Thank you everyone for the awesome comments on the previous chapter. I'm thrilled to see that people are enjoying my gorier-type of writing style!

Season 2 finale of "The Walking Dead" was amazing (for anyone that cares about that show, lol). Today I officially ordered my first comic book (a whopping 1,000+ pages...the one the show is based on)…I blame DP for turning me into a comic book/superhero-obsessed nerd. Anyway, onto the story! :D

Abandoning all common sense, Danny ran out into the open to where her lifeless body lay. She couldn't be dead. He knew she still had to be alive, somehow. She was just...taking a nap...

"Valerie," he whispered with tears in his eyes as he knelt by her battered body. He didn't want it to be true, but there was no denying it: Valerie was gone. What remained of her lone eye was still open, as though it were blaming him for being too late to save her. With a trembling hand, he gently covered it with her eyelid.

He cradled her limp form for quite some time, barely able to contain the strangled sob that he was on the brink of letting go. Valerie, along with Sam, was one of the toughest girls he knew. She had been fighting ghosts for months, just as he had, except she didn't have the advantage of being part ghost. Even with the unequal playing field, she had fought valiantly and constantly kept Danny on his toes. It used to annoy him, but when their feud transformed into something of a rivalry, he actually enjoyed their fights and began looking forward to the afternoons when the Red Huntress went on her pre-homework ghost patrols.

The bloodied, beaten body in front of him was not the girl he once knew. The Valerie that Danny knew would never have been defeated so easily.

He heard footsteps behind him, but he didn't care to know who or what it was. If this was to become an everyday occurrence, then Danny wasn't so sure he wanted to remain in this post-apocalyptic Amity Park anymore.

"Phantom..."

It was his mom. He didn't want her to see him like this, nor did he want to see her face, with the knowledge that she had done this to Valerie. The absolute worst part of this situation was that he was stuck in ghost mode, when he wanted nothing more than to run into his mom's arms and for her to comfort him, to tell him that everything was going to be okay.

But he wasn't five years old anymore. He also wasn't Danny Fenton at the moment, though the prospect of revealing his secret to his mom was becoming more enticing with every new horror that presented itself to him.

"Phantom," she repeated. From the sound of it, she was standing just a few feet behind him.

"Don't call me that," he snapped. He still didn't turn around, but being continuously reminded that he, Danny Phantom, had been unable to prevent the death of one of his own friends was driving him mad. He didn't care if she connected the dots, because right now, "Phantom" was the last thing he wanted to be called. In a world where people had become snarling, flesh-eating monsters, he wanted nothing more than to retain what little humanity he had left.

"Danny?" her voice had an odd pitch to it, as though it pained her to call him by that name.

Once the tears had mostly subsided and his breathing was more controlled, Danny felt safe to face his mom. Her facial expression was unlike anything he'd ever seen on her face before; he immediately had to look away once his eyes landed on the gun hanging limply in her hand.

"Danny."

Again, he could clearly sense that she loathed calling him that.

"Why?" was all he could choke out. To prevent another near-emotional breakdown, his eyes remained abnormally focused on his white-gloved hands, which were now stained with the remnants of blood. Valerie's blood. He couldn't bring himself to turn his hands intangible to remove the stains. Instead, they would serve as a reminder for what happens when Amity Park's hero isn't there to save the ones he vowed to protect.

"Pha-Danny...they're not-"

"What? Human? Then why don't you waste me while you're at it?" Danny shouted. For good measure, he grabbed her hand holding the gun and positioned the barrel against his forehead. "Go on, it's what you've always wanted to do, isn't it? If you're so hell-bent on killing 'monsters' then go on, pull the trigger!"

Maddie was deeply alarmed by the ghost boy's outburst. Here it was, the first cognizant being—human or otherwise—she had spoken to after nearly a month of devastating solitude...and he wanted her to destroy him. Not that a regular bullet would have done anything, with him being a ghost and all, but the shocking display of anger from him had definitely caught her off guard. Not just anger, either. Either she needed to find a living optometrist to get her eyes checked, or she actually saw the faintest hints of tears threatening to spill from those intense green eyes.

He was right in one aspect; she had always wanted to capture him. But utterly destroy him? Not at all. And kill him? That wasn't even possible!

