If you follow this story and jumped straight to the newest chapter, please go back and re-read the previous ones! I've edited them, some a bit heavily, so you might not follow this if you haven't read them.

Robbie woke up for the second time that morning at a more reasonable hour (for him, anyway): ten-something. Or at least, that's what he figured by how high the sun was in the sky.

He was lying on the ground, and he couldn't really remember why. It came back slowly: leaving the house, walking towards Thompson's house, passing out. He must have fallen back onto the grass of his yard, though that wouldn't explain the trees filtering the sunlight from overhead, or why his fingers felt sticky, like they'd been coated in juice and left out to dry.

Thank God, the hunger was gone, or at least nearly gone; only a whisper of it remained, an 'I could eat' instead of an 'I've been without food in the savannah for a month'. Robbie actually smiled a bit at the absence of the pain. Maybe he'd broken it, maybe it was what he'd heard fasting was like: after a while, your body just gets used to the hunger and stops demanding food. He could still smell the animals around him, and they still smelled good, but they were no longer as tempting now that he wasn't in agony from hunger. Still smiling, Robbie sat up.

And immediately felt like puking.

Close by his right side was a dead raccoon, or what was left of one. It seemed like it had been ripped open, and bones and guts were strewn across the ground, soaked in blood. Its dead eyes were still open, its fur matted with its blood. Flies swarmed and buzzed around it, as hungry for it as Robbie wasn't.

Something had definitely eaten part of the thing. As many guts as there were, there weren't enough to entirely fill its skin. The raccoon's stomach seemed to have teeth marks on it, too: the ragged edges from where a bite had been torn out. The liquid from inside the stomach was spread across the ground too, but was easily overwhelmed by the blood.

What had done this? What could have, or would have? He'd never seen anything like this before, or even heard about it. Was this another crazy supernatural thing Dipper had brought about? And why hadn't it attacked him?

Robbie pushed himself up, off the ground. Whatever had caused this, he didn't want to be around when it came back. He made to pull up the hood of his hoodie - after all, it was daytime now, and the less people saw of him, the better. But again, he stopped when his hands came into sight. But this time, it wasn't because they were blue.

It was because they were red.

They were covered in blood, soaked in it. The blood had worked its way under his fingernails, dried into a sticky, disgusting mess. It was soaked into the sleeves of his hoodie, caked down his front. He was dripping with red.

He skittered backwards without thinking about it, trying to remove himself from the horror of it all, but of course his blood-drenched limbs came along. Still, he put some distance between himself and the raccoon, and that helped.

Had . . . had he done that? Killed the raccoon?

It would explain the blood, but how could he have done that and not remembered? He scoured his memory for any trace of the last six or so hours, but there was nothing, a void. It was like trying to remember what happened to your body while you were asleep.

What was he going to do? What could he do? There was no place he could go, covered in blood like this, not even home to wash the blood off.

He raised his hand into view again, and though he was prepared for it, it was still a bit shocking to see it drenched in blood like he'd dipped it into a vat of the stuff.

The blood was dry enough, a bit sticky but not still liquid, flaking off in little solid pieces near the edges. He could smell it, a bit faint but salty and tangy and incredibly delicious, a bit like barbeque sauce but better somehow.

Robbie's mind was at war with itself, half crying out in disgust at the blood caked up his arm, and the dead raccoon nearby, but the other half crying out louder for him to eat it, devour it, and find even more.

Well, the raccoon was already dead, right? The blood had already been spilled. Ignoring it, washing it off, would just be wasting it . . .

Numbly, Robbie lifted his hand to his mouth and licked his fingers.

The blood tasted good.

Robbie cried a little, silently, but he kept eating it. He didn't want this, didn't want to do this, but if he would black out and kill things if he starved himself, then he had to eat. He didn't want to risk hurting his parents, or his friends, or Wendy.

He licked the blood from his hands in silence. He looked over to the dead raccoon, with flies covering its fur and buzzing at its innards, and he knew he should eat it, because he sure as hell didn't want to go through this again and the more he ate the longer it would be until the hunger was back, but he couldn't. It was too much of a stretch for him to see the raccoon as food, no matter how tempting the smell of it was.

What now?

He was a zombie. He was dead. He was dangerous.

He couldn't be seen like this. He couldn't trust himself around other people like this.

He was a monster.

(He wasn't the only one, or at least, he wouldn't be for long.)

He didn't want to be this way. He didn't want to kill things and eat them. He didn't want to constantly be thinking of his friends, his family, everyone he cared about as food, as delicious.

But what could he do? Zombies couldn't die, as far as he knew, and they certainly couldn't come back to life.

So this was it. This would be his eternity.

It was a sobering, heavy thought. His arms wrapped around his knees instinctually and he pulled himself into a ball, trying to pull himself into a shape so small he would disappear. If he didn't exist, he wouldn't have to worry about this, and no one else would, either.

He needed to protect the people he loved, to find a way to keep from hurting them. They wouldn't be safe with him around.

Robbie slowly climbed to his feet. Numbly, he looked around for something that would give him an idea of where he was and spotted a patch where the trees dispersed a few dozen yards away. He stumbled his way towards it, probably looking every bit the stereotypical zombie but too numb and empty to care.

He walked out into someone's backyard on the edge of town. Thankfully, no one seemed to be home.

He walked out from behind the house and onto the street. There were neon flyers all over the street, stapled to lamp posts and stuffed into mailboxes. He grabbed one blowing down the road and skimmed it. Apparently the Mystery Shack was throwing another event/party thing, this one free with the purchase of their new bottled spring water.

He threw the paper back to the ground, where it continued skittering along the pavement. At least with an event like this going on, there wouldn't be many people around to see him.

Robbie trudged his way home and climbed his way up the rope ladder. It would have been easier to go in through the front door, but the door to his room was still locked, so he wouldn't have been able to get in anyway.

He pulled himself through the window frame and crashed to the floor. He couldn't really feel it, and he didn't hear anything break, so it didn't really matter. Better that he didn't hurt. Better that he was as numb as possible for what he was going to do next.

Robbie grabbed a pocket knife off his desk and sawed through the ends of the rope ladder that were inside the room. The rope ladder fell to the ground outside with a heavy and final-sounding clump.

Before he could begin to doubt himself, Robbie closed his window and locked it. Then he pulled on the lock until it broke off in his hands, locking the window shut permanently.

He dropped the broken twist of metal to the floor and headed for the door. His hand grabbed the locked doorknob, tight, so tight that the metal began to crumple under his fingers.

This was for the best.

Robbie bent the doorknob off at its base, leaving a twisted and useless metal stub on the door and a cold lump of cheap metal in his hand.

It was done. He couldn't get out. He wouldn't, couldn't, hurt anyone or anything ever again.

Everyone was safe from him.

Except himself.