Welcome to my new multi-chapter story. Given that my most of my other stories are nearing their final chapters, I wanted to have another project waiting in the wings for when I complete them. My new favorite television show is "The Walking Dead" and while this is NOT a crossover, I have been rather obsessed with zombies as of late and would like to incorporate that into my DP stories. The title for this story is based on Wanted: Dead or Alive posters, because zombies want fresh meat any way they can get it, amiright?
This will be a bit gruesome at times, as I'm trying out some new descriptive writing techniques. So if you can't handle horror-type stuff, I wouldn't recommend reading this. It is rated T for a reason. But if you think you have what it takes, then proceed with caution and enjoy one of my first horror-type stories (those who have read my fanfiction before know I'm more of a humorous writer).
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It was quiet.
But not too quiet.
Somewhere in the darkness, there was the rhythmic humming of a power generator accompanied by the sound of a swarm of flies buzzing overhead. There was an ethereal green portal at one end of the room and an enormous, blue-glassed enclosure at the other. Broken shards of glass and empty test tubes littered the linoleum floor in the middle of the dimly lit lab, and the unmistakeable scent of rotting blood still hung in the air from where it had spilt onto several documents that might have once been worth something to a scientifically-inclined individual.
In the glowing cage, there was a boy dressed in a black jumpsuit with white gloves and boots. His hair was an equally untarnished white, a stark contrast to the rest of the lab, which was coated in blood, ectoplasm, and spoiled coffee.
Like clockwork, his eyes suddenly fluttered open. There had been no trigger for this; his unconscious mind had merely decided that now was the time to wake up. His glowing green eyes did not immediately register the destruction surrounding him, as a personal once-over was the first order of business.
After determining that he was still in his ghost form—and thus, safe from his parents' prying eyes—Danny struggled against his restraints. One snapped off as soon as he tugged on it; the other took a little more effort. They had clearly weakened over time; how long had he been in here?
Within seconds, he was free to move about the small room, though it was what lay beyond the walls of his enclosure that caught his attention. Despite the dimness of lab, he could visibly see several tables upturned, weapons scattered about haphazardly, and the floor coated in various substances that he didn't want to identify for fear his suspicions would be confirmed.
"Jazz?"
He called out the first name that came to mind, as it was imperative that he remembered he was Phantom and could not allow himself to slip up in front of his parents. The ghostly clock on the wall told him it was two-seventeen in the morning. Strangely, Danny felt wide awake and quite well-rested.
Limping slightly as he made his way around his confined quarters, Danny found a rusty door hanging on its last hinges at the south corner. He floated upwards, preparing to use all of his strength to tear the door from its socket, but he needn't have bothered; it came off nearly as easily as his restraints had.
With half of the door unhinged, Danny was just scrawny enough to slip through the cracks. He froze as he landed on the ground beyond the cell, waiting for some sort of ghost alarm to go off, indicating his escape, but nothing came.
Then it hit him: the intense smell of days' old blood and rotting flesh from all around him.
Forcing his gag reflex to hold back the vomit that was rapidly rising in his throat, Danny closed his eyes and held his nose tightly to cut off his sense of smell. It was so rancid that his eyes were watering, and even with his nose thoroughly plugged up, he couldn't forget the smell. It wasn't even the sickeningly sweet scent of blood pouring from a wound—Danny knew this smell from the numerous times he had been bullied throughout his school career—but old, viscous blood that had been left to dry in various cracks along the floor of the once-spotless lab.
Keep moving, Fenton, Danny mentally urged himself onward to escape this putrid nightmare. Surely there would be a good explanation for the unkempt state of his parents' lab.
Just as Danny opened his eyes and readied himself to proceed forward, however, another horrific sight met his eyes: a cold, lifeless hand lying near the stairway. Its owner was nowhere to be found, and from the looks of the dried stream of blood settled beneath it, the hand had been cut from its source a long time ago.
Danny couldn't keep the bile in his mouth back any longer and released the foul liquid at once. There was a dreadful burning sensation in his throat as it made its exit, but it felt better to get it all out instead of trying to continually suppress it. He had seen plenty of frightening things over the years, but the thought of a normal human hand, detached from its source, was beyond what he could possibly handle.
