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Ok, so this story is weird but something I vowed to write.
Years ago a movie came out starring Brad Pitt called WORLD WAR Z. The character played by Brad Pitt was name Gerry Lane. Not my name but close to it (Jerry Lane).
I vowed to write a story about a chiropractor zombie hunter named Brad Pitt.
This is that story:
Brad Pitt Chiropractor Zombie Hunter
Dr. Pitt: The Adjustment
Chapter One – The Healer Who Hunted
The world ended, but spines still needed adjusting.
That was the thought Dr. Brad Pitt kept repeating to himself
as he crouched in the ruins of what used to be a suburban strip mall. The neon
sign overhead—half of the letters burned out—still read “CHIROP AC IC CARE.”
Once, this had been his office. A place where patients had laughed nervously as
he coaxed their vertebrae into alignment, where he’d tapped charts of the
nervous system like a conductor pointing to musical notes. Now, the waiting
room couches were shredded, the fish tank long since shattered, and the air
smelled faintly of mildew and old fear.
Brad tightened his grip on the steel crowbar slung across
his back. It wasn’t just a crowbar—it also had one of his Graston tools,
polished and wrapped in worn leather so it fit his palm like it had been
crafted for him. He had added a 10-lb weight to give it more heft but it was
the one referred to as ‘The Handlebars.’ Most hunters used machetes, guns, or
spiked bats. Brad preferred leverage. Pressure. The clean, satisfying click of
bone breaking back into place.
Across the cracked parking lot, shadows shifted. Zombies.
Their gait was familiar to him—not just as predators, but as patients. He
couldn’t help analyzing them as they lurched forward: hunched thoracic
kyphosis, cervical extension fixed at grotesque angles, lumbar compression
grinding their movements down to jerky spasms. They were monsters, yes, but
they were also puzzles.
“Pitt!” a voice hissed from the roof of a nearby pharmacy.
“What the hell are you doing?”
It was Lucille, one of the colony’s hunters. Her silhouette
was sharp against the moonlight; rifle trained on the parking lot. “You see
’em, right? Don’t just stand there—take the shot!”
Brad didn’t answer. Instead, he crouched lower, eyes locked
on the lead zombie. Female, maybe forty before death, jaw slack and arms bent
wrong at the elbows. Each step was a symphony of dysfunction. Her age at death and her street clothes
indicated that she had probably died as
a victim of the group she was now part of.
He waited until the creature lunged. Then he moved.
The crowbar tool swung up in a perfect arc, slipping under
her chin and snapping her cervical spine with a crisp pop. The sound was clean,
almost clinical. For a fraction of a second, Brad swore he saw clarity flicker
in her cloudy eyes. Not hunger. Not rage. Something else. Then she dropped,
lifeless at his feet.
Behind him, Lucille groaned. “You’re sick, you know that?
You actually enjoy it.”
Brad didn’t argue. He wasn’t sure she was wrong.
By the time he cleared the lot, six more corpses lay
sprawled, each dispatched with the same precision. Not hacked. Not smashed. Adjusted.
That was the word that haunted his thoughts. Even in this world of rot and
ruin, his hands couldn’t stop seeking alignment, balance, relief.
He dragged the bodies into a pile and crouched beside them.
His gloves were slick, his shoulders sore, but he still pressed his fingers
against a dead man’s cervical spine, feeling the stiffness, the locked joints.
“Still jammed,” he muttered. “Still not right.”
“Still dead,” Lucille called down. She climbed from the
pharmacy roof and strode across the lot, shaking her head. “Pitt, you’re
supposed to be hunting. Instead, you’re… what? Treating them?”
“I’m learning,” Brad said softly.
“Learning what? How to die stupid?”
He didn’t reply. He just stood, wiping his hands on his
coat, and stared at the horizon. The moans of more wanderers echoed faintly
through the night. They were never far. They never stopped coming. This pile would start to stink soon; the rot
permeating the air. Faster than before
because these corpses were dead when he stopped them. It was more than the rot, it was the extra
odor of the dirt that many had come out from.
Most hunters killed to survive. Brad hunted for something
else. Something he couldn’t yet name.
