Episode 2
Detective Zenzone ep 2: Patient O
The day started like any other, wake up, brush your teeth, kill the monster trying to crawl up the shower drain, eat breakfast.
But then as I was finishing the last bites of my waffles Greenwings walked into the room, “We have a new mission Zen.”
“What is it?” I asked as Butler wiped my face.
“I intercepted some CIA communications, apparently one of their secret island bases is sending out an SOS.” Greenwings replied as he “ate” some waffles via absorbing them through his shadowy hand.
I looked up from my meal, “And we should care because…?”
“Because they mentioned zombies in the SOS.”
I suddenly stood up and grabbed my pistol, “Zombies? This could only be because of two things!”
“Fralegend…” Greenwings began.
“Or Raincoat Corp…” I finished as I went to my desk and fiddled around with the computer.
“Greenwings! Do some reconnaissance on the island and tell Butler it’s coordinates. Butler! Prepare the teleporter and pack some supplies, make sure to also pack various antidotes and talismans, we don’t know if this outbreak is biological or mystical.”
“And what will you do?” Butler asked as he went to the closet.
I looked up from the computer, my face grim. “I’m going to play Animal Crossing… tell me when we’re ready to go.”
duh duh-duh duh
Detective zenzone is the best detective there is!
duhduhduh
All other detectives are pieces of 
!
He’s smart he’s strong he’s really the best!
He’ll stand up to any teeeest!
duhduh duheaaeaearra
He also has some okay-ish sidekicks!
And a lot of villains!
And though they’re smart as bricks!
They can still be a pain!
duh duh duh duhduhduh duh duh duh
reahareahaero
DE-TE-CT-IVE ZEEEEEEEN!
He’s the best!
30 minutes later and Butler had finished packing, Greenwings came back from reconnaissance and I had finished my zombie killing practice.
It was time to go…
We stepped into the teleporter and in the blink of an eye we had arrived at a tropical paradise.
Or maybe it was a tropical hell…
Fires were all around us, burning trees and straw huts to the ground as people ran away from screeching monsters.
“Greenwings! Use Butler as a human shield and stand behind me, I’m going t-” I was cut off when a dark form blurred across the burning village, putting out the flames and snapping the necks of the zombies.
Clearly, they were so afraid of me that they killed themselves, it was the only explanation.
The survivors of the village looked up at me with awe filled eyes.
I extended my arms “Don’t worry, I have saved you from the zombies! There is no need to throw a feast in my honor and declare me your patron deity!”
Butler whispered in my ear “Is saying that really necessary?”
I chuckled under my breath slightly, “if I had a nickel for every time an island tribe declared me their patron deity then I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird it happened twice right?”
An elderly man walked up to me, his large headdress made me assume him to be their chieftain or elder, “We thank you for the great deed you have done, may I ask, what is your name oh great savior.”
“My name is Detective U. Zenzonegaming, what happened here?”
The Elder hummed and turned towards a massive concrete wall that had been just 5 feet away from me, how did I miss that? “Our island was not always home to the undead, surprise surprise, one fateful day two men came to our island on a canoe of shiny and grey wood. They said that they belonged to a tribe called, Umbrella Corp.”
“They made a deal with our tribe, they took some land in exchange for supplies, and constructed a magical temple. But ever since they have arrived people from the tribe have gone missing, our waters have been poisoned, and now the dead rise again…”
The Elder trailed off, his gaze becoming pained, “I fear that I am not long for this world. Though that’s not related to the undead, I’m just very old…”
“Well don’t worry Sir, Zenzone, Twilight and I will solve your problems. Just make sure you evacuate everyone to a safe place very far from here, uh, the only way we can get rid of the curse might be to burn the area…” Butler said as we began to enter the building through a backdoor, The Elder stayed there for a moment before walking back to the village.
Little did any of us know, that The Elder grinned deviously once we had entered.
The hallways were bright, illuminated by dozens of fluorescent light fixtures. There was also a surprisingly comfortable carpet on the floor, why a lab had carpeting I would never know.
Oh also there was a shambling corpse about 4 feet away from us.
I quickly pulled out my pistol and sprayed the zombie’s decaying grey matter across the hallways, instantly ruining the carpeting around us.
“I’ll take a sample and see what this thing is.” Butler said as he pricked the re-dead zombie with a needle, the blood that came out was a sickening black sludge, but it would do.
We continued onwards as Butler analyzed the sample, using various pieces of equipment he had taken from base.
Butler looked up from his work “Okay, it looks like the plague is biological in nature, which can only mean that Umbrella Corp is behind this. But I’ve never seen this strain before, it looks like it’s been modified for increased durability and infectivity.”
Greenwings turned towards him “I certainly haven’t noticed that so far.”
“Well, that’s because you’ve all been destroying or disconnecting their brains, if you did anything else then you would probably see the zombie just shrug it off, I’d even wager that the ones outside this facility are still alive, just unable to move.”
