Chapter 1
Philip woke up alone in the woods. Judging by that, he could guess that the rest of his day was going to suck. He sat up, stopping with hiss of pain as agony and nausea slammed through his head. Giving the pain a moment to pass, he carefully checked it's source. His gently probing fingers took notice of the very painful lump on the back of his head, looking at his fingers afterwards he also took note of the blood smeared on them. Wiping his hand off on his pants he took a bottle of aspirin from one of the pockets of his tactical vest and downed a couple with a few sips from his canteen. While he waited for the pain to pass he looked around the darkened woods. Judging from half moon in the sky he concluded that he'd been unconscious for at least a few hours, he wondered where the rest of his squad was. They were definitely getting an earful when he got back to camp. Casting his gaze around the small clearing he looked for his helmet. At least the moon provided enough light to see by, if dimly. With the pain receding, for the moment, he spotted something lying next to him. Reaching out he picked up the hard piece of material. After examining it closely he realized that it was his helmet, well a portion of it anyway. A single strap hung depressingly from the semicircular shard. At least his rifle had fared better. Hooked over his shoulder it had only fallen to his side. Casting the useless piece of equipment aside, Philip tried to collect his thoughts and figure out what happened. He'd tripped, felt some kind of vertigo and hit his head? He remembered hearing a voice before he'd completely blacked out, couldn't remember what she'd said though.
“She?” Philip thought with a start “There weren't any girls in my squad, who...?” deciding to think about it later he swung his C7 rifle back onto his shoulder and got slowly to his feet. After a few experimental steps he decided he was good to move and tried to get his bearings to make it back to base camp. With half remembered lessons on wilderness survival, Philip thought he had the right direction and started into the dark woods. After a little over an hour of walking he was beginning to feel a little spooked. It was too quiet, he couldn't even hear any insects, not even mosquitoes. There were always mosquitoes. He froze as he heard the distinctive crack of gunfire in the distance. Several shots, then silence.
“Someone must be using the range.” he sighed with relief “A little late for night shooting but I'm not complaining. Let's see, if the range is that way then camp should be this way...” his thoughts trailed off as he broke through the tree line into a very large clearing, with buildings. Blinking in confusion at the small wooden houses, Philip started to slowly walk forward. “What the hell? There's not suppose to be a village here.” he couldn't get a good estimate of how large the settlement was, but it definitely wasn't insignificant. More gunshots could be heard in the distance, an eerie contrast to the silent buildings.
“Okay, this is starting to resemble something out of a bad movie.” he thought as he approached. He stopped as he spotted a figure in the shadow of the nearest house. Female he thought, leaning against the wall and slowly shuffling along it. Hesitating a moment as he had the feeling that this was a bad idea, he opened his mouth.
“Excuse me, ma'am?” the woman froze at the sound of his voice. “I seem to be, well a bit lost.” the woman stood up unsteadily and started an odd lopsided walk in his direction. “Could you direct me to... Ah, I see.” Philips' mouth went dry as the woman stepped into the washed out light of the moon. Her skin was an unhealthy pallor, covered in places by dark stains that could only have been blood. Her gait was explained by the fact that she seemed to be missing a foot. Not that she noticed as she let out a soft hungry groan, her murky eyes fixed only on him. “Definitely,” looking behind her he saw several more figures lurching out of the shadows “a very bad movie.” Swiftly turning on his heel, Philip made a terror fuelled dash in the opposite direction as a chorus of hunger filled moans filled the air behind him.
*SCENE BREAK*
“God I wish I had bullets for this thing.” Philip muttered to himself after his rifle got tangled with a low tree branch for the third time. It was a pity that real bullets weren't given out during training exercises. His mind being on the subject as after his initial retreat into the woods he began to try and move in the direction of the gunshots he'd heard earlier, well once his panic had died down. After listening long enough he determined that there were several sources for the gunshots and tried to angle himself toward the nearest, after all guns meant people. The thickness of the underbrush had forced him to slow down, but whenever he thought to stop the sound of moans drifting somewhere behind him encouraged him to keep moving.
