CHAPTER 1

I'm not Marion anymore. No, I've left Marion behind along with everything that happened in Australia.

I've been through twice what everybody else here has. I've been abducted by aliens and fought off their zombie fish. I survived near to the end of an alien invasion and a zombie outbreak. Then I died.

Somehow I was reborn. I came back, but everything was back to normal, for a while anyway. Then everything started back up again with another zombie outbreak and for the second time, I was killed.

But I got a new lease on life yet again. Unfortunately, I found myself trapped in a cage filled with the undead. Not exactly something you'd want to wake up to.

Regardless, I fought them all off and left Australia and my old name far behind and moved out to Mexico. As far as I can tell, the aliens that turned all those people into the living dead never returned.

That's not to say the zombie problem was gone. Something else came along, I've been told this was man made, and it has the same effect as the alien attack. Only this problem isn't confined by alien walls. It spread through the U.S. and into Canada and Mexico.

From there it probably spread through Mexico into South America and over seas to Europe and Asia through planes and boats. As far as we know, the entire world is infected.

I held up in the old ruins of Tulum, Mexico against the Pacific Ocean.

Weeks after the initial outbreak hit Mexico, a band of survivors flew into Tulum. Well, crashed is more like it. But since then, we've fixed up the place from ruins to an impenetrable fortress. I've been put in control of the prisoners we found just last week.

One of them goes by the name of Lionel Cosgrove, say's he's from New Zealand. Cherry found him in the middle of the desert, huddled around that lawnmower of his in a pool of blood and limbs. He doesn't know how we got there, just keeps putting all of the blame on the star and the moon and the 'dark forces'.

Our other prisoner is a loudmouth. Calls himself Ash, says he's a king. Apparently he's dangerous because Cherry apprehended him with such force. These two have been locked up for two or three days now, under my watch.

And that is my tale up to today. Not Marion's tale, I'm not Marion anymore. I am Torgo and I look after this place.


Torgo made his way down the old steps of the Tulum ruins to where the prisoners where being kept. It was a room with three walls of stone and a fourth of barbed wire. The ceiling had obviously crumbled away many years ago. Torgo was limping across the stone floor, he'd pulled a muscle the other day clearing some stone in the prisoner chamber.

He reached the prisoners' room and was greeted by the voice of Ashley J. Williams.

"Listen gimpy, you don't know who I am do you? I am the chosen one. The one written about in that fancy smancy Necronomicon book, the king. So just let me out of here, take down your barbed wire wall and let me go, and I'll cut you some slack."

As unfazed as Cherry was when she first encountered Ash, Torgo simply limped off the way he came. Lionel turned himself towards Ash and said, "That's not exactly the right way to get out of here is it? Keep acting violent and cocky and when you do get out of here, if you do, you just might be dead."

Ash retorted, "Yeah pal, you're definitely one to preach about violence. Now remind me Slingblade, who's the one who was found in a pile of arms and legs with a bloody lawnmower?"

Lionel didn't respond to this. Instead, he grabbed hold of the star and moon hung around his neck and turned his back to Ash.

And for a week or so things went very similar to that. Torgo would come, sometimes to check on the prisoners, other times to bring them food. Pieces of bread, small cups of water. Sometimes a piece or two of fish. And everytime he came Ash had less and less to say to him, although he never completely gave up. Lionel would kindly tell Torgo thanks and that he appreciated whatever he was given.

On the sixteenth day of being imprisoned, they heard gunshots. They thought they heard a couple every now and again but they sounded far off. This time, they sounded close. For a half an hour following the first shot, the air was filled with nothing but gunfire. At times, screams were heard but they were drowned out by the guns anyway.

The shooting slowed down as time progressed until it stopped completely. The rest of that day and the next, no one visited Ash or Lionel. Both were thinking desperately of a way to escape their tomb. The walls were too high for them to get up even if they stood on each other's shoulders. The floor was made of stone and couldn't be dug through and neither wanted to have a chance with the barbed wire.

Towards the end of their third day of solitude, when Ash and Lionel had both given up for the day on their escape plan, they heard uneven footsteps on the stone outside. They both looked up to see Torgo standing outside the prison. He had in his right hand an insane mechanism comprised of three shotguns rigged together to fire all with the pull of a single trigger. In his left hand he held Ash's dufflebag and Lionel's lawnmower was slung over his shoulder.

"Their going to break through our barrier relatively quickly. Its only a matter of days. As we speak, Cherry and the couple others left are getting everything ready for when we leave. We're moving down south, hopefully we can find better shelter or transportation, anything. You two are coming with us but the first bit of trouble you give us, you're dead."

Torgo ripped down the barbed wire and throw Ash the dufflebag. In a matter of seconds Ash had his boomstick in it's holster and his metal hand reattached to his arm. Torgo unslung the lawmower off his shoulder and dropped it down. Lionel walked over to it, clutching his necklace in his hand and picked it up. He primed it a couple times just 'cause and slung it onto his back.

When they were equipped and ready, Torgo lead them to the rest of the Tulum survivors.