Chapter 4

4: At Wolf Cub Elementary, the Defectors were all frazzled and wary of any intrusions by the Revenant.  They had had considerable trouble dealing with the five that had come in the day before.  Richard Finestra had shut and barred the front door of the school to prevent any more of the undead from entering and then one by one the Defectors had destroyed the zombies.  Nobody had died and that was a testament to Richard's speed and skill at fighting.   Richard had been a faithful disciple to Rend, the Nocent from Sypraxia who had led the Defectors.  He listened to all his stories about the Collective and their ignorant ways.  The Nocent seemed to have the right idea in Richard's mind.  They understood the importance of physical strength and mental sharpness.  Who needs all the touchy feely, lovey dovey spiritual shit that the Collective wanted to live by?  Might makes right.  If you're too weak to kill, you don't deserve to live.
  Rend had taught him that the Nocent spirits were trapped inside the bodies of the Revenant.  If only there was a way to extract those spirits and implant them into healthy bodies, then the Nocent could rise from the ashes and dominate this world full of weak, pathetic people.  And all the while, Richard would be by their side, in a position of power and honor.
  The only thing that stood in his way was the Scathing, which was a Sypraxian disease that humans were not immune to.  It killed them.  It was spread through the zombie's saliva and other excretions.  Another possible roadblock to his success was the Untaken.  But they were all powerless fools.  In order to take up the gauntlet of world domination, Richard had to organize the Defectors and have a plan to free the Nocent from their prisons of ravaged flesh.  He needed to find a way to defeat the Scathing.  The Untaken were of little concern.  The Revenant would destroy them all, given enough time.  He was sure of it.  Nothing to do now but kill some zombies.  Any of the undead with a bandage on their hand was spared.  No bandage meant they were fair game.