I don't own MCR or the boys' names. It has been disclaimed. Kaythnxbai! XD

The Way of the Walking Dead

being an account of the

experiences of myself,

Gerard Arthur Way,

and

My Chemical Romance

in our quest to bring down

the living dead

I have chosen to tell you of this event. Because I have chosen to tell you, I hope you will choose to keep this an ultimate secret, more secret than I have kept it myself. And I am only telling it to one person.

You may therefore tell it to a half-a-person. Or someone who's dead.

I think the dead are walking. I would be afraid if I were a sane person. If I were you. Only I must assume that you are probably insane as well; if you believe this and keep reading, you definitely are. Any sane person would throw this book into a drawer labeled "Evidence Against the Accused" and track me down with a team of hit men. Clap me in irons, throw me in prison. Enthrone me in an electric chair.

The first thing I thought the first time I saw one of the living dead was, "Wow, that dude is messed up." Then he looked at me, and I couldn't help thinking he was really really ugly, even though I try not to see people as ugly, ever. Then he stepped back from the counter, and he walked funny. I noticed this as well. People around me noticed, and that was concerning. At first it was simple, normal... "Mommy, look at that man walking there!" So Mommy would look, and she would start to freak...actually, she started to hyperventilate...and then someone noticed her, then noticed him, who had only yet noticed one person, and that was me. He singled me out, perhaps because I had singled him out. From the moment he took his first step, I intended to kill him.

Or incapacitate him. You can't technically kill the walking dead. They are, in fact, dead.

I was carrying a gun. It has been three years since this incident happened, so don't think about trying to arrest me for it. Yes, the gun was unauthorized, so don't bother looking in the records for my name. You won't find it. Some of my friends and I had formed a sort of band that was sort of pointless. We didn't really have objectives, but we wished we did, and that was what drew us together. One decision we made that made us feel slightly more important was that we would always carry a gun with us, wherever we went. It made me more satisfied with myself; it made me feel dangerous but also stronger, because I could at any moment shoot whoever annoyed me, or shoot myself, but I chose not to. And in that was my power based.

This was the first time I had a real reason to fire. I pulled the gun from inside my leather jacket without a thought, aimed at the walking dead's chest, studied his surroundings and what was behind him (I use the word "studied" here, but I did not spend excessive time on it as this word seems to imply), and fired. I pumped three of my six rounds into his chest, and he slumped to the floor with a small grunt of pain. I realized the moment he started to fall that I was in severe danger of arrest. Any moment the people would start screaming.

And then they did.

I thought it was because of me, but I realized when the dead grabbed my ankle that they were screaming for my life. It was in more immediate danger than I had realized.

The living dead gave my leg one hard tug before I could do anything, and I fell flat on my back, loosing air on impact. I was seeing stars and feeling unbelievably dizzy, like standing was not an option. I realized he was pulling me in closer.

I roared, swinging my revolver towards him and shooting him repeatedly in the forehead. A tiny part of my mind had time to congratulate me on my accuracy, and then I was pulling out of his grasp and struggling to my feet. I expected he was killed...I did not know at the time that to defeat one of the living dead they must be destroyed... I was going to move out for my own safety from the patrons in the restaurant, but then I realized he was struggling up again. I couldn't leave. Not without this monster. So I goaded him closer and closer to the emergency exit, and at last I threw open the door, causing a raging wail to whine through the building. He didn't like that. He moaned and covered his ears, but he kept pushing his way after me. I held the door for him, not certain he could make it out himself. As soon as he was out, however, I dropped the door and ran. He darted after me. He darted! This thing had speed I had not anticipated. I ran down the alleyway before looking down it, and realized it was a freaking dead end. I skidded, trying not to slip in the water puddles, whirling, his clutching grasp missing my jacket by inches, and ran towards the street. He loped after me. I could hear his heavy footfalls on the pavement, hear him moaning as he gave chase. It occurred to me that the only way to stop him would be to utterly destroy him, but how to utterly destroy him, I wasn't exactly sure. Perhaps if I blew him up...though how to achieve that was also uncertain.

I burst out onto Maple Street. Perhaps there had been a maple tree here once, but there certainly wasn't one now. This street was all glass, metal, and asphalt.

It suddenly occurred to me, as I darted to the left and ran down the sidewalk, between tables and people alike, that this monster might kill an innocent bystander, giving me up as a bad job and taking someone who hadn't yet realized their peril. I turned to look, and saw him barreling through the people I had just left, paying them no heed whatsoever and gaining on me as I slowed to watch him. I turned back to the front and slammed into a dark-skinned man wearing a long, black coat.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, and started to say something else, but I shouted, "Sorry!" and pushed myself to run faster. This monster seemed to be gaining speed every minute I let him run. I realized that what I needed most at this moment was Mikey.

