#izaori

  Mello decided he absolutely hated Tetris. 

It had been two painstaking hours of nothing but Tetris.  Two hours of staring at the same bare wall of yet another abandoned building, all while the god awful retro game music bounced around Mello’s skull as Matt stacked thousands of virtual bricks on top of each other on his tiny screen.  Mello couldn’t even think through the noise of it. The only other sounds to compete was the clicking of buttons as Matt expertly stacked each new colorful block, the loud crumbled sound effects that followed when he cleared a row, and the occasional puffing then crushing of yet another cigarette into the ashtray. The smell of wet mold and nicotine smoke filled Mello’s lungs, which only proved annoying to him as he tried to keep his breathing even through his pain. 

He shifted to sit up and groaned in pain, quickly laying down again. Two hours of staring, waiting for the painkillers to kick in, or waiting for a new plan to pop into his head.  He still felt nothing but phantom flames dancing along his entire left side of his body. The sizzling feeling of the explosion still hadn’t left his skin after two days, even after the bandages and painkillers, and whatever else that Matt had brought him. It was impossible to focus on anything but the pain, but Mello was stubborn. No way would Matt catch him whining. No way would he give up in catching Kira. 

He just couldn’t do a damn thing with that tetris music playing! 

“Hey, where’s my damn chocolate?” He called in the general direction of the gamer who had become his bedside nurse. 

Without pausing the game or that awful music, Matt tossed a plastic rectangle onto the couch and into Mello’s lap. He kept on stalking each block without missing a beat. “Here’s some chocolate.” 

Mello squinted and turned the unidentifiable candy package in his hands. The smooth plastic felt unfamiliar on his fingertips and he dropped it to the floor, kicking it away with his boot. He would never admit out loud to Matt  just how blurry the world suddenly looked, or how much effort it took to shove the candy bar far away.  Despite all the pain from his burns, his blurred vision, and maybe the meds kicking in,  he could still recognize his favorite snack anywhere. And that sure as hell wasn’t a chocolate bar. 

“The fuck is this?” Mello hissed, tilting his head towards the gentle direction of the glowing screen in his gloved hands. 

Matt paused his twelfth round of Tetri Effect™️ on his Pikachu themed Nintendo gameboy advance. “Listen. I’m still waiting for the shipment of all your snacks to get here. You didn’t give me much time to prepare before I got here.” 

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to your excuses. I had an endless supply from my guys when I was in the mafia!” He huffed and laid his head back against the arm of the couch. He had taken to laying carefully on his right side to face Matt, face away from the back of the couch and staring at absolutely nothing all day, and to avoid facing the pain that any pressure on his burns would cause him if he laid on his left side. 

“It’s not an excuse!” He picked up the rectangular package and waved it around. “It’s a Kit-Kat.” 

“I hate you.” Mello weakly kicked his boot again in Matt’s general direction. “It’s been two days. You can leave now.” 

Matt laughed and Mello frowned, lifting his head again as Matt stood and came to sit on the couch, carefully raising Mello’s legs to rest on his lap. He felt relief that Matt didn’t actually just walk out. He really was all he had left, at this point. Even if he wouldn’t admit it, the explosion had set him back a lot more than he anticipated… Now each hour was another chance Near had to get ahead of him, like always. 

But of course, Matt didn’t really think about the situation the same way. 

“I already told you, I’m not letting you put on any leather jackets or set a foot outside until it’s been a week of wound care. I didn’t sneak a Wi-FI hotspot onto my Delta flight for nothing you know.” Mello heard him opening that stupid candy bar as he spoke. “I did research about how to take care of you, obviously. If you’re so quick to catch Kira before Near… You’re going to make your scars worse if you rush after him too quickly after that explosion.” 

The serious tone he suddenly took on took Mello off guard, and so he kicked him in the stomach and grinned when he coughed and dropped the KitKat again. “Well if you really knew me, you’d have made sure the chocolate arrived before you did.” He shook his fist in mock anger. “I’m having withdrawals!!!” He had become an expert at avoiding all of Matt’s questions and concerns since he had come to take care of him. 

Matt was now aggressively tugging Mello’s boots off to free himself from further pain, starting to sound agitated. Oh, so Matt was going to be whiny now instead of him?   “It’s not chocolate withdrawals. It’s the pain meds I’ve been giving you. You’re welcome.” 