That night, he dreamt of spines. Endless columns of bone
stretching into the sky like ladders to heaven. He dreamt of adjustments so
pure they didn’t just heal bodies, but freed souls.
When he woke, his decision was already made.
Tomorrow, he would hunt again. Not for food. Not for glory.
But for truth.
And maybe, just maybe, for redemption.
Chapter Two – The Outcast
The colony woke to the sound of hammering.
Barricades always needed patching, holes always needed
plugging. The world had become a leaky ship taking on water from every side,
and every survivor had a job: some scavenged, some hunted, some guarded. Brad Pitt?
His job, according to most, was to kill.
But killing wasn’t what he was after.
He sat at the edge of camp sharpening his crowbar on a flat
stone, eyes half-lidded as the steel rasped and sang. Each pass of the blade
wasn’t just maintenance—it was meditation. The others hefted their weapons like
hammers. Brad treated his like a scalpel.
“Doc,” said Lucille, walking up with a ration tin in hand.
She tossed it toward him. “Eat something. You look like hell.”
Brad caught it without looking. Cold beans. He ate in
silence.
“You hear the talk last night?” Lucille pressed. “They’re
saying you’re cracked. Larry wants you off hunting detail. Says you’re a
liability.”
Brad chewed slowly. “Larry thinks everything is a nail
because he only knows how to swing a hammer.”
Lucille chuckled under her breath. “Careful. He’ll break
your face if he hears that.”
“Then I’ll fix it.”
She smirked, but her expression softened. “I’m serious, Pitt.
They don’t understand you. Half of them are scared of you. The other half just
think you’re nuts. You keep talkin’ about spines and alignment like it means
something in this world. To them, it’s just… nonsense.”
Brad finished the tin and set it down. His eyes drifted to
the horizon, where faint groans echoed in the morning air. “It’s not nonsense.
It’s purpose. They see monsters. I see blockages. Chains. Every bent vertebra,
every locked joint is another soul stuck in its cage. If I can free even one…”
“Then what?” Lucille cut in. “You think they’ll suddenly
thank you? Offer to farm cabbage instead of chewing our throats?”
“I don’t know.” Brad’s voice was low, haunted. “But I saw
it, Lucille. In her eyes. Just for a second. She was free.”
Lucille shook her head. “And you wonder why they call you
the outcast.”
The meeting that night was tense.
Survivors gathered in the hollowed-out shell of the grocery
store, lantern light casting long shadows on cracked tiles. Larry stood at the
front, arms crossed, his beard greasy and his eyes sharp with disdain.
“This ain’t complicated,” Larry barked. “Pitt’s a liability.
Out there playin’ doctor with corpses while the rest of us are fightin’ for our
lives. He’s gonna get someone killed.”
A chorus of agreement rumbled from the crowd.
Brad leaned on his crowbar like a cane, silent, unflinching.
“He doesn’t kill clean,” another hunter shouted. “Takes his
time. Twists their heads like he’s fixin’ a toy. It ain’t right.”
More nods. More mutters.
Finally, Brad spoke. His voice was calm, almost too calm.
“You think survival is enough. That killing them ends the story. But it
doesn’t. They come back. Again and again. Because no one is asking the right
question.”
The room quieted slightly, curiosity sneaking through the
hostility.
“What question?” Larry spat.
“What if they’re not gone?” Brad’s eyes swept the crowd.
“What if their souls are trapped? What if the spine—the bridge—holds them
prisoner in their own flesh? What if an adjustment isn’t just breaking a neck,
but breaking chains?”
The silence that followed was heavy. Then Larry laughed.
Ugly, mocking laughter that filled the room. “Hear that? He thinks he’s some
kinda savior. Thinks he can cure zombies with a back rub!”
The laughter spread. Some shook their heads. Others avoided Brad’s
gaze.
“You’re an outcast, Pitt,” Larry sneered. “You’re not a
hunter. You’re not even sane. If you had your way, we’d all be dead already.”
Brad felt the heat of humiliation rise in his chest, but he
didn’t lash out. He only tightened his grip on the crowbar until the leather
wrap bit into his palm.
