Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

A young woman yawned and raised her hand to stop the aggressive sunlight of the early morning to blind her as he stepped out of her small home, neither far from the farmlands, nor far from the city, she lived where the houses were beginning to grow closer and closer to one another.

The street was wide enough for carriages to get through unimpaired, that was an advantage of leaving right next to the main way to the city, your neighbours didn’t have a perfect view of what was going on in your own home.

She looked to the right, hearing the sound of other people stepping out of their homes to go to work, some worked as farmhands, whilst others did whatever was available in the city, they always needed arms for construction over there.

She looked to the left and was left confused for an instant.

Sighing, she moved toward the person sprawled on the ground, they weren’t passed out, she could see them moving.

"Partied too hard last night, heh?" she spoke with an unrefined accent, trying to get a look at who it was, she knew quite a lot of people’s faces and her memory of names was pristine, allowing her to carry conversations with pretty much anyone.

The woman recognised the middle-aged man but stepped back as soon as she got a good look at his face.

Her scream forced everyone awake.

At a glance, it might seem like nothing was wrong with the man, he may seem a bit unkempt but he was known to work at a nearby farm, so it was more-so a sign that he was a hard worker.

One simply needed to do just like the young woman and look at his face.

His mouth and nostrils were sealed shut, in quite the gruesome manner at that, sewn haphazardly and with much violence taking place beforehand, his face had been beaten black and blue, enough to allow his aggressor to stuff his mouth with rocks and hay.

By the time people composed themselves, the minuscule amount of life he still had in him by the start had already gone out, leaving only a still warm body in the middle of the street.

"Will somebody go call the guards?!" someone with a better head on their shoulders than the rest finally spoke up, otherwise they would have all just stood around with mildly concerned expressions for a while.

"Dear gods, how could this happen?" a man with a thick beard and mustache spoke to himself as he looked from a distance, just barely stepping out of his own house.

Something attracted his attention in the opposite direction from the dead body, turning his head with a:

"Mmh?"

He could only see the sad eyes on the bag staring right at him as something cold pierced his throat.

One couldn’t fathom what could happen in broad daylight, as people could see, it only needed to be fast and inconspicuous in execution.

Loimos had walked out from a narrow alley as though it was the most normal thing in the world, as long as it appeared like he belonged here, the few people that may have noticed his dark figure from the corner of their eyes ignored him.

Quickly silencing the man by stabbing him in the throat, he pushed him back into his own house and closed the door behind him, letting the already condemned man bleed out on the floor, the undead walked with a faster step to intercept the person he could feel was going to enter the room he was in.

It was but the home of peasants, a father, a wife and a few kids at most.

There were basically only three rooms, two bedrooms and another that served as both the kitchen and dining room.

Living rooms were a term only the more wealthy knew, those of lesser fortune would laugh at such poor usage of space.

"Honey-" Loimos was already standing in her way, grabbing her wrist to get it out of the way, he also shoved his blade into her throat, pulling and throwing her to the ground, he seamlessly transitioned from murder to movement as he headed for the last room.

The three livings in there didn’t pose any problem, only one was awake and he couldn’t even get a noise out at the mere sight of Loimos.

The whole venture only took him two minutes at most, he stepped right out of the house the same way he came in, covered in blood, but at this point, he wasn’t within anyone’s sight as they had all gathered around the body.

As though it was an attraction, it truly was a wonder how the living could be both so fascinated and also so afraid of death, Loimos didn’t question the discrepancy in behaviour and walked away in the main street.

He broke into a few more homes along the way, mostly because they just happened to make the fatal mistake of opening their doors when Loimos was in the perimeter, they couldn’t even start to question his weird appearance before he was already stabbing them.

Though some proved to be more competent as they just shut their door at his sight, he was covered in blood at this point after all, it was otherwise more alarming than wearing a potato sack on your head.

The dark coat mostly concealed blood stains, but the rest of his clothing wasn’t so dark.

The bag was already starting to take on a darker shade.

Loimos arrived before a farm, unlike the majority of the dwellers the other way, those that took care of the farm and pretty much owned them had already been up for a while, they were already well aware of their surroundings and not groggy.

Not to mention, Loimos had noticed that they seemed otherwise more brawny and willing to cave someone’s head in for a slight transgression.

A completely different breed in sum.

The skeleton climbed up the side of the farm, crawling through a gap in the roof, making his way in an attic filled to the brim with random stuff, cobwebs and dust.

He laid down, face against the ground and stopped moving, simply staring through the small gaps in the floor.