I was pulling my cell phone from my pocket, dialing his number while dodging pedestrians and tables and dogs and poles and...wahh! wayward musicians trying to make a couple bucks off the passersby. I kicked his guitar case as I ran by. "Get out of the way!" I screamed at him.

He didn't seem pleased by my treatment of his tip bucket. "Hey! If you don't like the music, just say so, ass-hole."

I was tempted to argue, but then he saw the monster, nearly upon him, and scrambled to move his case out of the way of destruction.

Mikey answered his cell phone.

"Hey, what's up?"

He sounded bored and casual. Bored and casual! He was probably sitting at home playing VIDEOGAMES while I was trying not to die!

"Michael, I am running for my life!"

"What, cops catch you with a gun in your pocket?"

"No, there's this freakish thing..."

I could hear someone talking in the background, and I realized it was probably our friend Frank.

"Mike, let me talk to Frank."

"He's not here."

"Mikey!"

"All right," he groused, and while he presumably handed over the phone, I removed mine from my ear and dodged around a pole. The living dead slammed half his shoulder into it as he ran by, not bothering to compensate for my dodge. I put this to my best advantage possible, throwing myself through a maze of objects and people as fast as I could manage.

I returned the phone to my ear.

"Gerard?" Frank was asking.

"Frank! This is dead serious, I'm being chased by this thing..."

"Mikey said something about a thing..."

"I'm fucking serious, Frank! I don't think it's alive."

"Vampires? Gerard, what did you smoke today?"

"Frank, stop it! Where are you?"

"At my house, with Mikey." Then he seemed to focus. Something made him get serious. "What is this thing, exactly?"

"It's...like..." I was too busy throwing myself between a complex set of obstacles to answer. "It's like a zombie or something, it can barely walk..."

"It's chasing you, right?"

"Yeah, and I..."

"Use your gun."

"I have, every shot, he's not dead!"

"I thought you said he is dead?"

"Frank. If you were the one being chased by an unstoppable corpse, maybe you would understand my sense of urgency. All I want from you is one thing."

"What's that?" Frank asked, after pausing to think about it.

"Help me destroy it."

I could practically hear Frank's grin through my cell phone. I heard him start to speak, and then—

I shouted just before the collision. I was running through downtown and towards a small restaurant with flimsy tables packing their part of the sidewalk. It was into one of these tables that I crashed, rolling over the top and falling hard onto the concrete beyond. The table fell next to me, and people were screaming and chairs were flying and I could hear the monster moaning closer.

"Gerard! Gerard!" I could hear Frank shouting, but I threw the cell phone from my hands, kicking the table as hard as I could into the oncoming dead. It slammed him with as much force as a plastic table can slam something, which is worth basically nothing, but it stopped him for just a moment.

I scrambled to my feet and saw a man picking up and examining my cell phone, as though he wanted to use it to take a photo of the living dead chasing me. "That's mine!" I said, snatching it from his hand.

"Gerard!" Frank was screaming. I thought he sounded close to tears.

"Frank."

"Oh my god, don't do that to me! Where are you?"

"Downtown, on Maple Street. I'm almost to the square."

"I'll be there," he said resolutely, and I could hear the squeak of the springs in his and Mikey's crappy couch as he rose.

"Bring a flame thrower," I responded irritably, already running again, as I was already being pursued, again.

I wasn't sure a flame thrower was going to help. I knew Frank didn't have one, but he had Mikey with him. That kid could acquire basically anything.

I tore onto the square and startled the people gathered there. The crowd was denser; I wasn't certain if this was a good thing or a bad one. I could lose the monster more easily, but he might give me up as a target and kill someone else. Maybe I should just let him kill me and be done with it... But no, if he killed me, there would be no one to stop him from killing the others. I had to fight him.

I grabbed a lamp post on my way by to halt my headlong dash. I let momentum swing me back to face the direction from which I had come. The walking dead was struggling through a mass of people that didn't appear to have noticed it's grotesque appearance. Then I heard the first scream. Now they understood. I kept my eyes trained on the monster, hoping he was watching me. He was still pushing his way through the people, but turning his head, seeming to get distracted by them...

"Hey!" I screamed at him, leaping from behind the lamppost. "Hey! Leave them! It's me you want!"

His head turned in my direction. This is how I know living dead recognize human beings, because this one recognized me.

