Destruction's Aftermath: 2

This is the second installment of the story I was trying out. Enjoy.

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She gazed around, surveying the destruction all around her. Everywhere she turned, there was death. It stared her in the face, and yet she could feel its gaze boring through her back.

Then, movement.

It started near an alley. A charred body, burnt to the bone, began to twitch. One by one, the dead began to rise.

Her pulse, a few minutes ago stilled, began to rise too. She glanced frantically around, searching for a way to escape the shambling dead. There was none. A loud hiss made her spin on her heels to face the source. There, right in front of her, was a zombie, its shattered chest revealing lungs which inflated and deflated in a grotesque parody of life. Startled, she backed away, only to stumble over another moving corpse, this one shuffling along on its hands, its legs blown away by the blast. The first zombie loomed large over her, and it extended its hands.

She screamed, a loud, piercing sound. The thought of being touched, being violated by the... the... thing sent a chill up her spine. She shrank away from its cold, clammy grasp, but the other zombie behind her grabbed her shoulders. She wrenched away from it, only to find that the zombie with the shattered chest had her by the hand. This one was stronger, and she could not pull away.

Still, she struggled, and while doing so, noticed something. There was something strange about the way the zombie held her. It could have easily reached any number of more vulnerable parts, yet it chose to hold her hand. Before she could think about this strange fact, she was gently helped to her feet.

Gently?

As soon as she was standing, she noticed something else she had not noticed in her fear: All the undead around her were prostrating themselves. The one who had just helped her up then collapsed to its knees and kowtowed.

She was perplexed. The undead were not attacking her, they were worshipping her! This, she thought, might have had something to do with why she had come back from death after being stabbed by the man.

Tentatively, she beckoned to a zombie in reasonably good condition, and to her surprise, it shuffled forward. More intrigued than scared now, she pointed to a small chunk of rubble and asked it to pick the rubble up. Before the words had escaped her lips, the zombie was already moving and effortlessly picked the rubble up. She then made it raise and lower the rubble, and ordered it to throw the rubble into a nearby Dumpster. Amazingly, the zombie once again complied without her even having to speak.

The day wore on. She became more and more interested. She was no longer fearful of the dead. She ventured to other parts of the city, and found she could raise the dead merely by pointing at corpses. Her newfound companions proved capable of inhuman feats of strength, and could move with a mere thought from her. She could even control several at a time. The zombies also had the same powers of regeneration as her. She had already noticed the not-so-damaged have their wounds reduced to nothing, although they still did not look fully alive. In time, she supposed, even the heavily wounded and disfigured would heal.

Yet, in spite of all this newly acquired power, she could not help but feel a sense of anger towards the man who had destroyed her home, her family, her friends, her very life.

She would exact her revenge on the one who had done all this. And he had given her something to do it with.