Arran Ringham

By default, Arran is a normal human being. Sometimes different things slither out from the cracks in reality. Sometimes the world gets darker or people begin grafting machines to their body. This is a place for those other versions of the man, alternate dimensions perhaps, or just a different life.

Six months ago, Arran Ringham passed away peacefully in his sleep. Then, that night, when it was time for his shift to begin, he got up, got dressed, and went in to work as if nothing was wrong. Exactly how and why Arran became one of the walking dead is unknown and not even Arran himself noticed the change at first. It wasn't until six months after his "death" that his repeated inability to check his own blood pressure after exercising led to the realization that he had no pulse. After a brief panic, Arran quickly realized the benefits of his condition. Whatever force has animated his body has made it more healthy than ever before, other than the fact that his heart no longer functions.

Arran no longer needs to eat, drink, or breathe. His body can still process food and liquid normally, but if his body were deprived of sustenance, he wouldn't even notice. He's also stronger and faster than a normal human should be but he's careful to conceal these benefits from those around him. He heals injuries at an astonishing speed and seems to be immune to pain.

Arran has avoided doctors and anyone else who might notice his true nature and is frightened of being discovered. He has no idea what's happened to him or what it means.

Arran was out and about one evening when this thing came out of nowhere and attacked him. It bit Arran and fled, leaving him severely injured but alive.

Taken to the hospital, his injury was cleaned up and stitched closed. The rabies test came back negative and he was sent home. The wounds healed quicker than expected but Arran wasn't opposed to getting back to the grind sooner than later. He'd been feeling restless and hated sitting around. It was on his first night off during the full moon that he blacked out and woke up in the woods, naked, curled around the carcass of a deer, blood on his mouth and hands.

Arran had become a werewolf.

Finding out such was real was a shock enough. Now he doesn't know what to do about it. He's burning benefit time to not have to work on the nights of the full moon because every time the lunar cycle comes around he transforms. People are starting to notice the odd changes in his behavior and he doesn't know what to do. There's no 'cure' he can be sure of; Wolfsbane? Mistletoe? Silver? Kill the werewolf that bit him? It's turning into a big problem. Worse... a part of him is almost excited by the changes. Sometimes he just wants to be reckless.

It was a fucked up situation to begin with. Some guy in excited delirium or just high as a kite on PCP was tearing up a parking lot outside a shipping mall and kicking the bumpers off cars. Arran was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The crazy charged his car faster than he'd have thought possible and started punching his way through the windshield with his bare hands. The guy ripped Arran out and the fight was on. It ended when Arran got pinned under the psycho, losing consciousness, and put five rounds into the man's chest but not before the nut job put his teeth in Arran's body.

Arran sleeps through the rest of the day. He wakes up the next night, at home, with no memory of how he got there and a new hunger. He's been turned into a vampire and now he needs a lot of answers, really quickly.

It's the zombie apocalypse and Arran's one of the few survivors left. He and his brothers have banded together to stake out a living in a post-disaster USA. Hopes for help coming have faded as weeks, months, then years passed with no aid. The world is in a state of collapse and the undead are everywhere. This is a survival story as well as a tale about human civilization in general. Zombies are the MacGuffin which propel the plot but the real focus is on the characters and the kinds of things they'd do, willingly or forced, to survive. Whether we die in a horde of zombie teeth or help re-establish civilization is a matter for our developing tale to address.