"Mom?" he called out, no longer fully caring whether his parents discovered him or not. There wasn't a single doubt in his mind that this was one of the worst nightmares he'd ever experienced. It was devastatingly simplistic, yet the sights and smells outweighed any other night terror he had experienced before.
He limped up the stairs, trying to keep his eyes trained on the path ahead in order to ignore the blood-splattered walls all around him. His body felt incredibly weak, but fear prodded him along.
It's a dream, it's a dream, he continuously repeated in his head. He couldn't allow it to be anything else, especially if that blood belonged to…
A small cry escaped his lips as he reached the kitchen. All of the cabinets were opened, the table was smashed to pieces, and the refrigerator was flipped over on its side. Breathing hard, Danny crept over to the fallen fridge and peeked inside. Using the ominously flickering kitchen light to see, he saw that the meat had been gnawed off to the bones, but all of the produce—the lettuce, the apples, the casseroles—was completely rotten and brown. Maggots were sluggishly squirming in and out of the cheeses, and what appeared to be an old jug of milk actually contained a pale yellow liquid with cottage cheese-like chunks floating at the surface.
By the looks of it, nobody had touched this stuff in ages.
"Jazz? Mom? Dad?" Danny called out in a hushed voice. He was on the verge of panic, but his mind was moving too slowly to fully grasp what was going on. There was nobody around, and nothing to tell him what day it was. The electricity had been shut down, he discovered when he tried reaching for the phone and heard nothing at the other end. Not even the drone of a disconnected line. Just silence.
Danny was in such a state of shock that it didn't even occur to him to use his ghost powers until after what had to be an hour passed by. By that time, he had reached the top of the stairs, only after inspecting the rest of the downstairs area. There was blood. So much blood. Like a massacre had occurred right in his own home.
The only thing keeping hope alive was that he hadn't discovered any bodies yet. Not even a hint of his sister or his parents.
He wasn't sure if this fact scared him or comforted him.
His and Jazz's rooms were relatively unscathed, but Danny did notice the subtlest hints of footprints etched in—you guessed it—blood, leading to his parents' room.
"Mom?" Danny called out, tears springing to his eyes as he edged towards their door. Every ounce of his being was begging for that blood not to be that of his parents'. 'Grief' wouldn't even begin to cover it if that were the case.
It was a whole new level of horror that Danny wasn't accustomed to. It was one thing to fight off dead spirits; it was something else to witness a scene of devastation brought down upon humans—his own family—by an unknown foe. The absolute silence around him was even more unsettling than the overabundance of blood.
Oh, what Danny would give to hear someone—anyone—talk to him right now. Someone to tell him that everything was going to be okay. Preferably his family, but right now, Danny would've been grateful for anyone.
His hands trembled violently as he reached in to push open the door that led into his parents' room. Danny wanted to shield his eyes, but knew he would have to face whatever awaited him sooner or later.
The door creaked unnaturally as he gave it a firm push and jumped backwards as he allowed it to swing open first. After reminding himself that he needed to remain calm, Danny took in a deep breath and proceeded forward in tiny steps.
As he peered around the edges of the door, he felt both reassured and frightened by the sight of his parents' relatively untouched room. There was a footprint here and there, but no signs of puddles of blood or any more detached body parts.
A sudden creak from above immediately caught his attention. Everything else was so quiet that Danny could clearly hear it, even in between his ragged breathing. Hoping that he would finally find someone to explain to him what in the world was going on, Danny hustled over to the rug that hid the entrance tube leading to the Op Center.
"One to the Op Center," he whispered shakily. It brought him up at once, and Danny breathed a tremendous sigh of relief, as there was no blood or overturned furniture up here.
He collapsed onto the ground, torn between remaining the calm and confident hero he knew he was supposed to be and giving into the horrified tears that were threatening to fall any second now. Nothing would ever be able to erase what he just saw, and his confidence in the nightmare theory was cracking the longer he remained here. It was much too real for him to be asleep.
Just as a single tear was about to slip from his eye, Danny heard the faintest click of a gun trigger just behind his ear. He attempted to turn his head around to face the one holding the weapon, but the gun poked him in the back of his head just as he tried doing so.
He slowly turned his head back around to appease his assailant and finally allowed the tear to slip down his cheek.
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Well, I hope you enjoyed this little introduction. More to come, but for now, have a happy Halloween and review if you dare ;)