Disclaimer - I don't own ZOMBIES or any of the characters involved. Copyright to Walt Disney Studios. Names of BG zombies are mine, characters themselves aren't.
It's time for the finale of the Tattooed Mistakes series!
I got this absolutely horrific idea soon after writing Far From Over, but I thought it was too dark to be the "canon" ending to the series, so I decided to write two alternate endings, one good, one bad. This is the bad ending, We Won't Get It Back When We Die, and the good ending, I Know That We're Gonna Be Fine, will come within the next week. As usual, krut09 edited a little promo video for me, so please check out her YouTube channel Kokinu09 to see that, and either check my Tumblr, unusual-ly, or ask me on here for the theme song playlist. It's currently unlisted on YouTube but it'll be made public once both chapters are posted
Trigger warning: suicidal ideation, discussion of trauma, character death
Won't Get It Back theme songs: Close Every Door from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Don't Come Home by Emma Blackery and Blue Beyond from The Fox and the Hound 2
We Won't Get It Back When We Die
~And you'll always wait for me to come home~
Being in the containment facility's hospital wasn't that much better than being in the prison. He had the tiniest bit more freedom, and the room he stayed in was a step up from a cell, but this was still zombie containment. And he was still a known murderer.
When he told Hazel what he had been experiencing, what he had been seeing and hearing, and that he wanted to be checked into the hospital, she didn't know how to respond. But she knew he needed help, and he wasn't going to get it in Zombie Town, so she agreed, through her tears, to take him there. Zephyr had sighed in relief when he heard.
It had been just over a month since then and once Alonzo was in the hospital wing, he easily fell back into the mindset of when he was confined to a cell for a year. His mom, his sister, his boyfriend and his friends had each paid a handful of visits, when they could. He had a therapist. He had (experimental) medication. He had small portions of brain food in his meals, gradually weaning him off from his addiction. He had, at least, some kind of treatment for his PTSD and his hallucinations and his persistent intrusive thoughts, as his therapist called them. But he was here for the same reason as when he had been locked up roughly two years ago; he killed a human.
He was treated differently to the few other zombie patients there. He was always followed by a patrol guard everywhere he went. He had daily Z-band checks. He was kept away from mirrors and other reflective surfaces, whenever he could be, after he described the zombie he tended to see in them, and what it told him.
It wasn't enough.
It didn't look like these pills were working.
"Why are you still here?"
"I'm you," if he looked up, Alonzo would have seen his reflection shrug. A reflection that had taken to appearing even without a mirror these days. The sound of his own voice, distorted and monstrous, grated against his ears but he didn't bother trying to block it out. It wouldn't help anything to try, "What, did you think I'd just disappear?"
Alonzo gritted his teeth. He'd been told not to respond, not to acknowledge it. He knew it wasn't real. He knew it was nothing but a hallucination. But after all this time, it just felt... natural. He was sitting on his bed with his back against the wall, with nowhere else to be and nothing to distract him. Therapy and examinations and taking medication kept him occupied. Meals could trigger something but he'd do everything he could to overpower the zombie when he was being watched. Then after it was all over, he'd be alone with his thoughts for a while.
The zombie was a part of his life now. This was just... life...
No matter how much he wished it would end.
"You said you'd shut up if I gave you something," he mumbled, "I'm giving you brain food!"
"Yeah. I'm starting to think that's not good enough."
The way he said it chilled Alonzo to the bone. So easily. No hesitance. He knew the zombie was cold, but those words froze him. His head jerked up but he forced himself to keep his eyes down.
"... What are you saying?"
"It just doesn't live up to the real thing, you know?"
His heart beat. He was losing his grip. He covered his ears.
It did nothing to stop the torture.
"You're trying to hide from me now?" the zombie mocked. He could hear the laughter in his own voice. He could hear everything, "Drak."
"Stop..."
"You know I'm right. You're a drak."
"Don't..."
"Your Z-band isn't helping you. You're unstable. Your brain's dysfunctional. And that makes you... a drak..." the zombie chuckled to himself while Alonzo began to hyperventilate, "Like father, like son, huh?" he pictured him shaking his head, that sickening grin plastered across his face, "Oh, but we are so much worse."
He was. He was worse. He had wanted nothing more in his whole life than to just be better than his dad, and he couldn't even do that. What gave him the right to call his father a drak now when he himself could see no hope whatsoever of reclaiming his sanity?
"You're not real."
"Aren't I?" the zombie teased, "I'm you. Aren't you real? Aren't your thoughts real? Aren't your instincts real?"
Of course he was real. Of course his thoughts and his instincts were real. And somewhere inside him, even the zombie was real. But he was more than his thoughts. His instincts weren't always right. And the real zombie wasn't the vision he was speaking to.
