The Walking Dead: Ghost Story.
Chapter One: Hitodama
So, bit of a foreword, here.
One, I've only watched, oh...the first three, maybe four? seasons of The Walking Dead TV Show (which is what this will be based off of), and my memory when it comes to them...isn't the best, so I'll be primarily using the Wiki where possible.
Two, as the title might indicate, this is an SI story (my first actual one...all the other stories on my FFN, save for the sole exception of Children of the Moons, were OCs that were vaguely based on me, and they were, well, pretty fucking bad, I'll be honest)... anyway, the SI is, well, a fucking Ghost, in case that wasn't obvious.
Three, continuing on the previous point, the SI will have quite a few "ghost" abilities, with a good amount of them being based on "classic" ghost abilities.
The abilities are as such (though I cannot do so on FFN, I will be putting the abilities in a Spoiler tag for those reading on Spacebattles, just for some convenience):
-Possession of both the living and the dead in order to gain full control of that being's body, only disrupted when the "host" body is killed or the SI chooses to leave on his own, upon which time the driving mind will regain control (aka, the living will be able to control their own bodies again, and the undead will go back to trying to eat living flesh, as usual).
-Intangibility when not possessing anything, which makes the SI entirely immune to damage from conventional weapons and able to go through walls and shit. The catch, however, is that the SI is incapable of touching anything when in "spirit form".
-Flight when in "spirit form"...what, you expected an explanation for this, of all things?
-"Aura Sight", allowing the SI to, well...you'll see. Just know that it'll be somewhat of a plot point.
-Travel through and inhabitation of electrical devices, though this ability will be...less than useful, very quickly, as the apocalypse gets into full swing.
-Banshee Scream, attracts the attention of the undead, unless they are already occupied with trying to attack someone else, and is only usable in "spirit form".
-Inability to be seen by the undead when in "spirit form".
Right, so, there's the abilities...before anyone says that he's OP as fuck for the world he's in, yes, I'm aware, and that's the point, he's not meant to be a silent observer incapable of helping, because that'd be boring.
Also, pairings... No. Full stop. I'm very much aware of how quite a lot of the Walking Dead stories on FFN possess (heh) either Yaoi or OC pairings, or are rather...strange AUs, and that's just...not happening, not in this story. Mainly because the protagonist is literally fucking dead, and so that'd be fucked up no matter how you try and make it work.
Shit's weird, yo...like, one story has "ZA" as an AU thing, despite the fact that the source material takes place in a Zombie Apocalypse.
Anyway, let's get right to it, hmm?
Also also, Chapter Titles will be named after types of Ghosts (provided by Wikipedia), because why the fuck not.
For example, "Hitodama" (Japanese): Balls of fire that float in the middle of the night and are believed to be the souls of the dead that have separated from their bodies.
"Normal Speech."
"Spirit form Speech" (Silver on Spacebattles, for convenience).
"Possession Speech" (Green on Spacebattles, because why not).
North Carolina, United States of America.
August, 2010.
The last thing I had expected when going to sleep in March of 2021 was to wake up standing over my own corpse as it began to twitch, my body entirely made up of slightly glowing and transparent silver...ectoplasm?
At first, I believed I was simply having some weird out of body experience, despite the fact that I had never had such a thing before, so I tried to walk back into my body...and it worked, for a moment.
...then I struggled to my feet and had my head promptly obliterated by a person running past with a shotgun, the destruction of my body's head pushing my new ghostly form out of my own newly twice-deceased corpse, because of course.
Blinking in confusion and shock, I had finally taken a glance at the world around me, and borne witness to the chaos of a dying planet.
Once I had seen the walking corpses, with a quick glance down at the motionless and headless corpse that had once been me, I considered the fact that I was suddenly a literal ghost in an entirely different world, before seeing the three walking corpses shambling their way towards the man who had shot my corpse.
On little more than a hunch, I flew towards one of the literal zombies and dove into it, my perspective suddenly shifting as I gained control of its body and began to see through its eyes, which, though horrible and somewhat blurry, were actually better than mine had been in life without the use of my glasses, and isn't that just a depressing thought...
As I turned my new body's head toward one of the other two zombies, the man with the shotgun standing and staring with an expression of horrified confusion, they continued to stumble towards him, just before the rotted hand of my new host came up and seized one of them by the back of the head and, with all the force of an undead corpse possessing both nigh-infinite stamina, and a distinct lack of biological muscle limits, forced it to the ground and slammed the front of its skull into the asphalt.
The one that I hadn't seized a hold of turned its head at the sound of one zombie becoming one corpse and growled, its eyes passing over my host body before turning its head back to regard the frozen survivor who had just watched one zombie kill another, almost like something that the characters in the book World War Z wished would happen.
As the zombie began to shamble forward once more, I locked the eyes of my new host onto the back of its head and rose its body to its feet, before seizing the back of the last one's head and repeating my previous action anew.
Rising back to the feet of my host body and raising my head to regard the man, he rose the shotgun and I nodded towards him, pulling myself out of my host's body in the hope that it would simply die once I was no longer possessing it.
This, however, did not happen, and as my glowing green eyes met his, my former host body groaned and began to shamble its way toward him once more, his finger tightening on the trigger of the double-barreled shotgun just before I dove back into the body of the zombie, jerked its head at him once in a gesture intended to mean "go", made it kneel...and slammed its head into the ground over and over again, until I finally found myself pushed out of the now twice-dead corpse.
Watching the man walk away, his eyes darting to watch everything around him, I muttered a quick "good luck, friend", and turned away.
Angling my head to regard the undead standing in front of a wall of TVs across the street, I flew toward them and began to work, killing each one by possessing one of their own, and then finally breaking that one's skull on the bricks of the wall next to the TVs.
Glancing towards the glass pane separating the TVs from the outside world, I felt a pull and made the decision to follow it, phasing my spectral body through the glass and into the TVs, and following the signals to millions upon untold millions of cameras across the world, I chose one location and dove.
Atlanta, Georgia.
September, 2010.
The world fell in three weeks, and I was unable to stop it, regardless of the abilities my new form held.
No matter how many I would lure away from military operations and safe zones through the use of my spectral form's "scream", there would always be more to overwhelm them, even as I lured the others.
No matter how many I possessed and killed, no matter how many times I would force my undead host bodies to walk back into the endless swarms with grenades in hand, there were always more.
Silently floating past a wall of TVs, their screens long since gone dark just like all the others, I gazed at the countless undead around me and wondered how long it would take me to destroy each and every one of them in Atlanta.
Glancing to my right at the sound of horse hooves striking asphalt, I took a moment to wonder what complete madman had decided to ride a horse into a city infested with hundreds of thousands if not millions of zombies, before the horde surrounding me began to react to the sound and became a living tide of flesh falling over itself to reach and devour the man who had just rounded the corner, undoubtedly following the helicopter that had just flown above the city.
Then, his horse reared up in terror, and I beheld the face of Andrew fucking Lincoln moments before he rolled off of the horse and crawled under a nearby tank, his horse screaming moments later as the undead swarm reached it and began to feed.
Fuck.
Well, guess I just found out what specific brand of hell I'm in, time to give some aid.
End of Chapter One.