[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]

Man you are weird.

[He's rolling his eyes too.

Once he puts the stuff away, he'll go over and peer over the edge of the roof to see how many zombies are down there.]

...it'll be night soon. Think we should risk trying to get home?

[very_sorry]

YES, JOHN. IT'S A WONDERFUL IDEA TO TRAVERSE ENEMY TERRITORY THAT'S CROWDED WITH MASSES OF UNDEAD CREATURES THAT CAN SEE IN THE DARK JUST FINE. LET'S GO FOR IT.

[Fucking idiot.]

[windyheir]

Well it's no good staying up here, they can probably smell us up here!

[Not that the undead can get them up there, but it's going to be a hell of a time getting down tomorrow.]

[very_sorry]

THEY PROBABLY KNOW WE'RE HERE ANYWAY. JUST SAYING.

[windyheir]

And I don't have enough bullets for all of them. Do you?

[John kept a small-caliber pistol with one clip of bullets for emergencies, but since bullets were so rare he had to save them. That was why he had taken up his hammer in the first place: hammers didn't need to be reloaded.]

[very_sorry]

I DON'T HAVE ANY BULLETS.

[He sighed in aggravation. It was probably best for them to leave now, yeah. The daytime was even worse for him than it was for the undead.]

WHATEVER. FINE. LET'S JUST GET OUT OF HERE I GUESS.

[To him either idea was awful, so it didn't really matter.]

[windyheir]

Good, glad you agree. The village is only a couple-

[And then he stopped suddenly, because he realized just what he was saying. He had been planning on dragging Karkat back to the village he lived in. The human village. The human village full of humans who hated trolls.]

...this might not work out so well. Uh. Can you get back to your troll village before night falls?

[very_sorry]

NO, AND I'M NOT GOING THERE EITHER SO IT DOESN'T MATTER.

[He got up, walking over to retrieve his sickle.]

I'M STAYING IN THE TUNNEL.

[windyheir]

The tunnel? But that's not too safe when the zombies can just follow you there, is it?

[Karkat don't be stupid you have to live damnit!!1]

And you should be around people anyway, just to make sure you don't....you know.

[There's no polite way to say it, but Karkat DID get wounded by zombies. Humans didn't have to worry about it, but trolls could contract the virus.]

[very_sorry]

ALL THE MORE REASON TO STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM THEM, RIGHT?

[He didn't want to think about getting infected, but if it did happen, wouldn't being around the others just infect them too?]

BESIDES IT'S NOT AS DANGEROUS AS IT SEEMS. THAT'S USUALLY WHERE I HIDE OUT ANYWAY.

[windyheir]

But you should still be around people, just in case you start bleeding more, or you get sick or something. At least around humans you won't have to worry about infecting them if you did catch something, right?

[Even if the other survivors don't accept Karkat, John can't just leave him alone there, not while he's hurt. He feels a burning need to help him somehow.]

[very_sorry]

LOOK. I'm not going back to your stupid human colony. You know what would happen if they found me. Don't even act like there's a chance they'd let me live.

[Besides, he'd still rather die than turn to the humans for help.]

And I'm not going back to the fucking troll hideout either. If I'm infected, then that's it for me. I'll just live for as long as I can.

[windyheir]

What if I sneak you in? I mean yeah there's a wall around it but there's not enough people there to keep a constant guard on all sides. It wouldn't be that hard to sneak you in under some hay or something.

[And then he could hide...somewhere. baby steps, Karkat.]

[very_sorry]

HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY IT BEFORE IT GETS THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULL? I DON'T WANT ANY HELP FROM HUMANS.

I ALREADY TOOK MORE HELP FROM YOU THAN I SHOULD HAVE. LET'S JUST GET OUT OF HERE AND NEVER SPEAK TO EACHOTHER AGAIN.

[windyheir]

[He stops there for a moment, frustrated, trying to think of some way to get Karkat to agree with him. Because even if Karkat's reasons are valid, John still won't take no for an answer.

And then it hits him.]

Well fine, I guess you'll just have to pass up all that free food. FRESH free food, even; we have gardens and stuff.

[very_sorry]

...

[God dammit.]

ONE. NIGHT. I'M LEAVING AS SOON AS THE DAWN COMES.

[If he's going to die, he should at least have a last meal, right?]

[windyheir]

[Even one night means a yes!!1 So John looks gleeful for a moment there.]

Don't worry, you won't regret it!

[And He'll go ahead and grab his bag again, because they're going to need to hustle to make it back before dark. Even now they're gonna have to dodge zombies to get there.]

[very_sorry]

[He rolled his eyes a bit, but otherwise started making his way down the ladder. He couldn't afford to get hit again. Hell, he might be screwed as-is.]

[windyheir]

[Actually they were both screwed, and they just didn't know it.

Fortunately, the fight back to the human village wasn't too terrible. There were a couple zombies, but John easily took care of them with his hammer. He was skilled with it, from years of practice, and all of the zombies fell quickly.

But as they reached the village, John noticed something. Normally there were guard posted along the high, patchwork walls around the village. They also kept spotlights up there, so they could shine them down on zombies to stun them if need be. But the spotlights were unmanned, and nobody was on the walls. Hell, there was no ambient lighting coming from the village at all.

The only light source was coming from a group of zombies, which were slowly moving towards the walls. For some reason, there was a light flickering red and blue within the group, which John thought was odd because he hadn't seen a light show like that before.

He also didn't notice that most of the zombies in that group were floating slightly off the ground.]

What in the world...?

[very_sorry]

[Karkat knew those lights. He knew them very, very well. The lights alone were indication that they were in deep shit. He took a step back, then quietly tried to talk to John.

Quietly was a term used loosely. As quiet as he could muster.]

John.

We need to get out of here.

[windyheir]

[John was scared. Whatever was going on, it was enough to frighten Karkat even, or at least make him suddenly want to run. He hadn't encountered a telekinetic zombie before, though he had heard stories. If he knew that this was one of those zombies, he would be shitting himself.

As it was, he knew he had to do something about these zombies, since they were moving in on the village.]

No, we have to fight them! There's innocent people in there, kids even! We can't just leave them to face whatever that is.

[very_sorry]

[Karkat was already nervous. Now he was getting annoyed on top of it all.]

JOHN THEY'RE ALREADY DEAD. And if we don't leave we're going to die too.

[windyheir]

They're not dead, they're just hiding. The zombies are on THIS side of the wall, duh.

[See it totally makes sense.

Also he's getting his hammer out to go smash some zombies. The poor boy doesn't know what he's getting into.[

[very_sorry]

[Wow okay. He can't believe he has to do this.

He grabbed John by his fucking arm and began running. He would explain it to him when they were safe. He had to act fast before John got them spotted.]

[windyheir]

[Whoops suddenly John was being dragged away, despite his best protests.]

Karkat, stop! I have to fight those stupid things! What the hell is your problem anyway?!

[But it was night, and there were zombies all around, not just in that group. No matter which-way Karkat turned, there would be at least a few undead.]