We did it, Nicole! It's the final chapter! The fic is done! It's finally done! I can do something else with my time now! I don't think I'm going to write for a long, long...oh hell, it's National Novel Writing Month, isn't it?

Nicole's Note: I think I'm going to celebrate by rewatching the season premiere of The Walking Dead and spend the rest of the night crying into a fruit cup.

Everything happened so quickly that the memory was still a blur. Chief Ryan, as it turned out, had not been unique in his mutation, and Pyro and Engineer had run into two of those things simultaneously, along with a herd that was following and eating the path of dead left behind in their wake. They just barely managed to get away. They were surrounded from all sides. Someone had to think quick and fast.

So Engineer did.

I am alone.

These words ran over and over in Pyro's mind as they sat in shock and stared at the zombies pawing at the front door. I am alone and my best friend is probably dead. The scenario repeated itself several times. They'd been swarmed. Pyro was limping and not moving as fast as they would have hoped, which gave the zombies the chance to catch up. Engineer had shoved them through the glass doors of the shop, but couldn't make it in himself before a tongue wrapped around him and he was pulled back into the crowd. Pyro waited for several minutes in hopes that he would reemerge, but he didn't.

Engineer was his best friend from day one. He was the only one who could understand them when they spoke. No one really knew why, but it was probably because while everyone else had immediately dismissed Pyro's speech as incoherent mumbling, he was the only one who actually took the time to listen to what they were saying. He was the only one who always seemed to enjoy being around them and never once considered them creepy or a burden. He was the only one who didn't automatically assume that Pyro was stupid and didn't know what anyone was saying or doing around them. He didn't mind whenever Pyro got scared or excited and clung to him or when they interrupted his work to show him something or that they would hog the TV for hours to watch Lassie, or The Twilight Zone, or whatever late night schlocky horror movie was playing that night that would no doubt have them cowering in Engineer's room for the next week.

Engineer was also the only one who knew 100% for sure what Pyro's true gender was, and gladly refused to confirm whether they really were male or not when asked because the fact that everyone thought their gender was apparently a secret amused them both. (Though they were fairly certain that Medic had since figured it out since he was equally as cryptic when pressed for an answer. One couldn't cut someone open in the name of science as many times as he had and not know what kind of organs they did or didn't possess by now.)

The others had gotten better about their treatment of them throughout the years, but they could still tell that the team sometimes deemed them to be more of a childish annoyance than anything. Without Engineer, they felt lonely and ignored.

Eventually the zombies would smash through the glass. They gave them about half an hour at the most. Yet they had no will to move or attempt to leave before they got in. They sat on the floor and watched them trying to smash their way in. Pyro gave up.

And then watched as the windows were splattered with crimson.

"There you are! Why do you keep running away from me?" Soldier asked the raccoon affectionately. It flailed, a thick stream of greenish drool trailing from the corner of its mouth onto the sleeve of his coat.

He looked up when he heard footsteps racing towards him. "I'm gonna frickin kill ya!" Scout leapt on him and pushed him onto the ground and attempted to strangle him, but Soldier was much stronger and more than capable of holding him off. The raccoon fell from his arms and scurried up a nearby tree. "First you summon frickin zombies on us, now you run from us for a frickin zombie raccoon?!"

"Scout, stop!" Sniper grabbed him from behind and pulled him off of Soldier. "I want to kill him!"

They both glared at Soldier angrily when rather than acknowledging them, he immediately got up and ran to the tree, shouting, "Lieutenant Bites! Come back!"

"Forget about the bloody raccoon, fuckwit! It's a zombie! It's already infected, and there is nothing you can do to help it anymore!" Sniper shouted at him angrily.

"Lieutenant Bites is not just a zombie, he is my zombie!" Soldier shouted back.

