It takes a solid 20 minutes before I feel even remotely functional again, which, considering it was only 58 minutes into my 75-minute night watch shift, something was definitely off with time. Most likely from hoping to the spirit realm like it was a tourist destination, and promptly living with the consequences of my actions in the form of nerve damage. And trauma, definitely can't forget the trauma.

  I shudder at the thought of going back, but quickly push the feeling down into the depths of the rest of my emotional baggage and promptly try to distract myself. A very unhealthy coping mechanism if I do say so myself.

  I was in no shape to fight off an angry kitten, let alone whatever else was lurking out there, but moving around might do me some good. Maybe it would help clear my head and bring to the surface whatever's been itching at the back of my mind since I got back. I take a deep breath to stabilise myself and slowly uncurl my aching body to stand on my trembling legs with my arms spread out by my sides to help balance myself.

  I spent the next few minutes standing like an unsteady toddler having an existential crisis, trying to piece together what I had forgotten and had just been through, when I spotted the unfinished mosaic of a stag sitting on the table in my mother's place. Its white tiles stand out against the blue and green world map tablecloth.

  I stare blankly as my mind is bombarded by memories of a loving woman who never gave up on my dysfunctional ass. I stumble slightly as I squeeze my eyes closed and rub my face. "I should say a proper goodbye," I say softly, steadying myself.

  Despite having clear intent when I muttered those words, I don't remember moving or how I got to my parents' resting place. Yet here I stand, with a cold, empty feeling consuming my insides as I look at my dead family, once full of life, now lying on a cold, hard concrete floor with pale skin and empty eyes. I would have preferred a better resting place than the neighbour's double garage, surrounded by disregarded timber and tools. But it was the best place with easy access in the winding, almost maze-like cul-de-sac.

  My insides feel empty as I stare at them, the cold familiar numbness creeping in as I hoped they would move and come back to me, but I knew it wouldn't happen even as I wished to talk to them one last time.

  A cool morning breeze caresses my back as the morning sun begins to inch over the monotone new-build houses, its glare making me squint. And yet, even as I take it all in, I can only feel detached numbness. I try to feel something, anything, at their passing other than cold indifference and mild discomfort, but I just stand there, staring, like a broken statue.

  'The fuck is wrong with you? They raised you, you little shit. Act like it'

  "Hey mum, hey dad. I hope you enjoy whatever counts as an afterlife and get to be together…wherever you are. I thought I should say a few words. I've never really been good with emotions, especially when other people are around, so I thought I would come alone." I take a slow breath, trying to ease the pit forming in my stomach, the new emotion making me uncomfortable.

  "Mum. I could talk for hours about your loving, happy, and independent nature. Your desire to make the world a better place, even if it was only one step at a time." I lean my aching body against the garage wall for support.

  "Your generosity with your time, energy, and advice has helped me in so many ways that I can't even begin to describe my gratitude. I'm…I'm going to miss you, mum. I'm really going to miss you." I stare at her cold, dead eyes and unmoving corpse before changing my gaze to my father.

  "Dad…"

  [Second set event: Corpses' sin has begun. All those who are deceased will rise from their graves to try and drag the living into their eternal torment to share their fate. Warning: the undead will mutate and evolve as time goes on.]

  I stare at the text for a moment, taking in the message and letting it settle into my mind. "Ah, that's what I forgot. Knew it was something important. Although I must say the timing is a bit shit." I look at the message, then at my parents, then back at the message. "Fuck."

  Then all hell broke loose. My parents' backs arched to unnatural angles, their dead lips now alive in the form of a snarl before a roar ripped through their vocal cords and exploded into the cold morning air, joining the cacophony that promised death from the undead that now roamed the land.

  'Shiiiiiiiit, this is not how I envisioned the funeral going.' I look on in horror as my parents' bodies are forced to contort and spasm. Their joints and bones crack like kindling, their eyes rolling in their sockets as they weep a viscous tar-like substance that stains their pale faces, forging its way down only to pool into their screaming maws.

  The twitching masses of contorted flesh stumble onto their feet and look around at the messy garage in abnormal jerky movements that swing their whole head around, flinging the black tears out of their mouths to splatter onto the floor, tarnishing the smooth grey of the concrete.

  Inevitably, they lock onto my horrified face and frozen form, their distorted faces stretch into broad, unsettling smiles that radiate sadistic malice and rage. I try to look into the eyes of the woman who raised me, but all I see is a bloodthirsty visage enclosed by long, greasy locks of dark brown curly hair staring back at me from my mother's once-loving face. I turn to face my dad just in time to avoid his frenzied lunge and see his eyes are filled with hatred and hunger.