It was hard to ignore, though. He really thought he had been making progress; therapy was going well, he was learning exactly how his PTSD worked and how he could cope with it. He remembered back when he first arrived and he was still scared to talk, when the brain food they had given him still tempted the zombie out. He couldn't eat in the presence of others, zombie or human, instead confined to his own hospital room with a patrol guard standing by the door. He still got to see other patients when they were all gathered to take their medications, when they could mingle for a short time. He was kept away from them the rest of the time.
He'd zoned out again, his mind wandering and the zombie luring it along.
"All that time Maka spent making sure we had flesh food instead of brains, even when they were all eating brains. All gone to waste. She never should have bothered."
"That has nothing to do with this. Anyway, Mom did the right thing. I wouldn't have eaten anything when I was a kid if brains were my only option."
He screwed his eyes shut in frustration at the sound of the zombie's cruel laugh, "You sure about that? I'd have thought Paka woulda forced us. He'd shove it down our throat if he had to."
"But he didn't."
"He should have," the zombie growled. Alonzo was resisting, and that only made the thoughts more persistent, which, as he now understood, manifested as the zombie's anger, "Face the facts. He was right, zombies need to eat brains. If we always ate brains, maybe this wouldn't be happening."
No. This wouldn't be happening if... if...
If I never killed-
He groaned and dropped his head into his hands. The zombie was wearing him down.
It's not the zombie. It's me. He's not real. It's all in my head.
"And if Paka was right about that, maybe he was right about everything," it continued, "Maybe we are just wrong."
This was just a relapse. That was all. A minor setback in his recovery. It happened. It was normal. So what if it brought up his weakness? So what if it brought up his dad? It had done that before. So why was it so much harder to argue this time? His dad didn't matter. Nothing he had ever said mattered. What mattered was his mom, and his sister, and his boyfriend and his friends...
"And you still think they're on your side?"
... It meant something. That the zombie was saying these things. It meant something.
It meant that some part of him still believed it all. He kept fighting it, but in the end, the zombie told him all the things he didn't want to admit to himself. Someone else had to admit to it. He didn't want to. Because really...
Why would they still be on his side?
Zephyr said he was scared of being separated, but he suggested Alonzo check himself into the hospital anyway. It couldn't have hurt him that much to be apart; he didn't have to face the constant reminder of that night if Al wasn't around.
"Maybe being apart really does scare him," the zombie mused in the back of his mind, "But c'mon. That's not a good thing. He shouldn't be that attached to us."
"It's a coping mechanism..."
"It's a pretty unhealthy coping mechanism, if you ask me. But let's be real, he was probably just waiting to get rid of you. And so was Maka. She couldn't handle all this, especially not by herself. I'd even bet Linka's already moved in. And they're not gonna want us back. I bet they all planned this. Zephka convinced you to come here so none of them would have to deal with it anymore. We're never going back home."
No. No. Of course he was going back home. When he was better.
"When was the last time any of them came to visit us, huh? They haven't been around as often as they used to."
There were limits. There were limits on how often family and friends could visit him. They came whenever they could.
"And when was the last time we saw Za'ka at all? It scarred him just to see me breaking through that one time. Imagine if he saw me in full control. Like Zephka did."
Now it was trying to trick him. Zach had visited. And he wasn't scarred. He was worried. He cared. They all cared, and they all wanted him to get better and come back home.
When would it shut up? When would the pills kick in and finally set his brain right? Would they ever? He just wanted it to stop...
... But he knew all too well that it wouldn't. The zombie was always there. It was in his brain. It was his brain. He couldn't silence it; the medication was supposed to do that and evidently, it wasn't doing its job. With a dejected sigh, Alonzo looked down at his wrist. And the solid, locked Z-band around it.
"Go on. Do it," the zombie urged, lurking in the corner of his eye, "Take it off. Let me out."
It wasn't worth it.
It wasn't enough.
They'd find him feral and give him a new Z-band if he did. And it would start all over again.
He needed a more... permanent solution...
He hadn't realised how long he'd been in his room, alone with his thoughts, until he heard the door unlock and a familiar, disgruntled-as-ever voice barked at him, "Let's go, Morgan."
What he did to deserve Officer Frances as his own personal guard, he'd never know.
It must be time for his meds, and the nightly check-up with his doctor and therapist. He took a breath and risked a quick glance at the zombie staring, blank-faced, at Frances. He never liked her. It was her job to keep him under control, after all. Alonzo pushed himself off the bed and stood. Feeling his legs shake, he swallowed and forced them to walk, right through the image of the zombie, causing it to vanish. It didn't matter. He'd be back the moment Al had another bad thought.
