Chapter Eight:
The Dead Men
Ashley Findale was pushing her way through the crowded grocery store to the cash register up front. There was a long line at the cash register and Ashley took her spot at the end of it. Immediately others filed into line behind her.
She lived in Benwitch, a small town a few miles out of Los Angeles city limits. She was purchasing milk and a box of cheap cereal that tasted exactly like Froot Loops, yet wasn't. Ever since the evacuation of Los Angeles things had been mighty crowded around Benwitch. There were a bunch of houses for those people set up… but no one had apparently expected such a large evacuation so there was an overflow of evacuated individuals.
Ashley had a couple of them living in her own house--the house was large enough to comfortably fit the new additions in luckily enough--while others had as many as four or five living with them.
The line for the cash register dwindled to nearly nothing within fifteen minutes, but by that time Ashley had been rung up and had gotten out of there.
The buildings in Benwitch were so small that some of the Los Angeles people were looking around like they were lost and confused. In a way they were. They lived in the world of sky scrapers and crime and just the city life. They had no business in a town like Benwitch.
The transition must've upset them all quite a lot because several were babbling about demons and monsters. She had also heard something about the end of the world.
Normally she would've just dismissed the sightings and gone about her daily business, but the evacuation of every single human being in Los Angeles and the extreme similarity of the reports suggested something major was happening, which, in effect, made dismissing the sightings and going about her daily business a bit more difficult. That scared her, let me tell you. That really did scare her. Not just that there was something going on, but that she actually almost BELIEVED that something was going on.
Ashley swung the plastic bag which contained the cereal and the milk she had just bought inside from side to side continuously.
The streets were crowded and she had to brush past several people roughly as she trudged through said streets. A helicopter zoomed by overhead and several cars blasted down the road. The town was much more noisy than it used to be and Ashley hated it. Despised it.
Sirens were blaring in the near distance. She had rarely ever heard sirens before now lest it was for a fire or an injured person. Who knew that a small town could turn into such a bustling place in the space of a day or two?
The abrupt change had been a great shock to the system, but Ashley was adapting quickly. She was known for fast acclimatization. The same could not be said for Beatrice, her mother, or Darren, her father.
She frowned at the thought of her most recent encounter with Beatrice. They had gone through a scuffle about her smoking and drinking. A bad one that had ended with Beatrice's left cheek flaring red. Ashley wanted to apologize for that. Beatrice hadn't deserved it. She was just doing her job as a parent and Ashley supposed she could understand and respect that.
Unbeknownst to the unfortunate Ashley, she would never get the chance to apologize.
The sun was burning into her retinas, so she threw up her arm to shield her eyes. That made her feel a little better. It made her feel as good as she could in such a situation as she was in.
"Hey Ashley," a whispering voice called to her. Ashley looked in the direction of the voice, certain that whoever had just spoken was calling to another Ashley and that it was just a coincidence.
That certainty was eliminated as she saw a man with a top hat and a bath robe pulled tight over his body staring at her with bleary, half - awake, bright blue eyes that were blood shot while smiling a smile that was bereft of teeth--well, I suppose that isn't fair considering he had one yellow and chipped tooth hanging on in the back of his mouth.
"Hey Ashley," the man repeated before raising a scraggly hand and signaling her to come to him with a pale, skinny index finger. "I need to have a word with you."
"Who are you?" Ashley asked cautiously. She didn't have to worry about strange people before now. Especially those who looked half - insane and knew her name.
"Joey Bonduck," Joey informed her. "I do enjoy watching you."
Suddenly Ashley was certain that this man was dangerous. It didn't emanate off of him like it seemed to in movies and television shows; it was a paranoia of her mind. When someone says 'I do enjoy watching you' you really don't rush to them chock full of trust. She began to walk away… and that walking… boy was it a bit faster than average!
"You're making a big mistake Ashley!" Joey's voice shot to her ears. His voice seemed as loud as the sonic boom that results from one of those military planes that flies faster than the speed of sound. Did anyone else hear it? It certainly didn't appear so. "Don't go home!"
