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It starts like lightning one day in a cave.
Tim, holding his post-patrol coffee, says, "Is Jason a zombie?"
All the residents there turn to Jason, who's trying to sneak back to his base. Damn.
"Why do you suddenly say that?" Jason says.
Tim tilts his head. Honestly, Tim post-patrol with 72 hours of sleeplessness looks like a zombie more than him. "Well, we never established why you returned to life after really, really dead. Like corpse-dead. We know you are not a vampire. Didn't come back by magic or science. So... maybe you're the first zombie of the outbreak, and a harbinger of post-apocalypse doomsday?"
"You need sleep, replacement," Jason shoots back.
"Buuuuuuut it's interesting, eh," Steph butts in. This is bad. The agent of chaos is taking an interest, and she will not let this go. "Jason as the first zombie. Patient Zero? Zombie Zero?"
"Don't take that caffeinated delulu shit seriously," Jason replies.
"But it's a thing we never ruled out?" Tim continues. "A zombie is not like a vampire or werewolf where we establish the curse or the virus name. The outbreak is different in causes each time. Virus, magic, fungus, yadayada. We should rule out that he's not a zombie to prevent a potential outbreak."
"Fungal zombies are not real. That's The Last of Us," Jason tries, tries to stop whatever shit that's going to happen.
"Todd does bite. We should confirm whether he is a zombie or not to prevent an accidental outbreak." Now Damian joins in, and he can't tell if the little shit is serious or not.
"Sounds fun," Cass nods. Cass!? You too?
Jason turns to Dick, the eldest. The supposed adult in the room.
Please, Dickie, his big brother. Stop the kids from this nonsense.
Dick, Nightwing, the born-to-be leader of the next generation, smiles and claps his hands.
"Sibling bonding project!" he says with glee in his voice.
Fuuuuuck.
"As I previously stated, each zombie outbreak, or each zombie zero's cause, changes every outbreak." The next day, Tim slaps the projector screen featuring a slideshow on the topic of Is Jason a zombie? "So we can't test by blood or magic or scanner. We must test by observing signs of zombie characteristics."
Tim clicks the slide. It says, "Zombie characteristics: the brainstorm."
Steph pulls the whiteboard out and holds the marker in her hand.
Dick, acting as a moderator, says, "Now everyone, let's brainstorm what zombies do."
"Jerky movement?" Duke says.
"Charge attack," Tim supplies.
"Invoke fear in cowards," Damian suggests.
"Brainssssssss," Cass hisses.
"Making weird noises. Like, bwarrrrh, bwrrrrr." Duke emits a very disturbing sound from his throat. Is he a voice meta?
"The Ring crawl?" Dick suggests.
"What is the Ring crawl?" Tim asks.
"I feel so old," Dick sighs. "Abnormal crawling posture."
"Insensitive to pain?" Tim continues.
"Tch, I'm insensitive to pain too," Damian crosses his arms.
"That's a different kind of insensitive, Dami. And I want to hug you from your childhood trauma." Dick tries to reach Damian. He flips away.
"Kill me now," Jason speaks.
Steph does not jot anything down. She is drawing zombified Jason on the whiteboard.
Jason is standing with Dick in the middle of the cave. "Why the fuck do I have to do this?"
Dick smiles. "Come on, it's just silly fun. Play tea parties with the kids sometimes." He looks at Tim, who is meticulously setting up a camera.
"I feel this is not as safe as a kiddie tea party." Jason looks at the red tape Steph lines on the cave floor.
"Let's say you're doing this as a payback for the time I covered your ass from Bruce last week for using excessive violence with the Penguin's gang."
"It doesn't cover enough for this headache."
Now Dick lifts his hand up. "And last month when I barred Bruce from intervening with your Outlaws stuff. And three months ago when you blew Robinson Park. And six months ago when I helped you bury—" he starts counting.
"Alright, alright! I gave you so much shit. Okay, I'll abide by your whims!" Jason throws his hands up.
"Big brother practice, Jay," Dick grins. "Be a doll and let the kid paint your nails."
"So!" Tim cuts in. "First let's test Jason's crawl. We'll evaluate how creepy it is with this 360-degree angle camera."
Jason looks at Dick, like, is this big bro duty, bro?
Dick shrugs.
What is his life? Made up with the crazy family, now ends up crawling on the floor.
"If you use the footage to blackmail me, I will break both of your ankles," Jason says, crouching down, then makes a crawl for three steps and stands up. "Satisfied?"
Steph taps her chin. "Ummm. It's pretty normal?"
Jason throws his hands up. "'Cause I'm not a fucking zombie!"
