Animatus

Notes: Thanks for the reviews. They give me so much inspiration; it's great. I've outlined the rest of what I want to do with this story and its sequel (yes, I am doing a sequel) so I'm psyched about pushing forward with this. I think you guys are going to like it.

Previously:

A gunshot rang out in the Bronze. Faith uneasily looked over at the door leading to the backroom. "I guess Riley turned."

"That means you're in charge," Joyce stated, looking over at the young girl.

Faith smiled apprehensively and said, "Stranger things have happened."

Chapter Twenty-One: Best Laid Plans:

"You look all somber today," Faith commented as she plopped down at one of the desks in the library with a bottle of water in her hand. She had been training on the punching bag, allowing her restless muscles a few moment of release, and her body felt completely satiated. Her heart was slowing to its normal pace from its heightened rate during her strenuous workout and she breathed deeply, relishing the calm that had settled on her nerves.

Kate chuckled without raising her eyes from the newspaper lying open on the desk in front of her. "Thank you," she said sarcastically, "that was the look I was going for when I got up this morning."

Faith laughed and took a drink from her water bottle. "Someone didn't get her cup of tea this morning," she joked.

"No, I didn't," Kate grumbled, briefly squeezing the bridge of her nose and shutting her eyes before she opened them again and looked up at Faith. Despite their good natured bantering, Faith could see a certain fear lingering behind her Watcher's eyes.

"What's wrong?" Faith asked seriously.

"You know," Kate began, circling the young girl's question, "you've learned quite a bit since you were called. When I first found you, you didn't know a thing about what being a Slayer entailed. But look at you now. You're everything that a Slayer should be."

"Cut the shit, Kate," Faith replied with frustration. "What's going on?"

Kate sighed and leaned back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap. "You've fought many vampires since you were called and you've defeated them all."

"I know," Faith stated.

"But those vampires," Kate explained, "they were as new to all of this as you. Not to say that they weren't a challenge," she elaborated upon seeing the sour look on Faith's face. "They were quite difficult. But they weren't the toughest vampires that you could have faced."

"Kate," Faith said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the desk, "what're you trying to say?"

"Read this," she answered, pushing the newspaper over to her Slayer. Faith picked it up and skimmed the headline. Another body had been found by the harbor with blood loss as the presumed cause of death.

"So there's a nest down by the docks," Faith shrugged. "We'll go clean it out, like we should have done last night," she added in a mutter.

"I don't believe that this is the work of a group of vampires," Kate said somberly, ignoring the younger girl's comment.

"What do you think is doing it then?" Faith asked.

"One vampire," Kate replied simply.

"No way," Faith shook her head. "This is what…the tenth body they've found down there in two days? All signs point to a nest, Kate."

"Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you," Kate nodded. "But not this time."

"Why not?" Faith asked uneasily.

"I've heard some things," Kate explained. "People are talking. They're saying that an ancient vampire has come to Boston. They say that he's so old that his feet are cloven."

"That's not good," Faith mumbled.

Kate smiled softly. "No, it's not," she agreed. "Apparently, his name is Kakistos. I've heard of him. He's a monster. And he's not like any other vampire that you've faced."

"How so?" Faith asked inquisitively.

"He's much stronger because he's been alive for far longer. I don't know how many centuries he's plagued this earth, but he's learned quite a bit in that time. Rumors suggest that he may have even killed several Slayers in that time, though I can't prove that one way or the other. The Council doesn't know much about him."

"So what're we supposed to do?" Faith asked nervously. She knew what Kate would say. She was the Slayer and it was her job…her duty…to destroy any evil creature that walked the earth, no matter how powerful it was.

Kate sighed heavily. "You know what we're supposed to do," she replied tiredly. "But that's not what I would like to do."

"What would you like to do?" Faith questioned.

"Run," Kate replied instantly.

"You want to run away?" Faith asked in surprise.

"That's what I want, yes," Kate answered, shame staining her voice, "but that's not what we'll do."

"He's just a vampire," Faith stated. "I can fight him."

"Of course you can," Kate lied. "I just worry, that's all. I don't want anything to happen to you."

"Nothing's going to happen to me," Faith insisted, smiling crookedly.

