Crimson Flood

Mayuri slaved away over his creations...His Adam and Eve. So far the prototypes had proven to be rather useful to him. Not only were they instinctually aggressive towards their inferior counter-parts, but the encounters with the two young women had proven that they had also retained their memories throughout the resurrection process. They were also remarkably fast and their strength was quite incredible. The only downside was their physical decay and their mental instability.

Mayuri had run through the problem endlessly in his head, slaving over the issue. After all, if the Kurosaki boy and Kuchiki girl were to lead humanity's next stage of evolution, they would have to be able to think clearly and solve complex problems much like their inferior predecessors and their physical condition left much to be desired. Their open wounds could become horribly infected and gangrenous and render them useless. He could not allow that to happen.

He leaned back in his chair and stared at his Eve. She was chained to the wall via a leash around her neck. She was behaving well at the moment and she sat on her haunches expectantly, her blank white eyes observing her master with childlike curiosity. Her delicate skin had become ruptured with open sores and wounds. Sickening blue veins were visible through the milky white flesh of her cheeks and her hair was falling out in places leaving her hideously raw and flaking scalp to be seen. She had lost so much weight since her heart stopped beating and now her shihakusho clung to her like a loose rag.

Mayuri stroked his chin and groaned. He decided upon a hypothesis that he very much desired to test...But there was the slight fear that it would erase the evolutionary process and render her a regular human being again. If she were to be resurrected to her original state then his dream would be shattered. He could not allow that to happen either. Mayuri reached into his coat and retrieved something. He grinned at it and then looked to his test subject. "Come here Eve...I have something for you..." His wicked, toothy grin spread as Rukia obediently limped towards her master.

Hunger...Confusion...Hunger again...It was all she could feel. The hunger was strong. The hunger would not leave, not until she was fed...Not until she felt the ecstasy of blood dripping down her parched throat or the rich, live-giving flesh of the mortals. It gave her a pleasure she had never felt during her first life. She had never even thought of what fresh human tasted like, let alone the immense rush of endorphins which washed through her body with every bite. She could only think of the hunger now. Nothing else had meaning except the hunger.

She had not felt pain in a long time...She knew that she should feel pain, but her entire body was numb to the concept now. In fact she was numb to just about everything she once knew. That was why...To feel something, anything at all she had to feed. If the only things in life she could ever feel were hunger and the joy it brought, then of course she would strive to appease that hunger.

The man with the funny face was staring at her. He did that a lot. He spoke to her in words she no longer comprehended and made expressions she could not interpret. When he looked at her it meant he wanted her to stay put, or to come closer. He would hit her if she chose wrong, but she never felt him strike her. She wasn't sure who he was, though he seemed familiar from her past life in some way...She did not know much about him, but he was the first person she saw when she was awakened. She had stared at him for a long hard while, clawing away at the solid air in an attempt to reach him and sink her teeth into his neck. The hunger was there as soon as she was awakened.

But now she wasn't very hungry. She had eaten her fill on her trip outside earlier. Two children, one only young and the other in his teens. She saw no faces however, merely arteries choked with nourishing blood and delicious meat. She swooped down upon them and buried her head deep inside the girl's chest cavity, gnawing away at the sinewy tissue around her heart and gulping down the thick torrents of red water which pumped out of it even after she had ripped the girl to shreds. Her skin was not very tasty, so she kept to the innards. Funny how offal disgusted her in her past life and yet now it was more satisfying than a chocolate cake.

She remembered things every now and then. Not much...But little things. She recognised her friend Ichigo. She remembered what she used to look like. She remembered chocolate cake. She still couldn't recall her name however. That was annoying. She also forgot how to speak, a shame. She had many questions to ask.

On her trip outside she also remembered something else. She saw some old friends form her past life. Alice and Karin. They were still alive. That mad her feel a gentle tingle, possibly happiness but she wasn't sure anymore. She could smell them and their living, thriving tissue and it had made her drool, but something inside of her made her refrain from attacking. Maybe her heart had woken up at that moment?

Now, as she stared at her master and a little object in his pale hands. It reminded her of something she had always hated...Needles. Her memory sparked up once again and she glared at the syringe. Regardless however of her distaste towards them she was beckoned forth by her master. She had to obey or she might not be fed. She was desperately hungry now. Just moments before she was full, but the hunger was like that. It hit suddenly and when it did it was a craving that made her entire body itch and burn with desire.

