The many, many colours of failure, and the bright tooting horn of SUDDEN INEXPLICABLE KNEE PAINS.
“Tim! Oooi, Tim! Come the fuck here. You gotta smoke this shit, man, you gotta.”
-
It’s like the Chaos Butterfly had been in an extra nasty mood, and had batted its wings for all its worth.
It had started at a remote research station in the depths of the jungles in South America. Some idle and probably lonely researcher doing a study on tree frogs had been hit by extreme boredom, as the prolonged drought had all the amphibians in hiding. In order to spend some time wisely, Marian Cross had decided to do as the locals do and try to smoke a compound extracted from an acacia tree.
Having got a more than satisfying high, he had coerced his research partner into trying it too, and all seemed jolly and well.
Little did they know, that the acacia trees near the research station had been infected by a parasite that usually took advantage of moths, but now had found a much better target.
Cross had made himself a dodgy multi-millionaire, selling this high-via-acacia product, and within half a year the world was completely taken over. The drug seemed to have no lasting side-effects, and in the short-term inspired nothing more than a severe case of the munchies. Its popularity in Asia had it nicknamed as Akuma (‘demon’ in Japanese, and being a contraction of the phrase ‘aku makan’ in the languages of the Malayan Archipelago, meaning I eat). His former research partner, Timothy Campy, had admitted himself into hospital on the grounds of feeling suspiciously out of sorts, and was later ridiculed as a hypochondriac.
Flap, flap, flap.
-
The parasite needed several months of incubation in the body before it could spread, and that was why nothing seemed to be amiss until months after the product was first introduced.
Suddenly, the munchies were a lot more severe.
Murderously so, even.
-
Seven and a half months after Akuma hit the mainstream market, governments the world over declare, with no small sense of embarrassment, a zombie apocalypse.
The parasites had had enough time to incubate, and as a result shit had hit the fan (the ceiling fan, mind you) almost overnight. The parasite caused a systematic shutdown of the conscious brain, leaving bodily functions to run on automatic. No filters remained , no sense of morality or right or wrong, or even any feeling of satisfaction. Nothing was ever enough, and those infected became gluttons of the worst sort. Very early on in the epidemic, doctors discovered that once the parasite had taken hold, there was no going back. The brain was gone, and hopefully those who suffered brain death had done so while on a high.
A zombie-maker, spread by bodily fluids. Suddenly sex stopped looking so attractive, as it was difficult to tell for sure whether or not someone was uninfected or was really a walking, talking incubator. Survival of the fittest, and chaos ruled. Lost and confused people started killing other people.
These zombies weren’t easily dissuaded in their search for anything organic to eat. Hordes of them fell into water catchment areas or forced their ways into power stations.
Fresh water became contaminated, and electricity became sporadic. Slowly but surely, the world stops functioning.
-
Consider the day the apocalypse was declared, day one.
This, is day seventy two.
Most of the world is dead and dying. Many armies had rallied up to try and quarantine those infected, but the number of people who were beyond help were impossible to contain, and now everywhere there are small pockets of the healthy barricading themselves against the zombies.
And there are some, who become self-appointed soldiers of fortune, equipping themselves with what they can loot and surviving on what they can scavenge.
Day three hundred and five.
Most of the world is dead, and most of the world is destroyed. Civilisation has faltered and fallen, and in numbers, the main survivors have been aboriginals, the forest people and dessert nomads who are removed from mainstream metropolises. They go on as they always have, some not even knowing that the apocalypse has come and is going on.
Kanda had made a few more trips to the capital, but it looked more and more ravaged each time he visited, and he had to kill more and more zombies each time. His favourite machete and axe had become blunt with overuse, so he made sure that for all the trips, he goes armed to the teeth, but also in possession of a whetting stone to sharpen as he progresses. Guilt had never featured in his feelings, even the first time he killed a zombie. They were dead in the head; he wasn’t. Good enough a reason to cut them down.
He surveys his crop of green veg, fingering a succulent leaf. It’s like with deserts, thinks Kanda, pondering on a point in a book he’s reading. He’s not a fast or avid reader, but it’s not like there’s much to do in these long empty days, so he grabs what books he finds lying on counters or shelves, and reads through them.
It’s like with desserts, are these rolling green plains. There’s so much empty space that your mind just inexorably broadens along with them.
