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Fallon was angry.

And Fallon had been angry for a long time.

So far, she had only managed to feed herself in small nibbles and bites, aside from her feast of Lucas and Esen. Instead of being disgusted with herself, she was disappointed. She should be better than this; she should be more organized than this. How long had it been since she had seen a familiar face? Andeon was dead. Pierrette was a failed meal. What of Yvette? What of Serenade? What of the handful of other faces that once meant something to the girl under the green skin? It had been so long since Fallon had thought of anything other than her next meal. Fallon wandered like a nomad day after day, eventually escaping to the woods at night to devour rabbits and rats. It was like drinking toilet water, like eating rotten meat. Her zombie cravings aside, Fallon hated that the culinary artist in her was being subjected to these sub-par meals. It was an insult to the person who she was... if she was still a person at all.

At first, Fallon tried to set a trap for her meal, parading around as the same girl she used to be. It had nearly worked with Pierrette, but now she had a gutted eyeball to thank for it. Her undead status made the mark just a flesh wound, but it was ugly and inconvenient. She couldn't see well, and so Fallon had taken to closing her eyes and following her nose. What other choice did she have? She had to eat. There was no other option.

It was nighttime in Barren Pines, which meant that Fallon was even more off-kilter than she had been. Her steps stuttered, echoing in tremors across the floor. Reaching a bloody and gnarled hand forward, she threw open the doors to the courtyard, striding out into the falling moonlight. Tilting her chin upward, she watched the glow of the moon, the same moon she had stared up at in France, in her old dorm room. How had the world shifted so much since then? Fallon remembered learning about the rotation of the earth, of how it was the ground that moved not the clouds flickering above. Perhaps the rotation had spun so out of control that the order of the world had been upset?

The thought made Fallon want to vomit.

Order, order, order. It had been stolen from her. No matter how she tried to restore it, it would invariably be stripped again, ripped off like a band-aid. And Fallon was sore. Standing in the open air of the courtyard, Fallon let out a growl, fierce and animalistic. Her hands curled in to fists at her sides. Rage filled her like breath, each surge of feeling more powerful than the next.

Standing in the moonlight, Fallon felt like she was about to explode outward in a flurry of blood and guts and skin and hair -- a bomb of humanity, a circle of destruction. Fallon tiled her chin downward, letting a curtain of hair obscure her face. A dark grin spread wide across chapped lips. She said, "Come out, come out, wherever you are..." and waited. But for what or who? She didn't know.

Fallon just hoped for one thing: that it was injured and human.

Another zombie.

Fallon smelled Calintha before she saw her, and the scent was as unappealing as a Thanksgiving turkey that had been left out on the table until Christmas. She wrinkled her nose. Was it just Fallon, or were the zombies getting more smelly? It was the aromatic promise of food (read: human) that Fallon had expected, and to her own surprise, she didn't really care to smell another zombie in the courtyard. Fallon had eaten that day, and the hunger was quieter. It did not stir in the presence of another zombie, merely bubbled.

Eying the tree where Calintha had stood, Fallon deflated. "I see--" Her voice was coarse like tree bark. Fallon stopped, cleared her throat, and began again, "I see you there. Behind the tree." Raking a hand through her tousled hair, Fallon dropped her gaze to the ground. This wasn't like with Esen. Esen had been an explosion of rage. Fallon had no desire to eat other zombies. Her culinary palette was above it, even in death.

The girl who had moved behind the tree did so too quickly for Fallon to recognize her. The students of Barren Pines knew each other, at least by face, but a blur of blond hair and breasts was not enough. Fallon wasn't sure that she wanted to talk to anybody. She had no desire to eat whoever was the zombie behind the tree. So what was the point? Fallon felt hopeless, despondent, her life a slow dripping of water.

She wanted to see a familiar face. She wanted to lie to herself. She wanted to go back to the kitchen and cook a meal for everyone on her floor, a real meal made of real food. The teenager had been trying to adjust to this new existence, but it made her more violent, more ugly. Was that what she wanted? Standing in the field, she stared at the spot where the other zombie stood, hands hanging weakly at her sides.

Fallon had no idea what else to say.

Fallon did not move a muscle when the blond girl stepped in to view. Movement itself seemed so unnecessary, as if moving her rotted joints would only serve as another reminder of the monster that she had become. Or that she always had been? The thought made her shudder. "Calintha," she said after a moment. "I remember, from before." They lived on the same floor, and Fallon remembered female faces much better than males anyway.