“Maybe,” he said softly. “Or maybe you’re blind to the
truth.”
The meeting dissolved in jeers and curses. But in the back
of the room, Lucille caught Brad’s eye. She didn’t speak, but for the first
time, he saw doubt flicker in her expression—not doubt in him, but doubt in the
certainty of the others.
That night, Brad walked alone along the barricades. The
stars above were sharp pinpricks, the moans beyond the walls a constant chorus.
He thought about Jonathan Livingston Seagull—a book his father had once read to
him as a boy. A story of striving, of going beyond what was expected.
The memory rose in him like a challenge.
If Jonathan could defy the limits of flight, could Brad not
defy the limits of death itself?
The colony could call him mad. They could call him outcast.
But Brad Pitt knew one thing: he was closer to the truth than they could ever
understand.
And he would find it—even if it meant standing alone.
Chapter Three – The Experiment
Brad had never been patient, yet patience was the one thing
he needed most that night.
The creature was small, barely moving, a husk of a human,
collapsed near the edge of the woods. Its arms bent unnaturally, legs twisted,
neck locked in a grotesque angle. Normally, hunters would have finished it with
one clean strike. But Brad didn’t lift his crowbar.
Instead, he approached slowly, talking to it in a soft,
almost whispered rhythm. “Easy… easy. I’m not going to hurt you. Just… let me
see your spine.”
The zombie groaned, a guttural sound that made Lucille
shiver from her perch on the ridge. She had followed him silently, curious and
worried, but Brad didn’t notice. His eyes were fixed on the creature, studying
its kyphosis, the way its vertebrae had collapsed.
He had tried this once before—on another, larger corpse—and
failed. It had been reckless, naive. The memory haunted him. But tonight,
something felt different.
Brad lifted the crowbar, not to strike, but to stabilize, to
align. He positioned it along the creature’s bent spine, pressing gently,
rotating carefully. The zombie shivered violently, a twitch in its lumbar
region. And then—a click.
The world seemed to pause.
The zombie’s eyes flickered—not the vacant, predatory gaze
he was used to, but a spark of recognition. A whisper of consciousness.
Lucille gasped. “Pitt… what did you—?”
Brad’s heart pounded. “It’s working. Just… hold still.”
He moved along the spine systematically, vertebra by
vertebra. Adjustments were precise, deliberate, almost surgical. He could feel
the tension release under his fingers, the unnatural lock loosening. With each
click, the zombie’s movements became smoother, less jerky, less… unnatural.
“Are you insane?” Lucille whispered. “It’s going to bite
you!”
Brad ignored her, focused entirely on the rhythm of bones
realigning. “No,” he said softly. “It’s learning. Like a student. Just… a very
slow, very stubborn student.”
Minutes stretched into an hour. Sweat ran down his temples.
He took out a pair of thick leather gloves to wear on his hands. While he tried to show purpose by using his
hands he also knew that a bite would be his own slow death so he wore the
gloves whenever he could. He knew that
the zombies could not bite through the gloves because the safeguard of the
gloves were stronger than the jaws of any zombie. Brad surmised that the zombies could not have
a strength greater than they had as living humans. Being a zombie did not give them extra
abilities that they did not have in life.
Minutes stretched into an hour. Sweat ran down his temples,
mixed with grime, but Brad didn’t relent. Finally, he straightened the
creature’s neck completely. The zombie’s groans softened, its eyes clearer than
before.
Then it blinked.
Brad stumbled back. Lucille’s hand flew to her mouth. The
zombie reached up, hesitated, and… smiled. A faint, almost human smile.
It wasn’t fully awake. It wasn’t fully alive. But it was no
longer the mindless monster it had been.
Brad sank to his knees. “Do you see? Do you see what’s
possible?”
Lucille shook her head slowly. “I… I don’t even know what to
call that. You… you fixed it?”
He shook his head. “Not fixed. Freed. For a moment. But
enough to know it can be done.”
The experiment weighed heavily on him. Back at the colony,
the hunters stared in disbelief when he described it.
“You… what? You brought one back to life?” Larry’s voice
cracked with rage and fear. “You’re playing god, Pitt! You’re insane!”
