Author's Note

Tags: GORE, zombie pwnage, moderate viscera

Out of all the stories I've crafted, The Dead Don't Shuffle is my absolute favorite. I loved crafting Mors passive insanity and lavish love for his job. I loved Triage and her strong, domineering personality; she's perhaps the strongest and most well-written character I have with respect to story length. And of course I loved demolishing zombies.

The Dead Don't Shuffle and Welcome to Night Vale, with the former being darker by leagues due to Mors' psychopathy and the excessive amount of gore, are currently my only comedies. However, the black humor was my own tribute to movies like Brain Dead and Shaun of the Dead. Welcome to Night Vale was the ying to The Dead Don't Shuffle's yang. Cecil and Mors were both very upbeat and cheerful, but while Night Vale had horrors that were not meant to be understood by mortal minds, Mors' zombie problem was very simple to take care of. He constantly faced creatures that begged to destroy him, but he was always so happy and carefree when all he needed was a shovel. It was almost like writing an Adams family member.

However, despite my love for the character and fanfic, I did something that tempered my enthusiasm: I completed it. There are no loose ends that require elaboration, all characters are established and have their own respective arcs, the zombies are still safely inside the crypt, and the ending ties everything together. There is nowhere for the story to go. I didn't explain why the zombies rose every night, but Mors is just a regular guy. Why would he know? How would he know? He wouldn't.

That's what I agonized over for the longest time. I wanted so dearly to add more to the story, but I couldn't conceive of a way that wouldn't retread old ground and tarnish the story. That's why I have about five or six scenes in my head where random things happen. They are just scenes from the lives of Mors, Triage, and Summers, but none of them advance any sort of story.

They primarily fit in with the slice of life tag on this story, but I have this problem with such stories. I always found slice of life to be boring. I have my own funny moments (who knew?), but I can't make funny scenes feel interesting to myself. I can't make scenes into a story, however much I want to.

The scene right here popped into my head after watching Team Four Star's abridged series, Hellsing Ultimate. It was episode three. At the time, I had no scenes or story of any kind for future installments of The Dead Don't Shuffle, but that episode changed that with one line.

"Hey kids, wanna see a dead body!?"

Boom, instant inspiration. The first thing that popped into my head was Mors going to Sunset Grove's school for job appreciation day. I had no idea why, but a demented zombie slayer stepping in front of children was both hilarious and utterly terrifying. However, the same problem came up: I had nowhere to take the idea. I didn't and as of this post still don't have any idea where to take a full chapter beyond this scene, and, alas, the chapter was scrapped. Here's the intro for your enjoyment.

The Dead Don't Shuffle: Job Appreciation - [GORE] [zombie pwnage] [moderate viscera] [traumatized children]

The Dead Don’t Shuffle: Job Orientation Day

It was a small, yet packed red and white schoolhouse. Sunset Grove was never a town that boasted much in terms of eager young minds ready to learn. When were the young ever ready to delve into math and science when a carrot on a stick wasn’t involved anyway? Still, the twenty seat single room schoolhouse was packed to the brim with fillies and colts of every age. Some bore whittled wood dolls or hoofmade toys. One aspiring bronze colt had a steel contraption crafted together from scavenged parts. The whirligig took up his entire desk and more, yet he was almost vibrating in his seat with excitement.

The only adult present, a maroon mare with a horrendously garish green mane, was giving a little filly an encouraging smile. “And where did you get it, Sunshine?”

Sunshine was a tiny little cream-colored filly who barely reached her teacher’s abdomen. “Daddy brought it back from Canterlot!” she exclaimed. She nuzzled the orb in her hooves with her snout and it began to rise before the children’s eyes. A cascade of ‘Ooooohs’ echoed across the short walls as it began to emit a timid glow. “If it’s too dark, I’ll have this!”

The filly was all smiles and eager to share her own little gift to the class as she escorted herself back to her seat. Sunshine’s classmates doted upon the filly and her prized gift for show and tell until their next classmate stepped up in front of the chalkboard. “Thank you for sharing, Sunshine. Now, who’s next?”

A blue colt with a messy mane raised his hoof in the air wildly. “Me, Miss Melody! Me me me!”

Melody smiled warmly and beckoned the little one forward. “Alright, come up here Cle—” Her voice was cut off as the door to the schoolhouse shook violently. Whatever was on the other side growled menacingly and dove at the door again, shaking the hinges.

Screams echoed through the classroom as the door next Melody’s desk burst into a cloud of shrapnel. The foals were peppered with bits of wood and Melody, ever vigilant guardian of her charges, rushed forward to greet the threat. Old, motherly instincts reared their head and she pawed the ground.

Before she could even react the intruder bull rushed her and clamped its powerful jaws around her throat. The teacher scream died to a quick gurgle as the beast wrenched its head side to side, spraying the room in a thin mist of red. Most of the foals were frozen in shock and horror at the sight. After a fraction of a second, one filly screamed in resolute terror. The beast stopped gorging itself on the teacher’s throat, its equine muzzle streaked with blood. Melody moaned weakly with her injuries, alive but in no condition to move.

