Dust Collectors

The ground is wet from the blood rain. Your father did what he could manage to clean it up, yet it's still creeping into the edges of the blanket..

No one had fun yesterday. This is a conclusion you've drawn based on the faces surrounding you: Your mother, cuts on both her hands, blood smeared from her brow to her chin. She looks scared, yet relieved. You don't know this, but she's glad that you're still here. Your father, he's brewing canned soup over the campfire. You're not quite perceptive enough to figure out if the sweat on his forehead is from the fire, or from the events prior. Laila. A stray survivor, kind, she assisted your parents in fending off the ruthless hoard. You don't know much about her yet, but she looks tired.

You don't understand why it made everyone so upset.

"Mummy, Dad?"

They perk their heads at your call. Your mother does so hastily, your father does so wearily.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Yes, dear." Your mother nods;

You sit playing with the cuddly alien in your hands for a moment, thinking of how to word your question in just the right way.

You're looking at him, Bob The Alien, that was the name you gave him after all. You don't remember if that was always his name, yet you remember when you used to bring him to the sandpit outside your house. You remember bringing him to bed with you. You remember your first mother telling you that she made him.

You can't recall any zombies in these memories.

"Was the world always this way?"

Your mother and father are trading glances. Your mother doesn't want to try and answer this question, she's not comfortable with the subject right now, and is much too tired for any meaningful conversation.

Your father, however;

"No. Night time was once peaceful."

"Did something happen?"

You ask this question knowing that it is, somewhat, grounded in ignorance that you don’t even possess. You know something happened, something must have happened, you just don’t know what could have caused such a drastic change. A change that you only know to be in the people around you, how they view the world, and how they react. Memories of the world before are dim, you only remember the feeling.

You're a child, lucky to have survived yesterday but you don't even know it. You're too young, but your father isn't the type to pretty up reality, even for you. He thinks it's important to be brutally honest, your mother is yet to convince him otherwise.

Now, “did something happen?”

"Something isn't the way to describe it. I don't like calling it an apocalypse, it doesn't do enough to justify what daily life has become. This is the worst, that's what it is."

He takes a moment to part his attention from the soup. This moment, it's a priority to him.

You can remember a big wall of smoke booming at you, you can remember these big orange splits in the ground. You remember people screaming, hiding and running away.

"Was there a war?"

"No there was not, that's the worst part. If there was a war then there'd be a story to show for all the loss. We don't get that satisfaction. The nuke was launched by one, absolute man. Nobody knows his motive, he coulda been a terrorist, hated the country, some insane mass murderer. I don't know, all I know is that it killed him that day."

You don’t know what a few of those words mean yet, but you manage to grasp the general idea.

"How do you know?"

"Because he's the worst of them now."

It's cold.

Your father leans you against him. He pulls your blanket up over your head, like a hood, trying to keep you comfortable despite the freezing wind that night.

"They're calling it The Bomber, the deadliest zombie anyones ever seen. They say it massacres its victims, that every encounter with the damn thing is like fighting off an entire blood moon at once. It can breathe fire-"

"-Like a dragon?" A reply only a 6 year old could barge in with.

Laila, the stray survivor chimes in.

"Yes Bailey, like a dragon. But unlike a dragon it can make weapons."

"You know about The Bomber?" Your father raises a brow at her

Laila crosses her legs. "Not much, but I've heard a little. I've heard it can make knives, and use them too."

"I heard it chars its victims, 'never leaves a body behind. Not even scraps."

You don't understand. "Are we in danger?"

Your father shakes his head.

"No, there are people much braver than us who are keeping us safe."

“Really?" Laila asks.

"They're calling themselves ParaBomber. Their sole objective is to keep civilians like us alive, and to spread awareness of the danger."

Blood is staining your mother's sleeves. Where was ParaBomber that night, when the sky turned red and they hid you away? This was not a question you could conceive at this age, and your father had distracted you from any potential you had at asking it.

All these years later, your father still preaches the honourable service ParaBomber graces the country with. They had never done anything to help you personally, but ever since that day you've associated them with your own safety.

"Zombic Radio"
Doc ID Number: #5050
Class: Paranormal Object

Perhaps the radio is playing back the past? What if by "zombie translating radio" what Mum actually meant was that the radio played back recordings of what zombies said when they were alive? It's the only logical idea I've got for the moment, zombies can not formulate proper conversation with one another. I refuse to accept it. 

There's every chance that the radio can pick up other undead classes, maybe it was intercepting a conversation between two sentient spirits the whole time?

Bailey Fraser, Day X6
Hideout 199

A zombie artist...

"Skittle. If you were an artist you would tell me that too, right?"

She kept scratching the wall. "Or if you do crochet? Or origami?"

Why a zombie would want to be an artist I've no clue.

I ambitiously walk to my cabinet, and I pull out my instruments. I'm excited.

"Wouldn't a zombie much rather do what I do for a living?"

(Do we still have those nails lying around... Ah! Splenderful, we do.)

"I've always wanted to try this."

And whether I would get to or not was a matter of if this ghost, in this unconscious state, would make contact with my mortal flesh.

(It would)

"Hey sweety sugarface, do you think I have to wear protective gear for this? Carry on with scratching the wall for no."

I pulled the ghost into the position I needed by either of it's wrists. Touching it's skin was like feeling TV static, and it made my hands feel fuzzy. It was much heavier than I expected a being composed of nothing to be, which I didn't mind. I managed to get it onto my desk just fine.

I hauled a nail from my bag and hovered it over the ghost's palm. I could not conjure a better way to do it, I was lacking some minor resources and had to make do with what was there at the time.

I banged the hammer against the nail.

Small specks of glowing blue flew at my face and dripped down my skin. Protective goggles would have been nice, but I am quite alright with simply braving it.

I struck the nail over and over until it was completely through the palm, then a couple extra strikes to guarantee that the subject was firmly stuck to the wood.

How To Dissect a Hostile Apparition: With Bailey Fraser

Step 1: Firmly secure the subject to your preferred surface. You want to restrain their wrists, feet, chest, and neck

Step 2: Mark where you're going to make your incision with marker

If you don't have markers available to you, paint or chalk will work just fine.

Step 3: Use a scalpel, boxcutter, or scissors to cut along your marks

Step 4: 

I dug into the slits I'd made with my thumbs and pulled the two pieces of "skin" apart from each other. Inside was bone, frail enough that it didn't require a hammer to tear through. My fingernails shred through the bone, and I could finally investigate what was inside of a ghost.

There was a heart.

No, really. That was it.

I could tell that it was a heart because it looked like one, and when I state it looks like a heart I am not referring to the human organ, I mean the shape. A heart.

It was not beating, but it was semi opaque, letting me view small tubes inside carrying liquid around in a spiral.

Unlike when I was tugging the ghost's sleeping body onto my desk, this heart spared my senses. It was wet from the ghostly blood, but it wasn't making my hands numb this time.

I looked at the body and saw the ghost's form recovering itself where I had made my incisions. Small veins grew from under the surface and slowly interlocked with adjacent veins. It was like witnessing a plant grow in fast-motion.

"Oi Skittle, do you feel in need of a romantic walk together?"

"Mer."

"I'm well aware that it's dark out, but if I die tonight Mum and Dad are going to be so mad at me."

She kept scratching at the wall.

"Well it isn't like the wall is going anywhere!"

"Mer."

"You don't care"