Third-Person Point of View

“Alright, so we’re going to go over zombies, how they’re made, all the information I have on them, and some speculation before we move on to training to get stronger.” Lissa wore one of Vicky’s slutty teacher costumes as she slapped a dry board. “First, every single person will get stronger if they consume cores. This isn’t as noticeable for some of the powers, but everyone will be a little bit stronger, faster, and smarter if they gain a power or increase that power's rank.”

All the girls besides Luna who fucked off to play with the dogs and Ellen who couldn’t be bothered to learn sat listening to the explanation she was giving. “What normally takes place in most groups is the leader takes the bulk of the cores and spreads only a trivial amount to the rest of his underlings. That doesn’t appear to be what our husband is doing, so I’ll digress from topics like how to get more cores from your group.”

“Now, all of you have been given a core to hold onto by our husband, that’s fine. Just keeping in contact with it won't do much, and after the first time you’ve unlocked your powers, you have to actively focus on absorbing the energy inside to use them… Zombies shouldn’t exist right now, and because of that, we’re still learning new information, like just touching a core will jumpstart powers. That wasn’t a thing from what I can remember the first time around.”

Vicky raised her hand, she was wearing a slutty student costume from her collection. “Teacher, what if you don’t want to gain a power because you’re afraid of how it will change you?” Lissa answered. “They say there are no dumb questions, but they’re clearly wrong. Not wanting a power is like not wanting money. Sure, some people can get by without money, but it certainly makes things easier.”

She sighed as she spoke from experience. “Being unpowered is being at the mercy of whoever you’re leader is. If our husband dies then you are straight fucked. The best case scenario for you is to become a plaything for the next leader of the survivor base you join. More than likely, you won't, and you’ll have to get by through other means. Those means are selling your body for rotting food and sips of water.”

The world had morally degraded for hundreds of years for every year of the apocalypse. What was thought of as abhorrent, like cannibalism, was done in the open and actively celebrated in some of the survivor camps. “There’s a risk of gaining a power, but the difference between having one and not having one is how easy it is to keep your integrity. Even with powers, it still isn’t a one-hundred-percent thing, but that number is almost zero with no power. For asking such a silly question, see me after class, and I’ll administer a spanking to you for disrupting my thought process… Where was I?”

Jade was eating a sandwich as she chimed in. “Zombies shouldn’t exist yet.” Lissa snapped her fingers as she responded. “Right. Zombies shouldn’t exist, but because they do, you all can get your powers earlier than what should be possible. The physical training, weapons training, and gun training I’m going to put you all through will let you fight against them. Zombies have differing ranks, and as they increase, they give higher ranking cores to increase your powers.”

Lissa pointed to a cartoonish drawing of a zombie as she explained further. “The first few months of a human turning into a zombie, they are still relatively the same. A bullet ripping apart the heart or blunt force trauma to the body will kill them. The moment the virus brings a person back to life, it will begin shutting down the functions of the human as it overwrites their code, starting with the need for the zombie to breathe.”

She further went on to explain that as the virus took over more and more, the zombies would become more zombie-like. Things that would kill them the first few months changed and no longer would as the heart stopped pumping blood, making it so that only destroying the brain will stop the zombie from functioning.

“With zombies out of the way, I’ll go over powers next. First are the powers that strengthen a single attribute of a person. This is either super strength, speed, endurance, perception, or intelligence. These are the most straight forward and a lot of people will take the enhancement syringes which wont let them grow their powers through cores but will boost their other parameters by about double, the cost of doing so is normally expensive but since our husband can make more with his power it’s the solution I’d go to for most people.”

“Thankfully, none of us have these weaker powers, but even with just the weakest version of this, you’d have a huge advantage over anyone without powers. The next would be auxiliary, or support powers like the kind Jade has. Awful at fighting zombies but valuable enough that most survivor camps will keep them around and alive. The vast majority of groups won't let support types upgrade their powers through cores as most naturally grow over time.”

“The next powers are manipulation and transformation. You could say one is better than the other, but most transformation types die early on account of having their intelligence lowered. The feral instinct you gain doesn’t warn against betrayal, and humans are the most dangerous thing in the apocalypse. Luna is a transformation type while Ellen, the girl doctor, and our husband are manipulators.”

“That would bring me to what I am and… I’m not sure anymore. I was a human with the zombie transformation power that Melissa has, but… That isn’t the case anymore. I’m stronger than a normal human and have some similar powers to that of a zombie, but I can feel my heartbeat. I’m clearly alive but stronger than an unpowered, but I don’t have a power.”

She dragged one of her lengthened fingernails across her forearm as she spoke. “I bleed, I breathe, I can eat, shit, and sleep… But I do so in much smaller amounts than a normal person would need to, and I think I can go without doing any of those things so… Enough trauma dumping on you all, let’s get to the physical aspect of this, and we’ll have you fire some guns after lunch.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

I watched as a fire spread through a building. Whoever had started it was already long gone by the time I stumbled across it. Any survivors inside were long dead before I arrived as well. I couldn’t help but wonder how it happened as I tried to recall anything from my first time through. Things like this were so commonplace that I couldn’t remember a specific time, only that they happened all the time.

It could have been someone trying to clumsily cook inside or a faulty outlet from a generator, there were a myriad of things that could have started it. All I knew was that watching it wasn’t helping anything, but it was still soothing to do so. The building collapsed in on itself as the rain wasn’t strong enough to put out anything the floodwater didn’t reach.

I could feel my powers start to work overtime as I lifted the skeletons out of the debris. I’d need to clear some of the gunk off the bones, but this would be a nice supply to keep as I kept using up all the bones I had on me. It was gross to mess with corpses, but I was more frugal now that the apocalypse was on us and didn’t want the bones to go to waste.