“Not god,” Brad replied. “Just someone who sees potential
where others see hopelessness. I haven’t raised it. I’ve unlocked it.”
“Unlocked it?” The murmurs spread. “What kind of nonsense is
this?”
Brad ignored them. He could already feel the seeds of
understanding taking root in Lucille. She alone asked the question he’d been
waiting for:
“And… you think you can do it with more?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “But I’ll need time, and I’ll need
to be careful. One mistake…” He gestured at the pile of half-dead creatures he
had already studied, “…and we’re dead. But one success…” His gaze hardened,
full of resolve. “…and maybe… just maybe, we can change everything.”
The others shook their heads. They would never understand.
But Brad didn’t care. The path was clear: study, adjust, and perfect. If
Jonathan Livingston Seagull had flown higher than anyone believed possible, Brad
would push the limits of the living… and the almost-living.
That night, he didn’t sleep.
He studied the spinal column diagrams he had sketched,
tracing vertebrae with his fingers, visualizing adjustments, imagining freedom.
Outside, the moans continued, but inside him, a quiet thrill stirred. A
breakthrough had begun.
And for the first time, Brad Pitt felt he wasn’t just
surviving. He was transcending.
Chapter Four – The Quest for Mastery
Brad Pitt woke before dawn, as he had every day since the
experiment.
The camp was quiet. Even the wind seemed to pause, as if
holding its breath, allowing him to move through the empty streets with the
precision of a surgeon. The zombies were out there somewhere, their moans faint
on the horizon, but he didn’t hunt yet. Not today. Today, he would train.
He laid out the skeletal diagrams he had scavenged from old
medical textbooks and old anatomy posters that had survived the collapse.
Vertebrae, discs, nerves—every detail he had memorized. He traced his fingers
along the lines, rehearsing the adjustments in his mind, visualizing how
pressure, angle, and timing could free what others called “lost.”
Brad also knew that what he was considering would be basic
ideas that he and other chiropractors had learned in school but now applied in
a different way.
Then he moved outside, dragging a restrained, semi-conscious
zombie into the small clearing behind the colony. Lucille watched from a safe
distance, arms crossed, a mix of fascination and fear in her eyes.
“You really gonna do this again?” she asked.
“Yes,” Brad said. His voice was calm, resolute. “If I can
understand it, I can improve it. If I improve it, I can save more.”
Lucille shook her head, but didn’t interfere.
The zombie sagged in its bonds, but its eyes followed Brad
with flickering recognition. He knelt beside it, gently palpating the spine,
noting areas of collapse, tension, and unnatural twist. Every vertebra was a
puzzle, every joint a locked door.
He worked slowly at first. A lumbar adjustment here, a
cervical release there. The creature groaned, tensed, shuddered—and then
something remarkable happened: it began to mimic his movements. Not fully, not
consciously, but its limbs flexed in rhythm with his hands.
Brad’s heart raced. “Yes… yes, that’s it.”
Hours passed. Sweat ran down his brow, staining his coat.
Each adjustment became smoother, faster, more precise. The zombie responded
faster. Its groans softened. Its eyes cleared incrementally. By nightfall, it
could walk—awkwardly, uncertainly, but with a rhythm closer to the living than
the undead.
Lucille finally approached. “It’s… walking,” she said, awe
breaking through her fear.
“Yes,” Brad whispered, almost to himself. “But that’s not
the limit. Not yet.”
For days, he repeated the exercises. Each morning, he ran
drills on a new subject. Each afternoon, he reviewed anatomy, spinal mechanics,
and movement. Each night, he documented every success and failure in a journal,
sketches and notes sprawling across pages like a cartographer mapping a new
world.
The colony grew restless. Rumors spread: “Pitt spends all
his time with the zombies but doesn’t just kill them.” “He’s dangerous.” “He’s
obsessed.”
Brad didn’t argue. He didn’t need their approval. He had a
goal that transcended their fear.
By the end of the week, his methods were refined. He could
bring a zombie to partial consciousness in minutes. Some even retained
fragments of memory—simple gestures, flashes of recognition, moments of
humanity. He had discovered a rhythm, a technique that was part hunt, part
surgery, part meditation.
