Trost was a small village in Southern Germany. Trost was on a very high hill that sloped into a valley. At the foot of the hills was a village called Heilige Maria, where the High school for the region had been located, as was the same for the train station, the medical clinic, the church, the graveyard... Most of those little local amenities had been located there in the little flat piece of land.
Everything had changed during the rising. Being surrounded by hills, the brunt of the villagers were killed right then and there. The church and its graveyard was built in one of the areas which did not have a hill at the back of it but rather a continuous stretch of flat land leading into the woods. This meant there was only one direction in which one could escape, at the very opposite end of the village, where much less people lived.
The government evacuated the survivors into the second largest village at the top of the hill, Trost, which received marginally less damage as the zombies seemed to suffer with the orienteering of the terrain. A large barbed wire fence with a current running through it was built around the village of Heilige Maria. Somehow, some zombies from the village would managed to get through the fence but were often killed almost immediately.
When neurotriptyline started its German trials, the scientists attempted to start a base in the old abandoned village, which was almost completely destroyed during the evacuations and the years of neglect that followed. The scientists and doctors worked in the school, and the medical clinic.
Mikasa remembered waking up in her geography classroom only it was dark and mouldy and instead of desks there were beds and she was wearing a straitjacket and then a voice she'd never heard before said "She's responding to the drug."
Mikasa thought about that moment a lot, especially whenever she took her neurotriptyline. A lot of PDS sufferers said that they remembered things from their rabid state -killing people, seeing things, rising- when they took their neurotriptyline. Mikasa had flashbacks of the first moment of clarity in her second life, instead of the predatory mindless rabid state.
She was doing the ironing, this morning, because it helped to take her mind off of the fact that things were different now. Before she had died, she used to do all the household chores, or help with them at least. It was how she showed the Jaegar family her gratitude.
However doing chores in this house didn't really help because it wasn't the house she'd done them in before. When she ironed she couldn't feel the steam or the heat of the iron. And when she ironed Eren's clothes she always noticed the 'FVL' patch on his shirt. The 'FVL', which stood for Freiwillige Verteidigern des Lebendigen (German for the "Voluntary Defenders of the Living.").
In this area the 'FVL' were heroes in their own right who still walked around with their guns attached to their belt loops and wore their army jackets over their clothes. Because of their intimidating demeanour no one told them they were out of line. They would sit in the local pub, complaining about all the liberties "rotters" had and their lack of reward for their participation in the war.
These kind of voluntary military groups had sprouted up all around the world during the rising, mostly in areas with a smaller population, which were considered less of a priority to the real army. In Southern France you could find the PVH, Protecteurs de la Vie Humaine. In the North of Britain there was the HVF, Human Volunteer Force. In small southern towns, rabid zombies found their revival cut short by the RRR, the Rabid Rotter Resistance. There were probably more, but these were the only groups Mikasa had heard of.
She'd seen a documentary about different PDS sufferers in three different countries settling back to normal life, each coming from areas where there were anti-undead groups were still around. She found it a small comfort, in knowing that whilst the 'FVL' were verbally abuse, they'd never had the guts to go round to an actual PDS sufferer's home and unload a gun into their head. A situation which had happened both in England and America.
She sighed before folding the clothes and then taking them up to the landing. After that, she went and checked the mail box. She noticed that there was a letter addressed to her and Eren from the government.
She sat down at the table and opened hers up, it read as follows.
"Dear Mikasa Ackerman,
You have been randomly selected for our re-integration scheme. You will be expected to enrol into The Central Ulm Gesamtschule. This is a new school, and building will reach completion by the end of July. On the 15thof August you will be expected to attend an open-day in order to get used to the school. You will also take an examination to decide whether you can take preparatory classes for college.
Mikasa stared at the letter for a few seconds. Really? They thought it was a good idea to enrol teenage zombies into a school in the centre of a city. Teenagers that were highly dangerous in an unmedicated state. Whatever, Mikasa thought. She wondered if Eren's letter said the same.
She knocked on Eren's door, letter in hand.
"Come in," he called. Mikasa entered and noticed her brother was sat wearing his 'FVL' jacket and playing 'Call of Duty: World at War – Zombies' on his Xbox 360.
"A letter came for you, I think it's from the government," she said. Eren paused his game and took the letter from his sister.
"Any idea what it's about?"
"I had one saying that they'rr enrolling me in a Gesamtschule in Ulm as part of an intergration project."
"I hope I don't have one of those. If any thing good came from all the dead people coming back to life, it was that I didn't have to go to school," Eren said as he pulled out his letter from the envelope. Mikasa felt like she should've been more offended by that comment than she actually was. She told herself he was just joking.
"Apparently, I'm going to some sort of thing for the work I did in the 'FVL'. I wonder if Levi got the same letter?"
"Probably."
"Hey, by the way, do you know where dad is?"
"I think he went to visit the Springer's, on a house call."
AN: yeah, so the 'In the Flesh' season 2 ending ripped my heart out but it was really good as well.
Reviews:
TodayParade: Thanks! You should definitely check out 'In the Flesh' it has a lot of socio-political commentary in it as well as well written charaters and interesting plots. Also in season 2 the main character, Kieren, starts dating another zombie called Simon and it's quite cute. Also if you Google Image search Luke Newberry, who plays Kieren, you'll find a compelling argument to watch the show.
Friend: Thank you!
chaosrin: Thanks! I have done a little more world building, but it's more an application of non-culturally affected facts from the 'In the Flesh'. The sghow is very interesting. A lot of the stuff in this isn't necessarily in the original program, such as all voluntary military groups except for the HVF. Yeah, I think I can get into the actual plot next chapter though.