  I darted out of the way and out of the garage into a more open space. "Hey Mum, Dad, do you remember me?" I asked in a panic. A small, stupid part of me hoped they would return to normal. All I got in response was a roar that sounded more at home coming from a feral beast. If anything, my words only seemed to spur them on towards me, claw-like hands reaching out, trying to tear their only son apart.

  I let out a long sigh and look at the clear blue sky above me as I gather myself. "I'm going to take that as a no. But if you change your mind, please let me know." I back away, summoning my rounders bat and trying to look at the situation logically, ignoring that it was my parents trying to kill me.

  'They move at an average walking pace...' I walk backwards and circle them, watching them struggle to turn. 'But have a low turning speed.' A memory of my dad teaching me to drive flashes through my mind, causing me to grit my teeth. 'Focus, brain! I can't just leave them like this, so shut the fuck up!'

  I walk backwards as I gather information while trying to monitor my surroundings.

  'I can't use much, if any, powers after that training session, but I never wanted to be reliant on them anyway.' A small part of me noted that I never wanted to mutilate my parents' bodies either, but I guess we were doing it anyway.

  I continued to circle them while trying to come up with a plan, but really, I was just stalling. 'Bring them to the floor and stomp on their heads. Take out Da… The male first and use his body to trip... the Female.'

  "Stop stalling, you little bitch." I growl out through gritted teeth and let out a shout of defiance before rushing to my dad's side and making use of his slow turning to slam my steel-capped foot into the back of his knee while giving a backhanded strike with the bat to the back of his head. It gives off a resounding crack that sends painful vibrations through the bat into my feeble wrists, making them ache before the adrenaline floods my system, numbing the pain and filling me with a false sense of strength and manic energy.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Even though the steel-capped boot and bat, his body felt like stone, but it didn't stop his moving corpse from crumpling like a folded chair when I smashed his joints and skull at full force. 'Stronger but slower bodies? Should make traps easier, but I will need to keep a distance.'

  I fix my gaze on my mother and call out to her in a low voice, coaxing her toward my father's fallen body. But even now, he was still struggling to rise, limbs twitching and fumbling to push himself towards his prey. I just needed her to stumble long enough to give me a chance.

  She lets out a guttural, bloodthirsty snarl, her eyes wild with hunger. The twisted desire to tear into my flesh blazes across her face, her teeth darkening, her nails curling into blackened claws as more of the tar blackens her veins and pours out of her decaying body.

  Letting out a snarl of my own, I pivot on my foot and grab one of her outstretched hands and pull her forward with all my strength, causing her to trip on my father's frenzied corpse. I take a few steps back and watch the writhing mass of entangled limbs for a moment as memories play in my mind.

  Mother taking me to play park when I was younger, us laughing on the seesaw as the sun glistened in the background. Going scuba diving with my dad in the Great Barrier Reef, playing board games on a Friday night…

  I let out a long, drawn-out sigh "I don't know if you are still in there or if you are watching somehow, but I want you to know I love you both..."

  Voices and movement come from the house behind me as I watch my parents struggle to get to their feet. "And I'm glad for the time we got to spend together…"

  I summon the javelin from my inventory and glance around at the surrounding houses, noting the sound of breaking glass and snarls coming from their depths. "But I can't leave you like this. It's not you, and I won't let it taint how the world remembers you. I hope you can both forgive me, and thank you for everything you've done for me." My eyes start to moisten as I lunge forward and drive the tip of the javelin through the back of my mother's skull.

  Sickening squelching noises fill the air, quickly followed by the sound of a shattering window as more reanimated corpses shuffle out onto the street. "Well, that's unfortunate," I mutter as my body shakes from unshed tears. 'Maybe training before killing my parents was a bad idea.' I spare my neighbour's house a quick glance and notice the undead Hungarian couple attempting to crawl out of their broken window, but quickly refocus on the task at hand.

  Leaning back again, I try to take the javelin out of my mother's skull, but it's stuck, bent within the brain upon impact. "Well, shit."

  I look at the incoming corpses before looking at my dad, now slowly pushing my mother's corpse away. "Sorry, Dad, but I can't leave you like this."

  With those final words, I slam my boot into his face, causing his head to smash back down onto the floor with a resounding crack. Stomping a few times in quick succession, I then grip my rounders bat and swing it down onto his head, making it splatter onto the tarmac like a rotten egg, making the grey matter explode out from within the skull, painting me in gore.

  Now, on my hands and knees, shaking from the after-effects of the fight and filled with a deep visceral anger that spreads throughout my body like a virus, I start to tear up, my breath coming out as shaky gasps. It was as if a dam had broken and all the pushed down and shunned emotions came rushing through like a tidal wave that threatened to drag me along with it. I just cracked both my parents' skulls like pi?atas, I just mutilated their corpses. 'What if there's a cure later on? What if they could have fought it? What if…eternal torment…What if it's the right thing to do?' I look up from my crouched position on the floor and see Peta and Nora's living corpses standing back up from falling through their broken window.

