This is a narrative of "Torment", covering the last four chapters. Written by the Z Man.
Over a century ago, a man of profound intellect by the name
of Doctor Thomas Orment came to this place with a single-minded purpose. As
remarkable as his mind was, there was one thing even greater, and that was his
love for his wife, Helen. The good Doctor moved here in search of a cure for
his ailing bride, who had fallen unexpectedly ill.
Doctor Orment had been working on a restorative serum for
many years, and in this place he was able to find the solitude needed to
produce the formula that would save his beloved Helen’s life. Using
unconventional techniques frowned upon by others in his profession, Doctor
Thomas Orment theorized that he could even make the dead live again, given the
right substance to be used as an accelerator. He experimented with cadavers,
and proclaimed success with a previously unknown type of enzyme. It worked
slowly, and would take one hundred years to activate in human flesh. He
injected his beloved wife, and then he injected himself last.
One hundred years later, the good Doctor and his beloved
wife arose from the dead, and yet, things were not as he envisioned. While he
still retained all of the faculties of his life from a century before, his wife
Helen did not fare so well. The other cadavers that he had injected had also
risen from the cold clutches of death, and to his horror, they had become blood
thirsty zombies. Poor Helen had suffered this horrible fate, too. The living in
this age had become prey for the risen undead. Nightmarish creatures roamed the
landscape, and tormented the living. They were seemingly unstoppable.
Doctor Thomas Orment had failed to cure his beloved wife
Helen, and had instead loosed a horde of blood thirsty zombies upon an
unsuspecting world. In his desperation, he called upon the Eugene Cracker
Agency, a loose knit group of hunters that often sought out unconventional
quarry. While the bounty hunters worked at destroying the zombies, the Doctor
continued his work, intent upon curing his wife of this dreadful malady. He was
determined to set right the error he had made previously.
Doctor Thomas Orment developed a new serum, and while Helen
lay resting in Cloverdale Cemetery,
he injected himself in order to continue his work. She had gone totally insane
and the Doctor had the poor woman interred in the cemetery because he could no
longer bear to see her that way. As for the bounty hunters, all but one had
fallen victim to the zombie hordes, and that one member could not be found
anywhere. Eugene Cracker himself had died at the hands of the voracious undead.
As the doctor worked tirelessly on a cure, he received a
message from a contemporary, a specialist by the name of Doctor Gunther E.
Vilstein. He convinced Doctor Orment to open a clinic disguised as a sanitorium,
and to use uninfected patients to test his serums. The serum reacted violently
with dead flesh, and using fresh patients would help solve that problem. Doctor
Orment agreed and gave over control of his facilities to Doctor Vilstein. It
was just in time, as Doctor Orment’s mind had begun to deteriorate and he could
no longer be trusted to complete the tests. Doctor Orment locked himself away
and let Doctor Vilstein continue the work he had started so long ago.
Doctor Orment had devolved into something less than human, and
doctor Vilstein discovered that the man had broken free of his quarantine. Upon
searching the grounds, Doctor Vilstein discovered that his predecessor had
fallen into a pool of acid left behind by the bounty hunters, and all but his
skeleton had dissolved in the noxious pool of fluid. Doctor Vilstein discovered
that the reason Doctor Orment’s skeleton had survived the disintegrating action
of the acid was because the serum had hardened his bones to the point of
invulnerability. His skeleton was indestructible.
Doctor Vilstein knew that he would have to discover exactly
how Doctor Orment had created the serums, for if the bones of the remaining
zombies or any the newer patients developed these properties, then no one
anywhere would be safe. He would have to work swiftly, or all would be lost.
In Cloverdale Cemetery,
there were monstrous things beginning to stir. Creatures that hungered for living flesh and
would not be denied that which they desired.