"No," she whispered shakily, withdrawing the gun from his forehead and tossing it off to the side after a moment of thoughtful consideration. In all her years as a ghost expert, Maddie never would have thought she'd come this close to a ghost of such power and prominence. And yet, here he was—the ever-elusive Danny Phantom—on his knees and entirely at her mercy.

Danny wasn't sure what surprised him more: the fact that his mom refused to waste his alter ego, or when she offered a hand to help him to his feet. However, still distraught over what had happened to Valerie, he ignored it and stood up on his own. Normally he would have just let the lack of gravity pull him upwards, but for some reason, he physically had to pick himself up. Not that he really noticed, anyway.

Unable to overcome the shock of Valerie's violent death, Danny numbly made his way back into the Op Center. Maddie began relocking the door behind them, just as another one of the Walkers made its way onto the roof. Danny didn't recognize this new one, but that didn't keep him from closing his eyes and shuddering when the gunshot echoed around the metal inners of the Op Center. The sound of another body collapsing to the ground was almost too much to bear.

"Good shot," he muttered darkly when his mom came back into the main area of the Op Center.

"Just doing what it takes to survive," she said in a weary voice. "They're not coherent beings, Phantom, you have to realize that."

Danny flinched at his mom calling him that again, but didn't bother correcting her. He hated "Phantom" because it served only as a brutal reminder of his vast accumulation of failures that lay beyond the secure walls of his home. But "Danny," without the hint of motherly fondness behind it, felt cold and unnatural. Right now, he honestly wouldn't have minded if she simply stopped talking to him.

"Yesterday, you told me that they were like me-"

"I was wrong," she cut him off. This seemed to surprise both of them, but Maddie didn't retract her statement. "Though scientifically speaking, both you and the Walkers are dead-"

"-they seem alive to me-"

"-but they've lost their humanity. They crave flesh, not regular food. They are incapable of speech—believe me, I've tested this. They are merely reanimated corpses. The brain stem becomes active upon resurrection, but the frontal lobes remain dormant."

"Frontal...what?"

"Frontal lobes. The neocortex. The part of the brain that allows for sensory perception, conscious thought...and language. The part that makes humans...human," Maddie whispered.

"So am I like them?" Danny asked softly, gazing down at the streets where Walkers were consuming the remnants of unmoving carcasses. It sickened him to think that anyone could compare them to him, half ghost or not. His mom did not reply for a long time. Finally, he turned back to face her, curious to hear what she had to say.

"No," she whispered. "But why aren't you?"

"I'm not like other ghosts. If you and Jack-" both of them flinched at the sound of the patriarch's name, "-would get over your obsession with proving to the world that I'm a terrible person, you would see the good I am—was—capable of."

"You refer to yourself as a person. Why?"

Danny took in a deep breath and sighed. It was now or never. His mom had already refused to off him once, and he was pretty sure she would be even less inclined to do so once she found out that her son was still alive. In different circumstances, he could have just left the scene, but in this frightful new setting, he needed his mom more than ever. What was the point of hiding anymore?

"Well...it's a long story, but-"

Just as he began speaking, there was a massive crash and shattering of glass coming from behind them. Mother and son immediately jumped to their defensive positions as a group of six Walkers stumbled into the Op Center. How they had managed to get onto the roof was anybody's guess, but the fact remained that they were now invading the only place Maddie had once deemed safe from Walker invasions.

Apparently there was a little more spark of critical thinking left in their brains than Maddie had initially believed, as they had ingeniously busted their way inside with the help of a rusty pipe.

"Danny run!" Maddie shouted as she shot three of them in a row. They fell to the ground at once, creating a pool of blood on the floor right where Danny had been sleeping the night before.

"I'm not leaving you," Danny whispered as he prepared an ecto-blast for an oncoming pair of Walkers. As he tried initiating his ghost ray, however, nothing happened. No initial flash of green indicating that he was about to fire, and no surge of power in his palms. Seeing no other alternative, he attempted intangibility. Again, nothing happened. His heart was beginning to race as the reality of his situation dawned on him. He couldn't explain what had happened, but that didn't exactly matter right now. His ghost powers were gone.

Stranded and powerless, Danny stared wide-eyed as the Walkers lurched towards him, groaning and licking their bloodied lips at the sight of a helpless victim awaiting his doom.

I hope they don't mind ectoplasm, Danny thought grimly as their sallow, blood-caked hands latched onto his arms and dragged him towards them.

I think you're going to love chapter five. Just sayin'

Until next time…reviews are always appreciated :)