Shattered pieces of youth

Prology

 Year 2023. January 1st

 From all corners of the world, people started noticing the dead rising from their graves. Those so-called "Zombies" were extremely aggressive and attacked humans, animals, or any living being in order to eat their flesh and infect them with the "Zombie Virus", which turned everyone into moving and angry piles of dead and bad-smelling meat. It was awful and gross, but deadly. Up to 80% of humankind died in a few months. Kids or elders, women or men, citizens or criminals, animals or humans, it didn't give a single piece of shit about who you are. The virus just killed everyone and made them into awful monsters seeking blood and violence.

 The infection went hella fast and was hurtful.

 Firstly you got a headache (which was the best you could get), an awful itch, and thirst. Usually it lasts for an hour, but in this period of time, half of the people have already died, scraping and tearing their own skin and flesh apart, down to the bones. Then you would start feeling terrible hunger, which never stopped; people ate their own flesh, and even if they started throwing up blood, their minds were damaged enough to eat their own vomit, continuing this awful cycle. Next is numbness and coldness, starting from the legs and slowly going to the head; that felt just as if body parts stopped gaining blood at all. For the last step, people would face voices and colorful hallucinations, leading them to smash their own heads to death. The whole process took from 2 to 7 hours of suffering.

 But humanity wasn't hopeless.

 People gained extraordinary powers that could help them beat monsters. It could be everything. They could get wings of all different kinds and sizes that could be made from flame, or metal shards. They could start creating giant wind blades or just simple water bubbles. Some of them got no skills and had nothing to do but be a bait for zombies, while the more lucky ones got all of the fame... But still, none of them was immortal...

 Humans got everything, in exchange for something they were trying to reach for centuries, from the start of the world...

 They also got a power measuring system:

F: Weak powers

E: A bit stronger power

D: powerful enough to kill a zombie

C: Powerful enough to kill up to 15 zombies all alone.

B: A hundred zombies all alone

A: Enough to kill a legion of zombies

S - Can just destroy a whole infected city.

S+: Not measurable

 For North America, it was such a mess at first, but a few months later there were giant bases with thousands of citizens in them, and then a year later there were already towns with all the supplies needed. They got connections with other bases that were now divided into three groups:

1. Cities: people only with power rank D+:

City - D1 - rank - D+

City: D; rank: D+

City - C - rank - C+

City - C1 - rank - C+

City - B - rank - B+

2. Towns -- people only with any kind of power:

Town - F1 - rank - F+

Town - F - rank - F+

Town: E1 - rank - E+

Town - E - rank - E+

Town - D - rank - D+

3. Bases—built around all towns and cities All people are welcomed, but only to protect those

...

 What a plot twist...

 After a year and a half, the zombies began to mutate and get new powers, sometimes merging into big, chunky monsters containing all kinds of alive-in-the-past creatures, or getting fire breathing, super jumping, and other abilities.

 And people got their second set of new useful sh*t too. Like magic stones that could be used to upgrade powers to new levels and explore new horizons... Not for people with no power, though, who were almost gone due to the cruelty of the world...

...

2025

 And this story will be about one fourteen-year-old boy who lives in an orphanage in a base around the city - C with no powers... Or so he thinks...
The only thing he truly wants by now is to either get enough money to help his caretaker - Puffy, because she is terribly ill, as if the apocalypse wasn't enough, or die, because he has no hope or will to live... Will he gain it in his adventure?