He grinned softly, like he was doing Mello a favor. This KitKat is as good as it’ll get until tomorrow, Mels. It’s a snack that you’re forced to use both hands, and focus on while eating. It’ll help.” 

Mello laughed bitterly and closed his eyes.  “This medicine you gave me must have been from Roger’s stash or something, because I feel just as awful as before.” He stretched his body out along the couch carefully, settling himself as he pondered.  “But…Fine. Any chocolate will do I guess.. Sugar withdrawal is real, alright? I feel like you do, when you don’t smoke. All irritable and restless… You know… when L told me about some of his old cases, he mentioned when he had to travel to a remote country and Watari couldn’t find him any bakeries. He said, and I quote, ‘my detective skills were reduced to roughly… 15%. I never let them drop below 87%’…” Mello paused and then laughed at the memory. “What does that even mean?” 

 Matt laughed back and reached to grab Mello’s hand, setting the now unwrapped KitKat in his hand. “You know, I always doubted those stories you always say L told you about. I mean… remember the one he told you about his first time investigating a case? He was five, and uhm…” 

“The ghost in the wammy’s kitchen! I remember!” Mello shouted back, sitting up quickly to respond, much too quickly. He had to pause and grip the side of the couch with a groan as he calmed the flare of pain, and dizziness. “Ugh… Yeah.” He looked over and nodded. “What do you mean you doubted that?? He told me it ended up being a squeaky cabinet, you know. He knew it wasn’t a ghost…” He stared down at the offensive KitKat in his hand, watching the cheap milk chocolate melt onto his fingers. 

Matt leaned close, the light reflecting off his goggles. Why he always chose to keep them inside, Mello never knew,  but he did enjoy that some things about Matt hadn’t changed in the years they’d been apart, like his goofy outfits. “Hey, what if  it was a shinigaaammiii~?” He exaggerated the word, sounding like a ghost. “Like the one you told me came for Kira’s notebook~?”

Mello frowned and shifted right back into whiny mode. The fact that a shinigami was attached to each notebook was actually the only thing he wasn’t worried about, despite the circumstances. At least he knew it was something Near hadn’t figured out yet. Same with the fake rules, he could use that. 

“Shut up.” He shoved Matt away again and turned away, taking a big chomp out of the center of the KitKat, grimacing. It wasn’t close to what he craved at all. “Sidoh was kind cool, and Near doesn’t kn-”

“Mello! How dare you!” Matt cut him off and snatched the candy back from him. “Have you NEVER eaten a KitKat before?”

Mello winced and shoved Matt away a lot more aggressively this time, fighting to reach for it back. “So what?? It’s just chocolate!” He succeeded and took another bite, just the first one.

Matt laughed louder and shoved him back, shaking his head. “I’ve just never seen someone so confidently eat a KitKat wrong. You’re always surprising me, Mels.” 

Mello decided he hated KitKats more than Tetris. 

Mello wanted to smack that stupid grin off Matt’s face. “I hate you.” He said the words with no weight to them though. 

Matt smiled and broke the pieces of the candy apart, handing the long chunks of what was left of the wafer pieces back to him. “I just thought it would be good for you to have a snack you had to focus on, something to keep your mind off everything.” 

Mello’s annoyance deepened and he munched down on the wafers, grateful at least for the sweetness. “And why would I want to do that? The sooner I heal, and figure out a plan, the sooner I beat Near.” 

Matt sighed, his mood shifting back to concern. “Yeah, Okay…” 

 The mood shifted and Mello chewed, wishing he the medication would blur his memories again, like it had done just fine at doing the first two days of the explosion. Why hadn’t he felt better from them today yet? 

“Why did you call me, Mello?” Matt broke the silence and turned to him. “After all this time, why now? It’s not like you’ve been alone since you left wammy’s.” 

