[closed] zombiestuck

[windyheir]

[April 13th, 2009. That was the day everything changed. Nobody expected the sudden invasion from the skies, and within a year the invading aliens had taken control of a good portion of the planet. These creatures with grey skin and orange horns were absolute terrors on the battlefield, and no human army could even compare to their destructive capability.

That was why the remains of the American government decided to make the virus. They knew no army on Earth stood a chance against such a fearsome army, so they decided to turn to chemical warfare instead. No matter how strong the alien army was, even they would fall to disease. By late 2011 they had designed a virus that only killed off trolls, while leaving humans unaffected. The world had its secret weapon.

November 11th, 2011. 11/11/11 day. It was meant to be the turning point in the war, where the American military would unleash their fearsome disease on trollkind, killing them all off within a matter of weeks. Indeed, it seemed to work at first, and trolls began dying off by the thousands. They were dying so quickly that the Condescension, the leader of all trolls, had to continuously send new waves of trolls to Earth to fill in the spots for the front line soldiers as they died. Still, the virus seemed to be working, and all of humanity bundled themselves in to try to wait for the trolls to give up and leave.

But then, as the bodies accumulated on the battlefield, something terrible happened. Nobody knew why it happened, but some of the dead trolls began to rise again. Their bodies were dead, their souls were gone, but somehow they were able to move and attack. And when they attacked, they didn't just kill humans. they devoured them. And they attacked and killed other trolls too, and those trolls who were killed by their own dead rose again as well. spreading this mutation of the sickness.

Zombie trolls proved to be much, much harder to fight than regular ones. While normal trolls stopped fighting if they were fatally wounded, zombie trolls would continue to fight until their bodies were either burned or blown to bits. At first the Condescension tried to fight the zombification, telling her best scientists to find a cure. But after years of trying, no cure could be found, so the Condescension pulled her forces out and left in 2014, a mere five years after her initial invasion.

She didn't take all of her trolls with her, though. Any troll who had ever been planet-side was left behind, and all of their space-traveling vehicles were destroyed. She would not risk any chance of the sickness going along with her when she left. As far as she was concerned, the displaced and zombified trolls were now the problems of Earth.

It is now 2019. Roughly thirty million humans and seventy million trolls remain alive on Earth. Those numbers continue to dwindle every day, as the hundred million survivors of Earth have to combat countless zombies, each more fearsome than the last. Some are fast. Some have telekinetic powers. Some can control the minds of animals, other trolls, and even humans. All of them want just one thing: the flesh of the living.

John Egbert had only been 13 when the invasion started. He had been far too young to play any kind of role in the war, and afterwards all he could do was survive. Most of his friends had fallen out of contact when the invasion had started. His one remaining relative, his loving father, had fallen to the zombies years ago. All alone in the world, John had continued to survive in what remained of Seattle, making a home in the small, walled-off area that held all of the survivors from the western coast of the United Stated. It used to be a suburb of Seattle, actually, and the mayor of the settlement had been the mayor of Seattle when civilization had fallen.

They couldn't hide behind the wall forever, though. They could grow food and sustain life inside the walls, but when anything special was needed someone had to go out into the remains of Seattle and hope to find what they were looking for.

That is why John Egbert is currently sneaking through the empty streets, his trusty hammer on his back and his two pistols in his belt. He is trying to recover a spare part for one of the generators, and he has to make it to one of the many hardware stores and back before the sun sets. Being midday, the zombies are all inside, hiding from the harsh rays of sunlight. One of the lucky breaks humanity had gotten was that trolls seemed to hate sunlight, so zombie trolls instinctively kept to the shadows. John is taking advantage of that, and he hopes to make it home before any zombies come out to bother him.

But is he truly alone?]

Comments

[windyheir]

You know, your mom and dad! The people who make you and raise you.

[Maybe the trolls had a different word for it. Karkat had to have parents, where else would he have come from?]

[very_sorry]

You have a word for that?

...They do both of those things?

[windyheir]

Well yeah, why not? It's not like babies can take care of themselves.

[very_sorry]

What the hell does babies mean? Is that like grubs?

[windyheir]

I guess so, if grubs are babies.

[...]

Wait, so do you guys just...raise yourself?

[very_sorry]

OF COURSE NOT. That's just stupid.

Our lusus raise us. Mostly.

[windyheir]

What's a lusus?

[Maybe trolls were way different from humans after all, at least as far as parenting went.]

[very_sorry]

It's this guardian creature that watches after us, and raises us until we're old enough to leave the planet. If your lusus dies, you're pretty much fucked.

[windyheir]

Well that's what a parent is. Though it's kinda weird to call your parent a creature, isn't it? I mean, parents are just like us, except older. I know I wouldn't want my hypothetical future kids to call me a 'guardian creature.'

[very_sorry]

What the hell are you talking about?

Are you saying your adults actually raise the wrigglers? Jesus, no wonder you people weren't prepared for an invasion.

[windyheir]

I think the fact that our technology was way behind yours had more to do with that. Haven't you ever heard about what a mother bear does?

[very_sorry]

A what?

[windyheir]

You know, a big bear! The mom bear kicks the asses of anyone who messes with her cubs, because you don't mess with bear cubs unless you want to be mauled to death.

Humans are like that too, especially moms. Dads are kind of like that too but moms are worse.

[very_sorry]

Yeah, we have something that does that.

Our lusus.

[windyheir]

You keep using that word but I'm not seeing how it's different from a parent.

[very_sorry]

You described a parent as the one who made you, right?

Lusus don't do that.

[windyheir]

Oh! So you guys all get alien-adopted or something.

[He's not sure why trolls would adopt other troll children, but whatever. Cultural differences.]

Sometimes that happens here, if someone's mom and dad dies or if they can't live with their parents, but usually it doesn't.

[very_sorry]

Really?

Huh.

The only lusii I've seen since I got here weren't living in human lawnrings.

[They lived out in the wilderness. Which also made sense, but...]

[windyheir]

Well humans all over aren't really living in places they used to.

[He didn't know what a lawnring was, but he figured it was some kind of word for a house.]

Say, you said you leave your home planet eventually. What happens to your lusus when you do that? Do they go with you?

[very_sorry]

No they don't go with us.

I honestly don't know what happens to them.

[windyheir]

Really?

[Now that's kind of shocking. Even if they weren't quite the same thing, John would have thought that trolls would miss their parents. Or their lusus, supposedly.]

You don't ever think about your dad- your lusus?

[very_sorry]

Of course I do! He was the best. He'd bring me meals, ward off any predators, we'd celebrate the holidays together...

Sure he was a bit easy to piss off, but he was great. You'll never find a better lusus even if you tried.

[windyheir]

[It was hard to imagine a bloodthirsty race like the trolls doing things like cooking and celebrating holidays. John had spent his teenage years in a world that dehumanized them and made them 'the other.' He had a lot of assumptions he had to get over before he would truly understand Karkat.

But even if he doesn't understand, he can still empathize.]

I bet he was.

[It might sound like it could be sarcastic, but there was no malice in John's voice.]

And hey, if he was back on your home planet, then he didn't get mixed up in this mess, right? So he's safe and sound.

[very_sorry]

As long as some other troll or lusus hasn't culled him, yeah.

But he's pretty tough. I'd like to think he's still okay out there.

[windyheir]

Yup! And who knows, maybe you even have a little brother or something.

[Adult trolls were frightening, but maybe child ones were less so.]