Hola.

So I was watching 'The Walking Dead" after a huge marathon of zombie movies (including the Resident Evil series, the remake of "Dawn of the Dead", and "Zombieland", and I got to thinking about all the inconsistencies of zombies and the sort. And then I started thinking about all the awesome things about them. And then I started wondering about the virus itself and whether there were...exceptions. And then I started thinking about the logic behind zombies. And then I thought about how Artie would react. And then I thought about what necrophiliacs would think about zombies. Thus, this fic was born. Huzzah! ...but happy endings? Don't hold your breath.

Also found on Ao3 at UchidaKarasu.

Prologue
The Changed

14 January +22

Ashland didn't understand it, even twenty-two years after the beginning.

When the world had been normal, with fast food and cell phones and football and cars, the world had been perfectly aware and obliging of the fact that one day, they would all be half technology and half cyberpunks. It had been the technological age in 2011 (or what the Coalition called +00 A.E.), and it was common knowledge that it was only the beginning. One day, they'd be able to live forever and fly their cars, while talking on cell phones embedded in their ears and teeth, their bodies more machine with upgrades than human with flesh. Hell, even in +00, they had been waiting impatiently for the next computer, for the nanotechnology to branch out of the government into civilian life, for microchips to be planted in people like they were the dogs of the new age.

Instead, they moved as a group through the entirety of the desolate exoskeleton of a small town in Oklahoma, armed heavily with weapons they had made themselves as they crept forward, listening and looking out for the Infected.

Electricity didn't even work any more. There were no hair dryers, no movies, no iPods with R&B jams. The petrol had run out fifteen years ago back when the Scrags had been more numerous and had used vehicles. The ammunition was close to gone — they'd find a few loads occasionally but it was rare now that the Scrags and the Coalition had cleaned out the US and Canada. They had to make their own now, just to survive. Furthermore, they used quieter weapons as a general rule, because of the fact that the Infected were attracted to the noise. Using a gun was a last option, from the lack of ammunition and from the simple fact that they wanted to stay alive. Crossbows, long-reach blunt objects, and long swords worked rather well, although the last one wasn't as popular.

Mexico, or what the Coalition called the Wastelands, was a no-go. There might've had less of the Infected, but it definitely wasn't worth it in the end. The gangs and the independent groups holding together the shaky peace didn't take to outsiders. They killed anyone, friend or foe, out of survival. The Coalition, and in effect Ashland himself, recognized the need for that. They were more civilized, sure, but they'd shoot before asking questions if the situation called for it. Ashland couldn't count how many times he had just used his weapon because the Scrags hadn't called out to acknowledge that they weren't Infected. It wasn't his fault that they were foolish to just run up without alerting, because everyone was armed.

Ashland used to choke on his own vomit when he realized that he had shot his own kind. There weren't a lot of them left, the alive ones, and it was such a loss when it happened. Especially children. Nowadays, though, he didn't even blink at the backfire of a weapon, let alone at the death of a Scrag. They should've used common sense when coming to an armed battalion by calling out that they were alive. It was terrible, but it was a part of the new world.

He wished that he had been able to live out his dreams. Now, it just didn't matter. Ashland's job was simple, and of vital importance in the new world. He had to defend his platoon at all costs, find survivors and supplies, and he had to stay alive. It was of utmost importance and he didn't have a choice.

One day, hopefully, they'd be able to settle down somewhere, start anew. Restart the world, with an active civilization and maybe even a government. He'd help create peace; not the kind of peace that the Wasteland people had created, but a democratic peace, where children could be children and people could live with minimal fear. It would take decades, if not longer, to be free of the Infected, as they waited to kill the rest of them off or they themselves finally died, but one day, there would be peace. Stability. Life would return to some warped sense of normality.

They just had to survive until then.