Undead Danger

Chapter I: The Beginning

Bienvenidos everyone OFFICIALLY to the first chapter of UDa!!! I've been attempting to start this chapter for the past 48 hours so please don't hold back on feedback and let me know what everyone thinks so that the next part is  up to standard for the reader. Here's a backstory, and it does get a little bit.... bloody.

Word count: 1000 (not including A/N or TW)

TW: Cannibalism??, Zombies, and Death

Beijing, China. February 14, 2024. 2:37 PM.

Valentine's Day had struck the bustling city of Beijing, China. Vendors flocked to city streets, calling and haggling passing civilians. Couples, sickly in love, walked by, adoringly looking into each others' eyes. Mothers and Fathers, Aunts and Uncles, Sisters, Brothers, Daughters, Sons, and Cousins together gathered in the streets. Beijing was known for its festivals of love, and 2024 was no exception. What would stop them from celebrating a city full of romance?

One certain child, a little girl by the name Xiang, chased her school friend down the streets of the popular parties, dodging chastising adults and policemen reaching out, saying, "tíng!" (stop!). However, she continued to chase the boy, and they began running further away to the outskirts of Beijing, far away from the festival and the safety of adults. She shouted after Wěi Fú, begging him to stop or even just slow down. She only wanted her doll back, the doll her father worked long hours in a software company programming computers to purchase.

They entered a wooded scenery, soft feet thudding against the pine straw-clad ground with determination to lose the other. They ran for what seemed like hours (in actuality it was around 10 minutes), until the boy, Wěi Fú, stopped suddenly, face gone pale. He turned to Xiang, and pointed to a clearing about 100 yards away, where they saw a small native Chinese village in ruins. 

A giant crater up ahead, seemingly the cause of an explosion, had caused the land around it to have black vein-like lines running through the ground. Both Xiang and Wěi Fú exchanged a glance, naive 6-year-old curiosity taking over any rational senses to go back. When they arrived at the edge of the crater, both of them gasped, as there was a mound of what seemed to be moving skeletons and flesh jumbled at the bottom. 

Xiang immediately went back to the trees nearby and threw up, retching violently as Wěi Fú watched in sick fascination. However, he began to back away when the pile morphed into human-like entities, but something sinister. Skeletons covered in rotting, grey flesh, worn straw hats lit aflame, and dismembered arms and legs began to take form.

He once walked in on his parents watching a rather violent movie that had these same creatures in it. They had called them jiāngshī, or zombies, and insisted they weren't real. But here they were. He screamed when they began moving towards him and Xiang. Fast. crawling and groaning up the steep slope of the crater, practically begging for his youthful flesh. He backed away more, slowly at first, and then hurled the doll at a dizzy Xiang and sprinted away, forgetting about her entirely. He didn't care anymore, he wanted to go home. 

Xiang stumbled to her feet and silently cheered  when she picked up her doll. She opened her mouth, triumphant smile on her face to brag to Wěi Fú about giving into her so easily, when instead she screamed at the now moving pile of bones and gray flesh. She also turned, but unlike Wěi Fú, they grabbed her shoulders and pinned her to the ground, feasting, ripping into her intestines like a form of spaghetti. She was only 6.

Meanwhile, Wěi Fú was still screaming, sprinting back to the bustling city of Beijing, and quickly found his parents 10 minutes later. What they must've thought, seeing their 7 year old boy come sobbing, covered in scratches and dirt, barefoot, with blood smeared on his leg, no one will know. 

At first, when he told them what he saw, they didn't believe him. But when he brought up the jiāngshī, they paled. His father packed a bag and grabbed the family shotgun. They quickly got in the car, forgetting the rest of the city, and drove away (later to be confronted by the jiāngshī and brutally consumed on the highway anyways). 

What if they had told someone? What if they could've prevented this all by telling the authorities? Maybe they wouldn't have believed them, but what if they did? Patient zero to the infection, Xiang, was never seen again. 

Approximately 2 hours later, the jiāngshī made it to Beijing. It was absolute carnage. People being torn apart, actual brains being torn from skulls, and arms being dismembered. Children screaming for their parents, and Parents who were trying to protect their children, it was a nightmare, the biggest mass murder the world had probably seen since WWII.

Two days later, it had spread past Beijing and China to all of Eastern Asia. The jiāngshī moved fast, and the infection was spread through blood as well. It was deadly. People saw them coming and assumed they were slow like the movies, which only proved to be an urban myth.

They crawled, sprinted, or dragged themselves through human lines; militaries fell, and governments collapsed. By this point, everyone across the world had heard of the disease, and was prepared to take action. 

Three days later, all of Europe had fallen, sending the Americas and Africa into panic. Australia was already fighting the battle, and was managing to hold its own, however, as much as they tried, they knew they wouldn't last. Airports had been shut down, which meant while they couldn't get in, no one could get out. 

Those three days passed and left behind terror and anticipation. The world had died in 3 days and was continuing more into ruin hour by hour, and as each second ticked by, countries' militaries clutched their guns tighter, families huddled together closer, and the government held their breath as they watched their finest forces fall to the decaying teeth of the jiāngshī, as the Chinese called them. 

But to the rest of the world, they were the undead. Zombies. Zombis. Al-kasali. Зомбі. Walkers. Night-crawlers or -terrors. Skins. Roofers. Things. 

But universally, it was the same. They were out for human blood and nothing would stop them. 

Will anyone survive?

Alright, and that will be the first chapter of UDa!! I hope everyone enjoyed. Again, please feel free to drop some feedback if something is bothering you, this is our backstory on how the disease came into play. There's more to come into the next chapter, where everyone will be meeting Davis... Thank you for reading and I'll see everyone in Chapter II...

~ Sebby

Word count: 1000 (not including A/N or TW)