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Captain What A Piece of Work is Man McGriddle Sandwich from McDonalds Put a Gun Against His Head was, for lack of a better word, well and truly fucked. Of course, things hadn’t started that way, and in fact everything had been fine for her that morning, up until the zombies had started pouring from the sky. That was when all hell had broken loose.
For any of it to make sense one needed to go back roughly nineteen years to an indecent incident that took five hundred years of careful planning from two individuals. The following ten years had a third on board, as well as the unintentional help of
three
two others. It was surprisingly difficult to get the sperm of the one and only Emperor Undying (even with the assistance of two of his closest confidants). But it was possible, and that was precisely what Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead had done.
It had taken an incredible amount of planning, but she had finally managed to get three samples. The first two went into external wombs, which should have fucking worked but of course they hadn’t.
Both had died within days. Wake didn’t understand the technology, nor did she particularly care to, but when she found the one sample still alive nearly twelve weeks later… well, she had done what was necessary. She had already been en route to headquarters once the first two had died, and there wasn’t really much point in trying to turn back. Gideon was after her, and despite Pyrrha’s best efforts, he was gaining ground. Staying near Dominicus was a surefire way to end up losing everything she had worked for, so she kept her course and disappeared into the stars.
The child was more useful if she kept it alive, so she fought her better instincts and kept it inside her, giving birth when she finally got close to Blood of Eden territory. She had been unwilling to explain anything to anyone, only saying that the child was going to live, and that she was one of them.
And thus Gideon was born, or rather What A Piece of Work is Man McGriddle Sandwich from McDonalds Put a Gun Against His Head. The shorter moniker was a reminder, a living remembrance of everything that they were fighting against. Of course, Wake was the only one who knew it, but it was still worth it to her.
Gideon had grown up rather normally all things considered, or at least as much as could be considered normal for someone living on an Edenite colony, with her cousin (or maybe it was half sister) Pash. There were others, of course, there always were, but with how often they ended up moving it didn’t really matter.
For the most part it was just her and Pash, a pair of numbskull dumbasses against the world, and when they were kids that worked just fine. The two of them had spent countless days pissing the time away in the rubble of an area that had been marked for demolition, or in the middle of a packed city block, flashing their credentials to anyone with the gall to stop them.
To them, Blood of Eden was just a part of the world around them, like the ground beneath their feet and the clear, blue sky up above them, occasionally dotted with clouds. Wake kept both of them close, not letting them understand exactly what was going on until later, when they had already become desensitized to the violence Blood of Eden enacted in the name of… well, Wake had never exactly explained it to either of them, but there must have been some point to all of it.
Maybe that was when they had lost some of the childhood innocence, standing there in the center of the square watching one of the zombies be burned to a crisp, or maybe it was later, when Gideon was leading a raid while Pash, who was supposed to be helping her, was busy dying her hair blue. Gideon had gotten a bone shot at her that day, a whole fucking femur, and she had been washing the dustiness out of her mouth for weeks.
Wake hadn’t been happy about it, and of course Pash had been ripped a new one, not that she had cared. Gideon hadn’t really cared that much either, not really, though of course she found a way to get back at her. Next time there was a raid they were supposed to be leading together, Pash’s gear was mysteriously missing a few important securing factors, which had led to her falling flat on her face.
Gideon had watched from the side, nearly falling to the ground in laughter, only to have an incredibly angry, blue haired fury atop her in moments, punching every available inch of Gideon that wasn’t bony or sharp. It was how the two of them showed their “sisterly affection” as Wake liked to call it, and Gideon wouldn’t trade it for the world.
The two of them grew side by side, rising through the ranks together, making lieutenant before either of them had broken the ripe age of eighteen. They were two peas in a pod, two zombies trapped in a cage, two of those weird, not quite brick things stacked together, pieces of a grand puzzle that they could just barely see the edges of.
