Hunters
an excerpt

Undearth. That’s what it’s called. Such a horrible word, such a horrible stone. It’s what causes the necrotic waste to be so unimaginable and deadly. It’s only a mineral, a stone, which is naturally present in the ground in the necrotic wastes, but it has supernatural properties which cause it to be very dangerous. It’s because of these properties that everyone in the wastes are so cautious.
Undearth sucks the life out of anyone who is near it. In small quantities this is not too much of a problem because it can’t absorb too much to be life-threatening, but undearth is everywhere in the wastes. This means that areas where there is only minimal undearth presence people only feel tired, because it can only absorb the renewable life-force, but in most areas people’s life-force is slowly drained away, which is deadly. It causes those in such areas to literally have time taken off there life. Unless they live in those areas, though, it is generally insignificant, only in terms of minutes. But constant exposure can cause years to be taken off people’s lives. And in truly saturated areas life-force is drained so quickly that one can watch others age.
This is the reality that we live in. But it isn’t even this easy, no; undearth does something even worse than kill us slowly. A byproduct of absorbing life-force is the creation of anerigent, a biological toxin. Anerigent is toxic in any quantity, but even more so when someone’s life-force is depleted. Thus, when a person dies, their body is full of both anerigent and undearth. The presence of both of these materials causes the dead to rise. Yes, when someone dies in the necrotic wastes they rise again, as a zombie. Depending on how much undearth is present, the time it takes for the dead to rise varies, but rule of thumb is that it takes about a day.
You would think that anyone living here would be crazy, right? Or impossible? Well, you’d be surprised how determined some people can be. There is no one living on the edges of the wastes, because they’re smart enough to move away. But for those of us stuck too far in to travel out, we are forced to try and survive as best we can. And we do a damned good job, too.
Obviously living creatures aren’t well-suited to this type of life, but some more than others. Bjord can’t survive here at all, because their rock-armor begins to grow undearth on it, which quickly kills them off. Some of the physically weaker races, such as the nyeow and quamulus, are more affected by undearth than the other races, so they tend to be consumed faster. Then there are the other races, such as the lustraus, that can survive just as well here as anywhere else. Those races are an enigma to the rest of us.
Me, I’m human. Yeah, that’s right, human. We might not be the hardiest of races, but we can survive just about anywhere. I grew up in Slojorn, you probably have heard of it, you know, Citadel of the Damned? The Seventh Castle? Yeah, that’s where I grew up. It wasn’t always like it is now, a ruined city with only the walking dead inhabiting its halls. It used to be a prosperous city, one of the safest in the wastes. Sure, we had our share of dead cells, but for the most part zed heads didn’t get into our city.
Actually, maybe it wasn’t so much as safe as it was isolated. A series of ten feet thick stone and metal walls, the first twenty feet tall and each subsequent wall rising another ten feet, protected the city. We were located half-way inside a mountain, or, rather, we started that way. We continued to cut into the mountain, to expand the city and make room for more people, but I didn’t know much about it.
Hell, I was only a kid. And, like all the other kids, we didn’t know much about the zed heads. Most people didn’t know that much about it, only that to kill them you aimed for the head, but kids knew even less. To us, the zed heads were almost like fairy tales. We’d play games where one of us would be a zed and the others would beat on it, but we didn’t actually know what we were doing. When a zed head happened to spontaneously arise, which happened every so often, we’d throw rocks at it, and run around it, leading it like an animal, at least until the adults realized what we were doing. Then we’d be shooed inside and the adults would take care of it. It was this lackadaisical attitude to the zed heads that eventually led to the destruction of Slojorn.
It happened quickly. One bad crop and the entire city went to the Hells. It was corn, I think, that did us in. It had abnormally high levels of undearth in it. Normally plants get affected by undearth just as much as animals, which is why there aren’t many plants out in the wastes, but occasionally a mutation would occur and the plants could process it, but they would appear wilted and sickly. Those crops we destroyed. This crop didn’t look wilted or sickly, but instead appeared a normal crop, despite the vast amounts of undearth that was actually present within it.
I was sick at the time, so I hadn’t been eating anything, and my parents had been with me, so they hadn’t been eating much themselves. My brother, on the other hand, had been at a friend’s house, so he wasn’t as lucky. He came back home feeling sick, so my mother sent him to bed, assuming he had whatever I did. Everybody went to bed, and we were a lucky family because we had a big house, so me and my brother had our own rooms.