"It's me you want," I said again, more quietly, watching him as he approached slowly through the crowd. A few yards away now, I threw myself back into the running game, our mad running game. I was getting a stitch in my side. I had never liked running. In school, I had been forced into playing football for phys. ed. I hated it, and basically everyone there hated me. Running was not my game.

Amazing how your priorities change when your life is in danger.

I ran onto Maple Street on the opposite side from whence I'd come. I had to get away from all of these people, and find Frank.

That's when Frank found me. I knew it was Frank because of the tires, screeching.

Last year, Frank bought a magnificent, '77 Chevrolet Camaro. He was the only one that would dare travel at speed and skid their tires on the square. I looked back. Frank's car was stopped nearly in the center of the square, behind me. I could see Mikey in the passenger's seat, and Frank's hands tightly gripping the wheel. Directly in front of them, eyeing them unpleasantly, was the walking dead.

"Oh my god," I automatically said, and started running towards the car. The zombie's head turned my direction, and he started loping towards me, but he was too late, and I knew it. I threw myself through Mikey's open window. I felt terribly theatrical as I did so.

I pulled my legs inside, just as the monster was reaching for my ankles. Mikey screamed. So did Frank. He put his foot to the floor and with a crazed skidding of tires, we raced forward, Frank trying to avoid the innocent bystanders while cursing at them to get out of the way. I saw Mikey draw his gun from my awkward position on top of him. He fired five rounds into the monster as Frank threw us onto the wrong side of the road to avoid a mass of screaming pedestrians. The monster roared.

"Gerard, it won't die!" Mikey exclaimed, as though I could somehow do something about it.

"I'm aware of that," I groused, struggling to sit up straight, my legs currently in Mikey's lap, my head pressed against Frank's side. Frank unexpectedly slammed on the brakes and swerved to the left, throwing me into him, hard.

"Gerard, get off!" Frank warned, stepping on the clutch and the gas and the brake and the gas again. We were hardly moving, and, struggling upright, I saw why.

There was a cop facing us, apparently there to oversee whatever event had brought so many people to the square. He was now standing in the middle of Frank's intersection and pointing him to the side of the road.

"This is not good," Mikey was saying.

The cop was gesturing firmly over to the left, towards his squad car.

"What?" said Frank, feigning ignorance. "I don't understand you. Engine too loud." And then he heartlessly put the pedal to the floor, throwing Mikey and me across the car again as he swung hard to the right. I would have been in pain from slamming into Frank again, but my eyes were locked on the walking dead that we had nearly crashed into. It was fast. So fast.

"Gerard," Frank warned, and I felt his arm slam into the back of my head as he turned again. Horns were blaring at us and people were screaming, and behind us, I heard the sirens of the cop car.

"Options?" Frank asked, starting to sound frantic.

"We have to go back," I said.

"What? No! We'll be arrested, did you see that guy?"

"If we don't go back, that thing will kill those people! I've seen it, it can't be destroyed by conventional means, we need to stop it."

"With what, exactly?"

"We need to destroy it utterly. I don't know how, we just do."

"Blow it up?" suggested Mikey. He is my brother, and he thinks just like me.

"Burn it," said Frank, remembering what I said about the flame thrower. He threw us around another hard corner, to the left. He shot to the end of the block and skidded around the next corner. We were facing the square. I could see the walking dead.

"I don't suppose you did bring a flame thrower?" I asked, my eyes on the walking dead.

"No, sorry," Frank responded, slowing his speed as we drew closer.

Mikey was silent, and that concerned me. Then he spoke. "I know someone who does."

There was a long pause, during which Frank and I would have rolled our eyes at each other if we were in a reasonable position to do so. "In case you haven't noticed, Mikey, he's not with us now."

"No, but we could go to him. We could take it to him."

"How? Throw it in the trunk?"

Mikey was silent.

"Oh my god, he's a madman," said Frank, slamming on his brakes and throwing me yet again. I made a pledge then never to let him drive, ever again.

"It's all we've got, let's go," said Mikey, throwing open his door. I climbed slowly out after him, rubbing my nose.

Once again, the walking dead recognized me.

"Gerard, I think he recognizes you," Mikey said nervously as it started to lumber towards us.

"Thanks for noticing, Mike, you're so observant."

We ran to the side and Frank pulled his car between us and the monster, stopping just passed us. The trunk popped open.

"Okay. This is not going to be easy. Maybe if we just..."

