Day 3, Year of the Catastrophe – Monday, 2nd of May, 2020.

05:01 pm –the Kings House: Throne Room –

With electricity out, a lot of stuff was inconvenient. At least the toilet was still working. Though… It was a really weird feeling for Daniel to enter the toilet that he just left himself. He also really struggled with seeming himself all the damn time. How did twins cope with that? Well, they didn’t see both viewpoints at the same time maybe, thus they were not that self-conscious? He constantly felt the need to shuffle his hair into place like if he was looking in two mirrors at the same time. Only a little bit worse since he saw himself from the side and back as well.

Daniel had also assumed that it was still sunday as he had missed the part where he was unconscious for over 24 hours straight. This was the first time he missed it to go to his mother’s grave on a Sunday. Well, bad circumstances and all, yes. But still, it stung a bit. He would tell her that he was sorry next sunday though. No matter what.

Eating felt especially strange, since Daniel ate with both of his bodies at the same time. Especially when the tastes kind of mixed up. He would also really need to find a way to cook soon. Just binging on unhealthy food would probably not be the best thing in the world. Especially since he was craving some carbohydrates. Rice or pasta. He sighed. Maybe he could find a house with a generator and bring that one back home… Then somehow connect that to the vitroceramic field in order to cook… He would probably either burn down the house of kill one of his bodies in the process through electric shocks.

Was it even possible for one of his bodies to die while he continued living? A really weird question, that nobody would be able to answer for him. What if he got bitten? Would both bodies die and transform? Or just one? Would he be able to control both of them?

A huge amount of questions that grew larger by the minute as he continued thinking about it. But nobody would ever be able to tell him. Or were there more people developing multiple bodies?

For about twenty minutes Daniel was sitting around with both his bodies thinking about those things, before he noticed that this was a really odd thing to do. It was kind of strange to sit next to himself where both bodies thought the same thing at the same time and both were not doing anything. For a second he had the image of twenty of his bodies, sitting in a circle thinking hard, all having the same ideas.

Then he tried to clean the house while thinking about everything. His main body cleaned the mess that the invasion had caused in his living room, while the second one was downstairs wiped up the blood and gore the slaughtered had left. It was not easy to keep thinking and musing about his newfound existence while being busy. Downstairs he was disgusted at all the blood and the stench, while upstairs he was puzzling on how to repair smashed things without much of a hassle. Needless to say he came to the conclusion that he had to at least leave one body idle to think more freely.

After the cleaning was done Daniel sent one of his bodies to grab a sleeping bag and some rope. He would go and camp out on the roof with some survival rations. Mainly because Daniel did not want to have both of his bodies spend the night at the same location. That would open more possibilities. The other reason was that he wanted to keep an eye out for the Red Claw and other odd occurrences, and the third reason was that he wanted to try and sleep with one body, while being awake with the other one. That soon proved to be very hard to do. He managed to relax, close his eyes and not think for a while, but since his mind was occupied with observing the landscape from the roof it was more like he was watching TV in bed, rather than sleeping.

Sighing, he sat up in the dark bunker. It would have been so convenient to be able to do that… Then he felt the stone he had picked off of the undead guy before. Daniel reached into his pocked carefully and pulled it out. It was glowing slightly in the dark, yet felt like a normal rock. What was this? Did other zombies also have this sort of crystal on them? Daniel played with the stone a bit, when the mark on his hand was suddenly glowing the same way as the stone.

What in the world? He brought the stone closer to his former wound and watched curious as the light slowly seemed to trickle out of the stone like smoke, getting absorbed by his mark. An electrical tingling sensation crept up his arm into every corner of his body. And not only his body. Also his second body. Panicking, he pulled the stone away again. He felt drunk and numb. His second body nearly fell of the roof for a moment there as well. Quickly he climbed into the sleeping bag that he had secured with climbing rope beforehand. With his second body secure, he continued with the glowing stone.

As he continued to absorb the stone, his body felt warmer and warmer and the electric sensation subsided slowly. It started to feel really, really good. But just as he wanted more of this thrilling feeling, the light died and the crystal stone in his fingers crumbled into sand. The mark on his hand glowed for a while longer, apparently it had grown a bit. The original shape had remained the same, but it had expanded on the lower side with a line up his arm. Just a few millimeters though. Puzzled by this development, Daniel was overcome by a heavy drowsiness. It did not take long for him to succumb to sleep.

Day 4, Year of the Catastrophe – Tuesday, 3rd of May, 2020.

06:58 am –the Kings House: Rooftop –

Light was already up when Daniel woke up from his slumber. He had slept well, but there was a rather large problem. From his sleeping bag, tied to the rooftop, he was able to see quite the distance, several kilometers far away. And there were dead people everywhere! The longer he looked, the more he saw. He had never seen this many people in his life, let alone dead people. They swarmed the streets, the fields. The neighboring houses were all very swarmed as well, doors and windows broken down. Was there even anyone left alive in his neighborhood? Daniel had always figured that he would meet someone sooner or later, but the streets had been empty and the lights in the other houses had gone out with the recent blackout. It was impossible to tell if there were people. Even the entrance to his house was broken down again. He immediately found that out since the sofa was lying on the street.

He sighed. What a pain. Houses just were not secure enough anymore. Daniel wanted a fortress. His bodies however, felt great. Whatever this crystal had done to him, he appreciated this. He was wide awake, concentrating was far easier than before and he felt like his physical capabilities had improved. This had one severe downside though: Daniel wanted more.

But where to gain those crystals? Did every dead body possess one of these? Looking at the undead in his near vicinity he could not spot anything at the base of their necks, nor anywhere else. Maybe inside of them? The thought of rummaging through corpses with his hands just to find something like this again however… not a very inviting idea. The warm sunlight felt good, and Daniel decided to just enjoy the simple things in life. A nice sunbath on the roof and plenty of good food in a dark room.

After about twenty minutes it was getting really warm though, and Daniel decided on today’s plans. Clearing his own house again would be quite the hassle. No, he had to find a way to prevent his house from being overrun all the damn time. The most simple solution would be to just dig a large hole in front of his house to prevent them from entering. The windows seemed to hold rather well. A new door would also be an option, though he was no carpenter, so that would be quite hard to do. A less time consuming way would be to set up barricades that would hold. Cars? No, they would probably get past that with ease. A fence? Looking around, most of the garden fences had held rather well, some even impaling the undead instead of yielding ground.

It would not have to be a very fancy one either. As long as it worked, Daniel was fine with that. But most of those fences where rooted in concrete with metal, and were not only simple wooden sticks. Their own house sadly had no garden fence and was kind of wide open. Only a few bushes had blocked the way previously, but those had long been trampled into the ground by the walking hordes.

The amount of problems he had to deal with were rising. Luckily the need for food was not an issue right now. But cooking said food, the spoiling meat in the freezers, the broken front door and the security in general was rather concerning. Not the mention that he really had to find some of those crystals again. They were almost his highest priority now. He did not feel disheartened when thinking about all these problems at all now, his confidence was at an all-time high. He grabbed the wooden katana and prepared himself. What a wonderful day it was today.

Then he jumped off the roof with a mad dash.