I woke up in the early morning, feeling hungry, so I got up and went to the kitchen to get something to eat. I was just getting to the stairs when I heard a strange noise coming from my brother’s room, like scratching on the door. I was curious; I thought he had a dog hidden in his room, because he had done that before, so I crept up and began to open the door.
As I opened the door the scratching stopped, so I peeked in. My brother was standing there, a glazed look in his eyes, but what was strange was that his skin looked gray. Now, I was only about ten at the time, so I didn’t know much about zed heads, so I tried and talk to him. ‘Hey, do you have a dog in there?’ I asked him. He cocked his head at me and let loose a blood-curdling moan.
At that I froze. My brother began to lurch towards me, his arms extended as if he wanted to grab me. I backed up, but he just kept coming. I ran to the stairs, screaming, trying to comprehend what my brother was doing. He finally caught up with me, grabbed my shirt and started tugging on me. Next to the stairway there was a vase full of flowers, and that was the first thing I saw when I got grabbed. I took hold of the vase and swung it hard, smashing it into my brother’s head. He got knocked off balance and fell down the stairs, he was still reaching for me as he fell, even as his bones cracked and poked through his skin.
He didn’t get all the way down the stairs. About halfway down his shirt caught on something and he flipped over the railing, falling the remaining ten feet through the air. He landed on the carpet, a gory mess. See, undearth collects on the bones, because the bones radiate quite a bit of life-energy. But, in the process of absorbing that life energy it weakens the bones, which is why it is so easy to crack zed head’s skulls. Even knowing that doesn’t help the image disgust me any less.
My mother and father reached me about the time my brother landed on the ground. My mother quickly wrapped her arms around me and pulled me in close; my father peered over the railing and saw my brother. He didn’t just look, though, he stared. For at least three solid minutes, he stared. It seemed like an eternity. Somewhere in that time period a single tear slipped from his eye. But he didn’t let himself grieve. He stopped my mother from looking at the body and instead told us to go to the attic.
“But what are you doing?” my mother asked him, tears falling freely from her eyes.
“I’m going to check to see if anyone else is infected.” He said, his face stone. He hugged me and then walked down the stairs, heading to the door. My mother started leading me upstairs, but we heard him open the door. And we heard the wave of moans and groans rush into the house, the heavy breathing of my father as he apparently fought for his life, but nothing beyond that. My mother rushed me upstairs and quickly barricaded us in the attic.
We sat up there for a long time. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, being too young to completely understand the severity of what was occurring all around us, but I knew something was wrong. I could hear people shuffling around downstairs, the moans from those bastard zed heads, wandering the halls, looking for the people they could smell. We had a pull down attic, like most people in Slojorn did, so they couldn’t just wander up to us.
My mother refused to look outside; instead she sat in the corner and cried. Every time she looked at me she would start sobbing harder, and to this day I still hate her for keeping herself so isolated, for not trying to comfort me as I tried to figure out what was happening. I eventually found a window and was able to look outside, to see the destruction of Slojorn; the fires burning across those houses still made of wood; the countless number of zed heads, wandering the streets, ripping apart the poor souls that had been swarmed. I still remember the awkward black sky, so different from the red and gray sky that normally exists in the wastes.
At some point the attic stairwell began to shake and come loose. My mother screeched and ran to it, fighting with it, trying to keep it closed, but eventually she lost her grip and it came down. But, instead of a horde of zed heads coming up my, father did, but he wasn’t exactly himself. He had a bandana tied around his forehead and scratches all over his face. His clothes were bloody, but even worse, his left arm was bandaged up, his hand not there. My mother was overjoyed to see him, but at the sight of his hand she became very frightened. He said a zed head had bitten it, so he had chopped it off. I’m still unsure as to if that is true.
My father quickly led us away. The zed heads had mostly left our house, and the few left were already taken out by my father and a small band of other survivors. There were only two children in the group besides me, both male and each staring blankly ahead of them. I suppose they must have been in shock, and I probably was too, but I still had my faculties about me.
Our little group, fourteen in all, headed out to try and get through the streets and out of Slojorn. Most of the zed heads were in the streets, so we traveled through the aerial passageways, a series of corridors built on top of the houses that led throughout the city. I knew they existed, but I hadn’t realized how extensive they were. They were designed to be inaccessible to zed heads, but some people who had been up there before they turned were still there, now zed heads, so we still had to kill some of them.