Kate felt her heart break when she saw her Slayer smile. She knew that Faith was not ready to fight Kakistos. The vampire was too strong and Faith was too inexperienced. Had she been given another year or two to train Faith, she was certain that the young girl would have been able to defeat Kakistos, even if doing so cost her a great deal. However, Kakistos was in Boston now and posed a greater threat to its people than they would ever know. "We can assume that he's hiding somewhere in the harbor. There are plenty of abandoned factories in that district."

"I take it we're thinking recon?" Faith asked, rising to her feet as Kate did the same.

"We'll try to find him today and we'll attack tomorrow," Kate explained. "We're doing all of this in the daylight. I don't want to face him in the dark."

"Me neither," Faith muttered. "Kate," she said, capturing her Watcher's attention.

"Yes?" Kate asked.

"Everything's going to be okay," Faith smiled.

Kate watched her Slayer walk out into the foyer, where she grabbed her jacked from the coat rack. Sighing grimly, the Watcher shook her head, "Not this time."

……………………………

Buffy lowered the gun to her side, staring numbly as Riley's body slumped down onto the floor. She was surprised to find tears streaking down her cheeks. Sniffling, she placed her gun in the waistband of her jeans and sat back down on the packing crate. Riley's blood was seeping across the floor, extending in every direction like a ripple in a pond. Infected blood, Buffy thought to herself. Riley had believed that the zombie invasion had been caused by a virus that the Initiative had created on sublevel three. Buffy smiled bitterly, wondering if all of the death and destruction that she had witness over the past two weeks and several days had been caused because some scientists in a laboratory somewhere had decided that they wanted to play God.

Buffy wondered sometimes whether being a Slayer even mattered and whether fighting the forces of darkness did nothing more than provide people with false hope. The more she experienced of the world, the more she started to understand that demons were only responsible for a fraction of the evil to which the world was subjected. Human beings composed the greatest threat to the world for they possessed the greatest evil – evil that could not be explained by human nature itself, but evil that just existed in mankind with no purpose. Leaning forward so that her elbows were resting on her knees, she cupped her face with her hands.

Riley had been a good man. Though she knew now that he was not the person that she was destined to be with, she still mourned his loss. He had been good to her. Her attempt at normalcy had failed miserably. Buffy realized now that she was never meant to be normal, nor was she ever meant to be with anyone normal. She should have recognized that after her relationship with Angel had failed, but she had been too preoccupied with the notion that she could change her destiny forcibly. She smiled when she thought of Faith. When Faith had entered her life, she had realized for the first time how much she loved slaying. Her mother had hoped that Faith could become the Slayer in her place. Though Buffy had spent years rebelling against her calling, when her role as Slayer had been threatened, she realized how badly she wanted to retain it.

But her eyes had not been opened enough for her to see that Faith had never been a threat. Instead, Faith had always been her sister Slayer – the only other person in the world who understood what it was like to be her. But she had rejected the younger girl because she had been jealous of her. Faith had been wild, beautiful, and dangerous – all of the things that Buffy had wanted to be but could not be because she was burdened with friends, family, and responsibility. Those burdens Faith had wanted and Buffy had never appreciated. Sitting alone in the dark, with the body of her ex-boyfriend laying in front of her, she realized how badly she wanted those burdens back.

She had never been given time to mourn for Xander. But she cried now. She cried for him, Riley, and Anya. She cried for all of the people that she had lost over the years and all of the people that she knew that she would lose before the sun would set on her life. When she had finished crying, she sat alone in the dark, wishing that she could cry more tears. She could feel Faith's worry pouring off of the younger girl. Since she had given in to her feelings for the dark haired Slayer, she had begun to feel their bond more clearly. She had always known when Faith was around; she had heard a gentle humming in the back of her mind that just grew and grew until it threatened to drown out everything else. She could hear that humming now, but it was stained with concern.

Rising to her feet, she took one, last look at Riley and opened the door. Candles flickered in the Bronze, lighting the club with a soft, amber glow. For a moment, Buffy forgot the terror that had overcome her when the zombies had entered the Bronze not long ago. Then it all came back to her. Rubbing the last of her tears from her cheeks, she smiled when she saw Willow approaching her. "Hey, Will," she said softly.

"You okay?" Willow asked, crossing her arms across her chest so that it looked to Buffy as if the witch was hugging herself.

"Five by five," Buffy answered absently, allowing her eyes to search the room for Faith, but she could not find her. "Where's…" she began, but Willow interrupted.

