A Wizards Misadventures

~~Level Eight~~

AN: Late again. College applications are due and I… well, nevermind. It's really not hard to upload a chapter I've already written. I'm just easily distracted by the mountains of work that keep rising up but such is life. Sorry, guys. Then again, this chapter is a pretty good one in my opinion. There's lots of plot development.

Oh, and the zombie world is one of those original ones I mentioned around chapter 1s AN. The picture I had in my mind was kind of like World War Z. The movie, that is. Otherwise all the characters and such are original.

[|||| =LEVEL 8= ||||]

Claire and I raided a camping store and hotwired a nice Mercedes on our way out of the outskirts of New York, where I made a small scene crying over my motorcycle, which I put in my soulspace as soon as it was out of Claire's sight. Then came looting.

Most of the good stuff at the store was gone, but there was some okay stuff to loot. I had a few knives and some good clothes, Claire had clothes, two axes, and a climbing pick, and between us we had two of everything we thought would be useful except campfire fuel and food, of which we had about three bags of dried campfire food.

I demanded we stop and got some decent ingredients at a few small stores. They would spoil, but I had enough preserved stuff to make good meals for me and her. Claire had her head in the clouds, probably coming to terms with the apocalypse and didn't argue with my looting. Surprisingly, the water was still running and I was able to collect some in bottles and a large plastic box I found.

I wasn't sure how widespread the zombie plague was but it had taken New York within hours. It was probably an engineered plague, too, since zombies were a big leap of evolution, so it might have been released in every major city.

"You know, humanity just got sent back to pastoralism," I said absently, looking up at the starry sky from my sleeping bag. I was a bit uncomfortable since we were in a tree at the moment. Claire didn't want to sleep on the ground where a zombie could get her.

"… Yeah," Claire said, her voice small.

"Well, actually that might be an exaggeration. Bodies rot quickly, especially in warm weather. It takes about nine months in all. Maybe longer if the bodies keep enough organ systems running. They've got a heartbeat, after all. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to move. They breathe, think at a primal level, eat… do zombies need to poop? … Ugh." Claire snorted but it was wet. She was crying, probably.

"So zombies might last longer than nine months, we'll have to see. They might produce a preserving enzyme, after all. But the body's a complicated thing. Viruses are sorta blunt. They hijack and reproduce. They're doing delicate stuff; definitely genetically engineered. I doubt that they could do this sort of thing as perfectly as us original humans. Hm, maybe we should go south instead where they've got farms and food? Nah. There's less people in Canada if you get to the right place. It might take longer, but not by much."

I fell silent when Claire didn't respond. Then I heard a small sniffle. "Do you need a hug or something?" I asked.

"No!" she protested, her voice thick.

"Uh huh," I said, unconvinced.

"Ugh!" she groaned. I heard her roll over. "I'm gonna go to sleep. Goodnight you weirdo."

"Oh I'm definitely weird," I agreed. "And why not be? It's a big world and it just got a whole lot bigger. Why wouldn't you do what makes you happy? For better or worse, people are going to be doing that. Be weird if you want to. It's better than being stressed out. It's the apocalypse. Don't be one of the people who cry and moan. Be the person who laughs and parties the night away before you die."