Turning her head back to the moon, Fallon sighed. "Do you feel that?" She lifted her hand, stretched it out to her side, and bent her fingers slowly. "It is so quiet. I do not hear people like I used to hear them. I used to be able to smell humans everywhere. I can't smell anyone near here. Where is everyone going?" The hunger in Fallon bubbled at the thought of human flesh, but she clenched her eyes shut. When she opened them, she was looking back at Calintha. Did Calintha feel it to? How the whole world had changed? How nothing made sense? Did she feel herself disappearing too?

When Calintha stepped forward, Fallon did not move. She didn't feel threatened. The rage that surged in her was a constant flame fanned by the beast that the negaverse had awakened in her. She had been dealing with it this long; she could hold herself from attacking a zombie who wasn't provoking her. A human though? Maybe not. Fallon thought of her zombie form, of the people or power that brought this curse upon her -- faceless, nameless, unknown to her. They subjected her to this zombie state. If she had survived the fire, if she had the privilege of not desiring to eat her classmates, perhaps she would be better off. It is easy to be noble and good when your existence is not dependent on consuming the flesh of humans. Her eyes searched Cali's, looking for a shred of shared misery. None of the humans could understand what it was like to be like this, to have your humanity stripped away.

Fallon shifted weight, eyes glazing over in thought. Fire. Another fire to end her existence. Was that to be her fate? "In Judaism," she said, dragging a stained tongue across her lips, "there is no Hell like the Christian Hell. There is reward for doing good, for honesty. For those who do not make it there, there is Gehenna. It's like Purgatory. In Gehenna, a person is judged based on his or her life's deeds. It is where a person becomes fully aware of their own shortcomings and negative actions during their life. And there is the opportunity to be forgiven, and to rise to Heaven." Lifting a shaky hand, Fallon swallowed hard, pushing down the anger that echoed in her veins. Life was not fair, but the afterlife... would it show her mercy? This thing that she was... was it a demon? Fallon battled with her religion as a human, and that battle had only grown more desperate in her new state.

She sighed, and it helped the anger slide out of her. She sighed again. And then, to complete her compulsion, she sighed one more time. Her OCD was a remnant of her humanity. The thought of it made her laugh, giggles echoing across the empty field. The thing that plagued her in humanity was now her truest reminder of it. How funny, how terribly funny. Fallon could not contain her giggles, unexplained as they were to Cali, and continued to laugh, eyes turning upward into crescents.

The thought of Judaism comforted Fallon -- only a little. How could she feel comfort in a world that had chewed her up and spit her out? Her conviction at killing Lucas, despite having that ripped from her by Esen, was based entirely on a need to feed. In her old life, Fallon had a mean streak, a violent side, but she still thought of herself as a good person. She didn't actually kill people. She didn't actually act on the flashes of anger that shot up her spine like lightning to the degree that her mind did. But now... she kind of had. Whether Esen was a zombie or not, Fallon destroyed her, in gory detail. Lucas had been obliterated by Fallon's greedy stomach too. And what of the others? The friends she attacked? For a moment, Fallon thought of Pierrette's face. There was no guilt in her eyes, just sadness, sadness that she was forced to confront this dark side while so many others were not.

Her eyes strayed to Calintha. "For our sake, I hope it is," she said. There was not much faith in Fallon's words, but she tried to fake it. Could her God make her this monster? What lesson of faith was that supposed to teach her? If it had been a lesson at all, she had surely failed. She was unable to battle hunger. In a desperate attempt to not attack the ones that she cared about, Fallon sought out an enemy -- Lucas. And yet, it had done little to soothe her. In her desperation to be fed, she attacked a friend too. Fallon had embraced the monstrous entity looming inside of her because she genuinely believed that she had no other option.

When Calintha crumpled, Fallon narrowed her eyes. "Is this... it?" she asked, rubbing at her own chest. Her fingers brushed over something hard and metal. The Star of David. From the fire. It had seared into her flesh, leaving a bastardized melted stain of itself on her skin. Would it offer protection in the afterlife? Would there be an afterlife? If there was any pain in Fallon, she could not register it. Numbness had set in. If someone walked up and shot her right in the head, Fallon doubted she would feel it. She slumped to the ground, curling her legs to one side beside Calintha.

She made no move to comfort her, but with a free hand, she brushed some hair from the blond girl's face. "Perhaps we don't deserve to make it out," she said, only half-believing it. Something was going on in the gym. Fallon could hear it from where they sat. It was probably the survivors coming to kill them, to kill the classmates who were unlucky. How easy it would have been if she had been a survivor, how simple. Closing her eyes, Fallon tried to remember something happy.

She thought of food.
She thought of her marbles.
She thought of Andeon.

With magenta irises hidden beneath heavy lids, Fallon chose to be blind in a world that had stolen all that she loved from her, that had claimed the things that she held most dear for no reason at all.