Synopsis: Burned Remains; Ashes Revived

Well, it happened. The zombies came, the cities fell, and mankind... well, mankind didn't change much. Homo Sapiens is a little more scattered, technology a little less consistently advanced, and the local gun shop a little better off, but humans, in essence, took it on the chin and kept living. The zombie apocalypse is no longer a catastrophe, but a way of life, and there aren't too many people willing to dig deeper into the hows and whys of the undead.

That's not to say there aren't people who care. Well, okay. "People" is a loose term. More like one pseudo-angelic Guard with a sense of morality straighter, sharper, and more rigid than her sword, one surgically enhanced genetic pathology experiment with a dangerously anachronistic sense of idealism, and two vegetarian cops in need of an actual police force to be in (but not in need of any of its equipment) and their scent-tracking, attack-untrainable K-9 partner. Otherwise known as Vien, Johann, Derek, Francis, and Alexander (Zandra for short). Beholden to no-one and seasoned survivors, they know what they're doing. If they didn't, they'd be dead.

They're on the mother of all road trips, trying to find the origin of the curse of undeath, defending themselves and hapless towns, and learning to demolish the stony walls of solitude that used to protect them and now only hold them back from their goals. As they travel, they become entangled in bonds of friendship, blood, and circumstances. They find themselves attached to people they can neither forget nor ignore, no matter how unaccustomed to obligation they might be. And along the way, not only will they find yet more reasons to be rid of the zombie menace, they might just find out that it really isn't all that... menacing, under the right circumstances.

That is a worst-case scenario: if zombies aren't actually the monsters they're thought to be, if they have the capacity for sentience or, Fate forbid, sapience, then eradicating them will be more complicated than just wiping them out. None of them wants to go down in the history books as perpetrators of genocide, but those dessicated things are, and will remain, unambiguously dangerous.

With little hope, less help, and no good options, what will this patchwork group do when they finally find the answers to their questions, and the possible eradication of the zombies, once and for all? For the first time in years, they have everything to gain, and every last bit of it to lose as well. With all that resting on their shoulders...

They'll only stand taller in the end.

(Disclaimer: Details, incidental facts, subplots, characters, and basic story premises subject to change at the whim of the author. The author reserves all rights to abandon her plot and go off on a whim about sky pirates or a squirrel in the trees without prior notice. And I took out the "science fantasy" thing because at this point, it looks like I'm going to rip poor old science to shreds. I truly am sorry, science. Just so you know...Truly.)