And so she approached her master and the shiny needle. She stopped when the chain around her neck went too tight. She remembered chains. The man grabbed her arm and his hands felt cold. It made her body tingle with something that was probably fear in her past life. She stared at the needle which he pressed into her skin. It made a strange sound, like tearing paper. She saw blood, but it was her own and so it did not satisfy her urge. There was something magical about mortal blood. Living blood was swimming with energy and it was that that she craved. The needle was pressed down into her arms, her half-empty veins and as the plunger went down she felt it surge through her. It felt strange, foreign even... She didn't like it. She wanted it to stop. She let out the only noise she could make, a long mournful howl that sounded like a dying hound. She remembered dogs. She didn't care. She just wanted the needle to go away!

She tried to swat it away but then she saw her hand. The big red lines and holes had filled in on the back of her hand. The veins disappeared under her pale skin and the tears and wounds were starting to go away as well...

The master was laughing now, laughing like a mad scientist from a movie she had watched with Ichigo once...She remembered the nights she spent with Ichigo. It made her feel something...It actually made her feel something. She could feel? She could feel! The numbness was abandoning her! The hunger was receding. Then the pain hit her. Pain returned with a vengeance.

Rukia dropped to the cold wet floor and screamed. Her scream sounded wrong...It sounded...Almost human...

Karin looked around and frowned. She had been washed down the tunnel when she fell and now she was lost. She tried calling out to her friends but the only replies were the baying cried of the undead. She crawled along a cement embankment and wandered down a narrow opening which led out into another tunnel, parallel to the first. She followed it to an intersection which joined back to the first. She looked down the hall and saw a fragment of a ladder several metres off of the ground. The hatch above it was cracked and there was hole large enough for her to crawl through. She approached the ladder and stared up at it, wondering just how she was going to get up there. She tried jumping from a crouch, then run-ups but none of it worked. She tried kicking off of the walls but that was just as useless.

After twenty minutes of fruitless attempts she stopped to rest. She took in her surroundings and realised there was a large gap in the ground. She moved closer and stared at the great chasm. The water. From the first half of the tunnel was condensed through narrower tunnels which led into the chasm and then beyond that where Karin stood was where it continued. The layout of the system was a mystery to her and she shook her head in confusion.

The stagnant pool that filled the chasm was filled with unimaginable terrors. Rotting corpses, many of them in pieces littered the murky water. An arm floated past and bumped into a torso with one leg attached. A fleshless head rolled about between to eviscerated bodies. Organs bobbed up and down on the surface like horrendous bath toys. Karin would have looked away, where it not for the familiar face she saw intermingled between the sea of death.

"N-no..." She whimpered. She stared down at the body and screamed, "Alice!"

It was definitely her. She wasn't moving, just floating on the surface. She had large black stains on her front and Karin assumed the worst. She fell to her knees and sobbed. She let out a tortured squeal and wept uncontrollably, her eyes too clouded with tears to take notice of Alice stirring in the water below. She didn't see Alice's eyes open either, but she did hear the scream.

Karin moved to the edge of the pool and stared in disbelief at her friend. She cried out to her and offered a hand. Alice tried to swim through the sea of death but stopped entirely when she came across the corpse of the soldier, Ryan. The back of his skull had been split open like a ripe melon and now everything within had turned a sickly pale colour. Alice kicked and screamed and swam away from it.

It took a dreadfully long time for Alice to reach the edge of the chasm and even then she was too far down to reach Karin's outstretched hand. They both strained with the effort but they still could not reach. Karin leaned forward until she was about to fall in, digging her fingers into the decaying cement while extending her other hand.

Alice took a deep breath and ducked under the water before pushing her self up out of the water in an attempt at a jump. Their fingers brushed against each other but they could not get a grip. Alice cursed and tried again but once more it came within a hairs breadth of succeeding but still to no avail. She had to stop and catch her breath after that and Karin waited, keeping her hand out for her the whole time.

Alice dragged herself up onto the bloated corpse of a fat man and used him as like a pool inflatable. She slowly stood up and quickly lost her balance but as she fell forward she jumped. She grabbed hols of Karin's arm but almost dragged her down into the pit with her. Karin was forced down onto her stomach and she grabbed a hold of her friend with both hands using what little strength she had left to haul her up. Alice was still short of reaching the top and Karin was showing signs of strain. She wouldn't be able to keep her up for much longer.

"Hang on!" Alice cried trying to lift herself up at the same time. She reached out towards the edge of the chasm and only just wrapped her fingertips over it. Karin pulled harder and se finally managed to get a grip on the edge. She helped lift herself up while Karin assisted. It took a painfully long time but they managed to get her up onto solid ground and the two of them fell on their backs and panted heavily.