"Faith?" She asked, smiling knowingly. She chuckled quietly to herself and answered, "Faith has been elected our new leader."

"What?" Buffy asked in surprise.

"The people have spoken," Willow joked. "They want Faith."

"Really?" Buffy questioned. "When did this happen?"

"While you were in there with Riley," Willow said, nodding towards the room from which Buffy had emerged. "I guess everyone assumed that he was a goner. Looks like he is."

"Where is she?" Buffy asked.

"Upstairs with Giles. They're talking strategy," Willow replied sarcastically.

"I thought that you were giving her a chance, Will," Buffy admonished.

"I am," she replied defensively. "But that doesn't mean that I have to be happy with the idea that the person that once held a knife to my throat is going to be leading us out into the land of the dead."

"Fair enough," Buffy nodded.

"So are you okay with this?" Willow asked, narrowing her eyes as she watched Buffy's reaction. The blonde Slayer had seemed surprised that Faith had been chosen to lead them.

"Of course," Buffy spoke, bristling tensely. She had to admit that the news that Faith had been chosen as their leader was shocking, though the rest of the people in the Bronze were not aware of Faith's history. Still, she wondered if her girlfriend could handle the challenge of leading them and the responsibility that it would entail. She also had to admit that she was jealous of Faith – yet again. She had always been the responsible one, the one chosen to lead because no one else could. Though she knew that she should be happy that Faith was coming into her own, she felt like she was being pushed aside. "Come on," Buffy said, leading Willow up the stairs. Willow left her side to join Tara and Buffy looked across the room, her eyes finally settling on Faith, who was sitting against the wall with Giles in front of her and Jay to her left.

……………………………….

"Okay," Faith sighed. "Tell me what you know, G-man."

"Would you not…" Giles began, starting to complain about Faith's choice of nickname for him when he stopped. Xander had always called him that. Smiling sadly, he dropped the thought and started again. "Zombies have never been my specialty. I feel I should warn you of that before we begin. But that being said, I do know a little about them. And I've had some experience with them, other than this."

"Good," Faith nodded. "Tell me about it."

"Before you arrived in Sunnydale," Giles explained, "we had an incident. There was this ancient tribal mask. It brought dead things back to life."

"Ancient tribal mask?" Faith asked, sincerely hoping that Giles was joking.

"Yes," he replied weakly, seeing the bemused look on the younger girl's face. "Joyce hung it in her bedroom."

"How do you know that?" Faith teased.

"Have you never heard of the idea of respecting your elders?" Giles asked embarrassedly.

"So, ancient tribal mask?" Jay asked in an attempt to steer the conversation back on target.

"Yes," Giles replied gratefully, "the mask caused all of the people in town who had recently died to become alive again. However, they were not so concerned with eating people as with causing chaos. The mask held the power of a zombie demon called Ovu Mobani. Once we killed the demon, all of the zombies disappeared."

"Do you think that something like that is happening now?" Faith asked hopefully.

"Unfortunately, no," Giles answered, pained at her crestfallen expression.

"That sucks," Jay muttered.

"Those zombies did not act like your stereotypical zombie. These zombies, however, display characteristics that are known to be common for all zombie incidents throughout the world. In other words, this probably isn't mystical in nature," Giles explained. "These zombies are very real."

"So what else do we know?" Faith asked in frustration.

"A zombie is a person who has died, but whose body has been reanimated. Unlike a vampire, a zombie retains no semblance of its former personality or reasoning capability. It's driven by one need alone – to feed on human flesh," Giles explained grimly. "To kill a zombie, you must destroy its brain. These are universal characteristics."

"Okay," Faith nodded. "So do our zombies seem to have any individual characteristics?"

"They do," Giles smiled, happy with her chain of logic. "Generally, when a person is bitten by a zombie and dies, the person becomes a zombie. In this instance, however, it seems that even non-fatal wounds produce the same result. Even more, we can't be certain that bites alone constitute the necessary medium to transmit the zombie 'infection,' so to speak," he said. "Scratches may transmit it as well."

"Or blood or saliva," Jay added. "Like you said," he said, nodding at Faith, "we don't know if getting their blood or saliva in the mouth, eyes, or any breaks in the skin will transmit it as well."

"Yes," Giles agreed, "which makes this situation all the more precarious."

"Great," Faith muttered.

