Original by 山中一夜风交雨 on Lofter
DS!Nightmare in this story's setting by Blank_T137
Other characters in this version is by 山中一夜风交雨
(My Doomsday AU is inspired by 山中一夜风交雨's 末日的惩罚)
This short story is written by 山中一夜风交雨
Translation by Blank_T137.
DS!Nightmare was in a complex mood, unable to speak. Countless thoughts mixed together, and finally turned into a heavy sigh, while pulling the mastiff collar in his hand.
One of his eye sockets was bloody and empty. As early as the first day of the zombie outbreak, this eyeball was eaten by a zombie cellmate. Fortunately, the infection did not succeed by coincidence, but DS!Nightmare's half-zombie and half-human physique also made this wound never heal.
Wandering makes people waste time, especially as an alien, but in terms of quantity, it is difficult to say who is the alien between zombies and living people. DS!Nightmare is very self-aware. He cannot cooperate with human survivors because he is not a human now; however, those confused walking dead are not the same kind. Not only does DS!Nightmare look down on them, but they also suddenly realize from time to time that DS!Nightmare is not a companion, and then chase him and bite him all the way.
Most of the time, the zombies treat DS!Nightmare's attitude is amiable and he accepts him hanging around; but sometimes he will find out that he is not a pure breed, and he will be furious and rush to bite him.
The result is that the zombies chasing DS!Nightmare are comparable to the police sent by JR in the past. Considering that most of JR's people did not survive the outbreak of the doomsday, the zombies chasing him now may be the same group of police who arrested him.
Thinking of this, DS!Nightmare shook his head helplessly again. As a political prodigal, he has a good brother with real power.
DS!Dream hates DS!Nightmare's various behaviors and basically treats him like a living stain. DS!Nightmare never cleans his own ass. When he is happy, he goes to the black market bar all night and indulges himself, and orders children's bones to make leather bags; when he is unhappy, he exposes some illegal secret islands into the public eye and laughs at those dignitaries who are in a mess.
But all these are gone with the wind with the arrival of the doomsday.
DS!Nightmare tore a piece of raw meat and chewed it slowly with blood. The virus had affected his diet at the physiological level. If he didn't eat flesh and blood for a long time, he would gradually go crazy, and it would get worse and worse until he could no longer maintain his normal personality and became unreasonable.
Now it was even more difficult for him to join his brothers. The last example of a similar situation was a zombie (or half of a zombie...) that relied on eating humans to maintain its intelligence, Ink. After being captured, he was forced to work and was squeezed to the bone. Moreover, his attitude was clear that he would be killed after he was used up, and if he was not allowed to be used, he would be killed now. DS!Dream was completely cruel and merciless to non-human aliens that feed on humans, and he showed no mercy.
In a better situation, DS!Ink was still a human being in essence, but he was carrying the virus but it had not yet occurred, so he retained basic human rights, but he was also strictly guarded by DS!Dream.
DS!Nightmare didn't have good expectations for his brothers' attitude, so he escaped from the prison as soon as he was infected, leaving only the bloody headband and blood-stained pillow for DS!Dream to pay tribute to.
DS!Dream didn't know until his death that his brother was still alive in a sense. He always thought that DS!Nightmare died on the first day of the zombie outbreak, and the residue was eaten up, leaving only the headband that he had been wearing since childhood.
When the afterglow of the Justice Dynasty was completely destroyed and all efforts to end the doomsday came to nothing, DS!Dream calmly chose to shoot himself.
Perhaps in his eyes at that time, death was just going home, sleeping in history with the destroyed prosperity.
Passing through the zombies and human remains that died in the crossfire, prying open the dusty office, DS!Nightmare saw DS!Dream sleeping at his desk, just like the days when he worked overtime until late at night, but what was pressed under him was not documents, but his suicide note. A pistol fell next to him, and a bullet passed through his eye socket, and the blood and a little brain matter that flowed out had already solidified.
The rumors heard from others were truly confirmed, DS!Nightmare's irritable mind, which was irritated by lack of blood, stopped working for a moment, and part of his motivation for life was permanently taken away, dissipating along with the gunshot that he did not hear.
"I told you, the savior is not always successful."
DS!Nightmare sat next to his brother's body, and another swivel chair was also splashed with some blood, but he did not mean to be disgusted by the dirt. This office has been disturbed by many people, rummaging around, kicking over obstacles, and the broken furnishings were in a mess, but no one touched the remains of the great leader.
Today, the only person who did not regard DS!Dream as a god walked into the office, even though half of him is no longer human.
DS!Dream's gun was very clean, and he aimed at the vital part of the brain, not wanting his remains to become part of the creature he once hated the most, the disaster that destroyed him and everything he loved. So, he enjoyed the rare quietness in the land where the living dead were rampant.
"My dear...little brother," DS!Nightmare sighed, "You haven't done enough. Even if the living still respect you, the dead will not let you go."
Along the way, he has seen countless corpses in the battlefield ruins resurrected, wandering aimlessly, gnawing every comrade who has not turned into the same kind. The chance that DS!Dream's remains can rot and turn into bones peacefully is too small, and he will never get a decent funeral.
DS!Nightmare pulled out the butcher knife in his boot.
"Instead of being eaten by maggots, I'd rather give you peace." He said.
The obedient boy was exhausted from the experience of the world, so the rebellious brother took him home, although it was in the form of sky burial, and DS!Nightmare was the vulture.
After wandering in the wasteland for many years, DS!Nightmare's way of thinking has long been out of the scope of humans. He was not like an ordinary person from the beginning, and now he is happy to accept his changes. He did not plunder DS!Dream's flesh out of hunger or greed, just don't want his brother to be taken to nourish other wild dogs or maggots and flies.
