I was shopping, when society fell.
I was in one of those shopping malls that carter mostly to tourists, buying presents for my family and friends back home. At the time, I was in a store which contained all the shades of pink the human eye is able to see, looking for a dinosaur. Not easy, let me tell you. Why a dinosaur? Because this is Japan, and if there is any country in the entire world that ought to be able to carter to my daughter's odd love of pink and dinosaur's, it would be Japan. I'd finally found one, taking it like Arthur grasped his sword, a peaceful happiness filling me, when the screaming began.
The people in the store automatically moved out, to see, to crowd, only to begin screaming and shouting too. Me, I stood still as a rock, eyes wide.
In my defence, I was in a foreign country, on forced vacation after accidentally being dosed with a Unicorn-and-Thestral stew which had caused me to see all seven planes of existence at once. So when a hoard of impossibly strong, quick and sound-making inferi chased after the running and screaming people that had just left the store, pardon me for not believing my eyes.
Except, they weren't inferi. Inferi were animated corpses, nothing more. Terrifying and terrible, but never stronger or quicker than the magic that had made them, and you had to be a truly horrifying person to be able to even dabble in that part of necromagics. I could count on one hand, and even knew the names of all the Death-magicians in the world who could even think of making an inferi, and none of them had the power to make their corpses stronger than the average human.
And well, none of the not-inferi came for me. Inferi are generally drawn to humans, and the more magical you are, the more drawn they are.
I stood there for an embarrassingly long time, just gaping and staring. Then, slowly, I put the pink dinosaur into my bag, took out my wallet, put a few notes on the counter and slowly, almost hesitantly, walked out of the shop. Just because I was technically no longer hallucinating from that putrid stew, didn't mean it couldn't have side affects. It hadn't until now, but who knew?
Outside was a bloodbath. The not-inferi were feasting. I almost jumped when a slurping sound besides me alerted me to the fact that there were one right next to me, eating on what looked like an already mostly devoured woman.
I guess there was no chance she could be saved.
While I stared, the woman began moving. The not-inferi moved away, hastily making it's way to a store where I could still hear screaming. The woman convulsed, I almost moved to help her when she suddenly surged up.
She was one of them.
I jerked back, and my foot hit something, a bottle. The woman-turned-not-inferi pounced at me. Heart in my throat, I jumped to the side, grabbed something with my hand and swung it.
It was a pink baseball bat with cute animals and flowers on. The no-longer-human's head smashed in. Sickness gathered in my throat, and had the adrenalin not made me look at where the store of no-more screams, I might have puked.
That's right, defender of the light, defeater or Voldemort, head of Law enforcement and Dark Magician catcher of the British branch of magic, almost puked on site. Says something, doesn't it?
The female-not-inferi made a guk sound, and then thumped onto the floor. The not-inferi hoard, turned. Slowly, searchingly. I bent down, grabbed the bottle, hurled it past the hoard, and fled the other way. A glance behind me showed that most had gone after the bottle, but a few came after me.
Just brilliant.
If finding Jamie his Japanese comics was going to be like this, I might just skip it and find one of those "my dad went to Japan and just got me this lousy shirt" shirts instead.