And in his new and improved, broadened mind, Kanda has begun questioning his reason for living. His little Eden’s garden certainly was a beauty, but much though he prided himself on being antisocial, complete solitude with only his thoughts for company was beginning to wear him down.
Kanda climbs into his rickety jeep, and checks in a jerry can for how much fuel he has left. It’s been a long, long time since he’s spoken aloud, as cursing at a rock he’d stubbed his toe on was a lot less satisfying in the certain knowledge that no matter how loudly he raged, no one was around to come and be raged at. Kanda almost cannot remember what his voice sounds like, and in response to the miniscule amount of fuel left, he growls to himself.
Why not today? He’ll go into town, and go down fighting. There was barely enough fuel for a roundtrip anyways, so even if for some bizarre reason he decided to return and become a hermit, he could do so in relative safety and comfort.
Otherwise, he will die today, and take as many of the zombies down with him. In case there was some resurgence in humanity, Kanda supposes it’s better for him to have been a help than a hindrance. They’d be able to identify his body as that of a hero, because he’ll be in amongst a pile of properly-dead zombies with his throat slit and guts disemboweled. No way, in hell or anywhere else, was he going to allow himself to become some brain-dead monster. Seppuku’s a much better way out.
Resolve made and strengthened, Kanda neatens up his shelter for what may be the final time. If anyone came across the tiny plantation and tent and decided to make it their home, Kanda swears to bear only the smallest of grudges. He ties his hair back neatly, laces up his boots, and slips on his rosary.
Deep groves in the ground denote the number of days that have passed since he’s been here. Climbing into the driver’s seat of his jeep, Kanda takes a moment to count the number of scores. He’s survived for longer than he’d expected. Despite being by nature exceedingly cynical, Kanda had assumed the crisis would be overcome within a few months, and life would return to some semblance of normalcy. He hadn’t expected total ruin, and now he can’t understand why he had been so optimistic.
The door of the jeep sticks a little, thanks to rust and vigorous use, and Kanda has to tug hard before it comes slamming shut. Ever conscientious, he pulls his seatbelt on, then slaps his hands on the steering wheel.
Ten o’clock and two o’clock.
Turn on the ignition, and let’s go and join the millions dead. He steps on the accelerator and floors it so hard he leaves muddy groves in the grass.
-
He picks the city square as his final resting place. His car is parked just a few feet away, and he’s sitting on the steps, waiting for the zombies to gather. As they didn’t need to concentrate much on anything else, the zombies’ sense of smell was greatly heightened. They could smell fresh meat from quite a long way away, and Kanda doesn’t see the need to waste food or make noise in order to attract their attention. They’ll come, soon enough.
While waiting, he sharpens his favourite machete. It was a monster, gleaned from some ancient pawn store. Handle to tip it was thigh-high, and rusted over and viciously sharp. It’s heavy weight and insane length made it unwieldy in most hands, but in Kanda’s it was the perfect weapon. His second-favourite machete was sheathed and hung from his belt, and Kanda had two axes hanging from his back. Probably he was too well-equipped for someone who should be on suicide watch, but Kanda didn’t want to die being half-assed. In a line to his sides were a totally of eight Molotov cocktails, glass bottles half-full with turpentine with rags stuffed into the necks as wicks. A box of matches and a lighter were shoved down his left boot, and a kitchen knife was stuffed down his right. Running way well result in his slicing his foot off then setting himself on fire, but, and Kanda grins at this thought, he’s not got plans to run away.
Step, step, step. Kanda guesses they approach-eth.
He glances at his wrist, and counts what beads on the rosary he can see. He would kiss it, only there’s no place on this Earth private enough that would satisfy his conditions to do it. Kanda tosses away the whetting stone, and it lands in a nearby barren fountain with a satisfying thunk. He gets to his feet gingerly, picking up a bottle with him. Kanda’s timed himself; in a cinch, he could light a cocktail and fling it in under eight seconds flat.
The smell of turpentine is overpowering and intoxicating.
Maybe what’s most intoxicating is the thought that this dreary life is at its end, now. Kanda spares a moment to smile crookedly at the beautifully blue sky.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
-
Shuffle, step, shuffle, step. Sounds like someone’s going to do a spot of Thriller dancing, though Kanda can’t remember much about it except for the slick red jacket and mister Jackson having corkscrew curls. He balances his machete in his right hand, and spreads his feet a little to settle his weight comfortable.