After about half an hour of walking, a zed head caught us by surprised and bit one of the other children. He got bitten on his arm, but the zed head was killed off quickly after that. The boy was crying, scared out of his mind. His father was in the group, and he was deathly quiet. The group moved on a little bit and the father, his son, and my father stayed back. We could hear them arguing. It turned to shouting and then a gunshot rang out. The two men came walking back, my father quiet but his eyes smoldering; the boy’s father looked blank, like he had just seen a ghost. When my mother asked about the boy my father hushed her, but not before the boy’s father heard her.
“It’s taken care of.” was all he would say. The group continued on and we were almost able to get out of the city. But, as we looked out over the city’s walls, we could see a great problem. The zed heads had gotten out of the city and were milling about the walls. My father cursed under his breath and he gathered everyone together, except me, the other boy, and my mother. While we stood off to the side everyone else had a heated discussion.
Finally the rest came back. My father revealed their decision. Since he had been bitten he was going to lead the other two men who had been bitten into the zed heads and lead them away, so the remaining ten of us could try and escape. My mother broke out into tears and refused, but my father tried to calm her down. The man who’s boy had been bitten suddenly screamed and pointed his gun at us.
“You insensitive bastards! Your complaining about something like that?” he yelled, waving his gun around. My father tried to talk him down but he blew up at my father.
“No, you’re the worst of them all! You only lost your son; everyone else here lost their entire families! I shot my own son in the head! The freakin’ head!” the man yelled. My father looked down, unable to say anything. The man growled and let his arms fall to his sides.
“Well, I’m not going out like that. I’ll see you all in Hell.” He said and then put the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger. Everyone watched; we didn’t have time to look away. My mother screamed and my father just looked at the ground. Finally the other people in the group got everyone together and began the impossible task.
We started out, my father and the two other people, one female, one male, ahead of everyone else, rushing right towards the crowd then running into the city, leading the zed heads away. It worked, to an extent, but some of the zed heads continued after us instead of following the crowd. Those in the group who had weapon took care of them, but two in the group were caught and killed by the zombies. It was down to just seven of us; me, my mother, the other boy and four adults. Looking back on it, two of the so-called adults were teenagers, apparently together. They seemed like adults to me, though, since I was so young, but they must have been just as scared as me.
The now much smaller group got out into the wilderness, but we weren’t exactly safe. My mother excused herself and went behind a tree. We waited, the rest of the group trying to figure out what exactly they were feeling, but eventually the female teenager also excused herself and went out behind the tree my mother was behind, to go to the bathroom. She came back screaming, babbling incoherently.
Before anyone could stop me I ran behind and found my mother, dead, having hung herself with some of the fabric from her dress. As I looked at her and tried to wrap my mind around what was happening. My mother opened her eyes. Her mouth opened and closed, like she was chomping, and she sort of swayed in the wind. One of the other members of the group muttered, “By the gods…” and then he led everyone else away. I heard the gunshot ring out and the man came back, his eyes dull. That was the last of the suicides, at least, self-inflicted suicides.
As we traveled away, the now even smaller group of us tried to make our way to another town, or at least somewhere away from Slojorn. On the way we encountered some zed heads, and one of the adults, the man who had shot my mother, was killed. Later in our journey the two teenagers got away from the group and rushed head-first into a crowd of zed heads. That left only me, the other boy, and the last remaining woman, an older lady, wizened and disillusioned with the world. We found her dead in her sleep a few days later. Then it was just me and the boy.
The boy still doesn’t talk, even though it’s been thirteen years since the fall of Slojorn. He never really recovered from the ordeal, never really regained his mental abilities, if indeed he actually had any to begin with. We traveled together, learning how to survive in the open wastes, becoming part of the Hunter culture. We met many people like us, people who escaped dead towns, but none had gone through exactly what we had.
I named my companion Luis, after one of my childhood friends, and he became my protector, a brute of sorts, somehow able to take zed heads on with only his blade, yet never get bitten. He’s a rarity, though not too uncommon in the wastes. I took the more common route of a gunslinger, with a shotgun and two pistols, the most common of firearms in the wastes. We make a good team, Luis and I, him the hulking brute, me the gun-toting princess. But we still have quite a bit to accomplish.

─ Rowana, gunslinger Hunter