"Look, we drove all the way out here to find Merasmus! We don't have time for this shit! Now show us where he is so we can undo all this and go home and pretend it never happened, like we do every time this kind of shit happens!" Soldier looked from him back up the tree. "Again with the fucking raccoon! Don't bloody worry about it! I'm talking to you right now!"

They both jumped when they heard Scout shriek. To their horror, they both realized that all of the shouting had attracted a wayward zombie, which had snuck up behind Scout and taken a bite out of his arm.

"Scout!" Sniper shouted.

They both quickly ran to his rescue. Sniper shoved the zombie off him while Soldier took it out with a well placed whack to the head with his shovel. It twitched on the ground as he swung again and again, making sure it was completely dead. Scout seemed to be in shock and was throwing up at the base of a tree.

"Scout, are you alright?" Sniper asked.

"Stay away from me!" Scout said as he stumbled away in distress. "You'll kill me!"

"We're not goin' to kill you, Scout!" Sniper tried to reassure him. "We just want to help you!"

"Yeah? What about what you said earlier about the raccoon? You said it was infected and you couldn't help it anymore?"

Sniper looked suddenly uncomfortable. He guessed he had said that, but it was in a moment of anger at someone else. "Scout, I was talking about a raccoon, not a person."

"Yeah? Well the sentiment seemed the same! Just yesterday you were trying to convince Engineer to push me off a roof into a crowd of zombies!"

"You tried to feed him to zombies?" Soldier said in horror. "What kind of a soldier sacrifices his own comrades to save himself?" Lieutenant Bites slowly started to creep its way down the trunk of the tree towards Soldier. To its surprise, Soldier didn't even pay it any attention anymore.

"Look, I was only joking about that and you know it. I knew Engineer would never actually push you off," Sniper protested. He noticed the suspicious look that Soldier was giving him and retorted, "What? I was!"

"Yeah well, I guess it doesn't matter anymore. I'll be dead soon anyway." Scout sat down next to the puddle of vomit and looked fairly disheartened off into the distance.

"Scout..." Sniper walked over to his side and sat down next to him. "I'm not going to kill you while we're this close. We're almost to Merasmus. I'm sure once we get to him he'll have a way to undo all of this, which means you won't have to become a zombie."

"You really think Merasmus can undo this?" Scout replied hopefully.

"Well if he can't, I'm keeping you chained up in the basement and feeding him to you," Sniper replied sarcastically.

Scout considered the idea of eking out an existence in Sniper's basement. "I guess I can deal with those odds," he shrugged.

Soldier finally picked his raccoon up off the ground. Lieutenant Bites had begun to grow worried when pawing at his bootlaces didn't draw his attention. "Do you think if he can help Scout that maybe he can help Lieutenant Bites too?" he asked hopefully.

Sniper and Scout both stared at the raccoon, who was once more beginning to twitch and dribble foam from its mouth. "Yeeeah, why not..." Sniper nodded, though he and Scout both were unsure that it was possible at this point. He stood up and extended a hand to Scout. "Come on. Let's go find the others so we can find Merasmus and get the hell back home."

Heavy could tell Sasha was thankful that he had found a gun shop that hadn't yet been raided by survivors. Mowing down zombies became so much easier and he leisurely strolled down the street, taking out the hordes as they appeared. He saw that a bunch of them had gathered near a small shop, indicating that there was probably someone trapped inside, and figured he'd do them a favor by thinning out the herd a little. Blood splattered the windows as Sasha exploded their heads with her swift rate of fire before finally shattering them into a spray of glass.

He walked by and looked in, surprised to see it was Pyro sitting on the floor just beyond the reach of much of the broken glass. "Pyro?" Heavy said. He looked around but realized that Pyro seemed to be alone. "Where is Engineer?"

He must have said something wrong because Pyro immediately started crying.

"Nein."

"But they float for nine months before..."

"Nein!"

"But have ya ever even tried it?"

"For the last time, nein! You cannot use a baby as a flotation device!"