Philip started to run forward as the next set of gunshots was louder, quickly cutting through a small clearing. His momentum was brought to an abrupt halt as Philip fell flat on his face. Spitting out bits of grass, he glanced behind him to see what he'd tripped over. It was a corpse, male and dressed ruggedly. The odd part of his mind that had managed to remain detached noted that at least this one was really dead, hard to be a zombie without a head after all. Philip slowly picked up a thick stick from the forest floor and approached the body. Reaching out gingerly with the stick he poked the body firmly in the side, it felt solid and didn't move. Licking dry lips he then reached out and touched the corpse's arm, it was stiff and cold. Having confirmed in his overstressed mind that it was real, a slow breeze wafted into the clearing bringing the heavy scent of drying blood to Philips' nose. He promptly threw up.
After exhausting the contents of his stomach, he rinsed his mouth out with some of his water. Glancing briefly at the vomit covered body he immediately dismissed the thought of checking it's pockets. Glancing around the clearing, Philip saw a silvery white coloured framed backpack, laying near the tree line. Inclining his head toward it and speaking rhetorically to the corpse he said
“Yours? We'll I guess you won't be needing it anymore.” Trying to stay pragmatic about the situation, Philip edged around the body and moved to the pack. Picking it up he swung it up onto his back, he found that it seemed to have a rigid rectangular shape. However it was well balanced and only weighed around twenty kilograms, he was used to the army making him haul heavier loads. He also saw something else lying on the ground nearby. Philip bent over, leaning on his newly christened corpse poking stick to do so, and picked it up. It looked like some kind of PDA, it was difficult to tell though as the screen was broken and the devices innards ripped open as the frame seemed to have been crushed. He dropped it as he heard a thump and something rolled by his feet. It was a head, although with most of the face chewed away revealing the skull beneath. Jerking his gaze away from the macabre thing, Philip looked at where it had rolled from. Standing just under the trees not two meters in front of him was another zombie. This one had once been rather short woman with buzz cut hair, her eyes were a clouded milky white. She didn't have any visible wounds, Philip guessed that the blood on her hands and mouth weren't hers, but her skin seemed to have turned an unhealthy grey. Not that she seemed to have been very attractive even before the whole death thing, being short and heavily muscled she seemed to have been a bodybuilder of some kind. He'd never had a taste for that body type. The creature that was once a woman lunged at Philip with a hungry snarl. Desperate he swung his stick at the zombies head, it connected solidly and shattered. The blow didn't hurt it at all, but the flying wooden shards distracted it for a few precious seconds. Long enough for Philip to make tracks in the other direction. Adjusting his course slightly as he heard the gunshots again, Philip hoped he'd get out of here soon.
After nearly a half an hour of mixed sprinting and jogging, Philip was nearing collapse. His breath was in ragged gasps, but he couldn't stop. He was close. In front of him the trees seemed to be thinning out a little and he put on a last burst of speed. Breaking through the tree line he was clear! Then he was blinded as an impossibly bright light enveloped his entire field of vision.
*SCENE BREAK*
Police Officer Dareny frowned at the dark forest a hundred meters away as she swept her spotlight across it. The last day had been painfully frustrating, she hated feeling helpless. Well it was understandable, it's not everyday that you have to deal with a massive zombabe outbreak. She sighed and tried to recall how she'd gotten here as she brought the light around for another pass.
The call had arrived to the Feannis town police station around noon yesterday. It had come from a young tamer that reported the Maple Pass community had been completely overrun. He'd included a couple of rather grisly photos emailed from his pokedex, the fact that the call had cut off abruptly with the sounds of a struggle on the other end indicated that the tamer had just become a victim himself.
“What had been his name? Tim, Timmy? It was a T-something...” she thought, and resolved to look it up later. His family deserved to know after all. They'd immediately scrambled all their officers, as well as those from Hilton and Yuses, but that still only gave them a force of 30 officers. Most of which were Jennies like herself and couple of Hounds. They'd grabbed the few tamers that were in the area, but none of them had fire or ice types. At least the geography was on their side. Maple Pass was something of an isolationist community in more ways than one. The village was located in a natural mountain pass, with the forest filling the space between. The far side of the forest had a river cutting across its end, that was where they'd sent the tamers. One of them fortunately had a rock type that could use the Rock Wall technique, with that and between the others they should be able to keep the diseased corpses out of the river. That of course meant that any zombabes would be wandering in their direction. Which was sort of the plan.
