History

Welcome to Fiction Friday.  For the past few Fridays I’ve shared with y’all a glimpse into the mind of Zach the Zombie and some of his friends.  Today, I wanted to share a little bit about the early days.

You know the drill–this is only very minimally edited, so grace and forgiveness, please…no red pens!  

When the Rot started, everyone kind of freaked out.

Some people sought out doctors and nurses.  Some of them tried to help, but they began to rot too.  They couldn’t explain it any more than any of the wise Priests, or the Shaman, or the Imam.  Those people lost their jobs first.

People became angry.  Some only had sores, but some people’s flesh began to rot faster.  The doctors that were left tried to explain it as a bacterial infection, but none of them could actually identify the bacteria in a lab, or come up with an antibiotic that would help.

It was no coincidence that the the rot began immediately after the sun stopped setting, immediately after a whole number of people disappeared behind the City walls, and a bunch of new ones from the City appeared outside, with sores on their bodies.

Zach thought The Closing of the City began as a quarantine.  Earthquakes, fires, problems….outside.  Inside the City, no smoke rose from fires, no walls crumbled like they did outside.  The rotting people just weren’t inside anymore.  They remembered their homes, their families, they just couldn’t go back in.

Many tribe members got violent.  People fought amongst themselves.  They discovered that fighting with Rot probably was a bad idea, but it didn’t stop some of them.  Grabbed the opponent by the arm?  Can’t swing them around and fling them into a wall…no, that arm just ripped off.  Dang.

And then something happened that we knew this was no ordinary bacteria.  For some people, the rot began to heal.  No medicines, no treatment.  Just heal.  But new sores formed in different places…as flesh began to grow back, another area would become infected.   A man’s hand had been ripped off, and it grew back. The doctors were baffled.

But when rot started healing, and people’s limbs started growing back, the fighting grew to a new low.  Not everyone fought, but everyone panicked.  Everyone freaked out.  Some hid.  Most fought.

No one died.