They were different people, of course, and Gideon would take any opportunity available to her to remind Pash of that, and vice versa. Any time Pash fell during a training exercise that Gideon completed, or whenever Gideon fell behind on a lap, there would be a snide, sarcastic voice lambasting the other for their failure. At first that voice had been Wake’s, but over time they had grown to do it to each other naturally, needling at each other without much concern for consequences.
That was how the two of them faced most things, at least until the first wave of zombies had started showing up. There were normally a few of them cropping up here and there, either escapees from the Houses or from colonies caught in the crossfire, but they were shunned and pushed out when discovered, or lived secretly enough that nobody suspected a thing. It had never been a serious problem, just requiring occasional raids on spaceports and warehouses to keep things in check.
No, things had really become a problem on Gideon’s eighteenth birthday, a day that should have been full of joy. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t.
~~~~~
Gideon woke up that day much like she would have any other, with Pash crushing her. The large, muscular form on top of her wasn’t quite enough to force her out of bed, but it sure as shit was enough to get her awake, and as the birthday noogies began, sharp knuckles digging into her scalp, she was forced to acknowledge a few things at once.
First, and most importantly, she was eighteen years old, which meant a few wonderful things, and a few less wonderful ones. As of that moment, she could legally drink, not that such restrictions had stopped her in the past. She could also, much to Pash’s chagrin, legally purchase a personal firearm through something other than Blood of Eden, which meant that she could lawfully carry a side piece that was something a touch more personal. She had a particular piece she had scoped out a few months in advance that she would be picking up later that day, and despite the lump of a person on top of her she couldn't help but smile.
She was perfectly content to ignore the slightly more problematic elements of her newfound adulthood, namely the command she now held. She was a captain now, and while Pash would be joining her in just a few short months, for a brief period she would be well and truly alone in her position. Wake was still in charge, of course, and there were a few other captains across the colonies, but she was going to have a wide swath of troops to deal with. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to handle it, even if her smiling face said otherwise.
“Alright, Pash, I get it, it’s my birthday. That means what I say goes, so get the fuck off me before I put you through the wall.”
It was said as a joke, and it mostly was, but Pash was fully aware of Gideon’s capabilities which made her exit rather quick.
“Alright, birthday girl, but don’t you dare even consider holding your new rank over me, or I will tell Wake and she will eviscerate you. She won’t care if it’s your birthday or your first time holding a gun, she’ll put you in your place regardless.”
Gideon didn’t really feel a need to give Pash anything more to work with, so instead she shut the door behind herself as she stepped into the bathroom and quickly showered before changing. They were high ranking enough that she could have taken a longer shower, but she always felt weird about such things, especially knowing just how much poverty there was in some of the colonies. She wasn’t about to completely deny herself, but anything more than a quick minute or so in the shower made her feel worse than if she hadn’t taken one at all.
She got dressed quickly, throwing on her normal outfit and doing a quick patdown of her various pockets. She found more or less what she was expecting, and was able to refill the few emptier pockets with things in her room and bathroom, which was nice. She would need to do a more full resupply soon but she had enough things stocked for a normal day. Of course, no day as an Edenite was normal, but there was a certain level of strangeness that she could accept as part of a day to day routine without it fucking her up too much, and that was a good enough baseline for normal.
Just to be sure she checked the small gap in her mattress which she hid a few magazines in, thankful to find them all still there. They were printed on the shitty flimsy that the Houses used, and she had only managed to get it by scouring the wreckage of a zombie hidey-hole that she had raided. Frontline Titties of the Fifth was her personal favorite, though she had read the issue a few too many times to be surprised by that one article on page seven or the fold out centerfold that took up the last three pages of the magazine.
Gideon wasn’t sure whether or not Pash had found them yet, but if she had then she hadn’t said anything, and certainly not to Wake. Their mother was not exactly the most accepting of outside ideas, technology, or really anything connected to the Houses, not even a skin mag. It was rather a shame, especially because there were a few rather tasteful images that she was sure Wake would… appreciate.