I glanced back at them, “Eh, we’ll get them all when this place gets firebombed. What I’m more concerned with is how the US government is working with Raincoat Corp, this is a joint facility right?”
Butler looked around, “Well it’s a government facility and staffed by Raincoat Corp, so it must be.”
Our musings were cut off by a veritable horde of zombies that turned a corner, there must have been at least 30 of them, all dressed in lab coats or security uniforms.
Green rushed over to the group and began to toss the zombies about, stopping them from getting to me or Butler.
I carefully aimed my pistol and took fire, each shot dropping a zombie.
Within a few minutes all of the zombies were dead, and we were free to continue moving down the hallway.
We eventually reached a door that led off to a laboratory, science equipment and cages strewn across the tables and floor.
Butler immediately went to a computer and began to hack into it, while I investigated the room and Greenwings stood guard at the door.
I looked at a bloody cage, far too small to hold anything other than a rodent inside of it, “Patient O…” I read from a label.
Butler glanced away from his work at me, “D-don’t you mean patient Zero?”
“What? What’s a “Zero”, it says patient O.” I pointed at the label.
“It’s pronounced Zero…”
I chuckled, “Yeah right, next you’ll tell me that Twoteen or Oneteen is pronounced something ridiculous!”
Butler opened his mouth but decided against saying anything, he had just cracked the computer’s code anyways.
We waited around for a while until Butler gave a sigh of frustration, “I’ve been looking through this thing top to bottom but I can’t see anything about a virus, it’s just inane Headnovel posts or cat videos! Who’s desk even is thi-” Butler suddenly stopped as his eyes widened.
“What is it?” I asked as I moved over.
“The experiment records are all just… cosmetics testing, literally nothing on here relates to viral research or zombies…” I realized that there was no viral testing going on here – completely by myself – and decided to use my unmatched skills in deduction to figure out what was going on.
Time seemed to slow down as I considered the various clues that I had seen throughout my day.
Zombies… Cosmetics… Tribal Elder… Waffles…
Zombies with lipstick?
I gasped, “Run! We need to get out of here as fast as possible or we’ll all die!” sensing the subtle urgency in my tone Greenwings dashed over to me and Butler and picked us up before teleporting out of the lab, and not a second too soon, for as soon as we were out of the building it exploded in a fiery blaze.
“What’s going on? What’s happening?!” Butler asked as he tried to catch his breath.
“The facility isn’t Raincoat Corp!”
“The Tribe is.”
We all spun around to see the tribal elder standing before us, holding up a Raincoat Corp symbol.
He then tore off the loincloth and necklaces he had been wearing, revealing an entire suit and lab coat beneath it.
“But… how?!” Butler asked.
“Well, I suppose I could tell you. See, this island was uninhabited until that government facility was built, and Raincoat Corp had the perfect idea for a trap for you three. We would release our newest zombie virus strain, and quickly set up a fake village outside of the facility in order to trick you into going in! and it would have worked as well, if you were not so amazingly intelligent!” the Elder said calmly as he began to back away.
“So wait, all of those people were just actors?”
“Yes and no, they were hired actors, but the zombie attack was real, we needed to make it all look convincing otherwise the detective would realize it all far too soon. We just told them we were filming a new season of survivor.”
I pointed my gun at the Elder, “You’re going away for a long time…” I looked at a nametag on his coat, “Bob.”
Bob chuckled, “hehehe, oh I heavily disagree with that notion, Detective.” He discreetly dropped a small smoke bomb which temporarily blinded me.
“Quick! We need to chase aft-”
Greenwings interrupted me, “Done.”
The smoke cleared to reveal Bob, whose neck had been twisted around ninety degrees.
Looks like he was so scared of me he killed himself.
Why does that keep happening?
I looked at my too assistants, “Well the outbreak’s been destroyed, the area is currently burning, and the culprits are all dead… you guys want to have lunch?” they shouted agreements and we all teleported back to base, right before the helicopters arrived.
And everything would be great, for the rest of the day at least.
General Marcus Twain walked across the smoldering remains of the cosmetics facility, his aide walking besides him.
“This is them… it practically has them written all over it!” General Twain shouted as he punted a burnt zombie head, “Whenever there’s some kind of hush-hush disaster, some kind of paranormal event we get called in, but they always deal with it first!”
“It… is a problem sir…” his aide nervously stated as he remembered the various budget cuts they had been inflicted with, “But I believe that I may have found a… solution for us.”
General Twain looked over at him, “What?”
The aide handed over his tablet, and as the General looked over it his eyes widened, then narrowed as he chuckled grimly.
“Well, tell the boys in RnD to get on this ASAP, I want Project Nemesis up yesterday.”
Detective Zen and his cronies didn’t stand a chance…
