Episode 28: Zombies Killed In Episode: 0

“I just wanna kill zombies!” Zach yelled once more.
“I hate the way you yell,” Sunny’s voice echoed from somewhere. “It’s painful.”
“Oh, you hate everything!” Zach yelled, making very sure to keep his voice in the same tone as before.
“Which is exactly why I’m going to destroy everything!”
“Yeah, right. You can’t go Sephiroth on us!”
“I hated that video game. I also hate video game references.”
“Whatever.” Zach darted between the trees, looking for the hidden Sunny.
“You know what else I hate? Atomic weaponry. Don’t you think they’d have some here?”
“I don’t know! I just know that I have to kill you.”
“I hate death threats. I also hate not knowing why I’m getting them. Why do you have to kill me?”
“I don’t know! Killing people is fun?”
“Then come help me, even though I hate having help.”
“That’s dumb! If you kill everyone, who’s left to kill?”
“I hate fuzzy logic.”
“I hate your sorry ass!”
“So do I. I hate talking, too, so shut up.”
“I won’t shut up! Everything I do just makes you more annoyed. Annoyed people make mistakes!”
No one responded.
“Oh, that’s very mature. Just stop talking to me because I annoy you? I’d block you if this was the internet.”
Nothing.
“Dammit, where are you, psycho?” Zach continued his search. There was no sign of the maniac anywhere. And he really had stopped saying anything. Really, Zach had gone into the night expecting to do nothing but kill zombies... He continued searching the arboretum, running at nearly the same speed that he had from his home to S-Mart.

Joan Riese had not yet found a weapon, after ten minutes of circling the house. She had managed to deftly evade detection by the zombies inside and outside, but she knew that she couldn’t do it for long. Not with them milling about so incessantly. And she had no chance to find a weapon out here, and she knew it. There wasn’t another structure to be seen for quite a long distance. And then she realized that, despite all her training, she had neglected one place to search for an emergency weapon. There was obviously a parking lot just on the other side of the house. She hastened to it to search the trunks for something that could be of use.
Of course, she hadn’t taken into account just yet that it had been valet parking. Those attending the party didn’t really even know who the valets were, or who paid them. The valets themselves probably hadn’t even known why they had gone there to valet. It had just seemed the thing to do. And now they were dead, meaning the parking area was teeming with the half-living valets.
She decided to try something else.
On her first circle of the house, she had noticed a small window leading into the basement. She couldn’t quite grasp how she had never noticed it before, but it was there nonetheless. She hadn’t gone in on her first few circles, because she was concerned that, despite the basement’s empty appearance, a horde of the shambling undead was waiting just inside to ambush anyone entering through there. But now she knew she had no choice. There were no weapons outside, and she couldn’t just leave all of those people. She snuck to the window and smashed it open.
She didn’t notice until she was inside that the lights were on. She also didn’t notice until she was inside, and feeling significantly drier, that there was an imposing two-handed sword jammed into the ground. She approached it and examined the hilt. Then she gasped, and said, very loudly, very uncharacteristically, “Holy shit!”

“I don’t think that young lady is coming to save us,” a woman said to Steve. Coincidentally, that woman was Sylvie’s mother.
“Someone will,” Steve grumbled. “And if they don’t, we’ll get off in the morning. Now, please, go to sleep. You’ll need rest to run.”
“You should sleep too,” a man-Sylvie’s father-said. “I’m a cop. I know what no sleep can do. You look like you’ve been awake for nearly a day.”
“I’m a soldier. I can function at full capacity with even less sleep, and I need to be functioning at full capacity until we’re out of here and down there in a safe house. I’ll sleep when I’ve rescued all of you.”
“This is why I married him,” Lucy announced, squeezing the arm not holding the shotgun. The whole time, Steve had not looked away from the fields beneath them.

“These are...” Someone gasped. Another wave of fainting enveloped the room. Ujer, Hanh, Laban, and Elder Smith VI were the only ones who had managed to keep any semblance of wits about them. Elder Smith VI was, in fact, completely in control and smiling knowingly. Laban glanced up at him, and something suddenly rushed into his mind.
“Wait, that’s...”
“Laban, my child, both your name and that sword must be redeemed.”
“Areyouserious?” Ujer tittered. She stepped back up to the box and beheld the mystical gold plates. She reached out to touch one, and did. Despite their storage in the cold corridor beneath, each one was warm to the touch. Hanh’s eyes were wide, and his mouth was stuck midway between scoff and shock.
“Wait, wait wait.,” Laban protested, grinning out of confused instinct. “You’re telling me that I’m some sort of reincarnation of the ancient Laban, and I have to redeem myself using THE Sword of Laban, and that those are Joseph Smith’s gold plates that he hid all those years ago?”
“You’re not a reincarnation of Laban,” Elder Smith VI said reassuringly with a smile.
“Oh, that’s good.” Laban chuckled nervously.
“I just really like the name. The sword needs to be here, and redeemed, now. It only makes sense that The Sword of Laban be held by Laban.”
“How long have you been engineering this?”
“And yes, those are the plates that I hid.”
A stunned silence enveloped all those who had not fainted yet. Several more people fainted.
“You’recrazy!” Ujer squeaked.
“No...” Hanh said slowly. “I don’t think he is.”
“How old are you?” Laban stepped back, looking at the figure of Elder Smith VI that was suddenly filled with a new air of age.
“There’snoway!”
“I stopped counting a while back. You know, young Ujer, not many people believed me when I told them God was sending angels to me.”
“Okay, but let’s cut to the chase,” Laban interrupted. “Let’s accept for a moment that you are Joseph Smith, and these are the gold plates and the Sword of Laban. What’s supposed to happen?”
“A boy of action,” Smith smiled. “I’m glad for that. And your friends, Ujer, and Hanh: a girl of faith, and a boy of doubt. Of course, judging from your reactions, you may have swapped expectations...”
“JosephSmithdiedalongtimeagoand”
“Slow down, Ujer,” Laban said.
“Joseph Smith died a long time ago, and there is no way that he would come back here.”
“Ujer, my child, I never died.” Smith chuckled, and said under his breath, “I never die.”
“What?” Hanh asked.
“Oh, nothing, just thinking of a friend.”
“Hey, Joseph, you never answered my question. What do I do with it?”
“You will go out and fight Ezekial’s army.”
“Ezekial’s army?”
“He means the undead out there,” Hanh said. “Ezekial connected the bones of fallen warriors and created an army for the Lord.”
“Impromptu religious knowledge. A sign of new faith.”
“I’llbetthat’snothowJosephSmithtalked.”
“At least both of you switched...”
“Excuse me, Elder Smith. I still don’t understand.”
“You’re supposed to go clear the world of zombies!”
“Oh.”
“What?”
“Elder Smith, you do realize how stupid this is, don’t you?”