Well, it was Wake’s loss, and Gideon stepped out of her room before being hit in the face with a rather strong smell. At first she thought something was on fire that wasn’t supposed to be, and then she realized that Pash was cooking, which meant more or less the same thing. She appreciated it, she really did, but Pash was not exactly what any reasonable person would call a good chef, and Gideon didn’t really feel like getting poisoned on her birthday.
Normally she could stomach damn near anything but somehow Pash had managed to master the art of making things that were inedible and indigestible to even the wonder that was Gideon’s gut. Gideon managed to shunt the wonderful cooking down onto the floor where she was relatively certain a certain four legged critter would get to it pretty quickly, someone with an even more robust gut than even her.
Sure enough, a small, stocky critter with a banded tail and dark splotches around its eyes scampered in and, skillfully evading the watchful eye of Pash, grabbed the food. Within moments the little raccoon was back out again, Gideon’s trick proving to be a complete success and Pash was none the wiser.
“I know you had the raccoon eat it, Gid, so don’t even try to pretend you didn’t.”
Shit.
“Pash, you must blind and stupid because there’s absolutely no way I would have ‘Roni eat the food you so lovingly prepared for me. That would be an insult to you and all the hard work I know you put into your cooking.”
There was a beat of silence and for a moment she thought that she had actually managed to get away with it. She was proven so unbelievably wrong just a moment later when a new plate of food appeared, full of a steaming pile of… something. She wasn’t entirely sure what it was, or what exactly it was supposed to be, but it looked pretty damn unappetizing if she was being completely honest.
Of course, she wasn’t about to say that to Pash’s face, not even if she had been paid a thousand good meals in days to come, which meant that she had to choke down whatever Pash had put in front of her. That was a daunting prospect to begin with, but she made a good show of it, making sure she displayed absolutely no discomfort whatsoever as she got the food down into her gullet.
Somehow she almost managed to miss the fact that the food was actually good, and with how focused she was on making sure the food actually stayed down she managed to completely ignore the texture and quality of the food. It was far above Pash’s normal standards, so far above that Gideon was actually rather suspicious.
“Pash, I love you and you’re almost certainly my favorite sibling, but there’s no way in hell you actually were the one to cook this.”
There was a levity in her voice that could only come from insulting someone she’d insulted a thousand times before, and a chuckle under her tone waiting for Pash to concede to the truth. It took a moment of Gideon staring at Pash with her imposing, golden gaze for the other to crack under the pressure.
“Alright, alright, maybe you’re right. It doesn’t matter though, does it? You didn’t trust me to cook you a good meal. You’ve got to know how much that hurts, don’t you Gid?”
For a moment Gideon thought she had actually managed to hurt Pash, but then the joke all fell together and the two of them started laughing like a pair of loons. It was enough to draw the attention, and ire, of Wake.
“If you two knucklefucks have enough time to sit around laughing then you have enough time to have eaten and dressed, so let’s go! Come on, we have a whole hell of a lot of shit to do, and someone here needs to get ready to become a captain.”
Ah right, that. Well, it wouldn’t be a birthday if Wake wasn’t there to make it interesting, and the two of them trudged out of the room after her in a manner a bit too similar to a pair of kicked puppies for Gideon’s liking, but she ignored it for the time being. There were, admittedly, a lot of things that they needed to get done and while she would have loved to drag her feet and chill in the apartment for a bit longer, she knew that she couldn’t.
She was actually going to be saddled with responsibilities now, and as much as she would love to blow them off in favor of an extended birthday celebration, or just about anything else for that matter, she knew she couldn’t. Wake had impressed the importance of responsibility into the two of them from a young age, and she wasn’t the kind to shirk what few responsibilities she had so easily.
The small group stepped out of the building and down into the street, the somewhat constant thrum of human traffic making it easy to lose one's companions in the throng. Unless your companions happen to have electric blue hair, which would make the process of finding them again a whole lot easier.