"As a simple, non-fatal bite will infect someone, we have to assume definitively that something in the saliva or blood is transmitting the zombie contamination," Giles reasoned. "The rate at which a person turns seems to vary greatly as well."

"Yeah," Faith agreed thoughtfully. "Anya said that Xander turned right away. But Anya didn't turn, as far as we know, before she, hopefully, shot herself. And it took Riley a few hours."

"Therefore," Giles said, "we must assume that turning is dependent on other factors. Xander was bitten in the neck. He lost a great deal of blood right away. His wound was a fatal one. Riley, on the other hand, was bitten or scratched on the leg. Anya was bitten on the shoulder. Both of those wounds were non-fatal in themselves. Furthermore, infection, so to speak, could be delayed by strength, age, the capabilities of the immune system, and the list could go in indefinitely. However, people do turn, so the infection must supersede all of those factors eventually."

"Why are the zombies wary of sunlight though?" Faith asked.

"They're not always," Jay pointed out. "The zombies attacked initially during the day."

"Yes," Giles nodded. "They did attack the first time during the day. But Faith is also right; they were reluctant to amass as a group during the day."

"Maybe the sunlight hurts their eyes," Jay shrugged.

"What do you mean?" Giles asked.

"Well, they're dead. They're decaying. Maybe their eyes can't handle the sunlight anymore because they've started to decay as well," he reasoned.

"That's an excellent point," Giles smiled. "I hadn't quite thought of that."

"Thanks," Jay said sheepishly.

"We have another problem too," Faith acknowledged. "The zombies seemed uncoordinated at first. Like they were mindless monsters. But this last attack…it was coordinated. They knew what they were doing."

"It's like they're getting smarter," Jay shuddered.

"Perhaps they are," Giles said. "As they become accustomed to their environment, perhaps they're learning how to live in it. They know that they need food to survive and we may very well be the only people left in Sunnydale. Therefore, they'll try anything to get what they want. Besides, just as there are some notable and industrious people in the human race who seem to be much smarter and adept than others, maybe there are industrious and exceptional zombies."

"That's a comforting thought," Faith smiled grimly.

"Isn't it?" Giles joked.

"Maybe they're remembering things," Jay added. "They used to be people. Maybe they still remember things from when they were alive."

"Like how to work as a group," Faith nodded. "I think that Riley's original plan for escape is the best," she concluded.

"Yes?" Giles asked.

"We need to find two, large vans. I don't like buses, though. They're too unwieldy. We need something that can go fast without putting everyone inside at risk," Faith stated.

"I agree," Jay nodded.

"Tomorrow morning, we'll try to find some vehicles. We'll bring them back here," Faith said slowly, figuring out her plan as she spoke.

"There's a loading bay behind the stage," Jay said. "We can drive the vans up the ramp and into the Bronze."

"Good," Giles nodded. "We'll have to pack everything that could be of any use here."

"Yeah," Faith agreed. "We don't want to have to come back for anything. And I don't want to leave anything behind that we could use. We'll have to stay here again tomorrow night. But the next morning, we'll hit the road."

"Sounds like a good plan," Giles smiled encouragingly.

Faith nodded, though she was uncertain. She wondered if she was ready to handle the challenges lying before her. She suddenly felt Buffy's eyes on her and she looked up, seeing her girlfriend standing by the stairs. Buffy looked as though she had been crying. Faith wanted nothing more than to comfort her, but Jay had started speaking again. Ripping her eyes from Buffy's face, she looked over at him. "What?" She asked apologetically.

Jay smiled knowingly, aware that the blonde girl had walked up the stairs, and repeated himself, "I made that list for you of the people here." He handed her a napkin on which he had written everyone's names and former occupations.

"Thanks," she said, looking down at it. "This will be useful."

"Good," Jay nodded, rising to his feet. "I'm on patrol. I better get down there."

Faith nodded and watched him walk away, happy to have another ally. "If you don't need me anymore," Giles began.

"Go ahead," Faith interrupted. Giles smiled and stood, walking over to where Tara, Willow, and Joyce were sitting. Faith let her eyes fall on Buffy again, who was walking over to her.

"Hey," Buffy said softly, sitting down beside Faith.

"I don't know if I can do this," Faith replied quietly.

Buffy looked over at her girlfriend, sensing her apprehension. "You can," Buffy said confidently, truly believing, in that moment, in Faith. "I know it," she said and took the younger girl's hand in her own. "I believe in you."