Medic had never missed Heavy more than he did now. Why couldn't it have been him that he relocated first? It wasn't that he didn't like Demoman, but he got a little weird when he was drunk, and he'd just taken up his usual coping mechanism to deal with the ongoing apocalypse. Where was Heavy? How could he lose someone who was large enough to be visible from space?

The zombies seemed to be more active at night and yet they weren't being swarmed, so they must be going somewhere. Probably someone made too much noise and they all converged on their location. Maybe there was a grocery store full of delicious, screaming people meats that had them banging on the walls trying to get in.

"Look." Demoman pointed straight ahead. A zombie lay with its brains smashed all over the ground. "Looks like it was caved by a shovel."

There was a puddle of vomit and Medic found some raccoon fur clinging to the bark of a nearby tree. "Soldier's been here at least..." Medic conceded. "But I do not believe that is his vomit."

"Then who...?"

Medic took one look at it. "Scout."

"Ya can tell that just by lookin' at it?"

"It's bright red and smells strongly of Bonk. Who else would it be?" They found three sets of footprints and a tinier set of raccoon tracks cutting across the park. "I believe they went that way."

"Really? Ah'm glad ya specified that for me," Demoman replied. "Ah would've thought it was another group travelin' with a raccoon otherwise."

"I really hate you sometimes," Medic grumbled.

Pyro leaned against Heavy while they walked and just seemed out of it. If it weren't for the lack of any damage to his fire retardant suit, Heavy would have assumed that he might have been bitten and was on the verge of turning.

"Cheer up, little Pyro! I am sure he is okay somewhere," Heavy tried to reassure him. Pyro made a sound that sounded vaguely like a noncommittal groan of misery but otherwise didn't say anything. "Look! There's Sniper!"

Pyro picked his head up just slightly enough that he could see Sniper waving to them from atop a hill. He looked back at the ground and didn't seem to care. Heavy had to pull him along behind him as they made their way up the hill to ensure that he kept up.

"Is it just you both?" Sniper shouted once they started to near the base of the hill.

"Afraid so," Heavy nodded. "Who else is with you?"

"Soldier and Scout. But before I bring you back here, I need to tell you something..."

Pyro barely listened to a word that Sniper and Heavy were talking about. He heard something about someone getting bit and Heavy telling Sniper that he didn't know where Engineer was, but otherwise didn't pick up on much. He looked around and saw Scout hiding behind Soldier. Was Scout the one that was bit? He walked past Sniper and Heavy towards Soldier and Scout and leaned against the tree, looking just as downtrodden as he was before. Finally the other two regrouped with them.

"We're going to wait just a few more minutes to see if we find anyone else, then we're going to get moving," Sniper informed the waiting group.

Pyro glanced at Scout's arm. He had his hand clamped over it, but blood was oozing through his fingers, making it hard for him to hide the fact that there was a wound there. That was clearly a bite. Scout noticed him looking and didn't seem very pleased. "What are you lookin' at?" he demanded.

Pyro dug through all of his extra pockets and ammo pouches and found an extra flare he didn't know that he had, bringing his total number of remaining flares up to two. He also found what looked like a bandage. He kept them around in case he accidentally burned himself, which happened so frequently that his nerve endings were completely numb in some places. Pushing Scout's hand aside, he wrapped the wound up so that it was at least not exposed to the elements.

"Thanks," Scout replied. At least he didn't have to be in fear that Pyro was going to try and kill him.

"Heavy!" a familiar voice said gleefully. "See, I told you we would find him!"

"Yeah, yeah," Demoman said dismissively.

Medic looked through the group and frowned. "Where's..."

Sniper quickly shushed him. "Pyro's upset about Engineer. Keep quiet."

"What about Spy?" Demoman asked.

"Well he's..." Sniper turned around and realized, perhaps for the first time, that Spy was not there. He looked at Scout. "Wasn't he with us when we were chasing after Soldier?"

"Yeah...he was still with you by the time I caught up anyway...I don't remember when I last saw him."

