rotting meat? Then Charles stumbled into her from behind, not seeing her in the dark, and she screamed. He jumped back with a startled oath, and Moa turned, her heart beating quickly.
"Watch where you're going," she hissed at him, trying to keep her voice from trembling. He gulped in reply. She turned again, cautiously, and peered around her. She could see the nearby walls of the old place, but the deeper inside the church she looked, the darker it became. Taking a deep breath, she started forward, Charles close behind her.
The two moved cautiously, listening intently after placing each careful step, often holding their breath to hear more accurately. There was nothing.
Then Charles gave a startled yelp and was jerked away from Moa. She whirled around, but could see no sign of him.
"Charles?" She called fearfully, standing stock still.
She jumped at the horrendous sound that answered her call. She heard Charles scream once, but it faded into a choked gargle, and there were horrible eating sounds coming from her left. She gagged, and, sobbing, began to move backward, deeper into the church. A sudden hand on her arm made her cry out, but then Allen clamped his hand over her mouth.
"Stop making so much noise," he whispered to her, barely audible over the sounds of the zombies' feast. "You'll give away your location."
She sobbed again and tried to calm herself down, to stay in control of herself, to quiet down and think rationally. Allen relaxed his grip on her, and moved toward the sounds.
"Do you have a light or anything?" he asked her in a hushed tone. Moa started sheepishly. She had completely forgotten the flashlight she had brought with her. But then, given what Allen had said about talking, using a flashlight in the zombie-infested church would not have been a good idea. She passed it to him without a word.
Allen turned back to the slowly-fading sounds, and, getting his blade ready, turned on the flashlight.
Moa recoiled from the dreadful scene, but Allen plunged right in, his blade-arm swiftly killing first one, then two of the zombies. His stroke wasn't quite powerful enough to fully decapitate the second zombie, and his blade got caught in the partially severed spinal cord. He jerked at it, to no avail.
Two of the remaining zombies shuffled back into the darkness, their faces smeared red with Charles' blood. The last one wrapped its white hand around Allen's good arm, trying to take a bite of his soft, living flesh. Allen tried to wrench free of the thing's grasp, but it was too strong. He struggled to pull his blade free of the dead zombie.
A shot rang out then, clear and distinguished from the muffled sounds of the battle. In desperation, Moa had shot the zombie, trying to buy Allen some time to free his weapon. The zombie turned to look at her, and, apparently deciding she would make an easier target than Allen, shuffled toward her.
Moa began to tremble violently. Despite all her talk before, she wasn't prepared to confront something that could withstand a bullet at close range. The thing continued its advance, and Moa stood frozen in fear.
Luckily, though, her ploy had worked, and Allen had been able to free his blade. With a powerful lunge, he sliced the creature fully in half as it descended on the paralyzed police officer. She watched it fall, lifeless, to the ground, and began to sway in her place. She steadied herself.
"Officer? Are you alright?" Allen asked, his young face full of concern.
Moa gulped and nodded. Then she bolted like a rabbit in the direction of the door.
"Officer! Wait! There's still two more out there somewhere!" Allen called after her as she disappeared from the small circle of light, but she paid no heed. Allen muttered angrily and raced after her, hoping against hope to reach her before the zombies did.
When Moa reached the dubious safety of the church yard, she was panting heavily. She walked shakily toward the gate, but the night's activities had finally caught up to her, and her trembling legs would no longer carry her. She slumped heavily to the ground, watching it spin and dance in her vision. She vaguely heard the boy's voice calling after her, but she couldn't make out the words. Finally the world stopped its wobbling, and blessed blackness settled over her.
--
She awoke with a start in the station. It was morning. Groggily, she sat up and looked around. She couldn't remember why she was there…
"Oh! Charles—and the boy—and the church, and—" She began with a sudden flood of memories.
"Yes, we know," said the officer at the desk. "He's in interrogation now."
She looked at him, confused. "Who is?"