And yet, the more he succeeded, the more he realized how
much further he could go.
“I’m not done,” he told Lucille one evening as the sun sank
blood-red over the horizon. “They’re trapped, every one of them. But their
souls… I can reach them. Not completely, perhaps, but enough to show them
something they’ve forgotten: movement, balance, life.”
“You’re chasing ghosts,” Lucille said quietly, almost a
warning.
“Perhaps,” he replied. “But every ghost I free is a step
closer to understanding. To mastery. To… something greater.”
In the solitude of his training, Brad began to understand
the deeper lesson. Mastery wasn’t just about technique or skill. It was about
vision. About seeing potential where others saw only decay. About daring to
imagine a world where a monster could, for a fleeting moment, touch life again. These living corpses were once humans with
thoughts and ideas. Death did not
decline them from their former humanity.
He only needed to restore what had been once a living person with
memories and social connection.
Brad refused to accept the limits of the body—or the mind.
He could be something greater too, in his own way: through chiropractic adjustments,
through rhythm, through unlocking the trapped essence within the fallen.
And with each success, he felt it: a pull toward something
higher, something beyond mere survival.
Chapter Five – The Revelation
The storm had come without warning.
Rain pelted the ruins of the city, turning streets into
rivers and alleyways into mazes of mud and debris. The moans of the undead were
muffled beneath the roar of thunder, but Brad didn’t slow. He moved like a
shadow through the wreckage, crowbar in hand, eyes scanning every corner for
movement, every twitch that might signal life—or almost-life.
He was searching for something he didn’t fully understand. A
hunch. A whisper he had heard in dreams. And he found it, in the form of an old
man standing amid the ruins of a collapsed clinic, bones of the building
jutting around him like broken ribs.
“You’re Brad Pitt,” the man said without preamble. His voice
was calm, steady, resonant. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Brad froze, crowbar halfway lifted. “Who… are you?”
“I am a healer,” the man said simply. “Or rather, I was, and
perhaps I still am. You have the same eyes I once had—curiosity, determination,
vision. And a madness the rest of the world will never understand.”
The man stepped closer, holding a leather satchel. Despite
his age, he moved with the grace of someone fully in control of his body, every
vertebra aligned perfectly, every movement deliberate. Brad felt a strange pang
of recognition.
“I’ve heard of you,” the old man continued. “The doctor and
healer who touches the dead and sees the living. You are doing what most
hunters cannot even imagine. And yet… you are only beginning to see the path.”
Brad lowered his crowbar slightly, intrigued despite
himself. “You mean… you understand?”
“I do,” the man said. “I understand that the spine is more
than bone. It is a map of the self, a channel through which life flows. Every
block, every twist, is a shadow upon the spirit. Free the body, and you free
more than movement. You free potential. You free… the soul.”
Brad’s chest tightened. “I thought I was alone.”
“You are not alone,” the old man said. “Few can see what you
see. Fewer still have the courage to act. You chase more than survival, more
than revenge. You chase understanding. Mastery. And that is the first step
toward transcendence.”
He opened his satchel and removed a small wooden model of a
spine. Each vertebra was carved with precision, joints connected by flexible
leather. “This,” he said, handing it to Brad, “is what you must study. Not just
the mechanics, but the essence. Understand the flow. Feel it. Then you will
know what must be adjusted, and what must be left to its own path.”
Brad held the model reverently, tracing each vertebra with
his fingers. “I… I’ve been trying. But it’s not enough. Every day I learn
something new, but the limits… they feel infinite.”
The old man smiled. “The limits exist only in your mind. Birds
do not stop at the horizon, and neither will you. To fly, to reach mastery, you
must see beyond the flesh. You must see the spark within, even if it flickers
faintly in what others call a corpse.”
Thunder rolled, and Brad felt it resonate in his chest.
Something shifted within him. For the first time, he realized that his work was
not just about adjustment, not just about freeing the trapped undead. It was a
philosophy, a calling, a discipline of perfection.