There was a crashing sound through the trees and Spy stumbled into the clearing, tripping and falling into the mud. He was covered in blood that was not his own and zombie guts. "You bastards abandoned me!" he shouted accusingly at Sniper and Scout.

"See? He's fine!" Sniper said nonchalantly. "And we didn't even have to go looking for him!"

"What happened to your arm?" Spy asked as he got back to his feet.

Scout quickly hid his arm behind him. Some of the blood was starting to soak through the bandage. "Uh, nothin'," he replied. "I cut it on some broken glass when we crashed the car." The others in the know looked at him in shock that he was suddenly hiding it. They noticed Scout looking at Medic in concern and realized that it must have been him finding out that he was afraid of.

"Do you want me to look at it?" Medic offered.

"No! It's fine for now," Scout shook his head.

Sniper motioned towards Soldier. "We can't wait much longer. We have to get back to Merasmus now."

"Right this way!" Soldier said jovially. He grabbed his raccoon off a low hanging branch and marched off through the park, stopping to swing his shovel at a zombie that approached him from the trees.

They filed off one by one after them. Scout and Pyro brought up the rear, Scout looking worried at his bandaged and bloodied arm and Pyro looking behind him, knowing that Engineer wasn't there and hoping that he'd come running from the trees, just a little bit late in catching up with them.

He never showed up. Not that he was expecting him to.

"That's it?" Demoman said with concern when they arrived.

"Yes! There wasn't really a crowd last time I was here, though..." Soldier replied.

Medic now found out why there weren't that many zombies roaming about. Either all of the undead of the world were converging upon the source of the plague or an Iron Butterfly concert was about to start. Either way it was going to be unpleasant getting to the door.

"Wow, that's...that's one ripper of a crowd," Sniper said in equal parts awe and horror.

Everyone else fell back, keeping an eye out for any undead that wandered too close. "Alright, what resources do we have left?" Sniper asked.

Pyro had the two flares for his flare gun and his lighter. Spy still had his makeshift zombie disguise. Heavy still had rounds for Sasha leftover from his rescue of Pyro. Medic had everything that was in his medical bag. ("You mean all this time you had painkillers and you didn't offer me any for my ribs?!" "You didn't ask for any.") All Sniper had his kukri.

And Soldier had a rocket launcher with exactly one rocket.

"Where were you hiding that all this time?" Spy asked.

"In my pants!" Soldier replied matter of factly. "Sitting has been very uncomfortable!"

"Alright, so we've got something to start with," Sniper said thoughtfully. "But will this get us to the front door?"

"I can hotwire a truck or something and we can drive in as far as it'll let us," Scout suggested.

"Where did you learn to hotwire a car?" Spy asked him accusingly.

Scout shrugged. "One of my brothers."

"Okay, so if we can get a truck, that would make things a little easier," Sniper nodded.

They put together a makeshift plan that revolved around taking out as many zombies as they could in order to clear a path. It required constant movement to avoid being overwhelmed and they'd have to stay together as a group, which would be easier said than done as at this point half the team just wanted to get there, get Merasmus, and go home, and the other half had just spent two days without any sleep.

Spy accompanied Scout while they found a large truck and Scout got to hotwiring it. Though he was clearly trying to hide it, he was sweating by this point and looked nauseous and his hands were shaky. A few times he had to pause as a dizzy spell washed over him. He looked like he was starting to run a high fever.

"So how long ago were you bit, exactly?" Spy asked. Scout almost pulled out the wrong wire at the question. "Are you going to answer me, or just sit there in shock?"

"Don't tell Medic..." he pleaded. "I'm scared that guy's going to use me as an experiment or something!"

"Medic isn't going to experiment on you," Spy reassured him. He didn't mention that it was highly likely that Demoman was the only one who bought the broken glass story and Medic already knew. "But I would have appreciated it if you told me what really happened rather than assuming I'm stupid enough to actually think you cut yourself on broken glass."

