The first thing I remember is the fog. It was cold and damp. That wasn't unusual for late October of course, but it was the coldest dampest fog I had ever experienced, it almost felt unnatural. It wasn't very thick, and I could see I was in a forested area with a road just ahead. The second thing I remember is the screams in the distance. And the third was the smell. The smell of beans.

Right between the welcoming glow of the Agartha portal behind me and the road in front of me was a red tent, and in front of it was a small fire with a pot above it. And near it, sat what looked like a cowboy, cowboy hat and all.

"Don't worry kid, you haven't gone back in time. My name is Boone. I'm a troubleshooter." he introduced himself with a gravelly voice. "All we know so far is that death and fog came from the sea, or someone brought it back with them. If I was a gambling man, I would put my money on that someone still being around."

According to Boone, there were still a few survivors holed up in Kingsmouth town. If I would just follow the road I would come to the sheriff's station. "Kid, find out what those people died for. And you bring a reckoning."

Sure, one reckoning, coming up! Hoping I looked braver than I felt, I walked towards the road.

Have you ever watched a zombie movie? Because I hadn't, I wasn't really good with blood and gore. I did know enough to realise that what I walked into, well, no movie or tv show could have prepared me for.

It was hell. There were crashed cars and dead bodies everywhere. Some had the decency to stay where they had fallen, but some were walking around. The bodies, not the cars. Some zombies were eating the corpses, some looked half-eaten themselves. They didn't just look disgusting, they sounded disgusting. They smelled disgusting. And, as I realised I was standing on the arm of a corpse, they felt disgusting too.

I did what every hero would do in my situation: I took my weapon in hand, took a deep breath, felt my stomach heave, and puked up my breakfast. And then threw up a second time, for good measure.

Feeling embarrassed I looked back at Boone, but he just waved me on.

With nothing left in my stomach, I proceeded toward the first group of zombies. I figured it wouldn't do to let them get too close to me, so I lifted my hands, my sad little USB effigy in hand, and let lightning surge through my fingers. A bolt zapped quickly from one zombie to another, and they fell down. They twitched for a bit and then stopped moving.

Sorcha 5: zombies 0

I may have done a little happy dance, but I will never admit to that.

I made my way down the road, zapping any zombie that dared to come near me. I was feeling pretty awesome!

And then I came to the sheriff's station, and it suddenly wasn't awesome anymore. A handful of ragged looking survivors had barricaded themselves in at the sheriff's station, looking so tired and hurt and scared. There were some people with rifles on the roof, shooting the zombies that were attacking them, but the zombies wouldn't stay down long, they'd just get back up again after a while. It was a small island, these people must all know each other, must have known each other. They were shooting at friends, at family. And they were losing.

My phone rang, it was Richard. I told him that it looked like I was going to be dealing with zombies. I hoped he'd send reinforcements, but he seemed convinced I could handle it by myself. He reminded me again that my first priority was not to help the survivors, but to find out who or what was behind the zombie invasion and to put a stop to it.

I walked into the sheriff's office.

"Hey hey!" the sheriff, a woman in her fifties, greeted me warmly as I walked in. Her name was Helen Bannerman, and the man bandaging up a patient on the table was her husband, Doctor Bannerman.

There always had been something dark running under this town, the sheriff explained once she realised I was there to help. But not like this. When the fog, and the things in it, came rolling in most folks didn't stand a chance.

Of the folks that did, well, not everybody that was still alive was holed up at the station, there were people spread through town trying to survive by themselves. All of them had a lack of supplies. They needed food, water, first aid kits and ammunition. The sheriff also asked me to take the security cameras off the buildings around town that didn't need them so they could be installed near the station as an early warning system.

I spent the next few hours looting shops and diners, breaking into chemists and climbing roofs looking for cameras. And fighting zombies of course. There were far more of them than you'd think for a small town, but it seemed that while the town itself wasn't that big, there were houses dotted all over the rest of the island too.

The town itself looked much like any town in New England, broad streets with wooden houses and white picket fences. Haloween decorations were everywhere, as a sad reminder that not so long ago life in this town had been the same as in any American town.

It all took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I didn't think the survivors would make it through the night without my help. I called in regularly with Richard, my handler, to inform him of what I was learning as I was talking to people after helping them. It wasn't much.

A fishing trawler called the Lady Margaret had gone missing, and people had begun to fear the worst. When it finally returned, weeks overdue, it had brought the fog with it. Something in the fog had lured most of the people of the town into the water a few days later, and when they came back they were all dead but still walking.

I needed to find out what had happened to that ship.

"You've done a great job so far, but it's time to go home now. You can return fresh tomorrow." I had only been in Kingsmouth for a few hours, I was confused. "But these people need help!"

"They'll be fine for the next few hours," Richard reassured me, "You've done more than enough to supply them. This is a direct order. You are to go home and rest. This is going to be a marathon, not a race. No one is going to benefit from you burning yourself out on your first job. Teleport back to Agartha, and go home. You can start fresh tomorrow."

There was an entrance to Agartha near my home. Had it always been there but I had never been able to see it before? Had it appeared because I needed it? I don't know.

But it did mean I was home in time for dinner after all. I even had time for a quick shower beforehand. I wasn't sure how much I was allowed to tell Jessie about the job I was working on, but since my clothes were covered in blood and gore by the time I got home I had to tell her something, so I told her the truth. Not in detail, just that I was fighting zombies and I was doing okay so far.

I ordered some more clothes and an extra pair of boots online that night. It looked like being a special agent was going to be hard on my wardrobe, and I didn't have a lot of clothes left that fitted me after losing so much weight.