Was it even worth going there right now? To be given these pills that wouldn't even stop the thoughts and the hallucinations? It didn't feel like it. It seemed pointless for him to have ever come to the hospital in the first place. He should be in the prison.
Or he should be dead.
He sucked in a sharp breath as the idea crossed his mind. He couldn't do it. He didn't want to do it.
"I'm too much of a coward to commit."
Relapses were hitting him hard and they came with suicidal thoughts, but that statement still rang true. He couldn't bring himself to do it. He couldn't do that to his mother, or to Lindzey or Zephyr or Zach. Any of them.
"Can't you?"
He pretended not to see the zombie watching him as he passed by, standing idly against the wall around the corner. But the zombie appeared there for a reason. In that particular spot. He remembered what was down that corridor; a lab. The zombie patrol wouldn't ever dare to admit to it, but Alonzo's fellow patients in the hospital were always gossiping about what exactly was happening in there.
It had come to light recently that the zombie patrol was still, to this day, running experiments to try and understand zombism, its cause, the specifics of the mutations and, yes, even search for a cure, as if a generations-old mutation could have one. Rumours spiralled about where these experiments were carried out, and all the zombies who had been in the hospital for a fair amount of time believed that it was there, in the lab at the end of that corridor.
Limes and any lime products had been banned in Seabrook for almost as long as zombies had existed there, ever since the death of Z. Lime juice had turned him into a fully feral zombie, with no hope of restabilising, when they had hoped it could humanise him instead. He was killed.
Alonzo knew he was killed. Not a zombie alive didn't know Z's story. But the fact was they still kept lime juice somewhere in the zombie containment facility, to test for ways to reverse its effects. Likely in that lab. And lime juice would stop him from... thinking...
He wasn't going to get better. He wouldn't be considering this if he actually believed he could get better. And maybe his family and his friends and his boyfriend really did care about him but...
... That wouldn't matter if he wasn't stable enough to care.
He stopped only a couple of steps past the turn. He could still see the zombie out of the corner of his eye, smiling at him, taunting him. Daring him.
Frances placed a firm hand on his shoulder, jolting him out of his daze, "Keep walking, Morgan."
Alonzo gulped and released the breath he had been holding. He took one step forward, then another, and Frances eased her grip. Just enough for him to make an escape.
The zombie only laughed as Alonzo raced past him.
– WHEN WE DIE –
It seemed to come out of nowhere. One minute, Zephyr was idly strumming his guitar up in his bedroom, with the usual background anxiety that had remained ever present since the incident buzzing in his brain. He had gotten used to it, to always being on edge. It no longer felt right to actually relax. Then, the next minute, his mom had called him and Rizzo downstairs. She had sat them both down at the kitchen table, Zeus beside her. She had explained exactly what was happening, what the zombie patrol had just told Hazel over the phone when they called her to the containment facility. But Zephyr could barely process anything past the first sentence.
Alonzo was unstable.
Again.
– WHEN WE DIE –
They got to the containment facility as soon as possible, but Zephyr wasn't sure if there was anything they could do. A small group of zombies wasn't going to sway the judgement of the zombie patrol. At least they could be there. Him, along with his sister, their parents, Hazel and Lindzey.
They couldn't see him face-to-face. It wasn't safe. He wasn't safe. Zephyr's anxiety was peaking and beside him, Hazel had one hand over her mouth, trying to muffle her sobs, and hugged Lindzey with the other. Zynthia was trying to comfort her, while Zeus and Rizzo stood by with Zephyr, watching. Rizzo quietly slid her arms around her brother's shoulders and squeezed. The guard was talking, explaining to them the state Alonzo was in, but Zephyr couldn't fully process it. He didn't expect Hazel could, either. All he understood was that Alonzo had, apparently of his own accord, ingested lime substances that the patrol, for some reason, kept in storage. He would have found it hard to believe that Al would do such a thing to himself had it not been for the conversation they'd had not so long ago.
Alonzo had told him, promised him, he wouldn't go to such lengths as suicide. But getting himself killed wasn't exactly the same thing as killing himself.
They were led into one of the examination rooms, where the Z-band maintenance checks were usually carried out. Zephyr knew those rooms well, with a fairly normal space in the front where regular check-ups and such took place, then the chamber at the back, with its intimidatingly large, double-bolted, inches thick door, and the window next to it that allowed the medics and patrol officers to observe the feral zombie that could be locked inside. Zephyr had never in his life witnessed a feral zombie, restrained by an officer, through one of those windows, until today.
Everything slowed down, almost to a halt, when Zephyr laid eyes on Alonzo. He froze at the sight of the cold, soulless eyes sunk deep into his skull, the slack jaw baring his teeth and heaving out ragged breaths, the winding web of veins crawling across every inch of skin visible.
