Give 'em Hell; short stories

My Blood is Red and Unafraid of Living

This chapter will contain two unrelated mini stories from the same sentence prompt!
"My blood is red and unafraid of living." -Liquid Smooth, Mitski

Title: Dagger
Genre: Sci-Fi
Warnings: Mention of bleeding

Description: Dagger wants to be feared by all on his path towards grasping immortality but one day faces the reality of eternity and what the secret to living forever really means.

The fire was bright unlike the wallowing feelings of deep sorrow. Solitude ate up the mind and cursed the body. In solitude, he lived, and he lived alone.

Dagger existed without fear of death, and with his craving to live forever came the strong will to kill everyone on sight. Swallowed in flame and surrounded by fiery earth, Dagger had the pleasantries of death at every corner. It made him feel alive.

Before his prime, Dagger walked the earth alone in fear of death. In constant paranoia, young Dagger always carried a knife, which soon he chose to name himself after. In his paranoia, and fear of the unknown, he cut off his right arm as an offering to the gods for his own protection. Since then, his arm never healed, and always oozed in hot golden blood. Skin as dark as the lava rock with splinters of gold like the heated light that trickled through the canyons of his home like rivers of fire, tough and armored like the stones and ash that encased his planet; gold hot liquid trickling around his pores and skin as cracks in the earth would reveal magma beneath, Dagger was fearsome to see. He had the strong tusks of an orc and the eyes of red hot embers. His tail, strong and muscular, was long and nearly triple his already tremendous height. He wanted to be feared by all.

Dagger took no mercy on any trespasser. He had one wish and one wish only; to live forever and never die. He never hesitated to take a life-not even once.

And yet somehow, as he'd cut through the skin of a foreign caricature for the defense of his pride, he froze. The blood that oozed from their side was red. It was red, and unafraid of living. And for some reason, it made Dagger stop. Beleaguered, for the first time in his life, he realized the key to living forever was happiness; and that happiness in itself could bleed.

Title: An Alternative Place
Genre: Apocalypse
Warnings: Suggestion of gore, mention of death

Description: Burma explains the rules of the apocalypse after the fall of humanity has begun.

Note: Yes this is tied to the script you read in the last chapter.

My life has become a dream land--or rather, a nightmare. But through the apocalypse, I've found that blood is red, and it is unafraid of living.

November 5th, 2046, the fall of humanity began. Some disease possessed the people and it spread like fire through the mass populations of cities across North America. The disease likely came from a prestigious or perhaps undercover secret science facility, and most likely has some super awesome backstory, but I couldn't tell you. I have no idea where it came from or how it happened--it spawned, it is here, and there is no stopping it. I've learned not to ask questions.

The thing about the disease is that when it infects a living organism, they become extremely hostile. It really feels like we're living in a story like 28 Days Later or even World War Z.

Now, let me get one thing straight; the infected are not zombies. They are alive, and they hate the smell of death.

The disease doesn't survive well in heat, so most of the infected remain in the north of the US and Canada. So my family was planning to flee to Arizona or New Mexico to stand a chance in survival.

There are three rules of the apocalypse: Don't go outside at night (when it is the coldest), keep water as clean as possible, and don't let anyone know your name.

We the people surviving the apocalypse have started a new naming system--location. When you become the sole survivor of a street, your name is that street name. If you become the leader of a town or city, you adopt the name of the town as your own. And if you're the strongest of a state or territory, you adopt that name. I believe it even went as far as countries.

Whoever America, Canada or Greenland are, they're the strongest of us all--if they exist.

So, I'm not going to tell you my name. It's too risky. The infected don't become stupid, and if they know your name, they know how to find you. It's like locking eyes with a predator--you're screwed. So I call myself Burma. I'm alone on St Burma Street, my family is dead, and most of the town, Soldier, is dead.

Soldier, the new head of the town, disappeared unannounced. I knew he was dead, and confirmed it when I found his head floating in the watering hole near my house when I was going to fetch fresh water. And near the water, grabbing the Soldier's head with his fingers, was the squat fat man who'd killed him. I asked him why he'd done it, and he'd explained to me that Soldier was becoming infected, and the only thing he could do to save the town was to kill him. But Soldier's head was bloated and white--he'd been dead for a long time, and I didn't trust this man.

The man proclaimed himself as the new Soldier and of course, I had to abide since I had no other name to call him. He assisted me in getting supply in my preparations to flee to New Mexico--I needed to stock up on gas.

The new Soldier also told me he'd discovered a way to ward off the infected. They hate the smell of death. So he'd acquired dozens of dead bodies and stripped them of their innards to spread them about his yard. It reeked. But as promised, there were no infected beings. Unfortunately, they didn't offer much traction and I feared if there came a time to evacuate, I would slip around on the intestines and die. But such is the life of the apocalypse, you never know what will kill you.

This is the alternative place.