"The suspect," he replied. He walked over to a nearby door and beckoned for her to follow. She did so, wondering what he had meant.
"Officer Moa is awake, detective," the officer called through the closed door.
"It's about time," said a gruff voice from the other side. "Let her in."
As Moa stepped through the door she saw Allen, with his hands bound, seated at the interrogation table across from the detective, and things clicked together in her still fuzzy mind.
"Detective, Allen's not the culprit," she said before anyone else could speak. "He didn't kill Charles. He was trying to protect us." She looked down. "But I didn't want to let him handle the situation when it was our job, so I followed him, and Charles followed me…"
The two stared at her. "Are you trying to say it was your fault Charles is dead, Moa?" the detective asked in a dumbfounded voice.
"That's ridiculous," Allen said. "It wasn't your fault. You both knew you were taking a risk when you followed me."
Moa just nodded. The detective looked back and forth between them, confused. Finally his irritation won out, and he dismissed them out of hand, telling them the situation would be resolved later.
"And don't skip town!" He yelled out the door after the two as they were summarily ejected from the station before going back inside to mull over the case.
Moa and Allen looked at each other.
"I'm sorry about that," Moa said to him. "Thank you for returning me to the station."
"You're welcome, and it was nothing, you don't have to be sorry." Allen said immediately. There was a long pause after his words.
"So those two other zombies are still at the church?" Moa asked tentatively.
Allen nodded. "And Charles. He was infected as well. We should probably deal with them soon, so they don't have a chance to infect any others. You'll need a weapon. Use this." He handed her a long slim blade with a screw attachment on the end. Moa realized it was an attachment for his arm, similar to the
one he was wearing. She nodded in solemn agreement at his words, and they went down the street to confront the horrors residing inside the old building.
They stepped through the old gate cautiously, glancing around uneasily. Moa hoped they'd have better luck defeating the zombies in daylight.
The sunlight filtered down through the broken slats in the roof, filling the old church with a shadowy light. Moa looked around. There was no sign of the zombies.
"Where are they?" She whispered to Allen.
He motioned for silence, putting a finger over his lips. The crept past old rotting pews, going deeper into the building. Still there was no sign of the zombies.
"We're getting closer," Allen said after a few minutes of searching had passed.
"Why do you say that?" She whispered back, confused.
"The smell of carrion is getting stronger," he replied.
After several more minutes of searching, they still found no other signs of the zombies.
"I thought you said we were getting close," Moa said in a normal tone of voice.
"Shh," Allen hushed her. "I did, and we are. Just be patient."
"It's hard to be patient when you're trying to eliminate the living dead," Moa hissed back in irritation. "It's not something one does every—" She cut off with a startled gasp as a zombie lurched out of the shadows. She whirled, and gasped as a familiar face met her eyes.
"M-Marc?" she whispered in shock. Her brother-in-law had disappeared shortly after his wife had died, and the general opinion was that he had committed suicide, though no one had found any evidence as such.
The corpse shuffled toward her, moaning gutturally, its arms outstretched hungrily. She stared at it, dumbfounded. How could Marc be a zombie?
Allen rushed past her in a soft whoosh of air that brought her back to her senses. She leaped out of range of the zombie, watching as Allen swiftly decapitated it. She sobbed briefly as her brother's head fell to the ground, but reminded herself that he was already dead.
"You knew him, Moa?" Allen asked, wiping his blade clean on a handkerchief. She nodded, still stunned.
"But…how could he have been a zombie?" She asked him.
Allen sighed and sat in one of the pews. He motioned for her to join him. He rubbed at his eye absently, then began.
"Zombies are created using someone's need. If someone dies, and someone close to them is exceptionally upset by it, the Maker can use that person's need and anguish to call them back into their body. Unfortunately, their soul is gone, and they are a mindless being, yearning towards a real life but unable to get it. That's why they want to devour living people, to capture their life. A zombie has the ability to suck the life out of someone else in order to make themselves more like a living being, hence the infection. A new zombie is born every time a zombie kills someone, and that zombie then gets stronger because it has gained another portion of a life. The first person a zombie kills is usually the person who called them back, unless they were created through the infection." Allen explained carefully.