Mikey was talking but I wasn't listening. The walking dead had come within two yards of us, and I darted to the side and threw myself against him. Mikey immediately shut up and ran to the trunk. He threw it open and with much wrestling, we managed to push the monster slightly closer, but he was grabbing me, pulling me, baring his rotting teeth in my face.

And then I saw those rotting teeth explode right before me. Mikey had shot him in the mouth, narrowly missing my mouth in the process. I would have words with that kid, if we made it out of this alive.

But the beast had been taken by surprise, and knocked off balance, just for a moment.

"Catch him!" Mikey was screaming, and I gave the walking dead a hard push; he became then the falling dead, then the fallen dead, and immediately after, the caged dead. Ensnared, trapped, confined. Mikey sat down on the trunk, looking shaken. He was still holding his gun. I snatched it from him. "Get in the car," I said, putting his gun in my inside pocket. "And tell us how to find this friend with the flame thrower."

"Stop! Step away from the car and put your hands up! Drop the gun on the ground!"

"Damn it," I muttered.

"Run, Gerard!" Mikey shouted, leaping from the trunk. We raced around the side of the car, the police man shouting at us. I threw myself into the car, Mikey close behind me.

Frank was driving before Mikey's door was shut. I twisted to look out the back, and saw the cop lowering a gun and running towards his squad car. Which one was his was hard to say, as he had been joined by a whole squadron.

"Hey, Mikey, maybe you better call this friend of yours and tell him we're bringing him a zombie to torch with his flame thrower," Frank said sarcastically as we screeched through another intersection.

"I don't know his phone number!" Mikey protested. "We're not really friends, I just happen to know him!"

"Great. Do you even know where he lives?"

"Yeah, I can get you to his house. Turn right."

I suppose I should respect Frank for his reflexes. I probably would have asked, "What, now?" and missed the turn entirely.

Behind us, I heard the sirens start to wail.

"Oh my god, they're going to cut us off!" Mikey said. He was starting to hyperventilate. Typical Mikey.

The walking dead we threw in the trunk? It wanted out. I could hear it banging against the metal of Frankie's car. I looked back and police lights glared into my eyes. They were going to catch us. We had to dodge other vehicles and pedestrians, but everyone got out of the way of the police.

I knew if they caught us, this was not going to help, but I realized we had no other choice. I drew Mikey's gun out of my jacket.

"Gerard?" Mikey said, staring through his glasses at his nine-millimeter.

"Move," I commanded, sliding across the seat to make my point. We changed positions, Mikey climbing under me. As soon as he was sitting next to Frank, he caught Frank's arm in an iron grip. "Frank? What's he doing? Frank!"

I cocked the gun and leaned out of the window. I had never done this before; it felt dramatic and powerful. Better than just carrying a gun. Now I was opening fire on the cops.

I saw the officer's expression collapse into one of fear just before I fired, aiming for the other side of his windshield. The glass exploded into a million jagged crystals, and I saw the cop dropping below the wheel, trying to protect his head and drive at the same time.

Fortunately for us, he failed dramatically. His car swerved slightly too far to his right, in front of another cop car that had been swerving to avoid my bullets, thinking I was aiming for him. The cars collided and sent the shattered one into a death spin. The third cop swerved onto the sidewalk to avoid the wreckage; people screamed.

It was then that I realized so was Mikey.

"Gerard! They're going to put us in prison! You know what they do to guys like us in prison!"

"That's why we can never let them take us alive," I responded, pulling myself back into the car. "Frank, d..."

Mikey screamed again. He screamed like a girl when he was terrified. Frank slammed on the brakes hard, two cop cars swerving into our path from opposite sides of the intersection.

"Damn it!" Frank swore, trying to maneuver around them. He started to shift into reverse.

Mikey caught his arm. "Don't, there's one behind us."

Frank's expression became resigned and...determined. He shifted back into first.

Never let them take you alive. My own words echoed in my head and I wondered how serious they actually were.

Frank put his foot down.

We shot forward; people screamed, the police looked frantic, as we smashed through their barrier. Perhaps if we had been in a modern Chevrolet Camaro, we wouldn't have made it, but in this older model, this larger and heavier model, we were the stronger. I looked back at the police through the window and saw their cars just now coming to a stop, front ends dented dramatically.

Mikey guided us across town to a drab suburban area. We hadn't seen any cop cars or heard sirens for some time, but we knew they were still searching for us. The chances of them finding us were enormous; it wasn't as though we were inconspicuous.

