karmahoudini
Zombie warfare was less a joke when you were at the epicenter of the outbreak. Pop culture did little to educate you about the real threat zombies posed- it is through pure luck that you have managed to avoid being bitten as so far.
You are trapped on the third floor of your apartment building with a nineteen year old kid who cant keep his act together, and has proved to be more a liability the a help. You just killed your neighbor and his daughters, all of which were feasting on the once-voluptuous body of the girl who lived three doors down from you, and then locked yourself in the room with their corpses to plan out your next move. Your best friend and your sister are both missing and you have no idea where they are, or where you should go from here.
Something is beating on the door of the apartment you holed up in. That kid who's been tagging along with you looks like hes about to piss himself. The rooms reeks of death. What are you going to do?
"Go scout out the land," she murmured, and gestured absently off to the side. "See if you cant spot anything. A shack or a bunker or something like that, anything that could possibly host food." Or people, was the silent addition. Any denizen of these outer limits were to be dealt with in an entirely inhospitable manner.
The task was meant to keep him busy. Everyone from the city knew the wastelands were mapped out to the best of the Blackbirds abilities, and those dark shadows of the kingdom who passed through left nothing behind for those that followed. The meager resource party in assembly at the present was more a redundancy than a necessity anymore. As the Great Queen had sown life into the barren lands of her city, so too had she brought absolute destruction to all outside of it; indeed, it seemed to him that their periodical outings were really meant to be sure it stayed that way.
He knew not compassion and so could not endure receiving it as his friends and lovers so openly did. Emotions tied to his intimate being were a foreign concept to him, something so utterly alien that he could not bare to look it in the eye and accept it for what it was; he shoved the feelings down until they were naught but a smoldering ash in his core.
Destruction is a form of creation. When the fire burns away at the bone, ashes fall and from the fertility of our dust comes the potential for life.
The hit was solid, and the force of the blow was enough to knock him off his feet. Pain manifested on his face and red, shaped uncannily like the fist that had struck him down, blossomed over his cheek like a flower in the morning sun.
The umbrella began to unravel in the blink of an eye; the threads scattered and wove among the atmosphere above, forming a bright pattern of stars. Shaken as you were by the occurrence, the small red-headed boy next to you looked unaffected. He was quick to give explanation. "The world changes quickly here." He paused to admire the subconscious handiwork. "You get used to these things in the afterlife."