Tim is thinking. "What was your crawling position when you rose from the dead, Jason?"
"I don't fucking know! I was suffocating and filled with dirt and trauma! Probably dirt-covered!"
"Dirt-covered is a zombie characteristic," Dick comments.
"What does a zombie crawl look like, though?" Damian asks. "I've never seen any outbreak yet."
"Oh, Dami, it looks like this!" Dick perks up. Then the man beside Jason fucking contorts and crawls on the floor in what is supposed to be impossible for human joints. "They usually crawl and seem to use the shoulder or hip as the leading point," Dick drags his shoulder forward. "Like they can't control their small muscles anymore. But in some outbreaks that are more magical in nature, the movement will be more erratic, like they're being puppeted by a puppeteer with tremors, like this."
Now Dickhead is jerkily leading with his elbow first, then followed by his hand. How can a human hand twist like that? His head makes a weird motion like a seizure. Jason slowly steps away from Dick.
"Some even move like the only thing they can control is their spinal muscle groups! They crawl like a worm with dangling limbs!" Dick demonstrates with his body. Fucking hell, no human should be able to do that. Then he lifts his head up. "So does Jason's crawl look anything like this?"
All the other Bat-siblings now move until their backs hit the cave wall. Cass is far away, perched on the console.
"Bring the flamethrower," Tim says.
After Dickhead finally convinces the kids that he's not possessed or cursed, they move to the next test.
"Higher brain function," Tim starts. "Okay, Jason, remember these words: flower, chair, train."
Jason wants to hit his head on the table.
"Now subtract 7 from 100 as much as you can."
"93, 86, 79, 72, 65, 58, 51, 44, 37, 30, 23, 16, 9, 2, -5, -12... Kid, we know nobody here has an IQ score less than 120. We are puny humans fighting fucking metas."
"You may not be a puny human. You may be a zombie," Damian states. Jason groans.
"What is the similarity between a banana and an orange?" Tim continues.
"It's what I think your head looks like," Jason replies.
Tim jots down, "Hmm. Defect in some abstract thinking. Now let's test something else. Can you say 'Bwargh' and make it look as zombified as you can?"
"Bah." Jason makes a half-hearted sheep noise. Steph, Cass, and Duke dutifully echo it with more sheep-like bahs.
"No, Bwargh. Like your brain has leaked from your nostrils," Tim repeats.
"Boo," Jason says. Now there's a boo... boo... boo... in the background. Oh my god.
"Bwargh."
"Bleh." Bleh... bleh... bleh...
Tim writes down, "Defect in executive function. Okay, what are the three words again?"
"Should. Stay. Dead."
Jason takes one look at the raw brain.
"No. Just no."
Dick glances at him. "It's not even a human brain, Jay! It's just a pig brain."
"I feel like I'm gonna puke even just looking at it."
"Is the nausea from fighting hunger, like in some vampire novel?" Steph suggests.
"Or we can source a real human brain?" Tim says.
"NO!"
Steph and Cass are using a magnifier to inspect his skin.
"No sign of skin decomposition," Cass comments.
"Frankly, you have too good skin for a man with a vigilante lifestyle. How are your pores non-existent?" Steph grumbles. "What kind of skincare do you use?"
"Green and malicious serum found by a crazy old man. Used when catatonic. Submerged overnight until you have anger issues," Jason deadpans.
"The thing is, if Jason is Zombie Zero, he may not fully show his symptoms yet," Tim says, now swaying.
"Have you slept since you started this crazy idea?" Jason raises his non-concern. No, he's not concerned.
Tim slurps his umpteenth mug of coffee. "Anyway, maybe we should try to separate his higher brain function from his body control."
"Please don't cut my spinal cord," Jason says.
Tim lifts a piece of cloth up. "Nah, let's just blindfold and observe him walk. When people are not sensing their surroundings, they usually lose some of their fine motor control."
Steph tapes a red line again. Jason sighs. At least this one seems tame. He hopes it's over soon.
"This sounds fun. Can I join?" Dick steps in. "I don't think I'll lose to anyone."
"Me too," Cass steps in, with more cloth in her hands.
"If it's a competition, I must participate to prove my superiority." Damian grabs one piece of cloth from Cass's hand.
Duke sighs. "Peer pressure?"
"It's not a competition!" Jason tries to object to no avail.
"I'll be the referee!" Somehow Steph finds a way to get out of this and has already taped six red lines. She's ushering a sluggish Tim.
Jason sighs and walks to the supposed starting point, making sure he's turned in the exact direction. From this distance, it should be around 20... 25... no, 23 steps.