"Look, I just want to get in there and get Merasmus and hope that he has some way to reverse this so I don't have to spend the rest of my existence chained to the radiator in Sniper's basement!"

Spy looked at him amused. "His van has a basement?"

"I'm serious!"

"I am too," he replied. He nodded towards the underside of the dashboard. "You might want to finish that before everyone starts wondering what's taking so long."

Scout got the truck running in no time, but in his state Spy wouldn't let him drive it. He was content to just sit in the passenger seat leaning against the cold door as they drove back to the others. No sooner did they pull up to the tree where the rest of the team was waiting before Scout leaned out the window and threw up down the side of the door. Medic looked suspicious but said nothing while Sniper checked on him to make sure he was okay.

"So who's driving?" Demoman asked.

They were surprised when Pyro pushed past everyone else and got into the driver's seat and even more surprised when he seemed aggressively adamant on driving. He didn't seem upset and reclusive anymore at this point, he seemed downright pissed, and it was kind of scary seeing the normally childlike and innocent Pyro bring out the side normally only reserved for the BLU team.

"Everyone else ready?" Sniper inquired.

Merasmus was on the couch eating a bowl of cereal while Zombie John Wayne pawed at him in an attempt to eat him with more than half his face missing. "You know, this is not really your best film," he said of the western on TV.

He could hear more and more zombies pounding on the walls outside, but paid them no mind. The book had warned that the undead would be attracted to the source of their resurrection, so he had a foolproof plan in place to keep them from getting in. He simply locked all the doors and boarded up the windows. Clearly no zombie would ever be able to get past that line of defense! And if they did, he already had the reversal spell ready.

What he was more surprised about was hearing what sounded like the revving of a large engine outside. Surprised, he got up and walked to the window, peeking out through the slats in the wooden boards and saw what looked like headlights all the way at the edge of the horde. The vehicle plowed through the zombies and seemed to stall and get stuck somewhere in the middle. He stepped away from the window and shrugged. They'd be taken care of shortly.

He made it back to the couch and was about to change the channel when he heard an explosion that made his ancient blood run cold. That sounded like a rocket launcher. He knew of only one man who had access to a rocket launcher.

"Oh no, he's here?!" Merasmus groaned.

Engineer woke up at the sound of an explosion. The ground rattled and dust fell from the ceiling. The air smelled strongly of must and rodents and the floor was cold and seemed to be made of dirt. He slowly started to get up and realized he was in what looked like an old basement. The only light came from candles and lanterns and there was some occult paraphernalia laying about.

He heard a very scratchy and hoarse voice address him from the other side of the basement. "Oh, you're awake!"

Engineer looked through the dark and saw what he at first thought was a mummy but realized only a moment later that it was actually a woman in a wheelchair, a ball of yarn and some knitting needles in her lap. At least he assumed it was a woman. He couldn't tell by her voice and her appearance wasn't helping matters much. "Uh...pardon me, ma'am, but...how did ah get here?"

"You were banging on the cellar door, so I let you in," she replied. "I'm surprised you found it. It's so overgrown back there that not even the undead have been able to get through. I've been trying to get through back there for months! My son must have used a kudzu curse to keep me from escaping that way. Or maybe he just planted kudzu. I have no idea at this point."

"Yer...son?"

"Merasmus! My good for nothing son got tired of me nagging him to get a real job and stop mooching off of his roommates, so every house we stay in, he puts me down here in the basement with the rats. Though I have to say, it's a steady improvement from the dungeon back at his castle." The wheels of her chair screeched horribly as she moved to a table and retrieved a glass candy dish. "Hard candy?"

Engineer looked into the dish. The candies appeared to all be stuck together into one solid piece of butterscotch flavored terror. "Um...no thank you," he shook his head. "Wait, are you sayin' that we're in Merasmus' house right now?"

"Technically we're in John Wayne's house. My son is just freeloading in it," she replied.

