Whumptober 2020 - Saiouma Collection

[No.3 Manhandled | Forced to their Knees | Held at Gunpoint

[Warnings: Zombie Apocalypse (there's a cure for bites in this au), Blood and Injury, Bites/Dying]

With a world broken and crumbling to its own creatures, anxiety peaks, air thins, and the rotting and decaying bodies of the dead roam, what little life the land holds becomes precious.

Society itself festered and molded. The walks of many buildings became decrepit and unstable. The strong scent of musk and nauseating aroma soaked the air. Any living creatures who scoured amongst the builds wore a thick mask over their face. With the decomposing dead around, the epidemic grew worse.

Kokichi did not grow up in the world the adults spoke fondly of. He never experienced a school where kids his age, both older and younger, gathered in one building. Nor had he experienced a store, with walls and rows lined with food. The thought of it made his near-empty stomach pinch in longing.

The old world sounded so fun. Much more free than this one. Whereas now, venturing out of safe holds meant certain death. Common deaths were catching an unknown sickness to kill your family, die of infection with lack of medical supply, devoured by the monsters that roam around, or by your own hand. Succumbing to suicide as many do.

Kokichi's family was gone when he turned 5. Taken by illness. The rest of the people in the area slowly succumbed to other deaths. Leaving him, and a few stranglers alone. Those stranglers became his family. He would protect them until his anticipated death.

That is until he was separated from them.

Kokichi jerked himself left as he bolted down an alleyway. His lungs squeezing, grasping at any air he dared pull in as he ran. One foot thumping in front of the other as sweat poured down his face, trickling down his back, and soaking through some of his worn and old clothes. The van behind him screeched to a halt before the ally. He heard the door crash open as angry voices thundered and yelled.

Unfortunately, some people make the world's destruction as an opportunity to claim it for themselves. And those who don't surrender deserve to die, after all only the most loyal live in a 'better world.'

He cut through a slim gap in a decaying wall. The men after him wouldn't fit, they'd have to go around to the entrance. With little choice, he turned on his heel up the crumbling stairs. There were large breaches in the concrete, he stumbled, skinning his right knee on the broken cement. He inhaled sharply, yanking his collar over his nose as a most heinous scent rolled over the air.

He pushed for the next floor, and then the next. He must have cut a larger gap in his knee judging the amount of the blood running down his calf. It burned, but adrenaline carried him to the top floor. Breathing heavily, each exhale labored and weighty. But hearing the shout of the men didn't allow him to stop.

He dashed down the halls of the floor, desperate for escape. The sweat burned along his forehead the more he realized he had run himself into a corner. The end of a maze with no exit. His chest ached from the thinned air he breathed, all roughly filtered through his shirt.

He swallowed thickly. The thumping of his heart rang in his ears as he heard their feet echo down the halls he came from. Kokichi stared in near horror at the dead-end he stood before. Nothing but an old boarded window stared back, as if mocking his demise.

The floor creaked beneath his feet, the walls beside him were crumbling and falling apart, he turned around ready to put on the worst fight of his life. With his knuckles bleeding from his last encounters, half his leg soaked with blood, breathing with half the oxygen reaching his mind, leaving his fingers numb.