Mello swallowed his bite, looking away. He had made sure to share only the details of the Kira case, and the details of the kidnappings he’d done with the mafia and the Japanese police. He told him he had to use the explosives, but not why…He didn’t want to admit that blowing up their hideout had been plan b. He couldn’t admit that his plan to use Sidoh hadn’t been perfect. His whole life he watched as every plan Near had never failed… but having to use the explosives was supposed to be a last resort… and he was forced to use it. Not only that, but he had managed to get his name revealed, lost the notebook, all his men, and gotten badly wounded. Needless to say he wasn’t in a rush to admit these mistakes to Matt. But there was no point in avoiding it any longer…

“When I placed the explosives in the hideout, I told my guys it was only as a last resort. I didn’t want to use them. Because I knew I’d only end up getting hurt. I’ve made my peace with dying for the Kira case, I know it’s what L died for, but I’m still finding it hard to accept that I even needed to have a plan B.” He stared down at the last pieces of KitKat, broken and melted. “I can’t accept that I’ve lost yet. I know I still have what it takes to defeat Near, and Kira in all this…. But hell, it’s hard to feel like I’m making any progress when I’ve lost so much suddenly.” 

Matt sighed and pulled another of the replacement chocolate from his vest as he listened, starting to open it up again. “Okay, but how did you escape the explosion when no one else did?” 

“I placed all the explosives by the door to the room, and with the mask protecting me, and the desk, I was able to stumble out of there with just this.” He waved to the bandages covering him, the ones Matt had researched how to secure and had carefully been monitoring. “ Most of the police that ambushed lived, though. So I escaped outside and hid under some of the debris, until they managed to pick themselves up and go. I knew I couldn’t call an ambulance, or go anywhere really, without them finding me eventually. I had no one left, but you.” He lifted his head and smiled. “So thanks for actually showing up.” 

Matt smiled back and handed the new candy over. He seemed satisfied with what Mello was willing to share. “Do you know why I decided to bring my gameboy along with my other investigating equipment?” 

Again with this sudden mood shift. Mello felt like his head was spinning just having to think about the explosion again. Why didn’t the painkillers kick in yet? “I don’t know, because Tetris has the worst soundtrack and you’re determined for me to heal slower as I go slowly insane?” Mello was careful to break apart the candy properly this time as he sneered. 

“I decided to bring my gameboy, and specifically tetris, because they’ve had studies done with the game that prove playing it can help you regulate after a traumatic event.” He smiled and snatched the gaming system from where he left it. “It’s about time you practice your coordination and chill out a little, Mels.” He smiled and waved the game around, like saying this would solve everything. The chocolate on his gloves smeared all over, and he didn’t seem to notice. “Let the gamer do what he does best. I’ll mute the music.” 

Mello sighed, rolling his eyes. “How about you play, and I’ll watch. I need the sugar to kick in.” He shifted so he could rest the right side of his head on Matt’s shoulder, munching on another stick of chocolate. “If this turns out to be a waste of time, I’ll shove the rest of this candy in your hair.” 

Matt laughed and leaned close so he could see the screen, starting up a new round. “Watch the master, soon you’ll be so transfixed by my block stacking that you’ll come up with your next plan to beat Near. Or, Kira. Whatever comes next.” 

They sat like that for a while, the lack of music somehow not taking away from the experience. Mello actually did find his nerves calming, and his focus on the pain was then shifted to focusing on the game. Matt eventually gave him a turn, and it helped him relax even more. His mind was able to settle, and he even let the music play out loud again. 

The meds never did kick in, and after another two hours of playing, they needed to break so Matt could check and change his bandages again. 

“You’re looking better everyday, Mels. If you keep resting, we’ll be able to start the race for Kira again by next week. Thought of any ideas yet?” Matt has just finished putting the equipment away, and lit himself another cigarette as he mused. 

Mello rested back and thought over all he knew about Kira, the SPK, and the notebooks. He knew he had what it took to see this to the end. 

“I think by then, it’ll be time I go to New York. I have someone in the SPK that’ll help me get close to Near, so I can get my photograph back, and then we can go from there together. Are you up for it?” 

Matt grinned and nodded towards his gameboy again. “Time to stack the odds back into our favor. Right?” 

Valentine’s Day. A fun, yet very stressful time of year. Some people rush to stores to buy chocolate and flowers, plan a fancy meal, wear different clothes for a variety of reasons, but Light Yagami has decided to bake.

