The Rapture Virus draft 1

Prologue

	The apocalypse is never something anyone sees coming, its supposed to be a thing that creeps up on you, a surprise, the end of the world isn't something we want to see coming. Sure there are people that prophecise it, there are people that predict it, but that doesn't make it any better when it suddenly arrives and most of us are surprised.

	Many religions have some sort of coming of the apocalypse, a sign that indicates that its time for everything to start going down hill. This time, it started with a string of unknown deaths, people who were just having conversations and then suddenly fell to the ground, dead. These were always seemingly so random, no one could pinpoint the exact nature of what was causing them to die so suddenly, you could just be talking to your friend and then suddenly they're dead. The deaths were quick according to all the reports they gave, the brains of the people just shut off. It took months before medical professionals began to notice a pattern of the deaths, the people were saying a specific thing with a specific cadence and tone that caused a mnemonic effect to cause them to just shut off and die. They ended up calling the virus they found that implanted it "The Rapture Virus", since the phrases causing them to die were connected to religion, and it was a mass number of deaths every month, it resembled the rapture of christian mythos.

	By the end of a year there were no infected people left, all people that would of said one of the phrases already did, those that were religious but wouldn't say it were driven to religious fanaticism by the virus, causing them to be unable to control themselves and eventually they would say the phrase, leaving the world to only those that weren't religious, which was strange at first. Then we found out why it worked the way it did. Parallel to our reality are 10 other realities, one of which was where the ideas of angels came from, as that's what inhabited that reality, angelic beings. The other nine were hells, controlled by demons, which is where many originally thought The Rapture Virus came from, until the day the dead raised.

	A month after all the people who would of died from the virus did, and the angels and demons proceeded to take places within our world, those that died from the virus began to raise from their graves, their bodies well preserved by the virus itself, and they began to attack everyone that remained and the demons who had begun to help the survivors rebuild. The angels were left alone as they watched from the ivory towers they had constructed, the dead guarding and patrolling near their towers, if not going out to kill. The legions of the undead, created by the angels as an army of mortals to wage a war against those that remained and the demons that came to assist.

	A treaty was brokered among the demons and angels, to prevent sheer destruction of the world where the demons would have to cease helping the mortals left in the way they had been, and in exchange the angels wouldn't do anything themselves, but rather leave just their undead army to do the work. In order to assist the mortals the demons took the deal, but took a loophole out of it and seven of the nine hells took a chance to make a champion of their realm, a mortal chosen to be linked to their respective hell and gain the powers of it. They would not become a demon, but rather a mortal with demonic power to remain on Earth to wage war against the undead and protect the remaining mortals. The angels in retaliation made their own champion, a being of equal power to the champions of hell, and sent him to occupy the champions.

	So war began. Between the heaven of angels, and the hells of demons, with mankind in the middle, struggling to survive, in the wake of a virus that caused loved ones to die and become nothing more then the undying masses that make the angelic army.

Chapter 1

    Its been five years since the demons left us and the war started in earnest life has been mostly the same as before the world went down hill, every now and then you go out to get some groceries, you go to your daily job, and just try to survive the day, only now there's the on going war between the demons and mortals and the undead. So one minute you might be walking along your street, carrying your groceries you probably helped grow and make, and then a horde of the undead wanders onto your street and gunfire erupts. Maybe the day goes so poorly that you drop your groceries and run to hide, cowering behind some random vehicle that was laying around or a shrub. Maybe you were bouncing between all of the above trying not to be shot, while trying to ignore the sounds of your neighbors and friends being torn limb by limb by the masses of the undead.

    Now that might sound rather specific and someone might suggest those are the exact events that occurred to me on the day everything decided to go even farther down the drain and I was made to join the war in a much more active role, but those people are obviously insane, I would never hide behind a shrub during a firefight. I'd be hiding under the vehicle. That's just an obvious and much more safer choice. Irrelevant to the nature of what someone might of or might not of done, the part that mattered was what happened as a result of the horde attacking the street.