Cut open the stiff muscles, and the soft internal organs slipped out. Picking up a section of intestine from DS!Dream's abdominal cavity, DS!Nightmare held it to his mouth and was about to start swallowing, when he suddenly looked into the eyes of a golden pupil.
The dead DS!Dream sat up and stared at him dully.
...
The vitality of zombies is ridiculous.
DS!Dream is indeed dead, died of standard brain damage, but the resurrection does not require a complete brain. In theory, the brain stem is enough, even if most of the head is gone, only the chin and the back of the head can survive.
Compared with the almost headless corpse, DS!Dream's death is indeed not outrageous enough, so he did not get his wish to lie down quietly.
However, DS!Nightmare could not bring himself to kill DS!Dream again.
When he just discovered this, DS!Nightmare was very worried, wondering if he had made a big mistake. He was worried that DS!Dream could not accept the current situation. If he became an intelligent zombie like Ink, he would collapse emotionally the moment he regained his sanity, because he would become the thing he hated the most, a monster that maintained his sanity by cannibalism, hunting living people when crazy, and his mouth was full of blood when sober. Even if he became a half-corpse like DS!Nightmare, he would still feel very uncomfortable. In addition to the psychological pressure brought by eating raw meat and drinking blood, the despair of career failure and the hesitation of becoming an alien would all return from death with his thoughts and become eternal pain. However, he found that DS!Dream was just in the right situation. "Ah~" After tearing off his own piece, DS!Nightmare fed DS!Dream another piece. Since he was over five years old, DS!Dream never accepted food from his brother. The bullet permanently destroyed the possibility of DS!Dream regaining consciousness, and he would never feel pain again. Emotions such as entanglement and nausea only exist in living people. They don't matter to the dead without minds. He can't feel them. Everything is over. It's peaceful and quiet as he wants.
But DS!Dream's humanity is not completely destroyed. Although he is basically an ordinary zombie, sometimes he will be a little rational for no reason. He hesitates when he should bite DS!Nightmare and looks at him without taking any action. For example, when he is given canned food, he can still remember to open the package and eat it with a spoon like a human. Once DS!Nightmare made barbecue, DS!Dream took the barbecued skewers very naturally and ate the meat slices on them elegantly instead of stabbing the meat and skewers into his stomach.
The most impressive thing for DS!Nightmare, and the only human nature that DS!Dream showed after becoming a zombie that was not related to food, was that one day he accidentally put the pistol that DS!Dream used to commit suicide next to DS!Dream.
DS!Dream stared at the gun for a long time, suddenly picked it up, skillfully unloaded and prepared it, reset the trigger, then put the gun down and shot at DS!Nightmare saluted.
The military salute of the Justice Reigns.
His remaining brain tissue only had very basic functions, but he still remembered to salute.
No matter how DS!Nightmare tried to find joy in misery and find the bright spots in DS!Dream, zombies were still zombies after all, and he was a zombie.
DS!Dream's sensitivity to half-zombies was sometimes effective and sometimes not, and he wanted to taste his brother at every turn, often chasing DS!Nightmare up and down, and when he led the charge, he complemented the zombies transformed by former JR employees on the street;
Zombies' desire for living people is an uncontrollable nature. Maybe the zombie DS!Dream doesn't care, but DS!Nightmare knows that DS!Dream would never allow this to happen when he was alive. Whenever a survivor passed by, DS!Nightmare had to use his 165-centimeter height to hold his 188-centimeter younger brother;
Don't let DS!Dream eat human meat, this is DS!Nightmare set a bottom line for himself, so he had to find an extra portion of food for one person, and he had to find a way to prevent DS!Dream from refusing to eat. Not every meal was a good time, and DS!Dream suddenly remembered what to eat;
If he was not tied up and handcuffed tightly when sleeping, DS!Nightmare would often be bitten by DS!Dream with a scream...
"Don't look at me with such innocent eyes."
DS! Nightmare pulled the dog collar on DS!Dream's neck again.
Thanks to his previous experience of hand-making zombie pet toys on the black market, DS!Nightmare was not completely unfamiliar with raising DS!Dream.
The insulting nature of dog collars and muzzles was too strong. If it wasn't necessary, DS!Nightmare didn't want to use this method on DS!Dream. However, this is indeed the best way to deal with zombies, combining protection and restraint.
In this way, even if DS!Dream goes crazy, at most he will press him down and rub his muzzle wildly. The leather padding outside the muzzle is soft and harmless. If you let him go crazy for a while, he will lose interest and let go. The collar leash is connected to the souvenir bracelet transformed from handcuffs, so there is no fear of running away. Even if DS!Dream wants to run, DS!Nightmare will be dragged wherever he goes - zombies do not have the intelligence to untie the collar by themselves.
DS!Dream's golden eyes stared at him, as if in silent protest, but DS!Nightmare knew that this was just an illusion brought by appearance, and he was still a walking corpse.
"Okay, let's go, we're going to the next city."
Putting away the melancholy from the past, the brief bitterness and softness were replaced by a heart of stone again. DS!Nightmare pulled the collar forcefully for the last time. DS!Dream reluctantly stood up his tall body and followed his much shorter brother step by step.
The setting sun in the distance was like blood. The bombed blackened buildings exposed twisted and broken railings and steel bars. The buildings were more or less incomplete, and the burnt and abandoned vehicles accumulated thick dust. The hustle and bustle of mankind and the attempts to save themselves had stopped. Moss and vines crawled in the cracks, making a natural annotation for the end of civilization.
Half a zombie led a zombie and walked towards the desolate street in the distance.