Not dead! (Patreon)

Sorry that July has gotten away from me.  I've been trying to juggle a job with moving and writing.  Plan is to do editing of Homelands this weekend, so hopefully new chapter out next weekend.

Not going to make it to Bronycon this year, but that just wasn't in the cards.  However, I did sign a copy of Fallout Equestria that's going to be up for charity auction, so if you are going, you'll have a chance at it.

Sorry I've been silent for way too long...

Anyway, here's a little idea knocking around in my head.  Probably won't go anywhere but it's what happens when I've been watching TWD, which I really shouldn't do...

The rifle shot caught the blue perched atop the bus, the fifty caliber round nearly blasting the creature apart as it grasped at the hole in its gut in all too human a manner before tumbling on to the ground, its legs kicking and spasming.  Chuck slung the massive rifle and approached with an equally massive revolver in his meaty grip.  The blue struggled to rise, but he grabbed a shovel and rammed it down into the creature's gut, pinning it to the earth.  The blue let out a scream of rage and pain, claws scratching at the handle.

"So, which of you lambs hasn't seen a psycho-smurf before?" the muscle bound man asked the scavengers with a grin, his golden teeth flashing in the sun.  "Up close, I mean?"

Three of them, slowly shuffled towards the pinned monster in fascination, including Kife.  It was smaller than she expected.  Normal, or was this a child or teen transformed by hostile nanites.  The skin had an almost amphibious appearance to it, bright vivid blue with mottled black the closer one got to the edges.  The cheeks had split, exposing the entire jaw full of sharp fangs.  Wide, milky eyes seemed more suited for something living deep underground than anything that had once been human.  The tips of the fingers were pulled back, bony claws protruding from the tips of each.

"This here is your standard blue.  We'll call it blue, basic.  Probably only five or six years old.  Californian straggler, I bet.  Maybe out of Bakersfield or Fresno," Chuck said as he squatted next to the creature, its claws slashing inches from his potato-like nose.  "As you can see, even with a hole blasted in its gut and pinned like it, there's still plenty of fight left in it."

"That used to be a person?" one of the salvagers asked, as if not believing his eyes.

"Yup.  As much as you and me.  But it got some bad nanites inside it, they set up shop, and pretty soon this poor bastard's brain was hollowed out and reprogramed into what you see here."  He then pointedly looked down between its kicking legs, though it was just as smooth as a barbie doll down there.  "Sorry.  Bitch.  Hips and all."

"Is there anything left of her in there?" Kife asked solemnly.

"Oh, you bet.  Blue's have habits.  They're not mindless zombies.  They know things.  If you lock a door, they'll go looking for a window.  They won't just blindly charge forward to be slaughtered either.  They'll skulk.  Stalk.  Bite your ass when you're taking a dump."  Chuck gave Kife a unnerving grin. "And yeah, there's probably some memories in there too.  Some part of her screaming for death.  Sometimes you'll find a blue sitting in a junker, like its driving to work, or roaming through a store like it's shopping.  Yeah, they're still in there."

He then pointed the massive revolver at its head.  The blue's jaws parted in one last shriek, of rage or terror, and then the revolver barked.  The round destroyed everything from the jaw up, and the entire body fell back, twitching.  "First rule of killing blues.  Destroy the head.  Now, who thinks this bitch is dead?"

"You blew its fucking head off!" exclaimed one of the salvagers.

Chuck pursed his lips, then gave the blue's hip a nudge with his foot.  Instantly, the body began flailing wildly, limbs swinging.  "Shit!" screamed one of the salvagers, but the rest chuckled as they continued disassembling the scapped cars.

"Second rule, don't assume its dead just because you destroyed it's head,"  he stated, pointing his gun and almost artfully blowing apart its shoulder joints.  He grabbed a wrist and pulled, tearing the blue arm off like a raw chicken leg.  The wrist continued to curl, fingers opening and closing.  He holstered the gun and drew a bowie knife.  Slicing into the forearm, he pulled the skin and muscles back to reveal a tiny lump of wrinkled, blue gray matter.  "Blues grow secondary brains in their extremeties.  Means even with out their heads, they're still dangerous.  A blue can feel vibrations through their feet and they've got exceptional reflexes.  If this bitch got moving, she could jump away from a mine before her brain registered it was under her feet.  They're that quick.  That's why you take them down at range.  If they get close, you're having a bad day."