Ah. Should have gotten himself a pair of binoculars. Probably from day one. Too late for that now. Kanda shrugs to himself, pinpoints the shuffling footsteps as coming from a minute side alley, and sets his first Molotov cocktail on fire, throwing it over his head and watching it tumble in a messy parabola before shattering at the mouth of the alley and spitting out a roaring fire.
He hears screaming, and Kanda’s brow crinkle in slight confusion. From what he’s understood, the thing that infested the brains cut off the pain receptors, because that made it easier to force the body to do whatever it wanted. Except for the hiss escaping deadened lungs, Kanda’s never heard the zombies make much in the way of sounds. It rouses his curiousity; maybe, just maybe, it was another survivor? He’d kept a careful eye out for anyone that wasn’t infected, but given the length of time for the parasite to incubate, no one was a sure bet.
Not that he’d met anyone anyways. Ulan Bator wasn’t densely populated to begin with, and the swamp of the murderous things had wrecked the capital from the very first time Kanda had come to visit after the announcement was made.
Still. He literally has nothing to lose.
On cat-quiet feet he creeps to the alley, machete aloft so that in case of zombie attack he can decapitate more easily.
The throw had been strong enough that the glass bottle had splintered like shrapnel from a grenade, and turpentine on fire had gone everywhere.
Including on a body that was vigorously rolling on the ground, screaming in a language that was no dialect of Chinese, Japanese or Mongolian.
Now, Kanda’s not the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer, but he’s picked up on the fact that the zombies aren’t likely to win any Nobel prizes anytime soon either. A treacherous part of him whispers that this might actually be a fellow human being. The sensible part of him sets to find out, but realizes quite quickly that his voice box is so unaccustomed to speaking that all that comes out is an angry-sounding croak.
The screaming figure appeared to be gently smouldering now, and rolling onto its back, it looks up at Kanda with an incredibly green eye.
Kanda looks back, still croaking while he tries to remember the sound of words. He feels like a parrot learning a new language, or a toddler learning his first one.
The zombie suspect licked chapped lips, and went off into a litany of what Kanda supposes are greetings, only none in a language he understands. He just keeps listening, waiting for the right one to ring some bell in his mind.
“-, Ola, Hello, Apa Khabar, Ni Hao Ma,-“
“Stop.” Kanda had licked his lips too, and with that he felt some semblance of social instincts returning to him. He swallows deeply, and repeats himself. “Stop. Hello, whatever. Human?”
The thing nods, panting heavily. Kanda supposes being set on fire would do that to you. He’s not particularly anxious to lend a hand; sure, the guy wasn’t lunging at him to gnaw on his arm yet, but it was no proof that he wasn’t infected, and that he didn’t have some nefarious motives. The world is full of nefarious motives, yeah.
“Human, a hundred per cent. Soldier ‘f fortune, f’now. Hello,” he repeats himself firmly, rocking himself until he was sitting up. “Call me Lavi.”
Not ‘my name is’, Kanda notes with typical journalistic accuracy. He nods briskly. “Kanda.”
“Er. ‘s a pleasure t’make your acquaintance. I wasn’t expecting anyone else t’still be around here.” He glances at his pack, and Kanda does too.
It looked heavy. A lot heavier than Kanda reckons one man’s pack should be. “You’re a looter,” he said, in the tone of voice one might use to tell a waiter that there’s a fly in the soup. Though the concepts of flies and waiters and soups are a bit hazy in Kanda’s numbed memory. “No better than the zombies.”
This was said with the tone of voice one might use to tell someone that they are the fly in the soup. Lavi’s gaze is helplessly drawn to the unsheathed machete, then to the sharp bits of glass and dry grass on fire. He laughs nervously. “Hey, ‘m only taking what I need t’survive, yeah? Don’t tell me that all th’stuff you’ve got on you, yeah, y’bought fairly ‘nd squarely!”
Slow the fuck down, Kanda’s still not accustomed to any voice but for the one in his head, and add to that the mutt’s insane accent, he’s feeling a headache coming along just trying to stay abreast of what is going on. So the wind whistles and fires putter out while Kanda tries to comprehend what’s just been said. He looks disgusted at what the man has insinuated. “I pay when there are humans to take the money. Otherwise,” he shrugs. What’s the point? That first gardening/hardware store he went to he’d paid for what he’d taken, but on subsequent trips the money he’d put on the counter was still there.
