CC8 – A mysterious plague begins to sicken the Grimm, which eventually die from it. However, anyone they bite or scratch becomes infected as well.

The sounds of claws dragging against wood could be heard all throughout the small village of Kratmons. A normal Grimm attack might have wiped their town clear of life by this point. Instead, their unusual enemies had gathered in mass just outside their gates. Each one took their time clawing at the barriers between them and their prey, only for them to topple over and disappear into a cold black smoke with the next one in line sluggishly taking its place.

To the villagers, it hardly mattered that some of the Grimm died from exhaustion. All that mattered was the pained groans and growls that had been haunting them for hours. Occasionally, there would be a crack. A horrific sound of splitting wood from the walls that protected the town. Every man, woman and child would flinch at the noise, each one thinking that it would spell the end.

The end never came. Just more dragging of bone against increasingly weaker wood. A little boy held onto his father for fear of what might happen next. His dad had tried to reassure him that Mistral airships were on the way. They had managed to send a message to the town of an immediate evacuation plan. They would be arriving soon. They would take everyone in the town behind their defenses. They would be saved.

His father would never tell him that the message had been received over two weeks ago.

A few weeks before that, increasingly terrifying stories had been passed from their neighboring settlements. At first, nobody in Kratmons had paid the rumors any mind. Who would ever believe that a horde of Grimm were dying on their own? It was unheard of. It took trained warriors to wipe the beasts of hate and malice away from the world. Time allowed the Grimm to grow in size and strength, not wither them down to nothing. It made no sense.

Then the letter arrived. Mistral had confirmed the eradication of two of the largest settlements outside of their walls. They had demanded that all citizens take refuge under any protection they had while airships were sent out to collect them. Under no circumstances were they to defend themselves against the Grimm.

A snap rang out from outside of the town hall. A board flew past the buildings door, and the growls grew louder. The little boy buried his head into his father's chest and began sobbing as faded red eyes glared at the refugees. Everyone that could hold up a weapon tried their best to defend themselves against the beowolves. To their surprise, their defense seemed to be working. The beasts simply snarled as they limped forward.

Spears and arrows began to connect with the front line of Grimm. Those in range were impaled as more spilled over their decaying bodies. Despite everything they were doing to defend themselves, the villagers were simply too outnumbered by the horde to hold the line. There was a scream of a man with a sword and shield. His leg bled blackened blood as he sliced through two more Grimm in his path. As he moved, the excruciating pain continued to seep through his wound and up towards the rest of his body. Quickly, three strikes became one in the same amount of time. A few more minutes passed and his attacks began to miss their target entirely.

A woman looked at him with tear-filled eyes and screamed his name. The words never made it to him before his body collapsed on the floor. Everyone could see his dark brown eyes glossed over with the same black that radiated from the creatures he fought.

Fear overtook the remaining villagers. There seemed to be no end to the onslaught of Grimm. Just a simple mistake would ensure that they would never live to see it, if it even existed. Screams from some of the children called out to their parents. Sobs and wails from them deafened ears to the whirring sounds just outside the building.

There was an explosion. Bright red fire engulfed the front of the hall, and charred the bodies of black that resided there. A man outside called for support, and bullets rained down behind him. As the Grimm horde was eviscerated, he yelled at the remaining survivors to follow him. The airship had finally made it! They were going to be saved!

What they weren't prepared for was the path to their evacuation. The man rescuing them wore all white and carried nothing more than a revolver as a weapon. Each shot he fired seemed to explode on impact as the creatures of Grimm were ripped to shreds before their eyes. Each one of the villagers raced for the white bullhead that would bring them to safety as the man continued to fight for their lives.

One Grimm pounced at the crowd. After seeing so many sluggish opponents, the villagers stood petrified to the flying attack. There was a yell out in agony as it swiped at its prey. The man in white had taken the blow to his chest in a last ditch attempt to shield the survivors. Another gunshot rang out, and the cause of his pain evaporated before their eyes.

The man tried to fight, but felt the wound on his chest begin to spill down to his pants. He grasped at it to feel for signs of blood, and was met with a cold blackness. With the last of his strength, he pulled himself onto the bullhead behind the villagers. The whirring picked up and liftoff was achieved with as many lives aboard as they could manage.

The hero dropped his pistol on the bullhead's floor. His vision was fading along with his strength, but he could see just enough to make out a man climbing over top of him. There was a searing pain on his chest and then a second on his leg. In all the action, he hadn't even felt the gash that had run across his thigh. He heard a voice tell him that everything would be okay. He had never known cauterizing wounds to be a good sign of that.