"Look ma'am, it's imperative that ah speak to yer son. He's set zombies loose on the world and mah friends might be in danger!"

"If you want to talk to him, you're free to go upstairs and do so. I don't think he bothers to lock the door since I can't get up the stairs anyway," she replied. "It would be nice to be able to give him a piece of my mind, though...the nerve of that child, even after I raised him myself! His father would be rolling in his grave...come to think of it, he probably is right now. I wonder if the zombie curse reached that far?" She poked Engineer's ribs and looked at him disapprovingly. "You look thin. I should feed you! I think I have some fried rat leftover somewhere..."

"Uh, no thank you, ma'am. Ah just ate a gerbil on mah way over here." Engineer looked around and found a pile of tools that Merasmus' mother had moved to the corner. He looked to the stairs that lead up from the basement and then back at the shriveled up woman in the tattered shawl. "Ya got any plywood?"

The explosion from Soldier's rocket leveled out enough space for them to jump out of the truck. Pyro fired a flare into the crowd, lighting several zombies up. The burning corpses meandered forward before falling and those around them caught, causing the flicker to spread through a small part of the horde. Heavy opened fire, clearing a path through that they quickly ran down.

They soon realized that they'd need a distraction to draw out most of the zombies. Pyro shoved his hand into Medic's medical bag and dug around. "What exactly are you doing?!" Medic demanded.

He pulled his arm back out and was holding a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. He unscrewed the cap and splashed it on the interior of the truck until it was thoroughly drenched. Using his lighter, he lit the passenger seat. Instantly the inside of the vehicle was awash with flame, which quickly caught the rest of the truck and sent black plumes of smoke spiraling upward. The horde surrounded the blaze and flames rapidly spread throughout the deceased at a much quicker pace than the flare had.

"Good thinkin' on ya!" Demoman patted him on the back.

The team pressed on as most of the zombies converged behind them on the metallic blaze. Scout and Spy brought up the rear at a pace that Scout could handle. Worryingly the undead paid him no mind, almost as though they thought he was already one of them, while they assumed from Spy's disguise that he really was one of them. The last thing Scout wanted to do right now while he was running a high fever was be up on his feet and walking and Spy was practically carrying him through the crowd.

They made it to the front door and everyone was surprised with just how hard Pyro banged on it in a facsimile of a knock. "Who is it?" Merasmus demanded from the other side of the boarded up and broken window, as though he didn't already know who it was.

"UPS!" Scout shouted. "We're here to deliver your package!"

"I don't recall ordering anything. What's in it?"

"An arse kicking! Open the bloody door!" Sniper snapped.

"Mmmmm...no," Merasmus replied. "Go away. I'm watching TV!"

"Hi, Merasmus!" Soldier said cheerfully. "Lieutenant Bites says hi too!" He held the raccoon up to the window. It promptly shoved its paws in through the slats in one of the boards and reached for Merasmus so it could pull him closer and bite him.

"You brought that raccoon here?!" Merasmus shrieked at them. "You know the only thing less welcome in my home than you, Soldier, is that stupid raccoon! Go away! I do not wish to speak to any of you!"

They heard him stomp away from the door and back across the house. He didn't respond again when Pyro banged on the door once more and violently tried to force it open. If only he had his ax, he could really force his way in.

"I am worried about Pyro," Heavy whispered to Medic.

"Alright, so does anyone else have any..."

Pyro interrupted Sniper by shoving him aside. He realized that Pyro now had his kukri and was currently walking towards the large crowd of zombies that were swarming along the side of the house. They could hear the sounds of the blade slashing through wet meat and the thuds of the dead plummeting to the bloodstained grass that moved steadily along the side of the building and around to the back. The backdoor turned out to have been accidentally left unlocked, allowing Pyro to open it with ease and slam it back shut behind him.