Money is mostly cotton, and burned beautifully.
Lavi is quiet, absently slapping at his smoking sleeve. He’s dressed to suit a Mongolian winter, though since he’s been traveling obsessively since the world first fell to ruins, the reason his pack is so heavy is because he’s got clothes to suit everything from West Sahara to Alaska. It isn’t weighed down with nicked Crown Jewels, which is what he suspects this savage, savage man in front of him thinks is the issue. He really had not been expecting to see another living soul in this part of the world (the generally condensed populations of Asia had meant the spread of the infection had occurred almost in the blink of an eye. China and Japan in particular had fallen hard and fallen fast.), and the diving knife strapped to his thigh is weighing in on his opinion.
To his knowledge, since the apocalypse began he hasn’t killed a single uninfected human being. There’s never really been a need to, you know? It was easy enough to hunker down in the mountains of Andorra for a few weeks as things went from bad to worse, then to set out to do the things on his must-do-before-I-die list. Perhaps not in the manner he’d planned when he was a young kid and started the list, but over the months the self-appointed title of a soldier of fortune became something he viciously wants to live up to. He’s aspiring for freedom of the mind in a world not crammed to capacity with other, minds.
It took Armageddon for ‘Lavi’ to find himself. And he thinks he likes what he sees. Kanda is proving a possible threat to this, which is why he keeps on fingering the hilt of his knife.
“Why were y’staying out in the open? Shouldn’t you be hiding out ‘f th’way? There aren’t many zombies left, yeah, but y’still might’ve been overwhelmed if you hang around in a massive empty space.” In the end, Lavi decides to gather more information before deciding on a course of action. Kanda seemed like an interesting specimen, and Lavi has decided to live a life choked full of interesting things.
Besides, it was nice to air out his voice and talk to something that could respond, again. He was exceedingly chatty by nature, and while it was fun exploring the world, he’s missed having company to do so with.
“Came to fight and die.” A flash of a feral expression, and Kanda stares at the burn marks on the grimy walls. “Die with a bang.”
Ah. Lavi scratches his chin thoughtfully. “If I say please, yeah, would it make y’reconsider?”
-
It’s like the Chaos Butterfly had been in an extra nasty mood, and had batted its wings for all its worth.
It had started at a remote research station in the depths of the jungles in South America. Some idle and probably lonely researcher doing a study on tree frogs had been hit by extreme boredom, as the prolonged drought had all the amphibians in hiding. In order to spend some time wisely, Marian Cross had decided to do as the locals do and try to smoke a compound extracted from an acacia tree.
Having got a more than satisfying high, he had coerced his research partner into trying it too, and all seemed jolly and well.
Little did they know, that the acacia trees near the research station had been infected by a parasite that usually took advantage of moths, but now had found a much better target.
Cross had made himself a dodgy multi-millionaire, selling this high-via-acacia product, and within half a year the world was completely taken over. The drug seemed to have no lasting side-effects, and in the short-term inspired nothing more than a severe case of the munchies. Its popularity in Asia had it nicknamed as Akuma (‘demon’ in Japanese, and being a contraction of the phrase ‘aku makan’ in the languages of the Malayan Archipelago, meaning I eat). His former research partner, Timothy Campy, had admitted himself into hospital on the grounds of feeling suspiciously out of sorts, and was later ridiculed as a hypochondriac.
Flap, flap, flap.
-
The parasite needed several months of incubation in the body before it could spread, and that was why nothing seemed to be amiss until months after the product was first introduced.
Suddenly, the munchies were a lot more severe.
Murderously so, even.
-
Seven and a half months after Akuma hit the mainstream market, governments the world over declare, with no small sense of embarrassment, a zombie apocalypse.
The parasites had had enough time to incubate, and as a result shit had hit the fan (the ceiling fan, mind you) almost overnight. The parasite caused a systematic shutdown of the conscious brain, leaving bodily functions to run on automatic. No filters remained , no sense of morality or right or wrong, or even any feeling of satisfaction. Nothing was ever enough, and those infected became gluttons of the worst sort. Very early on in the epidemic, doctors discovered that once the parasite had taken hold, there was no going back. The brain was gone, and hopefully those who suffered brain death had done so while on a high.
