Zachariah woke up gasping and screaming with remembered pain. He looked at the clock and was surprised - he was early this time.
He sat up in his bed and thought long and hard about going to school. After a full week of horrible deaths and 'resets', as he had decided to call this phenomenon, Zack really could not see the point of continuing his education. A diploma can't kill zombies.
So, today he had a full 14 hours before the rain - what can Zack do to make his night go better? Stay inside and lock the doors? Buy a baseball bat for protection? Get kidnapped by gangsters and taken to their (hopefully well defended) lair?
All good options. After 'last night' Zack was feeling particularly desperate. He actually managed to live until 10pm before he was caught by a crowd of 'normal' zombies and torn apart.
That's a strange fact about the blood rain - which is inherently strange. It lasts about 15 minutes, and the puddles dry up 30 minutes after it stops. If too much gets on your skin while drying, you turn into a 'red' zombie. Red Zombies get faster and stronger as time goes by. They lock onto a human and pursue them until they die, then lock on the next one.
The humans killed by Red Zombies turn into zombies themselves - but unless they die in a puddle of blood rain, they don't turn red. These poor saps are your classic shambling corpses that are clumsy, slow and stupid. They are ravenous and gather together in crowds to hunt.
And there's a third group to look out for after the rain - humans. Twice already Zack has died by humans this 'week'.
The final fun fact about the rain - if you get some on you, but not enough to go zombie, you will change. These changes take time to activate, so Zack hasn't lived long enough to see many examples yet, but he's seen people shooting lightning from their fingertips, or breathing fire - crazy impossible things like that.
Add in his own Reset curse, which was probably caused by the rain, and it's easy to see just how much fun the apocalypse truly is.
So Zack set today's goal: Live Long Enough to See Tomorrow!
Grabbing his essentials, Zack left the house - he would gladly try to wait things out at home, but a helicopter fell from the sky and destroyed it one day, and Zack wasn't sure it wouldn't happen again.
He set out of the house and got on a bus out of the city - maybe he'll fare better in the countryside? Baseball bat in hand, he stares out the window gloomily, hoping to never wake up here again.