Suddenly Ashley found herself looking at Joey, who had appeared in front of her out of thing air. A woman's arm passed right through him with what appeared to be no effect. It was like a videogame glitch. When Joey spoke this time his voice was much quieter. His eyes now looked fully awake and scared.
"Something big is about to happen, Ashley," he stated. "I don't want you here when it does happen. You have a mission. This mission involves things that you may not want to believe in, but you will have to."
"What the hell are you?" Ashley asked. She then walked forward without waiting for an answer, expecting to walk through this hallucination. She found herself being grasped by the shoulders and held in place by the amazingly strong Joey Bonduck.
"You have something that you need to do. Something that will aid in the war that's going on in Los Angeles."
"What war?" Ashley exclaimed. No one heard her other than Joey.
"What may, unfortunately, be the Final War. Take my word for it that you do not want to go home. Get out of town. Go to L.A. because you need to go there. For the good of mankind."
Ashley hadn't even realized that she had dropped her plastic bag a good minute or so ago. All she was focusing on was the fact that this strange being who only she could see, hear, or feel was telling her that she was going to be of importance in a war. A war in Los Angeles.
"Why don't you want me to go home?" she asked.
Joey paused. "You… j - just don't go home, Ashley."
"Is my family okay?"
Joey took a longer time to answer this time. "Get out of town. Everyone here is going to be changed. Including your family."
Ashley ducked out of Joey's grip and darted through the opening between his outstretched arm and his body. She then sprinted all of the way home. By the time she reached her house her feet were pulsing painfully and completely sore.
The house looked alright. It didn't look like anything bad was happing, or even about to happen. She smiled and called her sanity into question as she entered the house. It was then that she realized she had lost the grocery bag.
"Shit," she muttered under her breath as she closed the white, hardwood door behind her. She was in the dining room now. It was a tall, square room with a large, circular table in the middle with ten chairs. "Hi everybody! I'm home!"
She waited for a response, but alas, there was none. Nothing but silence. "Hello?" she called.
Again there was not an answer. This time she heard a sound, though. It was quiet and was coming from upstairs. It was the sound of someone walking. Someone walking with slow, shuffling foot steps.
"Mom? Dad?"
This time there was a creaking sound as a door swung open upstairs. More shuffling foot steps followed. Then the stairs were creaking beyond the door that led into the kitchen.
"Is anybody here?"
She wondered if there had been anyone in the driveway. If there hadn't been, then the footsteps may very well belong to a thief… or a murderer. Maybe someone had been injured.
Whatever it was, those ominous, shuffling footsteps were saying that something was wrong. She then decided that it would be best to get out of there. To let whatever had happened evade her knowledge for the rest of her life.
Her feet obviously sang a different song because she walked forward all the same. She walked over to the door and grasped the cool handle of it.
The footsteps had now stopped and she could hear something on the other side of the door, clawing at it. She wondered if it was one of those monsters or demons. Her hand dropped from the door handle.
"What is wrong with you, Ashley?"
The idea of a monster or a demon waiting on the other side of the door was absurd. The idea that maybe it was her mother, father, or one of the two evacuated ones was much more rational. So she pulled the door open.
Her face went pale and her body froze. She felt her muscles nearly loosen to the point where she would piss her pants, but she managed to keep control of that.
The thing standing before her was completely human… in a way. It wasn't in another. The way that it wasn't was that if a human were to endure so much ravaging, that human would be dead. No 'if's, 'and's, or 'but's about it.
This thing was still alive, though. It was alive despite the fact that its eye had been gouged out along with the surrounding skin and muscle tissue to allow the skull to be seen. It was alive despite the fact that its entrails were hanging out of its torn abdomen. It was alive despite the fact that its left arm had been torn off with a great amount of force.
In the way that it was human was that it had the shape of a human… and it also looked a lot like Beatrice.
"Mom?" Ashley asked in a wavering voice that didn't sound like her own.
If that title registered with the thing in front of her or not Ashley would never know. What she did know was that it was infuriated as soon as she said it.
