Stage One: Hope in Darkness

Fighting Sickness (Lara)

Fear is natural and there to keep you alive and happy, yet in times like these it feels debilitating. A sickness spreading through you, a plague that wreaks havoc on the mind and body. Fear causes a chemical reaction in the brain. The change in chemistry traps people in their primitive brain, the part that will prepare them for genocide and war, the parts that are incapable of empathy, logic and self control. All of the most desirable traits of humanity. Thus destroying the best parts of them. Fear is natural, a healthy response of the brain to keep you alive. You cannot get lost in it though, can't let it drown you in the chemicals.

I was in the front so I got the unlucky honor to peek around the corner. Carefully leaning over I focused my eyes on the sight before them. I frowned at what I saw. Dead eyes open wide, armless walkers waiting with gaping mouths. That chemical called fear rushes through my system. I quickly tamp it down. I should be afraid, but I can't let it control me. What lay before my eyes was much worse than a group of lifeless walkers abling around in the street. What I could see was worse, walkers made into pets. Into weapons to be used on others. These zombies had masters. Ripper walkers. Men who had long since given into the fear, let it seep deeply into their minds. Let the chemicals corrode at all that they once were. Let them become something worse. The old saying 'if you can't beat them, join them' was a thing they lived by. They walked, talked and thought but they were no better than the walkers that they corralled like poorly trained dogs.

Ripper walkers removed the arms of the walkers that they lovingly called pets. They covered the heads of the walkers so they couldn't see, couldn't attack. The human, I used that word loosely for the rippers, part of the group was sitting around amidst the pets. They had made a camp, what they called a camp at least. Roughly made walls of broken cars and scrap, leathers and fur thrown about haphazardly around served as beds. Pets chained to the 'outer walls' of their camp made a perimeter of teeth that no one would be dumb enough to attempt a heist. Not that the rippers had anything a normal person would want. On top of being scavengers that preyed on any other survivors out there the Ripper walkers were also cannibals. Charming little creatures weren't they?

Rippers sat on tops of cars and trash cans, gathered loosely around a bonfire that was centered in the camp. They laughed and roared, enjoying big chunks of dripping flesh. They had made that kill very recently. A human, oddly enough the rippers would not eat their walkers. Fucking psychopaths. They had truly embraced the new world, thinking themselves more as the walkers than humans. That is what made them worse. Full thinking cannibals. The walker one could at least out smart, out maneuver. If you kicked down a ladder they did not have the sense to raise it again to follow you. The rippers did. They also had a fondness for firearms and explosives.

If Ripper walkers were here then we were in big trouble.

"Lara" Ryan whispered behind me, tired of waiting for my brain to start again after the shock of seeing the rippers. He wanted to know what I had seen, what had caused me to turn pale. Cause I surely had lost a couple shapes of pink. I pulled back around the corner, shielding my eyes from the sight of that deep red flesh still dripping with blood. I looked back at the three of them.

"Ripper walkers" I whispered into the space between us. Sam gave an irritated sigh.

"I was hoping you wouldn't say that," Sam mumbled. Derek took all of this in silence. It was as if nothing even fazed him. I wished for that strong resolve of his. Found myself envying that calm that seeped from him in waves. When I wished for peace all I got was this curse, these nightmares that plagued me even in the light. Derek looked to the ground then to Ryan as he asked,

"And what about the bomb?" Always a step ahead. He had kept in mind the reason we had been sent out here in the first place. A calm strategist. Focused on the mission, was he a soldier before the end of the world? It would not surprise me.