“Jesus Christ, why the fuck is there such a fucking huge forest inside a fucking secret underground military base?” Zach screamed, for quite possibly the dozenth time since entering said arboretum. Once again, Sunny made no reply. “Could you at least tell me your name?” For the dozenth time, no answer to that question came. Zach frowned, and suddenly remembered the other weapon he was carrying. He grinned, slowed down to a trot, and resheathed his sword. “Alright, I guess I’ll just have to smoke you out!” He pulled out his flame thrower, and booted it up. He was about to begin lighting trees on fire, when he noticed a figure slowly advancing through the arboretum behind him. He spun and pointed the flame thrower at it.
The figure made him think twice about turning it on full power. It was sort of greyish, sort of scaly, and sort of oozy. He stared at the thing, oozing, sort of glooping with out the gloop sound, across the arboretum’s grassy floor. Terrified for the first time in a long time, Zach did turn on the flame thrower full power. Flames licked it as it slowly began to pass. It stopped, and so Zach turned down the flames. The oozing grey almost shapeless thing lay still for a moment, but then it seemed to turn towards him. Zach began to scream high and quick screams, slightly longer than yelps, when he saw that it bore a face-a face that he knew.
A human form fell out of a tree right behind Zach.
“What the fuck is that?” Sunny wailed.
“It looks like... Oh, shit!” Zach dropped his flame thrower and ran quickly in the direction that he had been running before. Sunny took aim at the thing with Joe’s face and fired the shotgun. The entirety of the shell seemed to enter the thing’s body, creating a vague ripple. Sunny began screaming much as Zach had, and ran off at a similar speed in the same direction.
The oozing thing began moving again, the same direction as the other two, slowly gaining speed, as well as the shape of Joe.

Joan Riese stood in awe at the big sword jammed into the stone ground. She stood in awe at first because it was a very, very big sword. She stood in awe second because it was embedded deep in the stone. She had gone on a personal reconnaissance mission here only one day ago. It hadn’t been there then, and she couldn’t imagine how much power it would take to force that sword into the ground without cracking either one. It couldn’t have been done that easily.
But somehow, she knew instinctively that the sword she was looking at could do a lot of things that were generally impossible.
She stepped forward slowly, even melodramatically. She leaned down after a couple of steps, her tussled and damp black hair swinging towards the hilt as her deep, deep black eyes floated towards the same. She reached out gingerly to touch the hilt. It was warm. Not just any warm; it seemed to be flowing with indescribable energy. She, very suddenly, struck out her other hand to grab it just as she grasped it tightly with her first hand. She gave it a gentle tug, which it resisted, but not forcefully. She followed with a powerful tug, which it momentarily resisted, but then smoothly allowed itself to be removed.
Joan examined the blade carefully; it was sharp. Incredibly sharp. And it seemed to glow with some sort of invisible light. Also, it seemed to be screaming its name psychically.
“Excalibur,” she whispered, holding it up as any self-respecting hero holds up a sword at the moment that they realize it is flowing with power. She lowered it once more and began to walk towards the stairs heading up to the main building. She paused and turned. The basement of the floor was flawless. Absolutely no sword shaped gash where Excalibur had been napping. Joan grinned to herself, and began to climb the steps again.

Zach was running at his usual anime-esque speed. But for the first time all night, there was no gleeful smile on his face. For the first time in years, he was scared out of his wits. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what was happening and he cared that he didn’t know. It was the worst feeling he had ever experienced.
He burst out of the arboretum into one of those hideous white halls. It was completely bare. He didn’t take the time to notice this; he just kept running, until he got to a steel door. Instinctively, he pulled out Twin Scarlet River and sliced it open just short of its hinges. He kept running as it fell, and emerged a few feet higher than the ground and the bottom of the door. He leapt off of the still falling door and threw himself to the ground, exhausted and terrified. The door crashed to the ground, and still he lay there. He lay there for about three minutes, before another screaming figure emerged. It, too, collapsed just past the door on the strange structure. Zach looked at it, straining his neck to look up. The still screaming figure was Sunny. Zach let his head drop again and waited for Sunny to stop screaming as he caught his breath.
“Shut up,” Zach muttered when he hadn’t stopped screaming after another three minutes. It took a few more seconds, but Sunny finally did shut up.
“What... The hell... Was that?”
“I don’t fucking... know. Its face was... (Cough) Joe’s.”
“Who... The hell... Is Joe?”
“You should know, you killed his goddamned girlfriend.”
“I killed... A lot of people.”
“You’re not (cough) gonna kill any more.”
“I hate being told that!” Zach looked up again; Sunny was already on his feet and running. Zach cursed and took off, leaving behind the breath he hadn’t caught yet.

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