[Spritely Zombie]

Gokan fades in and out of consciousness after making it onto the dropship he vaguely recalls an explosion, and being carried down a corridor. But most of his mind is filled with nightmares, friends and family, ashen-faced and dull-eyed chasing him down endless poorly lit corridors. Seemingly non-sensical hatches opening in the smooth featureless walls to disgorge yet more of the zombies. The corridors end suddenly, and he turns to face his persuers who, as he watches, change, bones cracking and flesh tearing until they resemble imps far more than the humans they once were. He draws his pistols and unloads round after round into the mass, until his guns let off a resounding click. The collective mass hisses constantly and unleashes a volley of incandescent plasma.

He wakes up with a sudden start, looking up at the doctor standing above him, examining him. The world seems fuzzy somehow, the pains inflicted upon him over the last... Days? Hours? Minutes? He wasn't sure, seem like dull echoes, he can still feel them, but they feel like they belong to someone else, somehow.

Mentally he retraces his steps over the course of the day, being woken up by alarms for the fourth time in a row, the treck to the old communications center. The laughter sticks in his mind, somehow striking him as more disturbing than anything that's happened since. The zombies, he stops for a moment, the scientist and those two marines had turned immediately, and MrMao had turned relatively quickly after dying.

He loses his train of thought as Disrupter somehow manages to extract the bullet fragments from his shoulder, by entering through his stomach, he pauses to reflect on whether this is an indication of his qualifications as a doctor. He mutters something Gokan doesn't quite hear before he walks off.

The marines, and scientist had changed immediately, presumably so had the rest of the zombies they had encountered. MrMao had changed after dying... Yet the rest of them were seemingly unnaffected. Why were they immune? Were they really immune? Or was it simply a matter of time before he and the others changed?

The effects of the painkillers slowly wear off, and Gokan feels he can once again differentiate between up and down. Carefully, he sits up moving his shoulder, it aches very slightly, but he is surprised to find that he has full movement in it, and the bruises across his ribs, now a splendid shade of yellow an purple, don't hurt at all.

He glances around, spotting his combat gear, now easily identifiable due to the crude metal patch on the left shoulder, and the small gouges over the right-hand ribs. Quickly he pulls the gear on, feeling only slightly safer beneath the thin layers of kevlar. He checks the clips in his pistol, he looks up at the others, then moves the action, ejecting a perfectly good round from the gun's chamber. He puts the single round in an upper pocket before clicking on the safety and holstering the gun.

Literally, the exact second he holsters the gun, No Dachi has his episode.

No Dachi: "We have to leave, NOW!"

Gokan, relatively happy that No Dachi isn't going to be interested in an exclusive raw flesh diet just yet, holsters the pistol for the second time. Again, with almost perfect timing, this time for the generator to spark and die, taking the lights with it. An array of growls, snorts, hisses and moans suddenly fill the room.

"Why couldn't it have just been the toaster again?" he says sardonically...