In all of the movies they always displayed zombies as slow, dumb creatures that could easily be killed by a bullet to the head. This thing wasn't like that. This thing charged forward like an Olympic racer while screaming a blood - curdling scream.
Ashley shrieked as she tore through the dining room, leaping over the dining room table and ignoring the hand that had passed through her long, auburn hair. It wasn't her mother. It couldn't be.
Outside was a story all its own. Some of the things that were running around and about after human victims were torn apart like the thing in her house had been while others looked perfectly alright other than a ragged bite or two on various parts of their bodies. She was amazed that such chaos had arisen in the short amount of time she had been in the house. It had felt like a long time, but she knew that it hadn't been.
Ashley fought her way through the crowds of humans and things until she found herself in a clearing between a supermarket and a bunch of trees.
She darted to the trees and wandered through the woods for some time as the sun began its descent in the sky. At some point she had run into another zombie (she had ceased to think of them as anything else because they looked just like the zombies out of movies), which she had avoided.
When the sun finally set, she wasn't more than a mile away from Los Angeles. The deserted city where her destiny resided.
Meanwhile… Err… Before that… Or something…
"How DID you know the Apocalypse was going on anyway?" Angel asked the Scoobies at a meeting between him and his group and the Scoobies and the extra Slayers in Giles's tent. Buffy was sitting on a desk that was piled sky - high with books for research. Angel was sad that it wasn't Wesley who was putting those books to use. Xander was sitting on the ground in front of Faith and Robin Wood. Behind those two sat hand - in - hand Willow and Kennedy. The Slayers were lined around the tent in a circle. Giles was sitting in a rolling chair at his desk with Dawn and Andrew standing behind him. Spike, Gunn, Illyria, and Angel were all standing near the exit flap of the tent.
"Giles had an informant who knew what was going on here," Buffy stated. "Simple as that."
"Simple?" Giles exclaimed. "I'm the one who had to translate his message. I know it wasn't simple."
"Right," Buffy replied and then said a bit sarcastically. "Sorry."
"I'm a little glad it's here now," Dawn stated. Everyone looked at her strangely. She was still a little shaken from her recent encounter with a strange voice and cold hands. She then explained herself hurriedly. "I mean that because now he's going to become human and everything when he stops it." She motioned towards Angel. Angel's mood immediately turned for the worse. Buffy and the others noticed.
"What's wrong Angel?" Buffy asked.
"Umm… I have something to tell you."
"Obviously."
"There's a long story leading up to it, but I had to sign away that prophecy."
Buffy looked at him with wide eyes and so did the rest of the Scoobies. He imagined Spike and Gunn were equally surprised. Illyria probably didn't care.
"Are you retarded?" Giles asked.
"I had to do it in order to infiltrate this secret organization and gain their trust."
"No, I mean seriously. Are you retarded?"
"What?"
"You've been alive longer than I have and certainly have known about mystical forces much longer than I've been alive. So why is it that you don't know that you can't sign away a prophecy and I do?"
Angel looked at Giles dumbstruck. "Huh?"
"They probably tricked you into thinking so because they couldn't think of anything else for you to do in order for them to be satisfied that you were trustworthy."
"But the paper sucked in the blood."
"I have to ask again, are you retarded? Do you really think that the writers of the prophecy would want the paper stained? Of course not! It's a self - cleansing mechanism."
"Oh," Angel then looked around at everyone. "Well, now that that's settled let's get to business."
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Hey, MorbidMan here. Did you like this one? Hope you did. I think it's the shortest chapter of them all… or at least almost the shortest. The zombies will make an appearance later on in the story, so hold on to your… whatever you want to hold on to.
I really didn't agree with the fact that they made him sign away his prophecy. I mean, that's what the whole show was about! Right? It was his quest for redemption as he battled the forces of evil. That was his reward! I didn't like the series finale that much at all. See you all next chapter.
"Here in the land of make - believe,
Don't you cry,
You're so cold,
But you feel alive,
Take my hand for,
One last time,
Tell me how it ends!