    People were dying, the screams as each person fighting back getting mauled dying down with the gunshots, and in time all was silent, you could almost hear the sounds of the leaves falling to the ground. The song of the world, the wind, the life that once filled the air of this street, the people enjoying their life as much as they could after the fall of mankind. Silenced. It felt like time had stopped for a moment, the beating of my heart sounding like a drum within my ears, louder then the gunshots that were silenced mere moments before. Then, the gunfire started again, except this time different. Before it was shots in panic, fear could be heard in the shots that filled the air, constant and on going, you could basically hear the inaccuracy in every gunshot. This , the gunshots were precise, methodical, one followed by a brief pause then another. A person aiming and methodically taking out each and every undead that was in the way of whatever goal they were after.

    I slipped from my hiding place, to view and see what was occurring, these shots sounding less errant and less destructive to my own being, less chance of a stray shot hitting me. What I viewed was not something I expected to ever see within my lifetime during this apocalyptic situation. One of the champions of hell, holding some machine gun in hand, moving along the street, sending round after round into the skulls of the undead, never aiming for very long in one place, sometimes shooting the ones on the left, some to the right, his aim switching behind him to ones that wandered from around corners mere moments after they turned it.

    The sight was impressive, the gun control being impressive in its own right, the most impressive part to me was the lack of reaction on his face, a cold expression resting on his face as he shot yet another undead in the head, more and more starting to move and get closer to him, the pause between each shot getting smaller as he started to put bullet after bullet into the heads of them as they approached, until one reached to grab his shoulder. How I managed to process the next events is still beyond my ability to comprehend but the moment the hand of the zombie touched him, he dropped the rifle from his shoulder and pushed it back, slamming the butt of the rifle against the creature to make it stumble backwards a little. The champion threw the rifle at another one as he pulled a pistol out, and begun to shoot them, with the same methodical and mechanical headshots that he had done with his rifle mere moments before.

    A blade slide from somewhere, a blur of metal and man began, zombies dropping by twos, by threes, each body falling bursting into the bright blue flames of the angels recalling the form of the zombie. To remake it and bring it back. In a cycle of never dying. The flames of each form distracting me from the rest of the fight, the blue flames flicker bringing my attention to them. Blue flames. Sky blue at the base into a deep oceanic blue. A flame like that at one time would of symbolized joy, happiness, some form of heavenly splendor and purity. Now? It was putrid, being more decrepit then the bodies it consumed. A symbol of the creatures that brought ruin upon our world, and for what reason? Something we never learned. A history lost to only those who once resided in the ivory towers, now abandoned.

    A click and swishing sound brought me from my thoughts of times long past, of the blue flames and what they represented. I brought my attention upward, down the barrel of the gun that was now pointed at me, the man that had just cleared out the town of the beasts that had ravaged it standing above me, pointing his gun right at my face, that cold, calculating face staring at me with the same look that he held when exterminating the foul beasts. I realized who this was now, the coldness of his face, the combat prowess, the look of calm anger. It was the demon champion of Wrath, commonly just called Wrath by everyone. I gave a small little smile, nervously chuckling and shifting my eyes around the area to see if there might of been some reason he was aiming at me, but none would come, and so the fear of my life began to increase.

    Wrath pushed the barrel to my forehead, forcing my head back to make me look farther up at the sky, no resistance from myself as I didn't want to cause him any more anger, he was Wrath after all. The champion pulled his gun from my head and made a motion for me to follow, and with little other choice I did, and for the first time since I left my hiding space, I saw the horror of the land before me. The neighbors, the people I had grown to know after the past five years since I moved into this neighborhood, laying in the streets, laying over the railing of porches, every person that had mere moments prior smiling and enjoying life, many of them were now dead, soaking within pools of their own blood, the means of their defense sitting nearby. Some were intact. Some were torn to unrecognizable standards. And I didn't dare think of those that were within each of the houses that I couldn't see. Those that didn't have a chance to defend themselves. I slowly stared at the form of the man that had just saved me, and focused on him and him alone, not wanting to look any further at those that were around us, no longer living while I did, I was left with one question.

Why.