“Then I will continue,” Brad said, voice firm. “Not because
it is safe. Not because it is easy. But because it is right. Because it is
necessary. I need to make these dead people alive if only briefly. I need to form a bridge between the living
and the dead; the living and their enemies.
“Good,” the old man said. “And remember: mastery is not in
the hands alone, but in the mind and heart. A spine aligned is not merely
straightened—it is awakened. Your journey is far from over, Pitt. But you are
ready.”
The rain began to ease. Lightning illuminated the ruins in
sharp flashes, and for a moment, Brad felt clarity. The world had not changed,
but he had. His purpose was no longer a whisper in his mind—it was a guiding
light.
He looked at the old man. “Will you… teach me?”
The healer shook his head. “No. I can guide, but the path is
yours to walk. You will learn from the living, the almost-living, and even the
dead. And one day, perhaps, you will see the world as it was meant to be
seen—unbound, unbroken, free.
“To be honest, I think that you already have the tools you
need, the training to work from, and the desire and drive to create a new way
of think in a world none of us were prepared to encounter.”
Brad nodded. His heart raced, his hands ached, but his mind
was clear. For the first time, he understood what he was doing—and why. He was
not merely a hunter, nor merely a healer. He was an artist, a master, a seeker
of truth beyond death.
And somewhere deep inside, the faint echo of a bird’s wings
seemed to whisper: Fly higher. Fly further. Beyond.
Chapter Six – The Great Battle
The horizon glowed orange. Not sunrise. Not fire from the
few scattered survivors’ cooking fires. It was the horde, countless figures
shuffling, staggering, moaning—a tide of decay rolling toward the colony.
Larry was at the barricade, already yelling orders.
“Positions! Shields up! Fire when ready!”
The hunters moved with mechanical precision, weapons ready.
And Brad Pitt stood apart, crowbar in hand, eyes scanning the advancing mass.
He had trained for this moment. Not just training the body,
but training the mind. Every adjustment, every hour of study, every failure and
success had led here.
But this was not a typical fight. Most would rush, hack,
shoot—slaughter without thought. Brad would do something different. Something
no one else would dare.
As the horde reached the perimeter, Brad stepped forward.
“Wait,” he called to Lucille. “Watch.”
Larry spat on the ground. “You can’t—”
The first zombies reached the fence. Brad lunged. Not with a
swing meant to kill, but with a precise adjustment—a lumbar snap that freed a
creature’s locked posture. The zombie staggered… paused… and then,
astonishingly, it stepped back.
The hunters froze.
Brad moved among the horde with speed and grace, striking
vertebrae into alignment, realigning twisted spines, freeing the smallest
sparks of cognition within the monsters. Some responded, some didn’t—but enough
did to begin the chaos in the ranks.
One of the newly “freed” zombies turned, its eyes flickering
human for the first time in weeks. It didn’t bite. It helped another, guiding
it to safety. A ripple of confusion spread through the horde.
“Holy—what is he doing?” Lucille yelled, ducking behind the
barricade.
“Saving them?” someone muttered. “Or… what the hell?”
Larry’s fury boiled over. “Stop him! He’s gonna get us
killed!”
But Brad didn’t stop. He adjusted, released, freed. Vertebra
by vertebra, spine by spine, the horde began to fracture. Some collapsed,
finally at peace. Others faltered, confused by clarity where there should have
been only hunger. And a few even turned, retreating from the camp instead of
attacking.
The battle stretched hours. Rain had returned, soaking the
earth, turning it into mud. The moans and shrieks clashed with the crack of
broken fences and the groan of freed bodies. Through it all, Brad moved like a
conductor, orchestrating chaos into order.
At the height of the fight, a massive zombie—the alpha of
the horde—lunged at him. Its spine was bent grotesquely, its movements erratic
and violent. Brad met it head-on, crowbar in hand.
He dodged, adjusted, twisted, pressed—each movement precise,
practiced, perfect. The creature faltered, shuddered, groaned… and stopped. For
the first time, the alpha stood straight. Its eyes cleared. Its roar became… a
guttural hum, almost contemplative.
Brad fell back, breathing hard, watching as the creature
turned and walked away from the colony, leaving the other zombies confused,
hesitant.
