OUR PROTAGONIST; ALTRYN

She was a frail, gaunt woman whose skin was described as blue-ish, alike her clothing. Her wrinkled face revealed her to be around middle age, 48 years old to be exact. When any townsperson layed eyes on her, they’d guess she was a widow or an old schoolteacher, as she lived atop Ash Mountain.

	Her name is Altryn, and it’s been months since she’d left her home. Her mother died on March 3rd, 1898 from a sudden heart attack while talking to Altryn about the beautiful treasures hidden in the town. Altryn would do anything to bring her back, and that was the beginning of her studying the forgotten practice of necromancy (though she preferred to call it revival.)

	It’s been two months now, the night is May 6th, 1898 and Altryn begins to descend the mountain under her home. Getting caught is a risk, but it is unlikely for anybody else to be awake at 4:00 a.m.

	Conveniently, there is a cemetary next to Ash Mountain. She sees the gravestone for her mother, with the rose she put the months ago still there. The rose was already withered, but she did not expect her mother to be the same way. She had never peeked inside of a gravestone, so she expected a completely intact body, but we all know this isn’t the case.

	Our protagonist casts the spell to bring back her deceased mother, and the ground next to the grave begins shaking. Out comes a zombie with unrecognizable features.

	“Eek!” shrieks the necromancer as she feels ice cold hands surround her. The ground shakes once more, as if it was an earthquake. The air turns dusty as more hellish zombies rise up from beneath.

	“Please go back to your graves,” the protagonist calls, but it is futile. The creatures knock her unconscious and separate into three groups. There is about 50 zombies, and each group has a little more than 15. With their fancy clothing, the zombies could pass as humans were it not for their gray skin and missing limbs.

	You’d expect the protagonist to meet her end by now, but the zombies just abandon her unconscious body on the floor. One group’s target seems to be the local church, another group targets the forest behind Ash Mountain and another group targets Ashbury Town. As the cemetery belonged to the local church, it was only a few meters right. The pitch black sky indicates that nobody is awake, but the zombies remain coordinated to search for fresh meat inside.

	The zombies smashed the door and welcomed themselves in, ravaging everything. Ripping down every decoration that the people spent to long working on, the zombies leave no corner untouched while searching for people. When they finished wrecking havoc, the entire place looked like a tornado swept through it. The moment they finished, they all walked out and headed towards the city as if they could read each other’s minds.

	The closest home is three hectometers away and the zombies run to it. However, their bodies do not like the wind as pieces of flesh and skin fall off while running. One’s head fell off and yet they continued. They’ve reached a small house made of concrete with a small front yard. The house is elegant, and with a doorbell made of gold, it looks like it belongs to somebody rich. This won’t be for very long though, as the zombies knock down the brown door and are greeted by a screaming man.

	“Who is in my house?” he shouts, only getting back silence for an answer. The house only has one room, though it’s a very large room. He is the only one residing there, but the zombies are excited for their first meal. They spit poison at him and instantly end his life.

	The zombies bite his flesh and consume his body like bloodthirsty carnivores. They even help the ones without arms to eat the flesh. They don’t take down decorations, but instead move onto the next house and repeat the process many times. Children, adults, entire families were killed just for the creatures to have a food source, and even after they’d fed themselves, they’d keep killing people just for fun.

	By the end of the night, 3,000 people had been killed. Nobody knew why so many people had vanished overnight, as anyone who saw the zombies were killed as well. Only Altryn knew, and she’s trying to get the people of Ashbury (the town) to believe her.

	“A group of undead corpses killed people with poison spit and then ate them!” Altryn tried to explain, but she could not provide evidence as she did not want to reveal that she was the one that caused the corpses to come back alive again. Everyone simply laughed and deduced there was a serial killer on the loose.

	Altryn was then called the woman with many tall tales, but she continued telling people about the zombies. Even the town mayor believed there was a serial killer who could murde r3,000 people in one night. He called everyone in town to a speech, and gave them pitchforks to murder the serial killer if they ever came by.

	“Remember citizens, no human would want to mess with over 20,000 people with pitchforks,” said the mayor as he ended the speech. Everyone clapped and stayed vigilant of anyone who looked suspicious. The zombies’ plan was to wait until everyone went to sleep, but it was 1:00am and the citizens still remained awake. The zombies could not wait any longer, for they would starve if they did so. They’d also been hiding beneath trees all day, being completely bored. The undead made their appearance to a group of seven distracted adults, and killed one with poison spit.

	They screamed for help to which the townspeople ran over to see the problem. The group of seven became a group of fifty-one people, about the same size of the group of undead.

	“Looks like that one woman was right,” said one of them before the battle started. The townspeople began throwing their pitchforks at the undead, but only 5 were hit. The undead took the pitchforks and began using it against the townspeople by impaling them with it. Three got impaled in the neck, letting out very loud screaming as they died. More people attempted to fight, but some accidentally stabbed themselves instead of the undead. The undead started biting the humans who died in battle, which began to turn them into zombies. Now that the humans were outnumbered, it was becoming clear that this was a losing battle.

	“Everybody run!!!” screamed a woman whose husband had been turned into a zombie, and the townspeople listened, pushing each other in an attempt to escape. The undead continued to kill anyone who dared to oppose them. Thousands of people evacuated the town of Ashbury, thousands attempted to hide. Those who chose to hide had made a bad decision as most were discovered by the undead. It was not May 8th, 1898 and the mayor attempted to have another speech.

	“Citizens, these misunderstood creatures only attack because we treat them as horrible monsters,” began the mayor. Most people believed the idea of making peace with the undead was ridiculous but they hoped it would work. The speech was interrupted by a group of 300 zombies, but this gave the mayor a chance to show that the zombies aren’t evil.

	The mayor walked up to a zombie and said to it with a smile,”I welcome you to our town.” The crowd of ~17,000 people waited to see the zombie’s reaction. It almost looked offended and spit poison at the mayor, instantly killed him. The crowd pushed each other, each one trying to escape. Those who got left behind were killed by the zombies. Without a mayor, the town fell into chaos. For the next month, everyone took everything they could and evacuated to the nearest towns. It’s now June 14th and Altryn is the only survivor. She had been making a plan to stop the zombies but it was too late. She felt a tremendous amount of guilt for starting all of this mayhem. She ran off to the forest behind her house and hung herself on a tree. She left an ominous note saying, “The dead do not like to be disturbed.”

	119 years later, all of the zombies decayed due to having no food source. And yet nobody ever found the note that Altryn had left once ago.