With Pash still in her sight she was able to avoid getting lost, at least until the screaming started. She wasn’t sure what caused it, or why exactly a stampede followed it, but she got swept up in the madness and was torn away from her family. She heard the crack of gunfire, and from the corner of her vision she saw that blue head of hair fall under the crowd, red mist filling the air. With a grunt of effort she fought herself out of the swarm and off to the side.
From outside the crowd she could see a few things, none of which were good but the worst of which was the two bodies cooling quickly on the pavement, red pooling around their heads.
The cold, dead eyes of Wake and Pash stared into her soul like a quartet of spotlights, and suddenly she was center stage.
~~~
When Gideon was four, she had somehow managed to find her way into a can that she really shouldn’t have. The contents had seemed tasty enough and she had managed to get all the way through the can before someone managed to stop her. When Wake had seen the completely empty can of rat poison sitting next to her daughter she had, understandably, panicked just a little bit.
Every doctor on the colony had seen Gideon in the space of about four hours, but none of them could find a single thing wrong with her. It was as if the poison had done nothing to her, so Wake chalked it up to the poison having gone bad, as did everyone else. There was no other explanation that made a hint of sense.
When she was six a bus, one of the big, two story ones, had run into her, and she had taken it like a champ. The bus had a bit of a dent in the front of it, though that might have already been there, and the spot on the street where she landed was covered in scraps of flesh, a few bone chips, and a fair amount of blood, though from first inspection none of it appeared to be hers. She tottered away from the scene completely fine and entirely unharmed, her legs carrying her without a hint of a problem as if they hadn’t been bent the wrong way just moments earlier.
It was harder to ignore that time, especially with all the witnesses on the bus, but somehow everyone was perfectly willing to accept that the bus had hit a bird and little Gideon had chased the carcass until it became a sploot on the pavement, even though all of them knew that didn’t quite make sense. Word started to spread, just a little bit, of how Wake’s child wasn’t quite right, how there was something unnatural, almost wrong, about her, but Wake quelled those discussions with a firm hand and a glare. Someone once said that she was “too alive”, and Wake had planted her boot so firmly in their clavicle that they had been out of the workforce for three months.
Admittedly, it was a bit hard for her to reconcile all that she had seen, especially as the incidents became more and more blatantly unnatural . There was no way in hell that anyone, not even a perfectly fit and athletic sixteen year old, should have been able to take a rifle round to the sternum without so much as flinching, but Gideon had managed it without even realizing she had done it, just continuing to laugh and smile in her way that was just so alive .
On her seventeenth birthday, Gideon had been made aware of the rather concerning trend, against both her own will and Wake’s. She had blown out the candles on her shitty little birthday cake that was probably one of the more valuable things the colony had brought in that month when a stray bullet from a fight a few streets over had flown through the window. It got Pash in the left shoulder, and somehow had just enough momentum left in it to make it to Gideon’s open palm.
Any normal person, any reasonable person, who ended up with the spent remains of a bullet in their hand would probably scream out in pain from the heat. Most people would end up with a burn that would welt and sting and cause all sorts of problems. Most people wouldn’t grab the bullet, turn it around to investigate it a bit, and then throw it back out the window because they didn’t need it. Gideon was not, by any measure, a normal person.
The focus had remained on Pash and her rather minor injury at first, but then the focus had shifted to Gideon. She hadn’t thought anything of it, because of course she hadn’t, but there had been no way for Wake or Pash to ignore what was sitting right in front of them. It wasn’t all that bad, and Wake had somehow managed to avoid explaining just who Gideon’s father was for a bit longer, but Gideon had been required to keep what little she did know under wraps, as had Pash.
As she stared at the corpses of the only family she had in the world, and watched them stare back at her, she wished she could trade that hardened skin and faster healing for their lives back, though she knew she couldn’t. What she could do, though, was make sure that the bastards who had killed her family knew just what they had done, and that they suffered for their crimes, for their sins.