When the last wave had either been freed, collapsed, or
scattered, silence fell. The colony’s survivors emerged from hiding, stunned.
“You… you did it,” Lucille whispered. “You saved them. All
of them… some of them.”
Brad’s chest heaved. Rain dripped down his face. “I didn’t
save anyone,” he said softly. “I showed them another path. Freedom is not
guaranteed. But it’s possible. And that is enough for now.”
Larry stared, jaw slack. “You… you’re not a hunter. You’re…
I don’t even know what you are.”
“An artist,” Brad said, lowering his crowbar. “A seeker. And
from this day forward, we survive differently. Or we don’t survive at all.
We have to find another way.
We need to resolve this with something other than bullets and
crowbars. If we don’t we can expect a
day when there are no more bullets and no more weapons of destruction and then
we will all die. At least now, we have
another weapon.
Lucille came to his side, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ve changed everything.”
“I’ve only begun,” Brad replied. “There’s more to learn,
more to teach, more to free. And someday, maybe… we’ll all survive. Before we
can find a new home without the zombies we have to survive in the world we are
in; a world with the zombies.”
The storm cleared, leaving the world washed clean, the
horizon open and endless. Brad Pitt, chiropractor and zombie hunter, stood amid
the aftermath, bloodied and soaked, but unbroken. His spine was strong, his
resolve stronger.
And somewhere deep within, the echo of his mentors and
teachers whispered again: Learn, improve, train others.
Chapter Seven – Transcendence
The dawn came slowly, pale and trembling over the ruins.
The camp was quiet. The horde had been scattered or freed.
Survivors emerged, blinking in the gray light, looking at the aftermath with
awe, disbelief, and a touch of fear.
Brad Pitt stood at the edge of the barricades, soaked and
exhausted, his crowbar resting lightly in his hands. Every muscle ached, every
joint protested, but he felt something beyond pain—a calm, an alignment not
just in his body but in his purpose.
He had faced death, chaos, and the undead itself. He had
done more than survive. He had taught, he had freed, he had transcended.
And yet, the pull of something greater called him.
From the remains of a collapsed building, a soft glow
emerged. He turned and saw it: the old healer, standing as he had in the storm,
his spine as perfect as ever, his eyes steady and knowing.
“You’ve done well,” the healer said. “But mastery is not a
place. It is a state. You have glimpsed it, but now… you must ascend.”
Brad felt the truth in the words. He had always chased
perfection, the freedom beyond limits. He had fought, healed, and strived—but
he understood now that mastery was not a deed alone, nor a battle won. It was
the courage to continue seeking, even when all eyes doubted, even when failure
loomed.
He stepped forward. The world felt light beneath his feet,
or perhaps it was him who had grown lighter, unburdened by fear, unbound by
doubt. He raised his hands, feeling the rhythm of life in the earth, the
residue of his adjustments in the freed horde, the pulse of possibility in the
sky above.
The air around him shimmered, almost imperceptibly, as if
reality itself recognized the attainment of vision. He was not leaving the
world behind. He was rising within it, connected to every life, every spine,
every spark of potential.
He remembered Jonathan Livingston Seagull, who had refused
to accept the ordinary. Flying higher, beyond expectation. Brad understood now:
mastery, transcendence, and true freedom were not just acts—they were states of
being.
And so he rose.
Not into the air like the master healer, but into the realm
of mastery. His hands glowed faintly with the energy of every life he had
touched, every vertebra he had adjusted, every flicker of humanity he had
restored. In the gaze of the freed, in the eyes of survivors who watched in
awe, he became more than a man. He became a symbol of possibility.
The colony would remember him, not as the hunter who slew
monsters, but as the healer who revealed that monsters could be more than they
seemed, that life could persist where others gave up, that even in the midst of
ruin, transcendence was possible.
And somewhere, far above the ruins, Brad imagined wings. Not
literal wings, but the limitless reach of courage, vision, and mastery. He had
flown farther than fear, higher than doubt, beyond the horizon of ordinary
understanding.
Brad Pitt, chiropractor, hunter, and healer, smiled.
The world had changed. And he had changed with it.
He had flown.
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