"So how the fuck do you kill it?" squawked the salvager.

"Anyone know?" Chuck asked the others.

"UV light," said Kife.  "Sunlight breaks down the nanite's proteins."

"Gold star for the little girl!" Chuck chuckled.  "Blue's can die in an hour or three exposed to sunlight, which is why we operate from sun up to sun down.  But don't think that blue's aren't active in the daytime.  This one was sniffing us out.  Basements.  Anywhere indoors.  Storm drains.  They'll be packed full of these things and worse."

"Fire?" suggested a different salvager.

"Ennngh!" Chuck buzzed.  "Blue's don't like fire any more and any other living thing, but unless you're up north, it doesn't kill them.  They'll cannibalize and regenerate their epidermis in a hour and be right back in your face.  The only exception is up north.  They've got a variant with antifreeze in their veins.  Once those get going, they'll burn inside and out in a few minutes.  Stinks like a bitch.  What else?"

"Nanease?" Kife suggested.

"Two for two," Chuck said with a nod.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a Nanease injector.  "Blue got transformed from frigging nanites.  So to take them out, you can use Nanease," he said, shaking the injector.  "This is pure nanease.  Runs about two fifty, three hundred creds." he stuck it to the arm he was holding and injected it with a hiss of air.

"Fuck," muttered the second salvager.  "Someone's made of mon- shit!"

Almost instantly, the flesh began to boil and swell.  A rancid blueish green foam began to drip from its severed end.  The hand gave a few wild gesticulations, tendons snapping like gunshots, then it went limp.  Chuck dropped the limb, where it continued to foam.  "Should bill for teaching expenses," he said as he put the injector back in his pocket.

"Can they starve?" asked the first salvager.

"Blue's need to eat, and they'll happily eat each other if one is damaged.  They also need to stay wet.  Makes the Mojave a nice, natural barrier to them.  Not that the bastards aren't trying to crawl their way up the Colorado and into Lake Mead."

"Or up the Mississippi.  Or up the Columbia," added Kife.  "They can't cross overland easily, so they use waterways to infiltrate the interior."

"You sure this is your first salvage run?" Chuck asked, narrowing his eyes almost suspiciously.  "Littlebit here has it right.  Any waterway might have two or three dozen blues just hanging out under the surface, waiting for the sun to go down.  They don't drown.  They can extract oxygen from water just like a fish."

"Fucking hell," muttered the second salvager.

"Oh, Hell's got nothing on these fuckers.  These things were made by science.  Humans are ten times more fucked up than anything the devil can do," Chuck laughed.  "Now.  Last question.  Your buddy gets killed by one of these things.  Throat ripped out.  What ever.  What do you do?"

Not even Kife knew the answer to that.  "The answer is dismember at least, and cremate if you can.  That body's loaded with nanites that are doing everything they can to get that body moving again.  And it will if its intact.  So if you buddy buys it, don't put them in a body bag and expect to have a funeral.  Even embalming only slows these fuckers down.  I've been called in where some dude's been dead a month only to have them crawl out of their coffin.  That's why cremation's manditory in Vegas now.  Too many bodies getting back up again as blues."

"Like zom-" Kife started to say.

"At-at-at-at!" Chuck interrupted.  "Not zombies.  Blue's are way worse than zombies, Littlebit.  Remember, this idiot thought she was dead just because I blew off her head.  He'd be torn to pieces by the rest of the blue if he'd treated it as a zombie."  He straightened and kicked the foamy arm at the rest of the blue's body.  It too went wild and started to thrash as the nanease in the arm went to work on the rest of the body.  "Now get to work.  We've got eight hours before we need to be moving back to base camp.  Get going."