“Plan, some plan...” The police pokegirls had spread themselves across the pass, one hundred meters from the forest edge, in groups of three. One armed with a long range rifle and the two others with handguns to act as support. The hounds had spread barbed wire between the groups, as well as between them and the forest, to slow down any walking corpses moving toward or past their position. The dog pokegirls were now patrolling the area between the groups as well as making ammunition runs. The brass had said to hold until relief arrived at dawn.
“Right, just thirty police against a couple hundred zombabes.” She added it up in her head. Maple Pass had a population of 400 or so people in the last census, assuming they were reporting accurately as the people there had been about as anti-government as you could get in the Capital league. Estimate at least half that becoming zombabes, giving us 200 or so, probably more since pokegirls outnumbered men in these communities anyway. This of course doesn't count any pokegirls they had and didn't report, as well as any ferals that might have been living in the forest itself. “Let's just hope they don't rush us all at once. Given how seldom these guys interacted with the rest of the league they could have all been dead for a week before we noticed.” On the bright side it had worked so far. Even if they didn't have enough troops to risk entering the forest, the wind was at their backs and would carry any Mega-Zombie Poison away from them. The occasional one that wandered out of the forest had showed comfortingly little intelligence and just moved straight toward them. A good number of truly dead bodies lying near the trees a testament to their marksmanship. Noticing some movement among branches Dareny brought the spot light around just as something burst from the tree line. The fact that the figure stopped and threw it's arms over its eyes probably saved its life, as those actions were atypical of the average zombabe. “Sweet merciful gods, we've got a live one!”
*SCENE BREAK*
The light blinding Philip turned to the side and he blinked his teary eyes trying to bring them into focus. In the distance he could see a low wall made of sandbags, along with a pair of spotlights that had human figures standing next to them. Scattered on the ground between his location and them he could see lengths of barbed wire, and nearby were bodies. Motionless in the gloom, and judging by the smell, Philip quickly concluded that these were dead zombies. Assuming the term could be applied to the undead.
“What the hell are you doing?!” one of the figures yelled “Get the fuck away from the trees!” Philip jerked into motion as the voice, as well as sounds of motion behind him, reminded him that he was being pursued. Slowing down only to edge around or jump over the barbed wire, he also moved to the side in order to give them a clear shot at what was behind him. A few shots rang out before he managed to cross the distance coming to a breathless halt next to one of the figures. After catching his breath he stood up and stared. The woman was taller than him by almost a head, probably just shy of six feet. She wore a police uniform of an unfamiliar design, looking somewhat rumpled from overly long hours. Her face was unlined and friendly looking, with shoulder length hair that was swept back in order to keep it out of her green eyes. It was not however the strange uniform, the short skirt, or the way that uniform seemed to hug her body a little too closely to be proper that kept his focused attention. Rather it was the fact that her hair was a deep blue colour.
“Huh, a punk cop. Well, not the weirdest thing I've seen today...” Philips' thoughts trailed off as he realized he was being addressed. Hastily shaking his head when he was asked if he'd been bitten, the officer glanced at the forest behind as the shots increased in frequency with more undead emerging from the trees. Looking at them himself Philip realized he'd unintentionally attracted quite a following. His attention was drawn back to the officer when she tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, you know how to use that thing?” she said, gesturing toward the rifle still slung over his shoulder. Nodding Philip pulled the rifle into his arms “I'll need bullets.” he said.
“5.56?” at his nod she gestured to the rifle armed cop, also a woman, lying on her stomach by the sandbags. “Over there by Officer Cindy, load up and lend a hand.” with that she turned from him and made sure the spotlight was focused on the advancing corpses, before pulling out her handgun to take a few shots herself. Rightfully taking this as a dismissal, Philip rushed over to the sandbag wall and crouched down by the ammo cases he saw there. Pulling his spare magazines from his tactical vest, he began frantically loading them with rifle rounds at a record pace. Honestly if his instructors had been present, they'd have been amazed.