"Hey, how did you get in here?!" they could hear Merasmus shouting as he marched through his living room and unlocked the front door. Pyro looked less than pleased when he reappeared on the other side of the door and shoved the bloodsoaked kukri back into Sniper's hands before disappearing back into the house.

"Oh crap," Merasmus grumbled when they were all standing in his living room. Pyro pulled his flare gun. He had been saving the last flare specifically for this purpose. "Wait, wait, we can talk about this, right?" Merasmus said defensively as Pyro backed him up into a corner. "Clearly you're angry. Maybe you should take a moment to calm down?" Pyro huffed at him and shoved the flare gun up against his face, making it clear that he was no longer playing around.

"Alright. You want to talk now?" Sniper asked.

"What do you want?"

Over Pyro's shoulder, Heavy, Medic, and Demoman all pointed towards the window where several arms had just shot through the gaps in between the boards and began reaching towards them with a hungry desperation.

"Have you gone outside lately?" Spy asked sardonically.

"Oh, the zombies!" he stated as though just noticing them now. "You want me to get rid of the zombies!"

"Yes! And bring Lieutenant Bites back from the dead!" Soldier replied. He stepped next to Pyro and held the snarling raccoon so close to his face that he found himself leaning towards the mouth of the flare gun to get away from it.

"I can probably stop the zombies, but do you really think I can cure the undead?!" Merasmus demanded.

Scout suddenly looked distressed. "You can't?"

"Well maybe I can, I haven't bothered to try," he admitted. "But what makes you think I want to?" The flare gun clicked and Merasmus suddenly became aware that the last thing he was about to see was his own reflection in the optical lenses of a thoroughly pissed off pyromaniac. "Okay, okay, I have suddenly found motivation! It's just that...look over there, what's that?" Pyro looked over his shoulder where he was pointing and was suddenly grabbed, the flare gun fumbled out of his hand and now pressed up against the side of his head.

The others suddenly jumped up, hoping to help him, but stopped when Merasmus made it clear that he would shoot him if they moved. "Pyro, you seriously fell for that?!" Scout shouted before his outburst caused him to cough hard enough that he vomited onto the carpet.

"Alright! I want all of you out of my house, right now!" Merasmus demanded. "I don't care that your raccoon is dead, I don't care if that kid over there becomes a zombie, and I certainly don't care about whatever it is that I did that made you so angry with me!" he shouted to Pyro. "I just want you all out of my house and I want Soldier to leave me alone!"

An ancient voice, all hoarse and gravelly from nearly 800 years of smoking, shouted from towards the top of the basement stairs, "MERASMUS!"

"Oh no..." Merasmus groaned, knowing what fury was about to unfold.

The door to the basement smashed open. Engineer pushed a wheelchair up a freshly built wooden ramp that contained the shriveled up and almost mummified looking old woman who could have given the zombies a run for their money in an ugly pageant.

"This is as far as I need to go, dearie. Thank you!" she said to Engineer.

"No problem, ma'am," Engineer nodded.

Pyro could be audibly noted as gulping for air when he saw Engineer. He yanked out of Merasmus' grip, shoved him to the floor, and bolted across the room, glomping Engineer hard enough to nearly shove him back down the stairs.

"I'm glad to see you're alright too!" Engineer said excitedly while he hugged him back.

The (apparently a) woman in the wheelchair then turned to Merasmus and angrily started screaming, "You leave me in a basement for 500 years and now I find out you unleashed the undead on the world again, all because you got into another petty squabble with your only friend?!"

"Mom, this is not a good time..." Merasmus began before being cut off. "And we are not friends!"

"Look here mister, I haven't seen daylight since I was 309 years old, and if this little sweetheart hadn't come along and built me a ramp so I could escape, I still wouldn't have remembered what natural light looked like!" She squinted at the flickering flames from the burning truck outside. "Honestly, it's a little more underwhelming than I remember..." She turned in her chair to Engineer and handed him the scarf she had been knitting while he worked on the ramp. "Here dearie, this is for you."