Baking and cooking are very different. When you cook, it’s usually pretty easy to change a recipe on the fly. Adding a little more this, leaving out a little of that, and so on. Baking? Baking is a science. You add half a teaspoon too much of something and the entire process goes tits up.

Before he’s even started baking, Light has brought out every single utensil and ingredient he’ll need. His first idea was making cake, but there is simply too much that could go wrong with cake. Brownies were a no go, and cupcakes are essentially like small cakes that he could also very easily mess up. After mulling it around, Light decided on cookies. But what kind of cookies? Classic chocolate chip? A fancy lace cookie? The kind you roll up and put in a freezer? Lemon crisps? Thumbprints? Snickerdoodles? What about something more out there, like springerle? Light doesn’t have the tools to make those, anyway.

Who could go wrong with a classic chocolate chip recipe? Simple and delicious, easy to make in bulk. His boyfriend’s diet consists of pretty much only sweets.

Right when he’s about to get started, someone joins him in the kitchen. “It’s not good to let eggs sit out.”

Light sighs. Out of all the people to interrupt him, it had to be none other than, “Near. I’m baking, the eggs will be fine for a few minutes.”

Near observes the ingredients scattered around the counter, and the various mixing bowls and utensils. Light goes back to reading the recipe, but stops when he hears tapping. Near is playing with the mixing bowls, stacking them in an odd way. He doesn’t stop even after noticing Light’s glare.

“What? You aren’t using them yet.”

“And how will I, when you’re playing with them like toys? Did you even wash your hands?”

Near rolls his eyes. “I’m not dirty.”

“So? I don’t know where your hands have been.”

“On the bowls. Obviously.”

Light huffs, snatching the bowls away and setting them in the sink. He gives them a quick wash while Near moves on to playing with the spatulas instead.

“Stop playing around. I’m trying to bake.”

“L kicked me out of the room to study something. I’m bored.”

“Either help, or find something else to do.”

Near gives a slight pout, pondering the decision. He’d like to tell Light he’ll do what he wants, but knowing this is for L, maybe he should give the guy a break. This time. He’ll go back to being a nuisance another time. Near walks over to the recipe book and scrunches up his nose. “This is boring.”

“Sometimes boring is better.”

“Only two teaspoons of vanilla? That doesn’t seem like a lot. Why not half a cup?”

“You have to be joking.”

“It doesn’t sound like a lot to me.”

Light pinches the bridge of his nose, holding back some colorful language. “I don’t believe they even sell vanilla extract in that large a quantity, unless you’re buying one of those bigger, aged bottles. This,” he says, grabbing the tiny container, “is how vanilla extract is usually sold.”

Near takes the small bottle out of Light’s hand. Once more, he observes it carefully. “Why is it alcoholic?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you making alcoholic cookies?”

“Do you know nothing about baking? I’m not trying to get L drunk off vanilla. Think of it like bier cheese, the alcohol basically gets cooked out. It’s just there for flavor.”

“Why are you putting something in just to bake it out?”

Light finally catches on to the joke. He glares, and Near gives a shit eating grin. “Very funny, Near. Hand it over.”

Near gives back the extract and moves on. Finally, after what feels like forever, Light starts working on the batter. Light mixes the dry ingredients together, then grabs a different bowl. Near stops him.

  “Why aren’t you putting the butter with the rest of it?”

Light is starting to feel more agitated. “It won’t mix properly if you do the ingredients in the wrong order.”

Near looks around at the remaining contents. “It all goes together anyway. Why does it matter?”

“It’s like math. If you do the equation in the wrong order, like not using PEMDAS, you’ll get the wrong answer. We don’t want the cookies to be messed up.”

That makes sense. Near doesn’t really understand the order of baking, but he definitely understands math. He’ll take Light’s word for it. The recipe backs up his reasoning, anyway. Near doesn’t lose the page as he flips through the book, noticing most of the recipes carry on that way. Dry ingredients, wet ingredients, mix. Seems simple enough.

The process has been prolonged by Near’s shenanigans, but the cookies are almost ready to be put in the oven.

“Why are you using such a small amount of dough?” Near questions, again.

Light has had enough. He turns his attention away from the batter and pulls Near over to the recipe book. “Look. Just look. We need to use one inch balls so that the cookies aren’t too small or too big. See the picture? If we use more dough, it won’t cook right. If we use less dough, it won’t cook right. The recipe is made for cookies like this!”