It's alright,
Show me how defenseless you really are." - Breaking Benjamin "So Cold"
The Dead Men
Ashley Findale was pushing her way through the crowded grocery store to the cash register up front. There was a long line at the cash register and Ashley took her spot at the end of it. Immediately others filed into line behind her.
She lived in Benwitch, a small town a few miles out of Los Angeles city limits. She was purchasing milk and a box of cheap cereal that tasted exactly like Froot Loops, yet wasn't. Ever since the evacuation of Los Angeles things had been mighty crowded around Benwitch. There were a bunch of houses for those people set up… but no one had apparently expected such a large evacuation so there was an overflow of evacuated individuals.
Ashley had a couple of them living in her own house--the house was large enough to comfortably fit the new additions in luckily enough--while others had as many as four or five living with them.
The line for the cash register dwindled to nearly nothing within fifteen minutes, but by that time Ashley had been rung up and had gotten out of there.
The buildings in Benwitch were so small that some of the Los Angeles people were looking around like they were lost and confused. In a way they were. They lived in the world of sky scrapers and crime and just the city life. They had no business in a town like Benwitch.
The transition must've upset them all quite a lot because several were babbling about demons and monsters. She had also heard something about the end of the world.
Normally she would've just dismissed the sightings and gone about her daily business, but the evacuation of every single human being in Los Angeles and the extreme similarity of the reports suggested something major was happening, which, in effect, made dismissing the sightings and going about her daily business a bit more difficult. That scared her, let me tell you. That really did scare her. Not just that there was something going on, but that she actually almost BELIEVED that something was going on.
Ashley swung the plastic bag which contained the cereal and the milk she had just bought inside from side to side continuously.
The streets were crowded and she had to brush past several people roughly as she trudged through said streets. A helicopter zoomed by overhead and several cars blasted down the road. The town was much more noisy than it used to be and Ashley hated it. Despised it.
Sirens were blaring in the near distance. She had rarely ever heard sirens before now lest it was for a fire or an injured person. Who knew that a small town could turn into such a bustling place in the space of a day or two?
The abrupt change had been a great shock to the system, but Ashley was adapting quickly. She was known for fast acclimatization. The same could not be said for Beatrice, her mother, or Darren, her father.
She frowned at the thought of her most recent encounter with Beatrice. They had gone through a scuffle about her smoking and drinking. A bad one that had ended with Beatrice's left cheek flaring red. Ashley wanted to apologize for that. Beatrice hadn't deserved it. She was just doing her job as a parent and Ashley supposed she could understand and respect that.
Unbeknownst to the unfortunate Ashley, she would never get the chance to apologize.
The sun was burning into her retinas, so she threw up her arm to shield her eyes. That made her feel a little better. It made her feel as good as she could in such a situation as she was in.
"Hey Ashley," a whispering voice called to her. Ashley looked in the direction of the voice, certain that whoever had just spoken was calling to another Ashley and that it was just a coincidence.
That certainty was eliminated as she saw a man with a top hat and a bath robe pulled tight over his body staring at her with bleary, half - awake, bright blue eyes that were blood shot while smiling a smile that was bereft of teeth--well, I suppose that isn't fair considering he had one yellow and chipped tooth hanging on in the back of his mouth.
"Hey Ashley," the man repeated before raising a scraggly hand and signaling her to come to him with a pale, skinny index finger. "I need to have a word with you."
"Who are you?" Ashley asked cautiously. She didn't have to worry about strange people before now. Especially those who looked half - insane and knew her name.
"Joey Bonduck," Joey informed her. "I do enjoy watching you."
Suddenly Ashley was certain that this man was dangerous. It didn't emanate off of him like it seemed to in movies and television shows; it was a paranoia of her mind. When someone says 'I do enjoy watching you' you really don't rush to them chock full of trust. She began to walk away… and that walking… boy was it a bit faster than average!
"You're making a big mistake Ashley!" Joey's voice shot to her ears. His voice seemed as loud as the sonic boom that results from one of those military planes that flies faster than the speed of sound. Did anyone else hear it? It certainly didn't appear so. "Don't go home!"