*SCENE BREAK*
Philip had never before realized just how boring shooting zombies was. Not that if anyone had told him that yesterday he'd have not thought they were crazy, in more ways than one. After the initial crowd, the number of undead had tapered off to the occasional straggler wandering out. In all honesty killing the zombie itself was simple: spot, aim, shoot, repeat as necessary. It was the long periods of waiting for something to happen that were difficult. It was during one of these pauses that he noticed something strange, well something else strange. After the first crowd Philip had looked to his left at the police officer next to him and saw that, aside from hair that was trimmed close to her scalp, she looked nearly the same as the police woman he'd first spoken with. All the way down to the blue hair. His first thought was that she was a twin, but she was obviously younger than the first was. Siblings with a big family resemblance perhaps? It only got stranger when he noticed that the third woman manning the other spotlight also had similar features, again with similar hair only this one was slightly lighter in shade and cut in a pageboy style.
“I suppose I shouldn't complain.” Philip sighed to himself. Seeing bloody hand prints on his pant legs had made him realize that a few of his stumbles while going through the forest hadn't been caused by the underbrush. Frankly he'd rather deal with the weird blue haired police cult than the zombies. At least they wouldn't eat him, probably. With that all he could do was sit tight, keep his rifle trained on the forest, and wait. Pity his headache was coming back.
*SCENE BREAK*
Dareny looked at the brightening eastern sky with relief. Shouldn't be too long now. Zombabes had been approaching their lines with increasing frequency over the last hour, obviously the main group was beginning to reach the forest edge. If the undead mass arrived before the reinforcements then they'd have to use plan B. She hated plan B. A shooting retreat until the end of the pass and a last stand to keep them from open ground was not her idea of fun.
“Well at least the kid proved to be a competent shot.” she thought looking at, after having confirmed on her radio, the only survivor to get out of Maple Pass so far. “No, not a kid...” she amended her thoughts. She'd assumed he was young, something about him just screamed youth and inexperience. Particularly how he'd looked rather small in his over-sized military surplus gear. However once she'd gotten a closer look at him she'd found it harder to pin down his exact age. First of all was that he hadn't been that short, only a head or so below her own. Five foot five, maybe six if she'd had to guess. He was however pretty thin, it made his clothes look baggy as they'd been made to fit someone broader. His face wasn't too bad, a slightly narrow nose with a mildly pointed chin. The light stubble across his jaw showed that he was definitely past puberty. Dark smudges under his light brown eyes indicated that he hadn't slept much recently, “... but then who has around here?”. His hair an ordinary dark brown, lighter highlights coming out when light shined on it directly, was cut short on the sides with a little more length on top. Overall unremarkable, attractive but not exceptionally so. She stopped her musing as her radio started beeping.
“Dareny here, over.” she said into the hand held device.
“Dareny, the cavalry's on its way. Get your gear secured and have your people bunker down. Over.” she heard the gravely voice of Sergeant Angertin, from her precinct.
“When can we expect the troops? Over.”
“After the forest is gone. Over.” Dareny blinked at that, confused.
“I don't understand, what do you mean?” she said, forgetting radio protocol for the moment.
“Sending people into a dense forest crawling with zombabes is stupid. They'd be forced to engage at close range, the league won't send their troops into a death trap. They're sending in a bunch of flying pokegirls carrying fire types and explosives. That forest is to be burned to the ground, taking the zombabe infestation with it. Over.”
“But there might be people still alive! Earlier one...”
“Yes Officer Dareny, I know about your survivor. Earlier they sent in a few fliers with psychics to do some scans. Your boy must have been the last, the only one to get out. There's nothing but the dead in there now, a lot of whom are walking around when they shouldn't be. Now bunker down, they'll be there any minute. Out.” Dareny swore and called out some orders as she stowed her spotlight. She saw shapes in the sky moving toward the forest as she dove to the ground, seeing Cindy jerk the boy's head down as she did so. For a moment it seemed like the world held a breath, then a second sun dawned in front of them. The heat and sound washed over their backs, the light too bright for their gloom adjusted eyes.
When she raised her eyes the entire forest had become an inferno. The tree line had almost become a solid wall of flame, overhead she saw an occasional flash as one of the airborne fire type pokegirls sent an attack down to spread the fire faster. She sighed and looked around one last time to see if any zombabes had escaped the blaze, then motioned for the young man to join her.
