Aron emerged from the kitchen, where he'd been briefly looking for more snacks. Doc had asked he and Austyn to let everyone know what they'd done to the Mansion while the hunting party was away.

"We've fortified the first floor by blocking the entrance with a grand piano," he said, "as well as boarded up the windows. It's imperative, obviously, to leave the piano where it's at and to do routine checks to make sure everything is secure. If I've forgotten to mention anything, I'm sure Austyn can jog my memory." He had to chuckle at this, considering he'd lost all memories of his previous life. "It goes without saying that keeping the zombies out is our first priority. Ultimately, as long as this first floor stays secure, we should be fine."

"Thanks," Annie said, taking the gun from Neal. She followed Doc toward the staircase, nervous about being on ritual bodyguard duty, but feeling more confident with gun in her possession. She didn't normally bring lethal weapons with her on jobs, she wasn't a killer and theft plus murder gets a lot more police attention, but she knew how to use a gun. At least on a firing range anyway.

Doc and Annie walked down the basement staircase, with their arms full of flowering plants. Doc nearly dropped hers when she saw the zombie. "We'll have a lot of work to do before we enter him in the beauty pageant." She tried to laugh, but her nerves betrayed her. No one had told her how frighteningly hideous zombies were.

The zombie gave them a venomous look. "Reh hee KOH!" He yelled through his make-shift gag, every part of him straining against his fetters.

"Sorry, that's not going to happen any time soon." Doc recovered herself and began to place the plants in position around him. She found a rope that she had seen earlier, and threw it around an overhead pipe, so that she could hang flowers more or less over the creature's head.

"It goes without saying that keeping the zombies out is our first priority. Ultimately, as long as this first floor stays secure, we should be fine."

"Unless they learn to climb like monkeys or the like." Neal said dryly before taking another swig of drink. "What about possible ways of fighting them off? Any work on that front?"

"I seem to recall that blasting their brains out worked rather well," Delia commented dryly. "I'm sure that other things like decapitation would also prove effective."

"Well, that's a given." Neal said with a slight smile. "Be prepared to just go for the brain if decapitations or any other method doesn't work. I've seen undead that are practically unstoppable with any other method but a head shot before..." he added mostly for the benefit of Aron and Austyn.

Official Gamemaster Business

This roll is to determine the outcome of the Ritual of Life. Given the strengths and weaknesses of the character and the options available in this story, your success will be determined by a 6-sided die. You must roll a 1, 2, or 3 to successfully re-humanize the zombie. If you roll a 4, you will fail to heal the zombie and they will die. If you roll a 5 or 6, you will not only fail to heal the zombie but also empower it. The roll will be done for you, and the characters involved will be PM'd with the result of the roll and instructed how to proceed. If you would like to modify this roll, pass on rolling, or agree to the roll, please PM a gamemaster or post in the Cavern Tavern in the next 24 hours.

"Just so you know what you're getting into, you might want to bring some light reading material or a hand-held device. Being a spectator at a Ritual of Life can be really dull."

Bryan felt his pocket to make sure his phone was still there - he could read a few pages of his current novel if things got too boring - but he suspected that having a live (?) zombie so close at hand would keep things from being too dull. Still, he had little to do but follow the group to the conservatory, and he remained curious as to what the Ritual would be like.

Doc stood facing the zombie with her hands stretched in front of her, and her fingers entwined. She closed her eyes and stood there in that position for over 10 minutes. She wasn't used to performing the ritual on an unwilling participant. It was hard to let go of distractions and trust that Annie would save her if anything went wrong.

When she finally immersed herself in the ritual, what she saw amazed her. Colonies of bacteria were formed along the walls of arteries and veins in the shape of fluid pumps, and elsewhere in the body as replacement parts of injured organs. It was the most sophisticated microbe she had ever seen.

Eventually, she shifted her arm position so that her right hand was grasping her left forearm, periodically switching back to finger fold. She was eradicating the infection, colony by colony. This was the most dangerous part, because of the risk that her efforts could accidentally stimulate the bacteria, rather than destroying them. She continued this process for a long time. As she continued, the zombie seemed to gradually lose it's energy.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . .

When Doc realized that the subject's infection was completely purged, she sighed as though she had been holding her breath for hours. He was no longer a zombie, but what was he now? A man or a corpse? He had sustained a lot of damage, internal and external. She was still standing with her fingers entwined in front of him, so she checked him for signs of life that way.

The infection had almost killed him, but not quite. Doc concluded that she had to heal his injuries immediately, otherwise he could die any minute. She grasped her forearm again, and proceeded to repair the damaged tissues with all possible speed. When she was done, she paused the ritual to undo his shackles. He collapse on to her arm before she lowered him to the ground. She then stood over him and with arms crossed and completed the resuscitation part of the ritual. Otherwise he would have faced months, if not years, of convalescence. The newly rehumanized man regained his color and alertness.

The man groaned, then sat up and rubbed his head. He opened his eyes, look around, then frowned at the threesome looking down at him.

"Ok, that was weird," he said, slowly getting up. "Who are you, and where am I?"

Annie had watched the ritual with the gun grasped tightly in her hand. She'd half expected some sort of mutant zombie to rip its way out of the shackles and start nomming on Doc's brain.

"My name is Annie," she said, stepping forward to the man's side. She gestured at the others in turn. "This is Doc and Bryan. You're in the Mansion. Doc just cured you of a very serious illness, but we need to know how you contracted it. Do you remember anything from before?"

"...it'd...help to know what I contracted," the man said, rubbing his head again. "I mean, I remember lots of things--I remember everything...I jusst don't know what starts where...."

He looked around.

"Where are my kids? Are they with their mom? They're doing better, right?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know. I wasn't in the group that brought you back to the Mansion," Annie said. She took a deep breath. She knew this next bit of info probably wouldn't go over well. "You were turned into a zombie. Brain-eating. Shambling. The whole package. Do you have any idea if your family was infected also?"

"Yeah," the man snorted. "My kids bit me when we were trying to get them in the car to take them to the hospital. They came home from school complaining about headaches and begging for food. My wife took their temperature, and it was...it was...they didn't have one. We'd seen the advisory on the news, so we got them as bundled up as we could, and they started crying and fighting us...we almost had them in their car seats, when my little Tina turned around and bit me."

He rubbed his face again, then looked at Annie.

"Why did this happen? They all got this season's flu shots, just the day before."

"Interesting. So that's two possible infection points, the school and the flu shots," Annie said, thinking out loud. "Okay, we need to know which school your kids go to and also where they got the flu shots."