00 - New Dawn Falling

Five years into the apocalypse, people's ingenuity brought back one crucial pillar of civilization: electricity. Society runs on electricity, they said, and got to work.

They didn't restore any of the old, complex power plants though, no. They built simple generator farms cranked by the one, tireless resource that has been around in abundance ever since the world has gone to hell. Yep - zombies. You got your classic horde-on-a-leash merry-go-round generators, pole-vaulted zombie windmills and, of course, the ever so loud and clumsy but effective hamsterwheel of fortune.

There's just one problem: decay. Even a freshly bitten athlete gets you a year at best before efficiency starts declining. That may not matter much for your two-RVs-and-a-shed settlements, but for a place like New Dawn, where the (rotten in its own way) elite settled, every Watt counts, and premium zombies are highly desired.

To no surprise, meeting that demand brought up lucrative new business ventures to harvest, broker, and "defuse" the supply. And with that, the world turned from kill or get killed into kill and get wealthy.

Ray Morris joined that new world as a broker. The elite he caters to doesn't want to deal with the ones purveying the "workforce", which provides him a comfortable life and plenty of amenities. Moral dilemma? He simply doesn't care. None of this affects anyone he cares about anyway ... until the day he finds himself chained up in the back of a truck heading to one of the warehouses, like many of the unfortunate souls he delivered in the past.

Someone declared him dispensable.
Someone sold him out.

The only thing that's certain: this is neither a story about redemption nor forgiveness.

How we got here

It's hard to believe that Ray Morris was once a caring social worker, long before the Revenant pathogen was set free. Dealing with child welfare, he saw the worst of humanity on a regular basis, yet he remained hopeful to turn things around, at least for some. Then he got that one case that finally got to him. First he broke, then he snapped.

Prison brought out his dark side - an opportunistic and downright nihilistic side. Everything became a transaction, nothing mattered, and the connections he made in there became his new life after he got out. When the dead began to rise, that life became the new normal. If he's honest, the apocalypse was the best thing that could have happened to him, the total collapse of the existing society was pure freedom for him. He and the gang thrived.

So all things considered, Ray can understand and almost even admire that someone would betray him for their own benefit. But only almost. No, admiration isn't one of the feelings Ray has at this moment.

Half an hour ago, everything was business as usual. An exchange like countless ones before - a truck filled with a good dozen freshly-turned zombies he picked up from Winston, to be delivered to New Dawn. He was slightly surprised but didn't think too much of it when two unknown fellows got out of the truck with Winston. Only when he saw the cargo box being empty, Ray knew something else was up.

The last thing he felt was the burning sting on his neck, then he blacked out.