“Thanks for sticking it out with us,” she said to him as he approached her “and I'm sorry for your loss.” she bowed her head slightly to him. At his confused look she said “About loosing your entire village, your family.” she elaborated. “Poor guy must still be in shock.” she thought.
“Oh, I didn't loose anyone ma'am.” he replied, and at her look confusion said “I'm not from here.”
“Then where, no for that matter who are you?” Dareny was becoming a little leery of his strangely calm behaviour.
“Ah, I'm sorry. Let me introduce myself.” he said, straitening to attention. “Private Philip Leblanc, 33rd reserve infantry, Canadian armed forces. Speaking of which I need to recontact my unit. Do you know the way to the Tours Military Base? I'm a little lost...” the three officer jennies stared at the young man in the brightening light of dawn as well as the light of the forest sized bonfire just down field. Cindy broke the silence after a moment.
“Hey, um, Philip? Did you know your bleeding?” she said, reaching out and pushing his head forward to get a clearer look at the back of his head. Dareny looked over Cindy's shoulder for look herself, grimacing at the nasty wound. A rather large lump had formed at the base of his skull, the skin around it badly discoloured. Broken skin around it was seeping blood at a slow steady rate, soaking the back of his head and running down his neck. Only the lack of light had prevented it from being obvious earlier.
“How did you get something like that?”
“I got it when I fell, during the exercise with the rest of my squad.” he said, hissing slightly in pain as Cindy prodded at the wound.
“Alright, I think you need to explain.” Dareny said, crossing her arms.
“Well, we'd brought the regiment up to the Tours base for maneuvers. We were doing a preliminary sweep through the woods to get some practice before they officially started tomorrow, well today.” he said, the incredulous stares of the women making him nervous. “We were on our way to our position, I'd fallen behind because that crap helmet of mine needed adjusting again. I was in a rush so I was walking without paying attention, then...” Philips' frowned as he thought of what happened next “my foot, caught on something? I started falling and I swung my arms to get my balance but I ended up hitting my head pretty hard. I know I lost consciousness because the sun had set when I opened my eyes. I tried to find my way back to base, ran into those things and made my way here. That's pretty much it.” he finished, rubbing his hands together nervously.
“Philip,” Dareny started, trying something on a hunch “what year is it?”
“2000.” he said in a matter of fact tone.
“Alright, well Cindy here will take you to the medical tent to get that wound checked out.” Dareny said in a soothing tone of voice, nodding to her fellow Jenny. After they'd left she picked up her radio and asked to be connected with the medical tent. Specifically her friend Claire, a Nursejoy.
“Good to hear from you Dare, glad your still alive.” the cheerful voice of the Joy coming over the line.
“Well I'm glad you didn't have to patch me up like the old days.”
“Heaven for-fend.” Claire’s smile coming clearly over the line. “But we both know you wouldn't call right now for small talk. What's wrong?”
“It's about the survivor, guy named Philip.”
“Ah I'd heard about that. He was lucky to get out of there without needing detox. What about him? I thought your report said he wasn't injured.”
“Not that we could see at the time, no.” Dareny said with a bit of sadness “He may be in a lot more serious shape than I'd initially thought.”
“How do you mean?”
“He's... confused, seriously. First of all he's suffered a rather severe blow to the head, maybe even has a concussion.”
“Well that has been known to cause...”
“Claire, he thinks its before the end of the Revenge War.” Dareny interrupted “I asked him the year and he answered in the old calender.” There was a pause before the Nursejoy could bring herself to answer.
“Yes,” she said slowly “I would consider that pretty confused.”
“Look Cindy's taking him to you, just take care of him until we can get him to Feannis for a more thorough examination.” the police pokegirl sighed “I just hope my keeping him here didn't make it worse.”
“Don't tie yourself in a knot Dare, I'm sure he'll be fine. I'll be sure to take extra special care of him alright? Talk to you later.”
“Yeah, and thanks.” Dareny cut off the transmission and turned toward the still blazing remains of Maple Pass. Lost in thought as the sun continued it's climb into the sky.