Someone was screaming and it took her a moment to realize that it was her, though she made no effort to stop even after realizing where that dreadful wailing was coming from. While everyone else ran away from the two corpses lying in the street, she walked slowly towards them, daring anyone to claim responsibility for the act. That precise moment was when her day had gone from bad to much, much worse.
The two corpses, which were assuredly dead, rose, though they weren’t quite right. Their movements were wrong, jerky and inhuman, and their faces bore no emotion. Their heads lolled a touch, as if they were a pair of shitty puppets controlled by a puppeteer who couldn't care less what their audience thought.
It was the sort of thing that only a zombie, a true zombie, could possibly hope to achieve, and that meant they had finally made it to the colony. From what little Gideon understood of their tactics they didn’t tend to send in true zombies first, but rather their helpers, fools who didn’t know the boot they were crushed under, but Gideon didn’t really care. Someone had killed her family, someone had called the shots, and all of them were going to die. It didn’t matter who they were or what they could do, she would find them and end them.
Somehow in her rage induced delirium her eyes turned to the sky. Far up above, floating there in the sea of blue and gray that was the sky, there was a silvery shape. It was small and sleek looking, and there were smaller shapes pouring out of it, the lot of them falling to the ground and covering the already pockmarked cityscape with thousands of new holes.
From each shuttle, a group of people emerged. It was easy to tell which ones were the true zombies, and she decided to target them first, relishing in the way her bullets cleaved through them, rending flesh and bone indiscriminately as she blew them all away. That was the problem with zombies, and the boorish way they chose to fight: it was almost too easy sometimes.
She was surprised to see actual weaponry, something other than swords at least, in the crowd, but she immobilized the idiots wielding them in moments and moved on to her next group of targets without paying them a second thought. Most of the force was still full of sword bearing, brainwashed fools, and she took no joy in killing them, though she did it anyway.
Every body in her way was just another obstacle to fight through, and she did it almost mechanically, cutting them down with her bullets, and when she needed to reload she simply dropped her guns and started taking her fists to them, beating them down with all the rage burning in her.
Her knuckles should have been burning, split, and all kinds of fucked up but somehow she didn’t seem to notice it. It must have just been the adrenaline, but when a bullet pierced her shoulder and she kept punching she had to admit that there was probably something else afoot. She bent the barrel of the mindless soldier’s gun back and beat him over the head with it, all without missing a step.
There were soldiers and zombies fighting all around her, and yet somehow she managed to avoid any injury. She probably should have with how many gashes opened up on her sides and how many holes opened up in her torso as bullets carved their way through her, but she kept going, none of it slowing her down in the slightest.
It all happened so suddenly that she didn’t even notice that anything had changed until there was a mass of muscle standing in front of her, wrapping her in a tight grip. She tried to fight her way free, biting and kicking and clawing, tears streaming down her face, but the musclebound figure in front of her didn’t so much as flinch.
“Stop.”
The command was so solid that she couldn’t help but obey it, despite her natural inclination to do literally anything but that. She wanted to fight and kick and scream but the command kept her in place.
She looked up until she found a face, and the face that stared down at her seemed wrong somehow, as if it’s proportions were somehow off. Maybe there was too much muscle, or maybe it was that the eyes didn’t match, or that they matched too much. The intense brown gaze was too much and Gideon was forced to look away, though she didn’t want to show such weakness.
“Hey kiddo, how about we have a little chat, why don’t we? I think we have a lot to talk about.”
Gideon gave no resistance as the impressively muscular person led them away, tactfully placing themself between her and the corpses of her family which had somehow been laid to rest once more. She wasn’t sure if it had been by her hand or theirs, but she was glad that it had happened. That was about the only thing about the whole situation that she was glad had happened. Pash and Wake deserved better than to be puppetted by fucking zombies .