It had been so long, almost two years, since the incident. Since the murder. Since Zephyr had witnessed the most traumatising thing he may ever see in his life. He'd had so many flashbacks in that time, awake and asleep, so many bursts of paranoia. Clamouring desperately for something, anything, to tell him it wasn't real, and that Alonzo was alright, safe and stable, and that he wasn't going to lose him again. But now, Zephyr was staring every one of his nightmares in the face. Another version of Alonzo wasn't just going to suddenly appear to pull him away, back to reality, where everything was fine. This was reality.
But all of a sudden, he was stuck in the past. He was being choked, he was being thrown against a wall, and he was being dragged into a dark alleyway. He saw the broken Z-band, its screen flashing between green and orange, on the ground. He heard guttural snarling and slurred Zombie-tongue in Alonzo's distorted voice. And he saw him advance, unable to stop him. Unable to save him.
"Zephyr..."
It was barely a whisper above the chaos in his mind, but he recognised his sister's voice.
"Look- Zeph, look at me," she was saying, "Come on, open your eyes. Zeph, baby, open your eyes, I need you to look at me..."
They always said that when this happened. Open your eyes. Look. There's the real world. Where you're safe. Where everything's alright. Just open your eyes.
But this wasn't like all the other times. Right now, if he opened his eyes, he'd see a real world that was just as scary as the one in his head, and there was every chance it would only get scarier. Zephyr felt Rizzo's grip on him loosen. He heard the anxiety rising in her tone.
"Mom! He's not listening!"
She had turned away to call for their mother and that eased the echoing in his ear, but it didn't really stop. Rizzo slowly let him go only for Zynthia to immediately take his arms in her hands. She turned him around and he let her, but he wouldn't lift his head. He wouldn't lower his hands. He wouldn't open his eyes.
"Zephyr," she was far better at hiding the tremor in her voice, but that didn't mean he couldn't pick it up at all, "You can open your eyes, now, honey, it's just me. There's nothing else to see. Now, look at me."
It took a little more coaxing, but soon Zephyr blinked. A little more and he looked up to meet his mom's eyes.
"Good..." she soothed. Zephyr glanced around briefly and found she had turned him towards a corner, where he wouldn't have to face the sight of whatever Alonzo was going through. The officers were talking but he couldn't make out what they were saying over his mom's comforting voice. But he noticed the others tense up. He noticed Hazel completely freeze, her eyes wide with unmatched fear. He noticed Rizzo looking back at him frantically, then to their dad, who was trying his best to calm her. He noticed something was wrong. Very wrong. He heard the garbled sound of a walkie-talkie, then only a minute later, the door opened and another officer entered.
Hazel was across the room in a shot. She was pleading with the officer, but something made her keep her distance, a few feet away from him, while he responded with a simple "There's nothing else we can do." He ignored every other attempt she made to stop him, and headed for the chamber at the back of the room. The heavy door was opened for him and Zephyr couldn't take his eyes off the window.
"Zephyr, don't-" Zynthia started but his ears were ringing now and he didn't hear anything else.
He had seen what that officer had in his hands. That wasn't a taser. That wasn't just a taser. He felt faint.
Hazel ran to the chamber, begging them not to hurt her son but another officer, as insensitively as it could be done, pushed her away. Zynthia pulled her into their embrace and she latched onto the both of them immediately. She ducked her head down to rest it against Zephyr's in an attempt to comfort him. In solidarity. They both loved Alonzo. They had both hoped letting him come here would save him but now, that hope was lost. He only just registered a smaller body colliding with them and guessed it was Lindzey, having figured out exactly what was about to happen to her brother. Hazel's hand left his shoulder and he assumed she was clinging to her daughter.
Zephyr choked on his tears. If it weren't for both his own mother, and Alonzo's, having their arms wrapped tightly around him, he would be on the other side of the room, banging his fists on the chamber door, trying to force it open any way he could, bre-
...
... Breaking his Z-band off himself. Anything, anything, if it could keep Alonzo alive.
But instead, he just wept. Zynthia had one hand in his hair and she was doing her best to comfort him but he was beyond that now. Hazel, on the other hand, didn't have the strength to speak; not even a whisper. Zephyr could feel her tear-glazed cheek pressed against his own and he could barely distinguish between his heavy, ragged breaths and hers. Then came the gunshot and suddenly the chamber fell silent. After about two seconds, the sound of a body hitting the floor echoed through the room. It was brief, muffled by the locked door, but it sounded painfully loud to his ears.
Zephyr definitely wouldn't open his eyes now. He didn't want to.
He never wanted to open his eyes ever again.