#33

The burst of energy coming off of You's laser pike forms a scene transition. Cut to: England. A nice place to live; unwilling enemy of the Empire. You are now a young man named Mark.

Mark, though he has just been referred to as “you”, shall be called “you” in the lower-case, as he is full-bred British, and thus no relation to the all-American You. (Not you, you. I'm aware that you could well be from any country, and as such you may not be all-American at all. Which is okay with all concerned; I myself have some complaints about America, but I'm afraid I don't the time or courage to make them here. Besides, that would be inappropriate in the utmost.)

Mark, or you—we'll call you Mark and vice versa, until we return to You—is a representative for a vacuum cleaner company. He's actually pretty ordinary, really, and that is said in the hopes that, in the whole “Mark/you” setup, that statement is not taken offensively, because “ordinary” is a word often tinged with insult. Mark doesn't mind being ordinary, and thus “you” don't mind being ordinary either.

How about we just make it easy on ourselves and just Mark “Mark”.

Mark is driving home along a lonely road outside of a small town of that has no name. That's not a typo; the city is a postmodern bohemian colony with a populace made of jerks, who decided to troll the rest of the world by naming their town that has no name. That is to say, their town is called “that has no name”, no capitals. that has no name is a miserable place for outsiders, but Mark grew up there and as such has a few certain traits that should be examined here.

Everyone in that has no name has to have a certain level of bigotry towards some arbitrary detail. Mark has an intense and all-consuming horror of zombies. It reflects, in the minds of the town elders of that has no name, a growing trend of lower-scale zombie culture that is popularly devoured by young people such as Mark. Everyone in Mark's family has had such a trope-hate; one of Mark's ancestors, a man named Vitus, had an intense and all-consuming horror of cats, to represent medieval superstitions. Vitus' life was modernized and filmed in 1934 as The Black Cat, and with the help of an Einsteinian tachyonic antitelephone, it was suggested that Vitus be named for the character in the movie as a sort of totally ironic paradox. Here's a good time to point out that the citizens of that has no name also possess time-travel technology, but only use it to suit their irony purposes.

Fortunately, that has no name is about to be destroyed by zombies, so the pretentiousness of its citizens and their potential to become unbelievably irksome characters in this tale will probably be neutralized in this entry.

The engine of Mark's car begins to sputter. He looks at his fuel tank; it's near full, but the needle is dropping rapidly. All of the other needles are freaking out. Something is really wrong, so it's time to pull over. Mark doesn't know much about cars, which isn't helpful in this case, though he knows enough to understand when something's totally messed up.

He pulls off to the side of the road, besides a forest. The forest near that has no name is named the Devil's Forest, but only ironically. A lot of completely B.S. and faux-camp stories circulate around the Devil's Forest, mostly to get people to not laugh in a fashion that is totally ironic. Mad scientists are said to lurk in the Devil's Forest, cultivating an army of monsters to unleash on the world. This is hilarious but only to people who aren't quite in the know about the ways of irony.

Mark begins looking at the engine, but as mentioned, his knowledge base regarding cars is pretty tiny. He may have to walk all the way back to town, which might cause the others to laugh at him. So he tries his best to work on it, though his best isn't great.

Meanwhile, something rustles in the bushes.

Mark notices this immediately. However, he recalls one of the stories about the Forest being that an enormous frog lives in the swamplands of the Forest, and uses this tale as a handwave explanation as to the noise. It could be anything, really, and it certainly isn't something linked to his artificially-induced phobia.

However, Mark here makes a magnificent discovery. Not everything works along the guidelines of suspense, even in a world heavily influenced by the flowing tides of trope-magic. Though the bushes have only rustled once, and Mark is not properly afraid yet, a large company of creatures burst out of the wilderness to feast upon Mark's flesh.

They are, predictably enough, zombies. Or, it should be said, beasts that Mark is automatically convinced are zombies, in a loose definition of the term.

There are quite a lot of them, as hipster chemistry is a very powerful thing, so Mark is full of terror. He soils his pants, in fact, though he doesn't know it presently. He screams loudly, flails about so as to rip the car battery from his vehicle, which isn't easy, and begins to run away.