  I didn't know what was right or wrong, and I was the last person who should be making the choice. I was just some melodramatic teenager with emotional regulation problems; hell, I wasn't even expected to live this long. I get to my shaking feet, and try to calm my pounding heart as I stare down the living dead slowly encroaching upon me.

  My mind felt sluggish, my body unresponsive. I didn't know what to do. "Eternal torment, huh?" I hear the front door of my house open, but don't dare take my eyes off the slowly approaching dead; they could almost touch me now with their slowly blackening, outstretched nails, and yet I couldn't move. "So I should put you out of your misery? And if there is a cure, then I will have to bear that burden and hope I can be forgiven."

  I look at Peta, raise my right hand into the air, and send my will into my inventory. "I just hope you don't judge me too harshly." With that, I liquify the core of the metal shot put, letting it fall and solidify onto my raised hand, forming around my fist like a metal boxing glove.

  Clawed hands reach to rip into my fragile flesh, but I step to the side and swing my metal hand into Pete's bald head. There's a sickening crunch of breaking bones, his skull, my wrist, maybe both. He drops like meat, stumbling onto his knees only to receive a face of liquid metal flicked off my now broken wrist. It quickly solidifies around his head, forcing him to the floor and allowing me to savagely stomp on his unguarded windpipe, pinning him to the floor.

  Searing white pain fills my mind from my wrist, but it only pisses me off more. I spare a quick glance at the deformed joint sticking out at an odd angle, but only feel disgust at its weakness hindering me in putting the dead out of their misery.

  By now, Nora was upon me, and I was down a hand and running low on everything. I could hear my name being called and footsteps rapidly getting closer, but it felt distant, like I was underwater, submerged in a tide of melancholy and bitterness. I duck under a wild swing, crouch low enough to skim my hand along the floor by her bare feet, and trap her foot in the now liquid tarmac.

  Rolling to the side over splattered tar and brain matter after overextending, I find myself lying on my back staring at the clear blue sky, panting for breath and utterly exhausted, but I still had a job to do and a corpse to put down. Luckily, Nora was still trapped within the tarmac and couldn't rip the flesh off my bones while I slowly edged my way behind her, where I was finally able to see who was calling my name.

  A fully armoured Noah was rushing towards me, machete in hand and a look of absolute panic and confusion on his face. 'Oh yeah… we have machetes. Fucking dumb ass.' I mourn my pointlessly broken wrist as I fumble around in my inventory trying to find it and summon it to my left, non-broken hand. Finally armed with a proper weapon, I twist my body, line up the shot and swing it with all my frail might into Nora's head. The blade bites deep into the skull, flesh and bone, parting with a slurp that turned my stomach.

  I try to pull it out of the rapidly collapsing body, but I find myself being dragged down behind it before Noah finally reaches me and pulls me back to my unsteady feet. He quickly pulls out my machete with a grimace and looks around in a blind panic. I struggle to focus and lift my head through the physical and emotional exhaustion, but quickly see what has him so nervous. Eleven shambling corpses were heading our way. 'Damn, I really need to finish my bingo card. I have to prepare for all this cliche bullshit.'

  I grit my teeth in anger but swallow my internal pain and try to ignore the throbbing pain from my wrist. 'Time to move it or lose it.' I go to wipe my moist eyes on the back of my hand, but stop at the sight of my gore-stained arm and awkwardly push my way off Noah, gesturing to the neighbour's garden gate to the side of their garage.

  Before I could answer the unspoken question on Noah's face, I saw Ava's head poke out of the doorway, a look of fear and confusion written upon her face. 'Shit' Before the dead could spot her and decide she was a closer and therefore easier snack, I quickly called out a warning to lock the door and informed her we would loop around to the back door to get them away from our doors and easy to break windows.

  By now, the dead had gotten significantly closer, just in time for Noah and I to make a big show of going a few doors down before quickly rushing into the small gap between the tightly packed houses that led into the gardens. From there, Noah had to help me over the garden gates and fences to eventually make it to the back door, which Mia promptly opened and ushered us in with panicked urgency.

  I shuffle through the door and promptly collapse onto a dining room chair like it was my lover's arms. I had never in my life felt so bone tired and emotionally spent. But that's what I get for trying to do something productive and meaningful. A mirthless chuckle escapes my parched lips as I reflect on the situation I find myself in. If this wasn't happening worldwide, I would properly start moaning about being fate's reusable toilet paper.

  But if the apocalypse wasn't the perfect environment for healthy personal mental growth, then what was? 'If only the court-mandated therapists could see me now, haha, oh, people are here and looking at me.' I snapped out of my dazed thoughts and tried to refocus my scrambled brain on my friends who were crowding around Noah and I like we were a particularly exotic-looking exhibition with expectant looks on their faces.