A zombie-maker, spread by bodily fluids. Suddenly sex stopped looking so attractive, as it was difficult to tell for sure whether or not someone was uninfected or was really a walking, talking incubator. Survival of the fittest, and chaos ruled. Lost and confused people started killing other people.
These zombies weren’t easily dissuaded in their search for anything organic to eat. Hordes of them fell into water catchment areas or forced their ways into power stations.
Fresh water became contaminated, and electricity became sporadic. Slowly but surely, the world stops functioning.
-
Consider the day the apocalypse was declared, day one.
This, is day seventy two.
Most of the world is dead and dying. Many armies had rallied up to try and quarantine those infected, but the number of people who were beyond help were impossible to contain, and now everywhere there are small pockets of the healthy barricading themselves against the zombies.
And there are some, who become self-appointed soldiers of fortune, equipping themselves with what they can loot and surviving on what they can scavenge.
Day three hundred and five.
Most of the world is dead, and most of the world is destroyed. Civilisation has faltered and fallen, and in numbers, the main survivors have been aboriginals, the forest people and dessert nomads who are removed from mainstream metropolises. They go on as they always have, some not even knowing that the apocalypse has come and is going on.
Kanda had made a few more trips to the capital, but it looked more and more ravaged each time he visited, and he had to kill more and more zombies each time. His favourite machete and axe had become blunt with overuse, so he made sure that for all the trips, he goes armed to the teeth, but also in possession of a whetting stone to sharpen as he progresses. Guilt had never featured in his feelings, even the first time he killed a zombie. They were dead in the head; he wasn’t. Good enough a reason to cut them down.
He surveys his crop of green veg, fingering a succulent leaf. It’s like with deserts, thinks Kanda, pondering on a point in a book he’s reading. He’s not a fast or avid reader, but it’s not like there’s much to do in these long empty days, so he grabs what books he finds lying on counters or shelves, and reads through them.
It’s like with desserts, are these rolling green plains. There’s so much empty space that your mind just inexorably broadens along with them.
And in his new and improved, broadened mind, Kanda has begun questioning his reason for living. His little Eden’s garden certainly was a beauty, but much though he prided himself on being antisocial, complete solitude with only his thoughts for company was beginning to wear him down.
Kanda climbs into his rickety jeep, and checks in a jerry can for how much fuel he has left. It’s been a long, long time since he’s spoken aloud, as cursing at a rock he’d stubbed his toe on was a lot less satisfying in the certain knowledge that no matter how loudly he raged, no one was around to come and be raged at. Kanda almost cannot remember what his voice sounds like, and in response to the miniscule amount of fuel left, he growls to himself.
Why not today? He’ll go into town, and go down fighting. There was barely enough fuel for a roundtrip anyways, so even if for some bizarre reason he decided to return and become a hermit, he could do so in relative safety and comfort.
Otherwise, he will die today, and take as many of the zombies down with him. In case there was some resurgence in humanity, Kanda supposes it’s better for him to have been a help than a hindrance. They’d be able to identify his body as that of a hero, because he’ll be in amongst a pile of properly-dead zombies with his throat slit and guts disemboweled. No way, in hell or anywhere else, was he going to allow himself to become some brain-dead monster. Seppuku’s a much better way out.
Resolve made and strengthened, Kanda neatens up his shelter for what may be the final time. If anyone came across the tiny plantation and tent and decided to make it their home, Kanda swears to bear only the smallest of grudges. He ties his hair back neatly, laces up his boots, and slips on his rosary.
Deep groves in the ground denote the number of days that have passed since he’s been here. Climbing into the driver’s seat of his jeep, Kanda takes a moment to count the number of scores. He’s survived for longer than he’d expected. Despite being by nature exceedingly cynical, Kanda had assumed the crisis would be overcome within a few months, and life would return to some semblance of normalcy. He hadn’t expected total ruin, and now he can’t understand why he had been so optimistic.
The door of the jeep sticks a little, thanks to rust and vigorous use, and Kanda has to tug hard before it comes slamming shut. Ever conscientious, he pulls his seatbelt on, then slaps his hands on the steering wheel.
Ten o’clock and two o’clock.
Turn on the ignition, and let’s go and join the millions dead. He steps on the accelerator and floors it so hard he leaves muddy groves in the grass.