Near scrunches up his nose again. “L likes a variety of cookies. Underbaked, overbaked, just right- he’ll eat them no matter how you serve them. Why not make bigger cookies?”

“Because I want them to be perfect! I want to make something delicious for my boyfriend!”

With the argument happening, said boyfriend is able to sneak into the kitchen with ease. L quietly takes a look around, finding himself at the pot of gold- raw cookie dough. Salmonella be damned, raw cookie dough is a delight, a delicacy, one of the greatest things Watari would never purposefully let L have. He grabs a clean spoon and swipes some.

Oh. Oh no. He frowns.

“This isn’t right. At all.”

Light and Near freeze. With perfect timing, they both turn around to face L.

“He followed the recipe,” Near gets out first.

“Right, the recipe-!”

L shakes his head. He looks at the different measuring utensils laid about and figures out the issue with ease.

“You didn’t convert to grams properly. The ratios are all wrong. Also, it reeks of vanilla.”

Light glares at Near. Near smiles sheepishly. “Oops.”

L takes another spoonful of the cookie dough anyway. “It’s not horrible. You could try again.”

“I think I’ll go store bought this time.”

L smiles and tosses the spoon into the sink. “That might be a better idea for you two. Leave the baking to Watari.”

With someone more average, less motivated, maybe even scared and cowardly, there could have been minimal damage. An incident or two at most, enough to be written off as something silly like someone eating bath salts. Unfortunately for Light, and for people around the world, the young man had written names of hundreds if not thousands of criminals in the span of a week, along with scheduling many more to die that he cannot reverse. Death cannot be erased.

News of the first revival popped up in Japan, of course. Light had tried to space out the deaths enough that authorities could keep up with the stream of dead bodies, but there was bound to be a build up at first as society gets adjusted to a new, less crime ridden world. In a morgue somewhere, apparently one of the first criminals he had killed as a test subject got up from the table. The previously dead man scared the undertaker out of his mind, reaching out for him, clearly wanting to take a bite–!

It really was a stroke of luck that the undertaker had already sewn the corpse’s mouth shut using wire. After getting a quick yet confused grasp on the situation, the undertaker took the nearby fire extinguisher and made the corpse still once more.

News got out fast across the world. Dead bodies coming back to life. Unfortunately, not many people were nearly as lucky as the undertaker. Those killed by the zombies were turned into zombies themselves so long as they were salvageable. The very smallest relief is that the zombies seemed to ignore small children.

Light paces around his room, death note on his desk, untouched. It was obvious to him from the first occurrence but even the news is broadcasting what everyone is thinking now. Kira has created zombies. Any of the praise he had previously is gone, replaced with fear and disgust. Only a select few loons are absurd enough to support someone turning criminals into zombies! A few minutes pass, and Ryuk laughs, breaking the tense silence.

“This is funny to you, Ryuk?” Light asks, tone sharp. He stops in his tracks, glare icy.

Ryuk stares at him, unblinking. Can a shinigami even blink? “Very,” Ryuk states, “since I thought you read all the rules.”

“None of the rules say anything about zombies!”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Light.” Ryuk floats over, snickering to himself, and flips open the death note. He points to a seemingly blank page on the back. Upon closer inspection, in a different more similarly colored ink, there is a rule that clearly states that humans written in the death note by another human that have died will come back as zombies after 72 hours from their time of death, provided their body is intact enough to be reanimated. Not only that, but a second rule states that these reanimated humans are able to do the same to other humans with the same restrictions.

Light can’t help but gawk at the hard to notice rules. He had been so careful to read over the rules before, but had missed this. Shameful trickery. Ryuk laughs again, watching the gears turn in Light’s head. These people are already dead, the death note can’t kill them again. Even if it could, they’d simply be zombies another time over.

~

Meanwhile, government officials that had already been pointing fingers about conspiracies on the deaths of criminals across the globe are now making much more serious accusations. This has now escalated from planned death to some kind of biowarfare, involving what is assumed to be a state of not actual death followed by this zombified state. There are arguments, with some people insisting that these are genuine zombies, not flukes. These people would be right.