"You're alive." Karin wheezed.

"That's my line..." Alice rasped back, her chest rising and falling wildly.

"What happened?" Karin asked.

Alice looked to her and coughed. "Long story short...I killed Jaws..."

Karin's jaw dropped and she fell silent, quietly admiring such an impossible feat. Alice crawled closer and hugged the young girl. "I'm so glad you're safe...I was so scared..."

The two lay there for some time, oblivious to the world and also the monsters that were drawing upon them from further up the tunnel...

Shurin stumbled down the upper tunnels alone, working his way through the labyrinth by intuition. He kept looking back to see if anyone else managed to make it, but by now he was certain that they were all dead. That stupid girl had doomed them all, but he showed her. He wasn't going to die because of some dumb little kid stuffing around! And so what if Ryan and the others were dead? Now he had more rations. Now he had more weapons. He would get what he deserved.

The smell of the sewer seemed to be getting worse. Shurin crinkled his nose and cursed. "God, we should have salvaged some air fresheners as well..." He shook his head and moved on, weaving through the interconnecting tunnels. He passed yet another of the endless junctions and came to a large section of wall which had eroded over time. A flimsy iron gate hung on a single hinge, the other snapped long ago. Shurin passed through the gate and waited thirty seconds while a series of flame jets went off and incinerated anything within a small section of the hall ahead. When it was done he passed through the blackened section of the tunnel and into a large open area which had been built up a like a fortified town.

The flame jets had been Ryan's doing. His training in the SAS had come in handy for setting traps. He wandered through the town and called out, "I'm back!" He waited for a response but the townspeople were silent. That was odd. There were at least thirty other survivors in the shanty-town. Usually when the salvage teams returned they were treated like war heroes with their own little parade.

Oh well, Shurin wasn't in the mood for socialising anyway. There would be questions to answer about his missing team-mates...Questions he did not want to answer. Instead he went back to his home, a small shack built out of broken pieces of colour bond fences. He passed through the front door and noticed the shadow of something sitting in the corner.

"Hey!" Shurin roared and the intruder looked up. It was a little girl, with long brown hair and a stained pink dress. She eyed him curiously and then looked away again, bowing her head. "Hey!" Shurin repeated, "What are you doing in my house? If you've stolen anything I swear I will-"

The girl let out a horrible squeal and suddenly went under a table. She started crawling around and somehow she managed to reach the opposite side of the room in the blink of an eye. Shurin followed her with his eyes and laid eyes on the girl as she stepped into the light. That was when his jaw dropped.

The 'girl' had distorted limbs that bent the wrong way and jutted out to the side, like a lizard. Her fingers were far too long and there was a mess of parasites eating their way through her stomach. She roared at him and lunged, leaping an impossible distance with her freakishly mutated legs.

Shurin slammed the butt of his rifle into her face, knocking her flat on her back and she bleated like a lamb. "You fucking monster! How did you get in here?"

The girl responded with a second lunge and Shurin ducked out of her path, firing blindly. The shot penetrated her left thigh and she skidded and ran into the couch. As he lined up another shot he overheard moaning coming from outside. He cautiously looked out the window and saw rotting faces pressing up against the window, clawing sluggishly at the glass.

"Oh no...Oh god no..."Shurin backed away, into the wall. The lizard-girl reared up for another jump just as the front door was pushed open by a surge of the undead. The room was filled with writhing, rotting corpses in only a matter of second and Shurin was pushed up against the wall, with no more space to run. He cursed under his breath and loaded the rifle. He roared like an animal and fired, blowing the right side of an old woman's face off. He then shot a young police man in the throat. The next shot went through two of the ghouls, passing straight through the skull of the first and erupting deep within the brain matter of the second.

"Fuck you! Die! Die!" Shurin roared, desperately shooting into the growing mass of the dead. The entire colony had turned and there were more of them now. They had snuck in somehow and now the town was crawling with them. All hope was lost...

Shurin cursed and used the rifle as a club, knocking the front-runners back a few steps. Then he put the turned the barrel on himself. "No...I won't let them have me...I won't become one of you monsters! I won't allow it! Never, you hear me? Never!" He placed the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The gunshots only drew more of the undead.

Meanwhile, Alice and Karin were awakened by the gunshots. They both shot up and jumped to their feet, just as a horde of the undead closed in upon them. They stared at the ocean of shuffling zombies and they searched for weapons that they did not have. Then they saw the ladder. It was their only way out...But the undead were already beneath it...the two girls looked to each other and nodded gravely. They both took deep breaths and then they charged.

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