Winter stared at the general horror-stricken. She knew the man had been tense as of late. This new information showed that the emotions he displayed were only a small portion of the ones he held inside. She allowed the classified files to find their way back into their folder before readjusting herself to sit straight in her seat. "Do you have any other questions for me, Specialist Schnee?"

Winter froze in her seat. She had been sent to ask about the closed borders on her father's behalf. There was no way she could have prepared for any of this. The man's blue eyes continued to bore into her from his side of the desk. After giving herself a moment to collect her thoughts, and her composure, Winter found her question. "If all this is true, where did this plague come from? I've never heard of anything like it."

Ironwood's stare harshened at the question. "It was created." His words did a poor job to hide his hatred towards the topic. "Atlas scientists were tasked with creating a chemical to use against the Grimm by our previous general. When a prototype was created, he demanded it be tested in the field for practical use."

Winter's pale skin reflected a nasty green at the thought. "Atlas released this plague onto Mistral?" She shook her head. "We were at peace with them! Why would we…"

"Because peace doesn't last, Winter." Ironwood pointed at the map in front of him. "Mistral was one of our great enemies during the war. With a continent so large, it was decided that Anima was the best place to test on hordes of Grimm. There was supposed to be no side effects, but if there were, they were not to be near Atlas borders."

Winter shook her head. "I don't understand. What does this have to do with closing our borders now? That was years ago. Surely we must have some kind of antidote to the Grimm that have already been affected."

Ironwood's metal hand splintered the desk in front of him when it slammed against its surface. "We had our solution. It was supposed to be combat ready!" From Winter's wide eyes, Ironwood recognized that he had once again gone too far. He carefully pulled his hand out of the crevice it had left in the wooden desk. He stared at it for just a moment, taking in the state of the art technology that had saved his life that day. At one time, he had been considered a hero in Mistral for what he had done. If only they were aware of the full truth.

Ironwood stood from his chair and turned to look through a window facing the vast snowy mountains that surrounded them. The borders had to remain closed. They needed more time to fix what they had done. He reached for his shaking hand with his metal one. His words spoken softly to hide his fear in front of his subordinate. "The borders are to remain closed because of 'trade regulations' during this time. If your father continues to have a problem with that, let him know that I will be the first one to bring his ships down."

Author's Notes

This months challenge prompt is brought to you by Shandromand! Clearly, they were in the mood for something a bit scary/creepy, and I hope my idea for the prompt met that expectation!

Along with this entry, I've decided to talk a little about my thought process when thinking up how to respond to a prompt. So let's get into my head for a minute!

When I first read the prompt, my mind immediately started thinking of a zombie apocalypse situation. You have a mysterious plague that is killing off Grimm in a way that has never been seen before, and you have their ability to effect others with the plague. The thing that I took note of was how Shand gave me the ability to decide how long 'eventually' was when it comes to the Grimm dying from their disease.

So we have 'zombie' Grimm. That's cool. How did they get there? When it comes to weird things happening from canon, I feel like there are two sources that can never be wrong. Atlas, and magic. There are more possibilities, like dust, but most of them fall under the 'magic' category in my mind. Personally, I don't like using magic. It feels kinda cheap to use because it allows for literally anything to be done. In my mind it makes it a tool that can be overused very easily. Now, there are some worlds like Harry Potter where this makes sense. In RWBY, however, magic is much more rare, so using it all over the place doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That's not going to be true for every prompt, but in this case, Atlas seems like a much better choice.

So we have zombie Grimm and Atlas involvement. By this point I start looking at where in the story my ideas would fit. When I looked at the prompt a second time for more ideas, I kept coming back to the ability to pass on the plague. With huntsmen having aura to protect them, I felt like it made more sense for the Grimm to go after normal civilians. It makes the story far more tense when characters can actually be killed off. Considering the baseline for the story is 'Zombie Apocalypse', tense is a good thing.

So now we have the inner workings of the story! A lot of it might seem pretty straight forward, but I thought doing this might be interesting to some of the readers on here! As we are now at 21 chapters and about 6000 views, I hope you all have been able to see some form of improvement in these stories week after week! I'm honored that you all have taken the time to read the things that have come to my head, and I hope I will continue to make them fun to read!

On to the next chapter!

~Sh1f7er