"Thanks!" Engineer said as he accepted the gift.

"What...you never knit me anything!" Merasmus pointed out.

"Because you're an idiot and a disappointment!" his mother replied. "Now put the dead back in their grave and bring that raccoon back to life, or you're grounded!"

"Fine...I'll undo the curse!" he complained. "Assuming they haven't been shot in the head yet, everyone who became a zombie during the apocalypse will come back to life! They will not be looking forward to their medical bills!"

"What about Scout?" Sniper asked coldly.

"He'll be fine," Merasmus replied.

"What about Lieutenant Bites?" Soldier asked. He tightly held onto the snarling, zombified raccoon as it thrashed in his grip and bit onto his arm.

"Yes!" he shouted distastefully. "The rodent will come back too."

"Raccoons are not rodents. They're members of the family "Procyonidae", which includes coatis and ringtails," Medic corrected.

"I don't really care!" Merasmus grumbled.

All across the United States and Mexico and some of the southernmost parts of Canada too, the undead began to drop left and right like gnats. The curse was undone and save for a few sad souls like the former chief of the TPD, loved ones were returned back to life, albeit many of them were screaming and panicking because of their missing limbs or gaping wounds.

Scout was still running a fever from infection, but at least he wasn't going to turn into a zombie because of it and all he needed were some antibiotics to clear it up. Soldier was happily chasing Lieutenant Bites through the house while Merasmus was cursing him for letting "that rodent" get into the cabinets and drawers, and the raccoon had already begun to stockpile snack foods and shiny things underneath the kitchen sink.

"There. I did what you asked. Now will you please leave?" Merasmus demanded.

"John Wayne!" Engineer said with relief when he saw the man walk up from behind Merasmus. "You're alive!"

"Yes, and I send my thanks to your medic for reversing the grenade damage," John Wayne replied. He looked to Merasmus and glared at him with an angry intensity. "Merasmus, I really think you should move out."

"What?! Why?!" Merasmus replied.

"Because you blew me up with a grenade, resurrected me as a zombie, and got coffee stains, blood, and vomit on my carpet," he pointed out.

There was a pause. "...but I made you better," Merasmus stated.

"And then one of your friends drove a car through my living room."

Everyone looked to the rental car that Demoman had driven through the wall, which was supposed to be their ride home. In hindsight, letting a drunk guy with poor depth perception get the rental wasn't a very bright decision on their part.

"HE IS NOT ONE OF MY FRIENDS!" Merasmus shouted.

Soldier cheerfully clamped his arm around Merasmus' shoulders. "Cheer up, Merasmus! I know a place where you can stay!" he said jovially.

Merasmus and Sniper both sat side by side in the front seat of Sniper's camper van. Neither of them said anything to the other, but both were united by their burning hatefire for that idiot in the helmet who was currently running laps through the desert despite the fact that it was only 4:30 in the morning. They shivered in the cold of the desert night, and Sniper longed to be inside sleeping on his own bed instead of wrapped up in an old quilt in the driver's seat with a 600-year-old magician in the seat next to him.

"I hope you know this is only temporary," Sniper pointed out.

"Well, duh!" Merasmus replied. "Can you imagine doing this every night?"

There was a banging on the wall behind them. Merasmus' mother shouted, "MERASMUS! You and your friend keep it down! Mummy is trying to sleep!"

"Mummies! I haven't tried mummies yet!" Merasmus said as the idea occurred to him.

"Don't even think about it, mate," Sniper warned.

If you're about as old as I am, then you probably remember the chocolate episode of Spongebob and the shriveled up old fish in the wheelchair, which is pretty much what inspired the idea of Merasmus' mother.

Fun Fact: My Google search results now contain the phrase, "Can you use a baby as a flotation device?"

Nicole's Note: Well folks, that's all there is! There isn't anymore! Let us know how you liked it and maybe I'll help write a story again sometime.