Suddenly Ashley found herself looking at Joey, who had appeared in front of her out of thing air. A woman's arm passed right through him with what appeared to be no effect. It was like a videogame glitch. When Joey spoke this time his voice was much quieter. His eyes now looked fully awake and scared.
"Something big is about to happen, Ashley," he stated. "I don't want you here when it does happen. You have a mission. This mission involves things that you may not want to believe in, but you will have to."
"What the hell are you?" Ashley asked. She then walked forward without waiting for an answer, expecting to walk through this hallucination. She found herself being grasped by the shoulders and held in place by the amazingly strong Joey Bonduck.
"You have something that you need to do. Something that will aid in the war that's going on in Los Angeles."
"What war?" Ashley exclaimed. No one heard her other than Joey.
"What may, unfortunately, be the Final War. Take my word for it that you do not want to go home. Get out of town. Go to L.A. because you need to go there. For the good of mankind."
Ashley hadn't even realized that she had dropped her plastic bag a good minute or so ago. All she was focusing on was the fact that this strange being who only she could see, hear, or feel was telling her that she was going to be of importance in a war. A war in Los Angeles.
"Why don't you want me to go home?" she asked.
Joey paused. "You… j - just don't go home, Ashley."
"Is my family okay?"
Joey took a longer time to answer this time. "Get out of town. Everyone here is going to be changed. Including your family."
Ashley ducked out of Joey's grip and darted through the opening between his outstretched arm and his body. She then sprinted all of the way home. By the time she reached her house her feet were pulsing painfully and completely sore.
The house looked alright. It didn't look like anything bad was happing, or even about to happen. She smiled and called her sanity into question as she entered the house. It was then that she realized she had lost the grocery bag.
"Shit," she muttered under her breath as she closed the white, hardwood door behind her. She was in the dining room now. It was a tall, square room with a large, circular table in the middle with ten chairs. "Hi everybody! I'm home!"
She waited for a response, but alas, there was none. Nothing but silence. "Hello?" she called.
Again there was not an answer. This time she heard a sound, though. It was quiet and was coming from upstairs. It was the sound of someone walking. Someone walking with slow, shuffling foot steps.
"Mom? Dad?"
This time there was a creaking sound as a door swung open upstairs. More shuffling foot steps followed. Then the stairs were creaking beyond the door that led into the kitchen.
"Is anybody here?"
She wondered if there had been anyone in the driveway. If there hadn't been, then the footsteps may very well belong to a thief… or a murderer. Maybe someone had been injured.
Whatever it was, those ominous, shuffling footsteps were saying that something was wrong. She then decided that it would be best to get out of there. To let whatever had happened evade her knowledge for the rest of her life.
Her feet obviously sang a different song because she walked forward all the same. She walked over to the door and grasped the cool handle of it.
The footsteps had now stopped and she could hear something on the other side of the door, clawing at it. She wondered if it was one of those monsters or demons. Her hand dropped from the door handle.
"What is wrong with you, Ashley?"
The idea of a monster or a demon waiting on the other side of the door was absurd. The idea that maybe it was her mother, father, or one of the two evacuated ones was much more rational. So she pulled the door open.
Her face went pale and her body froze. She felt her muscles nearly loosen to the point where she would piss her pants, but she managed to keep control of that.
The thing standing before her was completely human… in a way. It wasn't in another. The way that it wasn't was that if a human were to endure so much ravaging, that human would be dead. No 'if's, 'and's, or 'but's about it.
This thing was still alive, though. It was alive despite the fact that its eye had been gouged out along with the surrounding skin and muscle tissue to allow the skull to be seen. It was alive despite the fact that its entrails were hanging out of its torn abdomen. It was alive despite the fact that its left arm had been torn off with a great amount of force.
In the way that it was human was that it had the shape of a human… and it also looked a lot like Beatrice.
"Mom?" Ashley asked in a wavering voice that didn't sound like her own.
If that title registered with the thing in front of her or not Ashley would never know. What she did know was that it was infuriated as soon as she said it.