-
He picks the city square as his final resting place. His car is parked just a few feet away, and he’s sitting on the steps, waiting for the zombies to gather. As they didn’t need to concentrate much on anything else, the zombies’ sense of smell was greatly heightened. They could smell fresh meat from quite a long way away, and Kanda doesn’t see the need to waste food or make noise in order to attract their attention. They’ll come, soon enough.
While waiting, he sharpens his favourite machete. It was a monster, gleaned from some ancient pawn store. Handle to tip it was thigh-high, and rusted over and viciously sharp. It’s heavy weight and insane length made it unwieldy in most hands, but in Kanda’s it was the perfect weapon. His second-favourite machete was sheathed and hung from his belt, and Kanda had two axes hanging from his back. Probably he was too well-equipped for someone who should be on suicide watch, but Kanda didn’t want to die being half-assed. In a line to his sides were a totally of eight Molotov cocktails, glass bottles half-full with turpentine with rags stuffed into the necks as wicks. A box of matches and a lighter were shoved down his left boot, and a kitchen knife was stuffed down his right. Running way well result in his slicing his foot off then setting himself on fire, but, and Kanda grins at this thought, he’s not got plans to run away.
Step, step, step. Kanda guesses they approach-eth.
He glances at his wrist, and counts what beads on the rosary he can see. He would kiss it, only there’s no place on this Earth private enough that would satisfy his conditions to do it. Kanda tosses away the whetting stone, and it lands in a nearby barren fountain with a satisfying thunk. He gets to his feet gingerly, picking up a bottle with him. Kanda’s timed himself; in a cinch, he could light a cocktail and fling it in under eight seconds flat.
The smell of turpentine is overpowering and intoxicating.
Maybe what’s most intoxicating is the thought that this dreary life is at its end, now. Kanda spares a moment to smile crookedly at the beautifully blue sky.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
-
Shuffle, step, shuffle, step. Sounds like someone’s going to do a spot of Thriller dancing, though Kanda can’t remember much about it except for the slick red jacket and mister Jackson having corkscrew curls. He balances his machete in his right hand, and spreads his feet a little to settle his weight comfortable.
Ah. Should have gotten himself a pair of binoculars. Probably from day one. Too late for that now. Kanda shrugs to himself, pinpoints the shuffling footsteps as coming from a minute side alley, and sets his first Molotov cocktail on fire, throwing it over his head and watching it tumble in a messy parabola before shattering at the mouth of the alley and spitting out a roaring fire.
He hears screaming, and Kanda’s brow crinkle in slight confusion. From what he’s understood, the thing that infested the brains cut off the pain receptors, because that made it easier to force the body to do whatever it wanted. Except for the hiss escaping deadened lungs, Kanda’s never heard the zombies make much in the way of sounds. It rouses his curiousity; maybe, just maybe, it was another survivor? He’d kept a careful eye out for anyone that wasn’t infected, but given the length of time for the parasite to incubate, no one was a sure bet.
Not that he’d met anyone anyways. Ulan Bator wasn’t densely populated to begin with, and the swamp of the murderous things had wrecked the capital from the very first time Kanda had come to visit after the announcement was made.
Still. He literally has nothing to lose.
On cat-quiet feet he creeps to the alley, machete aloft so that in case of zombie attack he can decapitate more easily.
The throw had been strong enough that the glass bottle had splintered like shrapnel from a grenade, and turpentine on fire had gone everywhere.
Including on a body that was vigorously rolling on the ground, screaming in a language that was no dialect of Chinese, Japanese or Mongolian.
Now, Kanda’s not the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer, but he’s picked up on the fact that the zombies aren’t likely to win any Nobel prizes anytime soon either. A treacherous part of him whispers that this might actually be a fellow human being. The sensible part of him sets to find out, but realizes quite quickly that his voice box is so unaccustomed to speaking that all that comes out is an angry-sounding croak.
The screaming figure appeared to be gently smouldering now, and rolling onto its back, it looks up at Kanda with an incredibly green eye.
Kanda looks back, still croaking while he tries to remember the sound of words. He feels like a parrot learning a new language, or a toddler learning his first one.
The zombie suspect licked chapped lips, and went off into a litany of what Kanda supposes are greetings, only none in a language he understands. He just keeps listening, waiting for the right one to ring some bell in his mind.