“There you are you little shit!” A new figure had streaked through the broken remains of the door and crashed into the zombie. All other foals, and even Melody, were of hardy Earth Pony stock. Sunset Grove was an old town saturated in the Earth Pony way of doing things, so the newcomer’s horn identified him as well as easily as his spade cutie mark. Mors, the resident grave digger and mortician, smashed into the zombie to get it away from the downed pony. Limbs flailed wildly, most striking Mors and his lousy cloth barding. The crack of broken ribs sounded across the small room before the pair stopped. Mors had managed to come out on top, holding back the zombie by the throat. It paid no attention to the offending limb and roared through its sunken, rotted face and missing jaw, spilling maggots onto the floor.

As the zombie thrust its weight against Mors in one more blind attempt at savaging the stallion, Mors parried the strike, putting all of his weight into forcing the zombie into dashing forward even faster. He smashed the zombie’s skull against Melody’s desk, scattering papers and splattering thick, coagulated blood over the wood. Mors put a hoof behind the zombie’s head and smashed it into the desk again. Next came the crunch of bone and other unmentionable fluid. The zombie’s considerable will to fight had not vanished, so Mors responded with yet another violent smash of desiccated pony to oak desk. The corner of the desk sunk several inches into its its skull, spilling brain matter and blood across the desk and the floor in thick chunks. The zombie gave one more twitch and stopped moving as the last hiss of rotten air exited its lungs before falling to the floor with a meaty thump.

Mors stood tall and picked off a bit of brain from his withers. He was a hair shorter than most adult earth ponies and had a rust-colored coat under his grey barding which had torn in the struggle. It didn’t look like there was a shred of body fat on his body. He winced, holding a foreleg to his chest before realizing he wasn’t alone. The entire room had gone silent, save for the occasional moan from the fallen teacher.

Mors picked up the fallen zombie by its only remaining ear and brandished him for the class. Blood and viscera leaked from the gaping face wound.

“Hey kids, wanna see a dead body?”

Mors fell to the floor with a heavy thud, swearing profusely. Lengths of gauze were tapped to his chest. The center was tinged crimson and black with both fresh and dried blood.

“About time your fat ass gets up,” came the voice of a disgruntled mare. Her white coat was tinged just the slightest bit of grey. Her copper curls were moist from a good morning shower and she was currently in the kitchen cooking something, giving him a nice view of her shapely flanks.

“I happen to know there’s not an ounce of fat on my ass. Yours, on the other hoof, looks like it has its own gravitational pull.” Coming from somewhere in her direction was a ladle that hit him squarely between the eyes. “Give me a break; I got to sleep two hours ago.” His injuries protesting with burning in his chest and legs and just about everywhere else for that matter, he slowly got up and moved back onto the couch from which he had fallen.

“It’s eight in the morning. You got done with the crawlers by midnight.” Mors peaked out the window. Was it his house? Come to think of it, why the hell was Triage, the town doctor, here? Yeah, she was the only pony who knew about his nightly and profusely violent wanderings into the town crypts every night. Whatever. A thought for another night. Time to sleep through another morning. It was way too early for this shit.

“I was doing stuff. And things.”

“What things?”

“You try repairing a shitload of gravestones. It’s not as fun as busting heads every night. Thirty motherfuckers means fixing thirty gravestones.” That smell... Mmmm, pancakes... Sleep or pancakes? Was that the smell of applesauce? Pancakes it was, then.

With a groan, Mors rolled himself off the couch. Despite it being intentional, he still landed on his side as his footing failed him. Cussing loudly, he got to his hooves and shuffled over to the dining room table. His small house already felt crowded with just one occupant, and with two the confined quarters made it even more so.

Triage moved away from the wood stove with the pan handle in her mouth. With a trio of pancakes for both of them, Triage removed her apron and settled herself down. Why did she always have to look so damn smug about everything? “You look like shit. Mind you, you always look like shit when you wake up, but damn.”

“Feed me,” he whined blankly, getting into his own chair. Still to early to deal with her ribbing. Staying up all night had the unfortunate side effect of making completely nocturnal. Dawn was only a couple of hours and the bright rays of Celestia’s sun burned like the worst hangover.

Triage complied by stuffing a pancake into his gullet. Choking on the offering and glaring at the smug fucker, Mors caught his breath and started munching on his pancakes. Despite the early hour, he never denied a free meal.

“What were you dreamin’ about?” she asked, pouring herself a bowl of applesauce and liberally sprinkling it with cinnamon. “You were mumbling in your sleep.”

“Just thinking of something funny.” Dreams... Mors thought for a moment. “Hey, what day is it?”

“Monday.”

Monday. Something tugged at his memory. The dream? Blood, guts, and violence. That summed up just about every night. Triage rolled her eyes at whatever look he was giving her.

“Oh, what the hell now?”

“It’s the school's job appreciation day!”