7e.) Enter, Jikon

John Muteki was on the outskirts of the city, walking calmly away from a small group of houses ablaze from a fuel line ruptured during the quake. The fire flickered behind him as he approached the city, his shadow flickering and dancing, stretching out far ahead of him.

His black pants and shoes were specked with dust and what looked like blood, his left thigh wrapped tightly with cloth bandages. His white long-sleeved shirt was smudged with black marks, the left arm of it torn into bandages, the right arm rolled up to the elbow. The fingers of his hand twitched slightly, as though the hand was trying to ball up into a fist all on its own.

His face was dull and lifeless. He showed no expression, strangely enough, as though what had happened had yet to register. Once he was about sixty feet from the burning buildings, he stopped, looking back. Then, he began to laugh.

The laugh started small and light, as though scoffing at some small joke, but soon erupted into a roaring, wheezing, side-holding guffaw that was very, very off putting. This went on for almost ten minutes.

Muteki finally stopped, shook his head, and kept walking. His face faded to the blank, expressionless gaze it had held before. It had held it often enough in the past. He passed through the gate of a cemetery. Many of the headstones and memorials were cracked or shattered. A fog was rolling out over the landscape. He kept walking.

Finally, John fell to the ground, sitting down hard on the spongy grass. Something in his pocket began to vibrate. He started at his hands as if he had never seen them before, and his thoughts raced.

This... this had to be the end. Of everything. Mankind had finally meddled with things too far, and something was wreaking its vengeance. He'd seen the shadow flit across the sky, moving almost too fast for someone who wasn't already paying attention to the sky to see. Some great beast, thrown into a horrible rage...

They were all dead...

The ground beside John rumbled, and he edged away on his hands and heels. A single hand thrust through the cracked earth and slammed down, fingers biting down into the turf. Muscles flexed, and an arm pushed itself up, followed by a shoulder, a head, and soon an entire torso.

John watched in horror as the corpse excavated itself. Hadn't the Bible had something about the dead rising from the grave on the last days?

"So this really is the end..." he murmured. All terror and despair suddenly drained away from his mind, replaced by a strange clarity of thought. It didn't matter what happened. The world was coming to an end. It was happening a bit sooner than expected, but perhaps things were worse than he'd let himself believe. What did he have to lose?

"The end? It bloody well isn't. I ought to know. That won't happen for a while yet, unless we're all very fortunate."

John blinked. Had the corpse just... spoken to him?

"Here, help me out of this hole. I seem to be rather... er... well... stuck."

Not thinking, John got to his feet and approached the corpse. He took it by the hands - noticing the cold, soft, yielding gray flesh - and hauled. Slowly, the corpse's legs were pulled from the hole, and it waved him away.

"Thanks. I'd have been in a spot of trouble if you hadn't come along, hm?"

The man - and John found it easier to think of him as one the more he spoke - brushed some dirt from his clothes, frowning in disdain.

"Now, where was I going to... Ah, yes."

The corpse then started off in a lurching walk, passing by John and moving on toward the city. The man paused just before he vanished into the mist, and looked back.

"You, boy! Come along. You might come in useful."

With that, the corpse lurched on, disappearing into the veil of mist. John stood there for a few moments. He had nowhere to go. His world had come to an end. This... man... was a splash of normalcy - albeit with an appearance that was anything but normal - in a world gone mad.

John followed the man into the mist.