How could the library have nothing?

Allen had managed to look over the entire library looking for a book on demons, searching casually at first before steadily deteriorating into a frenzy as more time and more shelving sections passed without producing what he wanted. By the end, he had absolutely scoured the library with nothing of substance to show for his efforts.

It was irritating too, as some books had gotten his hopes up. None of them had said demons on their spines or covers, but many of them did claim to be guidebooks or anthologies about monsters. They would surely have a section about demons in them, right? Wrong.

Search as he might, even the books that had their sections about creatures organized alphabetically skipped right over demons without giving them so much as a passing mention. There wasn't even a cliff note on Kanda's species between them all.

On the bright side, Allen told himself. I at least know what attacked me earlier.

A very commonly mentioned monster in the books was a grotesquely twisted and starved looking creature that was very much like the one Kanda had attacked back in the woods. It was a harpy.

The artist who drew the pictures in this one particular book was really good. The drawing was darkly shaded with sharp lines, giving the harpy on the pages a vicious expression. It even looked slightly scarier than the one he'd actually faced! Allen's blue eyes had scanned over the chapter's information, finding the information on those creatures rather surprising.

Harpies were apparently part of a class of monsters that had previously been human. The book writer hadn't been sure how humans could turn into harpies, just that it did happen though they gave off the impression that the creation of new harpies was a rare thing.

Harpies themselves were common to find, but not common in numbers. They hid in their caves during the afternoon and night, only coming out in the early morning and sometimes stayed out into the late morning. They seemed to be in a constant search for food and always looked emaciated, no matter how much they ate.

Humans had apparently not known for some time whether or not harpies could fly, but a few unlucky individuals reported seeing some of those creatures leaping off the ground into the sky. Harpies had also been sighted since then circling in the air like buzzards in small groups.

Harpies had the apparent reputation among humans as being dangerous, but also very cowardly. The text explained that this was because harpies actively avoided human civilizations and couldn't even be found in large groups amongst themselves, but these monsters were still known to be very vicious.

Human bodies had been found violently ripped apart by harpy claws, but people in groups of three or more have never been attacked by a lone harpy. There had been no recorded instance of that happening, anyway.

Reading this made Allen think back to his encounter with his harpy in the forest surrounding the house. So that was normal for them, then. Harpies were known for attacking lone humans separated from civilization. And . . . they seemed to eat people.

Allen got a quick flash in his mind's eye of his own body, eyes closed and chest ripped open, with bright red blood everywhere. Killed by a harpy.

His heart swelled with thankfulness for Kanda before he shook all of the thoughts regarding the attack from his mind the best he could. Well, all except for one.

Did this mean he was human?

It wasn't something he had allowed himself to dwell on before and he wouldn't allow himself to dwell on for too long, but he had wondered once or twice. What was he? He was made from human parts . . . did that make him human?

He had at first wondered if he was perhaps a zombie, only vaguely remembering the term and bare idea of it. Remembered it from where, he didn't know.

Lavi had quickly dispelled that idea during their walk, though, stating that he'd seen zombies before and Allen was not like one. Not at all. They were . . .

An idea shot through Allen's brain and he searched around for the creature books he had been reading, picking up each one as he found them. Only looking for information on demons and the creature that had attacked him, Allen had seen but not paid attention to the section on zombies. Recalling the brief interaction with Lavi, Allen found a renewed interest in them.

In fact, he suddenly thought it could be important to read what he could on all the monsters these books offered. He'd read about zombies and then he'd go back and read each of the books through.

Allen laid back in one of the library's comfy chairs with one of the books in his hands, the others set aside, and opened it to the chapter on zombies. It was an extra long chapter compared to the other monsters in the book, to Allen's surprise.

What the nearly ten pages the book dedicated to zombies amounted to was thus:

Zombies were, by far, the most common monster that mankind had ever come across. They could be found in singles often enough, but they most often came in hordes of nine or more. There was no regular horde size for zombies and they ranged from tens to hundred to sometimes thousands of individuals.

There had been occurrences in the past where individual towns were inexplicably beset by record-sized hordes (a size that the book could not or would not disclose). In these situations, the towns were sometimes under siege for several weeks worth of nights.

This last statement about the nights being worth several weeks had confused Allen at first. It just seemed like a strange or perhaps strangely specific thing to put in there. That is, until he got nearly right to the end of the chapter and found his explanation there.

Hordes of zombies were known among certain regions as "the mists" and that nickname was based on one of the more perplexing aspects of the zombie's behavior. A zombie disappeared at first light and reappeared, often in waves, and only reappeared again after the moon rose. Much like mist, to some people's minds.

