Work Text:
Niflheimr Z-free zone.
Warm spot well beyond Niflheimr itself.
Z bites: usually no more than one hour to turn, never as much as two. Quarantine is three hours.
Waiting room, Z-safe interactive entertainments and study materials. Always solo.
Hunt/gather/scrounge team returns; waiting period.
Quiet, always waiting.
All of the surviving civilization also waits. Maybe someday the Zs will all be dead and Niflheimr safe once more; just not yet.
Waiting.
Our groundwave accumulator keeps things OK. Scrounge parts work to build an x-point tap, to restart local civilization. A long, slow work in progress.
Waiting.
Cure? Inoculation? Maybe. We have research stations clockwise and counterclockwise of us along the world's end, with each of them being five Z-freeze radii away, just in case of outbreaks and subsequent iterative waves before they freeze solid.
Waiting.
Two Z vectors: bites lead to full zombification if not immediately amputated well above the bite, scratches lead to “mere” ghoulification (semi-dead, rather than undead; heart pumps ichor, rather than lying still; stimulus response better than Zs'; no Z-hunger; can only cause further ghouls, not Zs). Quarantined party members always masked and gloved against possible turn.
Waiting.
O ~~~ O