“-, Ola, Hello, Apa Khabar, Ni Hao Ma,-“
“Stop.” Kanda had licked his lips too, and with that he felt some semblance of social instincts returning to him. He swallows deeply, and repeats himself. “Stop. Hello, whatever. Human?”
The thing nods, panting heavily. Kanda supposes being set on fire would do that to you. He’s not particularly anxious to lend a hand; sure, the guy wasn’t lunging at him to gnaw on his arm yet, but it was no proof that he wasn’t infected, and that he didn’t have some nefarious motives. The world is full of nefarious motives, yeah.
“Human, a hundred per cent. Soldier ‘f fortune, f’now. Hello,” he repeats himself firmly, rocking himself until he was sitting up. “Call me Lavi.”
Not ‘my name is’, Kanda notes with typical journalistic accuracy. He nods briskly. “Kanda.”
“Er. ‘s a pleasure t’make your acquaintance. I wasn’t expecting anyone else t’still be around here.” He glances at his pack, and Kanda does too.
It looked heavy. A lot heavier than Kanda reckons one man’s pack should be. “You’re a looter,” he said, in the tone of voice one might use to tell a waiter that there’s a fly in the soup. Though the concepts of flies and waiters and soups are a bit hazy in Kanda’s numbed memory. “No better than the zombies.”
This was said with the tone of voice one might use to tell someone that they are the fly in the soup. Lavi’s gaze is helplessly drawn to the unsheathed machete, then to the sharp bits of glass and dry grass on fire. He laughs nervously. “Hey, ‘m only taking what I need t’survive, yeah? Don’t tell me that all th’stuff you’ve got on you, yeah, y’bought fairly ‘nd squarely!”
Slow the fuck down, Kanda’s still not accustomed to any voice but for the one in his head, and add to that the mutt’s insane accent, he’s feeling a headache coming along just trying to stay abreast of what is going on. So the wind whistles and fires putter out while Kanda tries to comprehend what’s just been said. He looks disgusted at what the man has insinuated. “I pay when there are humans to take the money. Otherwise,” he shrugs. What’s the point? That first gardening/hardware store he went to he’d paid for what he’d taken, but on subsequent trips the money he’d put on the counter was still there.
Money is mostly cotton, and burned beautifully.
Lavi is quiet, absently slapping at his smoking sleeve. He’s dressed to suit a Mongolian winter, though since he’s been traveling obsessively since the world first fell to ruins, the reason his pack is so heavy is because he’s got clothes to suit everything from West Sahara to Alaska. It isn’t weighed down with nicked Crown Jewels, which is what he suspects this savage, savage man in front of him thinks is the issue. He really had not been expecting to see another living soul in this part of the world (the generally condensed populations of Asia had meant the spread of the infection had occurred almost in the blink of an eye. China and Japan in particular had fallen hard and fallen fast.), and the diving knife strapped to his thigh is weighing in on his opinion.
To his knowledge, since the apocalypse began he hasn’t killed a single uninfected human being. There’s never really been a need to, you know? It was easy enough to hunker down in the mountains of Andorra for a few weeks as things went from bad to worse, then to set out to do the things on his must-do-before-I-die list. Perhaps not in the manner he’d planned when he was a young kid and started the list, but over the months the self-appointed title of a soldier of fortune became something he viciously wants to live up to. He’s aspiring for freedom of the mind in a world not crammed to capacity with other, minds.
It took Armageddon for ‘Lavi’ to find himself. And he thinks he likes what he sees. Kanda is proving a possible threat to this, which is why he keeps on fingering the hilt of his knife.
“Why were y’staying out in the open? Shouldn’t you be hiding out ‘f th’way? There aren’t many zombies left, yeah, but y’still might’ve been overwhelmed if you hang around in a massive empty space.” In the end, Lavi decides to gather more information before deciding on a course of action. Kanda seemed like an interesting specimen, and Lavi has decided to live a life choked full of interesting things.
Besides, it was nice to air out his voice and talk to something that could respond, again. He was exceedingly chatty by nature, and while it was fun exploring the world, he’s missed having company to do so with.
“Came to fight and die.” A flash of a feral expression, and Kanda stares at the burn marks on the grimy walls. “Die with a bang.”
Ah. Lavi scratches his chin thoughtfully. “If I say please, yeah, would it make y’reconsider?”