Where they went to during the day, no one knew. Efforts by small groups of individuals to follow them to find out where they went only resulted in those individuals never being heard of again. Presumably dead.

Zombies were not the only creatures that were exclusively active at night, not by a long shot. Yet, they seemed to have no physical weaknesses to sunlight, but in small quantities. It was common for humans to venture outside of their homes at night and not come across a single zombie, much less a horde.

Still, like other monsters, zombies were a very present threat to a human's life and had collectively killed more humans in the last decade than could be counted. People venturing out at night for either work or leisure are the most at risk, but being inside shelter is no guarantee of safety from a zombie.

Zombies seemed to not be able to smell or they otherwise just had an exceptionally weak sense of smell. The creatures were only capable of making a very low hissing sound and affecting a slow, shambling walk. They completely lacked the ability to run or job and have never been seen moving forward using anything more than the slow walk. They smelled strongly of decay and death.

Humans could easily outrun a horde of zombies, but can just as easily be snuck up on by a single one or surrounded by a group of them. However, if humans in a dwelling found their home the subject of a zombie horde's attention, then they had better hope that the structure can withstand said attention.

Most could withstand a zombie attack for long periods, but some structures or just their doors might not be up to the task. In those cases, a group of zombies or even a single one of them could be able to break down the door or an especially weak wall in the course of one night.

This is due to some of the zombie's identifying characteristics being their strength and their tenacity. Not too many monsters are characterized by greatly enhanced strength, but zombies were one of them. In some rare cases it has been observed that a zombie could break solid oak doors by bashing their fist into the same few spots in the door and creating a massive weak point.

This is both helped and hurt by the fact that there seems to be no recognizable brain activity going on in zombies. Besides the abilities to recognize and prey on humans with the added ability to actively attack structures that protect humans from them, there is no evidence that zombies have ever used the ability to think or reason.

To this end, not being a thinking creature allows them to continue a sustained and unflinching attack until the sun comes up. Long past the point that another creature would have decided the effort futile and left in search of easier prey.

One of the many, many more intelligent creatures out there that preyed on humans could do things like looking for glass windows which would break easier with less force, hide quietly and hope that the humans they're hunting think they've left and lower their guard, or even mimic the voices of other humans in order to draw them out.

Zombies do not do this. They do not become quiet in the effort to lull their prey into a false sense of security and they did not care how accessible prey was. A human out in the open would probably be attacked first over one cowering their home even if both got the zombies attention, but zombies would never, ever actively look for easy prey. Simply prey.

Reading about them, Allen felt a vague but strong sense of unease. If someone were there in the library with him to ask why he found himself so unsettled by zombies now that he'd read of them and knew what they were, it would probably have been their lack of thought.

Allen could see now why Lavi had been able to state so easily that Allen was definitely not a zombie when he'd been asked about it. The boy might not . . . know what he was exactly or what it meant for him, but he wasn't a zombie. He could see that now.

Zombies were predators, but they didn't think. Like a gun that fired on its own but had no one to guide it. If nothing else, he thought way too much to be one of those.

There was, however, the last passage of the chapter that really got to Allen, even more so than the rest of the reading. It was short and simple, but said that zombies arose from the dead. They dug their ways out of shallow graves or shambled paths out of forests or other scenes of murders. Like many other monsters, no one knows how zombies are created, although various regions of human settlements had their own suspicions on how it happened.

And while everyone, everyone knew that zombies shambled off at first light in the morning even when they'd been in the middle of an attack only moments earlier, none could supply the answer to where the creatures went off to. As far as hunters could tell, no zombie ever returned to the place where it had awakened as a zombie, whether that be their family homes or their grave, once they left it.

Chillingly, some people had tried to follow groups of zombies to see where they disappeared off to during the daylight hours only to either completely lose track of the zombies and return to their towns just as confused as before or to be lost track of themselves and never be heard from again.

Harpies lived in caves, Bunyips lived in swamps, Manticores lived in jungles, and Zombies . . . no one knew.

Allen had so many questions at the end of it that he didn't know what to do with himself. Well, he knew he would have to read as much about these and other monsters as he could and try to commit as much information to memory as he could. That much he knew, but his brain was churning violently with all the questions he had after the reading.

Not only could he not stop thinking about where zombies disappeared off to, but he also found himself wondering where they came from. This book didn't answer these questions. How were they created, yes, but who were they before they died?

How did their families feel about their loved ones rising from the dead with a hunger for human flesh? Could children become zombies? What would these people have thought about what they would become? Truly, who were these people before they had died.

Who had he been . . .

. . . before he'd died?