He secures the blindfold and proceeds to walk 23 steps quickly.
Then he unbinds himself and looks at his feet: there, at the end of the red tape, perfectly. (The Robin training is still there, he thinks, but will never, ever tell anyone that he's secretly proud of this.)
Jason turns around to see how the others are doing. Well... Duke and Damian have clashed into each other. Damian tries to push Duke down, while Duke starts pushing back.
"Stop thwarting me, you cheating meta!"
"I didn't cheat! And it's you that pushed me!"
"It's you! My spatial sense is impeccable. You, however, stumbled straight into me," Damian growls.
Cass and Dick, on the other hand, are now walking back to the other end. Cass is walking backward, while Dick is walking on his hands to the starting point. Both never touch outside the red line.
"Let's say twenty more times?" Dick says to Cass. "Whoever strays from the line first loses."
"Bring it on, brother."
It will probably take a while.
Tim is on the far end of the cave, swaying.
"Did I reach the finish line, Steph?" he mumbles while dragging himself sluggishly and zombie-like, then faceplants on the floor.
At that moment, the Batcave alarms sound the all-hands-on-deck alarm.
It's a massive gang war outbreak between Black Mask, Two-Face, the Penguin, and Falcone.
After another 48 hours of Gotham: Total War in real life, Red Robin gets caught by lucky remnants of the Penguin's gang. Mostly it's because he got less than 5 hours of sleep this week from all the crazy things he (made Jason) do.
Red Robin is tied up in an empty warehouse. All entrances are guarded heavily, waiting for a chance to take revenge on the Bat.
Goon A (real name Alexei) slaps Red Robin's face, but he's still not waking up. "Did you hit him too hard, Bryan?"
Goon B (or Bryan) shakes his head. "I didn't do nothing! The freak just closed his eyes and fell down."
Goon C (his real name is Chris) sits down to see Red Robin up close. "It almost looks like the guy is sleeping."
Goon A lifts his gun up. "Wait, you hear sounds from outside?"
Goon B walks to the wooden door of the room they are in. "What? I don't—"
A scream can be heard from behind the door. Gunshots. A scream again. Goon A thinks it's abnormal. Their gang is trained to not fucking scream when being attacked.
Crack.
The wooden door shakes. Something is breaking it.
Crack-crack-crack! The door breaks, and a large figure emerges from the hole. He—it uses its left hand that is holding a red helmet to repeatedly beat the door until it can clamber in, shoulder first.
"Grwarrrrgh." It emits a sound that is inhumane.
Goon B steps back. Goon C fires a gun at it, but it seems not to register the bullet that should be lodged in its chest.
It grins its teeth, bloody.
"What the fuck are you!" Goon A shouts.
The humanoid figure in the red domino mask opens its mouth again.
"Zombie Zero, motherfucker."
And proceeds to do a zombie charge run at the goons. Goons A, B, and C scream in cacophony.
Nightwing sits down beside Jason in the warehouse, looking at Steph, who is dripping intravenous caffeine (it’s a real existing drug.) into Red Robin.
"Where's your gun?" Dick asks.
"Bwargh." Jason coughs, then spits out blood that's still in his mouth. "Fucking shit. It's hard to talk with all this in my mouth. Bleh." He coughs again. "I depleted my ammo half a day ago, so I'm back to using melee."
Dick looks around at the carnage in the warehouse. "Somehow your melee is very... bitey?"
Jason slightly moves his right arm. "I may have fractured my right metacarpal. Punching with the left hand is a pain in the ass to aim at the right spot. Biting is easier."
Dick nods. "At least the bullets hit your bulletproof vest and knee guards."
Jason shrugs. "Yeah, makes my gait a little bit unbalanced."
Dick looks at his brother, "Anyway, thanks for reaching here the fastest."
Jason shrugs. "You said big brother practice."
Dick gives him a proud smile. Then he lifts a BatPad up. "Babs sent me a cool clip from Red Robin's mask-cam. Look."
He shows Jason a scene of feral Jason, face covered in blood and dirt, taking one, two staggering steps, then screaming, "Gwraaaaaaaagh!" before charge-attacking the goons. The mouth is wide open. Bloodlust. The zombie-ness in that clip is surreal.
"You can take a job as a new Resident Evil movie extra now," Dick laughs. "So, how does the big brother practice feel?"
Jason chomps on Dick's arm.
From my observations, it seems several of the members show signs of zombification in some ways, as seen in N, RH, and even me, RR, when lacking caffeine. It can be hypothesized that the true patient zero (or "Zombie Zero") may not be us.
We should test Batman.