Moa stared at him in horror. "Then, my sister is a zombie?"
Allen shrugged. "You'd know if there was a tragedy surrounding her." He looked at her with sympathetic eyes. "I'm sorry, if she is."
Moa nodded, getting a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She didn't want to see her sister as a reanimated corpse, didn't want to see her mindlessly reaching for food, yearning for a life she could never again have.
A zombie moaned behind her, and her eyes widened. She didn't want to look, didn't want to see. Either way, be it Charles or Claire, it was someone she knew, someone she had grown close to. But it wasn't. It was their body, their face, but it wasn't them. It was some animal, some mindless killing machine, something that wasn't her friends. She took a deep breath and turned.
It was Charles' zombie shambling toward them. Moa shuddered when she looked at him. His body was covered in bite wounds where the zombies had gnawed on him, and there was dried blood surrounding each of them. His skill was pale and his eyes had lost their lively luster. He was, quite obviously, dead. Moa has some fleeting sense of relief that she didn't have to see her sister like that yet, but sobered. Her sister, her partner, what difference did it make? It was still horrible, and they were still going to have to kill them. She sighed sadly and stepped forward, raising her blade.
The zombie (she refused to think of it as Charles) approached her, its shambling gait slow and awkward. As it neared her, Moa lifted the blade like a baseball bat, and lopped off the zombie's head. Her stroke wasn't quite powerful enough to cut through the spine, and the jarring impact as the bone and steel connected made her release her grip on it.
"Never let go of your weapon." Allen told her professionally, reaching past her to wrench it out of the body. He wiped off the blade and handed it to her. "You never know if there are more hiding around somewhere."
She nodded sadly as she took the weapon from him.
"I guess it's time to confront Claire," she said resignedly.
"Don't think of her as Claire," Allen advised, his voice gentle. "It's not anymore, and that'll just weaken your resolve."
Moa sighed. "Yes."
He studied her for a moment. "Perhaps you want to wait outside?"
She looked up in relief, then bunched her shoulders, standing up straighter. "No," she decided. "She was my sister, and I'm still a police officer charged with solving this case. I will see this through."
Allen nodded, his eyes showing his approval. "Alright then. Let's get it over with."
They continued their search through the church, looking carefully in any rooms they passed. Finally, Moa heard the mindless groaning of one of the undead.
The zombie that had been Claire burst from a room just down the hall, shuffling toward them with all its speed. It was horribly maimed from the accident that had taken Claire's life, and it pained Moa to see it. It was swifter than the other zombies had been, though not by much, and Allen brushed past Moa to deal with it himself. He set himself squarely in the hall, and with a bunching of his muscles, lunged toward the approaching zombie. The zombie turned, seeming to sense that its death was coming for the second time, but it was much too slow to get out of the way. Allen's blade-arm sheared diagonally through its neck, cutting upward into its head. He stopped his lunge on the other side of the zombie, standing still with his arm held away from his body. The zombie slowly toppled over, and he turned.
"I'm sorry I had to desecrate her body more than it was damaged already," he apologized to Moa. "Unfortunately, the only way to kill a zombie is to cut off its head, no matter how disrespectful that may be."
Moa nodded, staring at the lifeless corpse on the floor.
"I wonder if they went to heaven," she said suddenly, still staring at the body.
Allen gently turned her away from it. "I'm sure they did," he replied, guiding her back the way they had come. "I'm sure they did."
...
So ends chapter 1. Thank you very much for reading this far, as I'm sure zombie stories don't appeal to many. Reviews would be greatly appreciated on this story, if only to let me know that some people out there are interested. I hope it was enjoyable for you.