In all of the movies they always displayed zombies as slow, dumb creatures that could easily be killed by a bullet to the head. This thing wasn't like that. This thing charged forward like an Olympic racer while screaming a blood - curdling scream.
Ashley shrieked as she tore through the dining room, leaping over the dining room table and ignoring the hand that had passed through her long, auburn hair. It wasn't her mother. It couldn't be.
Outside was a story all its own. Some of the things that were running around and about after human victims were torn apart like the thing in her house had been while others looked perfectly alright other than a ragged bite or two on various parts of their bodies. She was amazed that such chaos had arisen in the short amount of time she had been in the house. It had felt like a long time, but she knew that it hadn't been.
Ashley fought her way through the crowds of humans and things until she found herself in a clearing between a supermarket and a bunch of trees.
She darted to the trees and wandered through the woods for some time as the sun began its descent in the sky. At some point she had run into another zombie (she had ceased to think of them as anything else because they looked just like the zombies out of movies), which she had avoided.
When the sun finally set, she wasn't more than a mile away from Los Angeles. The deserted city where her destiny resided.
Meanwhile… Err… Before that… Or something…
"How DID you know the Apocalypse was going on anyway?" Angel asked the Scoobies at a meeting between him and his group and the Scoobies and the extra Slayers in Giles's tent. Buffy was sitting on a desk that was piled sky - high with books for research. Angel was sad that it wasn't Wesley who was putting those books to use. Xander was sitting on the ground in front of Faith and Robin Wood. Behind those two sat hand - in - hand Willow and Kennedy. The Slayers were lined around the tent in a circle. Giles was sitting in a rolling chair at his desk with Dawn and Andrew standing behind him. Spike, Gunn, Illyria, and Angel were all standing near the exit flap of the tent.
"Giles had an informant who knew what was going on here," Buffy stated. "Simple as that."
"Simple?" Giles exclaimed. "I'm the one who had to translate his message. I know it wasn't simple."
"Right," Buffy replied and then said a bit sarcastically. "Sorry."
"I'm a little glad it's here now," Dawn stated. Everyone looked at her strangely. She was still a little shaken from her recent encounter with a strange voice and cold hands. She then explained herself hurriedly. "I mean that because now he's going to become human and everything when he stops it." She motioned towards Angel. Angel's mood immediately turned for the worse. Buffy and the others noticed.
"What's wrong Angel?" Buffy asked.
"Umm… I have something to tell you."
"Obviously."
"There's a long story leading up to it, but I had to sign away that prophecy."
Buffy looked at him with wide eyes and so did the rest of the Scoobies. He imagined Spike and Gunn were equally surprised. Illyria probably didn't care.
"Are you retarded?" Giles asked.
"I had to do it in order to infiltrate this secret organization and gain their trust."
"No, I mean seriously. Are you retarded?"
"What?"
"You've been alive longer than I have and certainly have known about mystical forces much longer than I've been alive. So why is it that you don't know that you can't sign away a prophecy and I do?"
Angel looked at Giles dumbstruck. "Huh?"
"They probably tricked you into thinking so because they couldn't think of anything else for you to do in order for them to be satisfied that you were trustworthy."
"But the paper sucked in the blood."
"I have to ask again, are you retarded? Do you really think that the writers of the prophecy would want the paper stained? Of course not! It's a self - cleansing mechanism."
"Oh," Angel then looked around at everyone. "Well, now that that's settled let's get to business."
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Hey, MorbidMan here. Did you like this one? Hope you did. I think it's the shortest chapter of them all… or at least almost the shortest. The zombies will make an appearance later on in the story, so hold on to your… whatever you want to hold on to.
I really didn't agree with the fact that they made him sign away his prophecy. I mean, that's what the whole show was about! Right? It was his quest for redemption as he battled the forces of evil. That was his reward! I didn't like the series finale that much at all. See you all next chapter.
"Here in the land of make - believe,
Don't you cry,
You're so cold,
But you feel alive,
Take my hand for,
One last time,
Tell me how it ends!
It's alright,
Show me how defenseless you really are." - Breaking Benjamin "So Cold"