The next morning I put on jeans, black leather knee-height boots, a grey sweater and my winter coat. I put my hair up in a ponytail, packed a lunch and went back to New England. It took me less than fifteen minutes, not bad for a commute to another continent!

The townspeople had survived okay without me thanks to the supplies and camera system I had scrounged up for them. I decided to focus on The Lady Margaret since the whole disaster had started with the return of the ship. I had been near the harbour the day before, but not close enough to take a good look through the fog.

The undead near the harbour and at the water's edge looked different from the ones in town. They looked older and as if they had been in the water for a long time, their skin had turned to a blueish hue and they were covered in barnacles. Some of them had mutated, their right arm ending in a barnacle-covered clublike appendage. Instead of moaning or screaming they bubbled and wheezed as if they were drowning. "Draugr" Richard called them when I called it in. I had heard the name before in video games based on ancient Nordic mythology, usually referring to the undead. It was as good a name for them as any.

The Draugr were harder to fight as well. They didn't just drop after a simple zap with lightning, I had to pepper them with fireballs. I was getting hurt myself, even though they were slow I wasn't very good at dodging their attacks, but my wounds healed almost right away.

I fought my way to the trawler and climbed on board. It smelled like rust, rotten fish and decay. The stench of rotting corpses in the town was unbearable, but this was worse. I got out a little jar of Vicks Vaporub and rubbed some of it under my nose. I had read somewhere that that would cover the worst of smells. It helped a little.

The deck creaked under my feet, and I wasn't sure if that was normal or if the whole thing was about to come apart under my feet at any second. It looked to me like it could go either way. The deck was slippery, and even in my boots, I struggled to get a firm grip. I was looking down at the deck, almost not noticing the captain until it was too late.

He came right at me, spewing green acidic vomit everywhere, lunging at me with his arms. He looked more like the Draugr than the zombies in town. I backpedalled as quick as I could, half slipping over the deck as I flung fireballs rapidly from my fingertips. In the end, he was blasted back, the smoke from his charred remains smelling acrid.

There was nothing aboard the trawler that looked out of the ordinary to me and no other crew members. If the rest of the crew wasn't here, perhaps they had gone back to town. Could one of them still be alive? They might be able to answer my questions. I went back to the sheriff's station.

The doctor was able to help me. He had treated the men that were part of the crew after they returned.

"The Lady Margaret was a traumatic experience for everyone on board," he told me, "they were changed men when they came back. I treated all of them in the days after their return."

All the men had started suffering from headaches and paranoia. Their symptoms developed at an uneven rate, and the medication the doctor prescribed them didn't work. Their symptoms developed until the men were barely coherent.

One of the men, named Joe Slater, especially was suffering badly, with a twitching leg and compulsive scratching of his right arm. The paranoia was causing him severe delusions, and the doctor diagnosed it as likely signs of schizophrenia. Because the others on board the ship had developed similar symptoms, the doctor thought it was likely to be caused by something environmental, especially since they didn't respond to medication.

It was time to pay Joe Slater a visit.

There was no answer when I knocked on the door, which wasn't unexpected from someone with severe mental health issues during a zombie invasion. I tried looking through the windows but the curtains were closed. Perhaps there was a key under the doormat or in a flowerpot? Did people really do that?

As I looked down I saw a watery, slimy trail of footsteps leading away from the house towards a nearby sewer grate. Well, shit.

I lifted up the grate and peered into the sewer. There was a ladder leading down. The smell was disgusting, but it wasn't like the town smelled any better. There were a few draugr in the sewers, and a few fireballs and lightning bolts took care of that.

I cautiously walked on, mainly because I did not want to slip and fall into the sewer water. And then I saw Joe Slater. He was dressed in fishing waders, a raincoat and one of those yellow rain hats fishermen wear. He was kneeling down, his breath coming with bubbling gasps as if his lungs were filling with fluid. He looked really bad and his arm had mutated into one of those club arms.

"I don't think I have much time left," he gasped. I stepped back and watched in horrid fascination as he turned his face towards me and I saw the skin on his face was peeling off and barnacles were growing all over him.

"Nightmares, all nightmares, after that storm blew us off course." he drew another rasping bubbling breath, "Of the compass. Off the map. Right into the red weed. Dead ships caught up within it." He stood up and stepped closer. I took another step back.

"There were… things moving in the fog. In the water. And there, in the darkness, it shone like a signal flare. A blade made of pure light, of terrible beauty. I could hear its siren song… calling me". His breath rattled in his chest, damp and awful.

"I reached out and took hold of it. Or it took hold of me. I was not strong enough, I know that now. They told me it pushed back the fog as I was out cold, told me it had saved us!" Joe shook his head.

"It didn't save us. It brought the fog back to Kingsmouth. I brought to fog back to Kingsmouth!"

He suddenly lunged forward, grabbing my shoulder. I nearly slipped and fell while raising my hands to cast a fireball, but he wasn't attacking me.

"I can still hear its song!" he said urgently, "I know you can too! You could find it! Put a stop to it!" Joe fell on his knee, his breaths coming in bubbling wet gasps.

And then I heard it too. A female voice, singing the most beautiful haunting wordless tune I had ever heard. I started to follow where it came from but changed my mind and turned back to Joe Slater. There was nothing I could do for him. Perhaps killing him would have been a mercy, but I could not kill a man in cold blood. And despite his appearance, he was still a man. For now. I turned my back on him, biting back the tears that welled up in my eyes and left Joe behind.