It's here that the text should point that the artificial phobias of that has no name are still as potent and powerful as regular phobias, and there's a level of intolerance brought into the psychology of the affair as well. So Mark is simultaneously legitimately terrified and disgusted, making him feel awful. Honestly, making fun of the deal isn't a proper thing to do, especially given what is presently happening. Half of that has no name has already been destroyed in a massive fuel fire, and dozens if not hundreds are dead. Mark has no living family, though, which will make it very bitterly bittersweet when he discovers the assault, which he is about to...now.

It's a short jog from the Devil's Forest to that has no name, but somehow, Mark didn't notice the flames. The flames are, if it hasn't been specified already, being caused by the zombies, who have shattered the fuel lines about town and are wielding torches, which is a lethal combination. The screams can be heard for miles, though some of the older members still fail to scream, preferring instead to defy the mainstream. They silently judge the others for being weak.

The zombies run free and wild, and deformed; their waxen features melt in the unnatural heat, and they scream as well, though they do so without the same reasoning as the others. Some of them are blind and others have lost limbs. Of course, the same can be said for their human victims.

Mark will be safe until the zombies notice him, which will occur shortly. The zombies that chased him from the forest lost sight of him awhile ago, because zombies tend to be much slower than living, non-zombie humans.

The phrase “living, non-zombie humans” gives Mark a tiny burst of pleasure in the maelstrom of horror. The phrase “maelstrom of horror” also gives him pleasure, but he doesn't specifically know why on either of them.

The pleasure fades when the zombies begin chasing him. They're slow, but not all of them are on fire, and there are dozens of them, and as mentioned many times before, Mark has a crippling fear of them. He considers breaking down and crying, but is conflicted over that because it means the zombies will get him. He needs release, and the release he needs is beyond words—making this especially difficult in the face of a drastic narrative shift.

Catharsis is a dramatic motion, however, and can be carried out by other players of a piece. Case in point, the glowing light that appeared through the flames and disintegrated all fifty-two of the approaching zombies. (Though, naturally, their number wasn't known to Mark.) There is a sudden wave of flame that Mark knows goes beyond a simple fuel rupture, and much of the remaining town is blown to ashes as well. The grey dust forms a wave that begins flying towards Mark, who shields himself helplessly; but then, he is enshrouded in a cyan light, and the ash is deflected away from him.

He blinks, feeling a slight burn as a little bit of the ash gets into his eyes. He can barely see, but what he sees is tremendous; the town, now crumbled to dust, is being swept into the air in a massive tornado. Given the size of the town—population somewhere circa a thousand—this tornado is miles across. The sky is blackened as a mixture of charred humans, houses, and zombies is carried high into the stratosphere. Mark falls to his knees, though his aura follows him.

After just a few seconds, it is all over. that has no name has been completely destroyed. Only some brick foundations and scattered shattered planks remain. In the center, however, where the town square once stood, with its monument honoring a series of white male writers beloved by the populace, there is a figure glowing with the same bluish light as that which protects Mark. As Mark strains to look at it, his aura fading in the process, it suddenly explodes into a fierce flash of violet light. Then, just as suddenly as that all happened, the figure is standing next to him.

Mark gets to see the figure up close. He can't tell if it's male or female, and frankly, the idea of it being neither or both is enough to make him be rude enough to refer to the figure with the pronoun “it”. The figure is dressed in black robes that billow around hir entire body, with a hood over hir head. Mark can't see hir face at all, but two vague prominences of color that may be eyes can be seen under the hood. He can't tell what color it is, though, which he finds very odd.

“Listen to me, boy,” ze says then. “More zombies will be upon us soon, and I doubt that is the least of our problems. I sense a fractured tense; it is present rather than past, suggesting time dilation on a massive scale. That is never a good sign. We have to move quickly.”

Mark says nothing, instead too blown away to react—and with him, the pun is indeed intended.

“Boy. I cannot speak frankly enough. Your country is under attack.”

Mark cannot tell from the voice which country ze comes from, or if ze is a man or a woman; both of these disturb him greatly.

“Boy. Decide. Will you follow me?”

Mark snaps out of it, and nods. Whoever this guy or girl is, he has a better chance with it than with the zombies. Still, it's tough to tell what Mark feels about this right now; and not even he knows. He was never that attached to that has no name anyway; liking it would be ironic, as it was never expected to be liked. And as mentioned, he had no family.

The two begin to walk away from the ashes, with the tall figure leading ahead. Beyond the ruins of that has no name lie the hills, and past that, the Wastes—a place once called Troy Novantum.