L sits in solitude, listening through his computer to the chaos in Interpol. This Kira person, was this their intention all along? It’s not the feeling L had first gotten from them, but it had also only been a week since the Kira murders started. For all he knew, Kira could have planned this from the beginning. L feels rather confident that this was not, in fact, Kira’s goal, for if he was Kira and wanted to bring around the death of many people to become zombies, he wouldn’t have picked criminals. There would have been some overlap with criminals for sure, but just criminals? Not a chance.

Watari brings in L over the conference call, and L lays down the law. To prevent as much further tragedy as possible, no more reporting crime as much as possible. In fact, try to keep everything on paper. On the possibility that these aren’t genuine zombies, a cure for this zombified state should be researched. Furthermore, the finger pointing needs to stop. No country would have willingly inflicted this upon themselves along with the rest of the world. It goes on similarly with L heading to Japan.

~

Just how many criminals did Light already sentence to death? Pages upon pages, names and names, all over the world criminals continue to die. All over the world, corpses begin to reanimate. In more fortunate, more savvy places, people have already begun cremating all the corpses to circumvent the problem. It’s hard for a zombie to happen if it’s a pile of ash. Some places, however, are already under total lockdown. Mass zombie infestations turning people left and right.

Light pours over ideas, drilling Ryuk for answers, but Ryuk doesn’t give. He laughs, giving vague responses and going on about how interesting humans can be in a crisis. Light has had to completely halt his plans in cleansing the earth of criminals. By the sound of it, he won’t be able to continue his plans at all. The death note was just a farce, a false hope. Something designed to be dangled in front of his face like bait that he took like a starving fish.

“If I’m the one who created these zombies, shouldn’t I be able to control them? Since I’m able to control the actions of people before their death, to an extent.”

“No,” Ryuk laughs, “You can’t control a thing. This isn’t about you, Light. The power isn’t yours. You’re just using it.”

Of course. To a shinigami, to Ryuk, this is all just a funny game. Light feels burned by something he didn’t fully understand the scope of to begin with. It truly wasn’t his power, but he felt it was given to him with purpose. Bestowed upon him by some divine intervention because he is able to sway fate with a written name.

~

Zombies. Walking the streets, drudging, semi-intelligent despite being functionally brain dead. Varying degrees of rotted bodies. It’s funny and unfortunate, really, because one would think that a lockdown because of an actual zombie outbreak would mean people would stay inside as much as possible. That’s not the case.

“The government can’t take away my freedom!”

“The zombies are misunderstood!”

“There are no zombies!”

An actual zombie apocalypse could be in the works and there are people denying the existence of the zombies. Some people believe the zombies are real but straight up don’t care whatsoever. Then there are the people who think of the zombies in almost an animalistic sense, thinking that since they were once human they shouldn’t be killed again even though they are actively trying to eat at and therefore turn more humans.

It’s impressive. It makes Light want to double down and get rid of criminals more, give people a reason to think more clearly, but the more he tries to create that ideal world the more damage he’ll do.

L’s solution is simple, after an autopsy. Or vivisection, depending on how one would argue the inspection. The zombies are just animated corpses. It isn’t a disease. It isn’t a mass case of doctors and undertakers around the world collectively thinking all these bodies are corpses. Something impossibly otherworldly must be happening right here, right now. A force beyond their mortal comprehension is making these corpses come back.

“Kill them again,” L says bluntly, “Destroy them. If it’s a zombie, it’s already dead.”

“Ryuzaki, what about their families! Surely they wouldn’t want their loved ones being destroyed!” Somebody argues with L, of course. “What would you do if Watari became a zombie?!”

L puts a finger on his lip, dragging it down. His eyes go to the ceiling. “Unfortunately, I’d have to kill Watari. If the situation was reversed, he would need to do the same. Regardless, there is no saving them. The zombies exist only to destroy, so we must destroy them.”

Watari doesn’t respond, but what L said is true. He doesn’t want to think about it since he considers L to be his son, but if something were to happen that led L to become a zombie, he would want to be the one to put L down. He’d be much more upset if someone else did it.

~

Gun shots. Bats. Sledgehammers. People running over zombies with their cars. Some people have taken this as an excuse to let out their violent urges. Light sees this on the news and feels his blood boil. Something he wanted to prevent, senseless violence, has sprung up even more because of this damned note. Telling Ryuk to take it back is pointless. The damage is done. What would happen, though, if Light held onto it without using it? Would Ryuk kill him?

Light glares at the shinigami. “You said I was the first human you’ve seen write this many names so fast. That implies other humans have had a death note. Wouldn’t somebody have noticed a zombie before?”

“Who knows?” Ryuk floats over to the window, looking out at the abnormally empty street. “Maybe it’s been forgotten.”

There’s nothing Light can do to reverse the chaos, nothing he can do to end it. Fine, then. The worst have the worst have already been written, many other well-known and otherwise publicly known criminals have already been written. More zombies are bound to appear, but this is it. On a regular piece of notebook paper, Light writes himself a note explaining the situation, knowing he won’t necessarily believe it when he reads it.

“The death note is worthless to me now. If this is its purpose, I don’t want it. Take it back!”

“I’ve had a lot more fun than I expected already.” Ryuk laughs, grabbing the death note away from Light. “Too bad. I wanted to eat more of your apples. They’re so… juicy.”

“Leave already.”

~

Having excellent marksmanship, Matsuda is part of the force assigned to patrol. It’s not his favorite thing in the world, in fact, he’s a little scared of the zombies. Too bad for him his skills are simply too much to pass up on in a time like this. He’s got not just one, but two guns locked and loaded, ready to go. It’s unusual for him to have even one on him most of the time, but the circumstances are grim.

Think on the bright side, Matsuda. According to sources around the world, the only new zombies popping up are ones being turned by already existing zombies, which are dwindling. He’s already taken down a couple. It’s unnerving. Most of them look almost like they could be okay if they put on a little weight, got a little color. Initially, Matsuda was surprised that rigor mortis let them move at all, but was quickly informed by an irritated Aizawa that at most rigor mortis lasts up to 84 hours. Then Matsuda felt grossed out by the idea that the zombies might be overly squishy. That idea was quickly stamped out, as the zombies are probably not squishy at all due to dehydration. Would they even really have blood? Probably, right? The one he shot had some blood.

What disturbed Matsuda even more was that when he went to check the body, taking hold of the hand, the skin came clean off like a glove. Admittedly, it made him sick. None of the sighted zombies have looked particularly bloated, though, which is a positive for him. Matsuda wasn’t sure what he would do if they smelled any worse than this.

Smelled. Can they smell? Matsuda was lost in thought, wondering how the zombies managed to find their way around, when he was interrupted by his earpiece.

“Focus, Matsuda.”

“Sorry, Ryuzaki!”

He taps something on a device that lets a cleanup team know the location of the zombie before moving along, wondering again about a zombie’s senses. Depending on how they died, their eyes might be all dried up, so surely, they couldn’t rely on vision. Maybe hearing is the way to go unless they died already deaf. Then Matsuda remembered that these zombies aren’t actually a result of an ailment. Not the original ones at least. The ones turned after the fact were declared uncurable as well, and Matsuda had his doubts, but the human body can only take so much decay before it’s irreversible.

Another shot rings out. Matsuda means business.

~

Light sits at the dinner table with his family, discussing the zombie topic. Light now has no memories of ever having owned or used the death note, and his brain has filled in the gaps for him. His dad insists that they all continue to remain in lockdown, that he can make the runs himself if they absolutely need anything from the market. Light encourages his dad and offers assistance. Why wouldn’t he?

Sayu and Sahicko have a brief argument that ends with Soichiro telling Sayu to respect her mother. Light smiles. For some reason, he was beginning to miss this.

~

By the time the zombies are cleared up, L is unsatisfied. He was never able to pinpoint who or what exactly caused this out break. Many people try to tell him it was a freak accident, but he knows better. Even if it was an accident, it was no accident. L wanted to know so badly who the face behind the operation was. He clenches his fist and bangs it on the table.

“Kira…” Yes, whoever Kira was, if they’re still out there, might have been killed by their own creation. What a twist of fate. L decides for his own sanity that Kira is still alive, but he doesn’t press the subject. How could he? Kira is seemingly no longer active, and the zombie situation has been solved. If something like this ever happens again, L will be ready to track down and find Kira.

~