"That one," Mikey said, pointing to a house on the left. "Right there." Frank slowly pulled into the driveway, which was fractured with grass growing between the cracks. The house itself was drab, some sort of ornamental grass growing taller than the porch next to the front steps. It gave the house a wild appearance, as though it was in the middle of a jungle, not the middle of a city.

"Okay," said Mikey, pushing at me to let him out. "I'll go up and explain."

"Hope he doesn't use his flame thrower on you," Frank offered.

"Be quick," I told Mikey, and he nodded, climbing over me and out of the car.

He hurried up the stone steps to the doorway, but the door opened before he could reach it. A man stood waiting there, looking expectant. He wore black clothes under a white lab coat (what is he, some mad scientist? I thought), but his most memorable feature was his hair, which he kept in a massive, red afro.

Mikey was talking rapidly, though we couldn't make out what he said. He gestured several times back at the car and a look of growing comprehension grew on the red-haired man's face. "Mr. Way?" we heard him ask, extending his hand to Mikey.

Mikey nodded and agreed, and the man quickly shook his hand before descending the steps passed him. "Come, you can put your car in my garage," he said, coming toward us. He came closer to Frank's window. "Back out for a minute and I'll give you the garage. How close do you think the police are?"

"Too close," I responded.

He grimaced and Frank pulled us backwards while the man jogged toward the door. "Keys in the house," he explained to Mikey.

Several minutes later I was standing in the man's garage, watching as he pulled closed the broken automatic door. It slammed closed, blocking out all sunlight. Mikey flipped on the garage light.

The man looked at us for a moment, and said, "So. You have a zombie?"

"Sort of," I said.

"How do I know I'm not about to murder a human being?"

"You'll know he's not human when you see him," I promised.

"So, where is he, exactly...?"

It was at that precise moment that the walking dead chose to smash his fists into the trunk and scream for his release.

"In there," I said unnecessarily.

The man rubbed at his chin. "Mr. Way says you shot it?"

"He probably has at least eleven bullets buried in his skull," I agreed.

"So to kill him you must destroy him?"

"Considering that he's no longer alive," I said.

The man rubbed his chin for a moment, then said, "So you want use of my flame thrower? Considering the only other option would be to use explosives...and I do not want to blow up my garage..." He glanced at Mikey, and then said, "Flames it is."

In moments he had left the garage and returned carrying a heavy-looking flame thrower. "So. How should we do this?"

"Which part of your garage do you care about the least?" was Mikey's response.

"Over there, by the broken door," the man gestured.

"If we open the trunk..." I said.

"So long as he's away from my car!" added Frank.

"Gerard should stand against the garage door," Mikey said.

"What!"

"It went after you when it could have gone after me, so it obviously prefers you."

"Nice. Just what I always wanted."

"Right. Gerard, stand by the door," the man commanded. "You two open the trunk, and I will incinerate him. You should run," he added to me, "as soon as I fire."

"No problem," I responded.

Frank leaned in his open car door and prepared to pop the trunk. "When you're ready, Mikey."

"Your respect for my opinion is so kind," I said sarcastically.

"Thank you."

"Ready, Frank," said Mikey, standing near the right side of the trunk.

"All right. On three, I'm pushing the button. One. Two. Three." He said it so calmly it was unnerving. He should be a psychiatrist or something. I felt completely comfortable standing there waiting for a zombie to leap out of the trunk of my friend's car and try to devour my brains. I watched as the trunk popped and eased open before Mikey could lift it, the walking dead's eyes already locked on me. He moaned in recognition.

"Hey, he still recognizes you!" Mikey said cheerily.

"Mike. Shut the fuck up."

The man with the red afro nodded in agreement. I hadn't realized he had gotten closer until I saw him nod, standing right beside Mikey, leveling the flame thrower in my direction.

"I would run now if I were you," he said, and pulled the trigger on his flame thrower.

I ran, but I still had time to pause and watch. It isn't every day you get to see a zombie being consumed in flames fired by a man with a giant red afro. I also decided, as I watched, that I wanted a flame-thrower.

The walking dead, for the first time since leaving the trunk, since being thrown into it, since...I couldn't remember when...took his eyes off of me and stared at the man behind the flame-thrower. He stared for only a moment before he screamed. He was blazing. The man put out his flame-thrower and just watched. The walking dead was roaring and thrashing around, fire leaping from his blazing arms, consuming his scraggly hair. Eating his eyes from their sockets.

"Let him outside, he's going to ruin my garage!" the man shouted as the flames leaped nearly to the ceiling.

"And my car!" Frank shouted, and the red-haired man and I ran to the garage door, forcing it upwards. Frank charged the dead with a scream and slammed him hard in the chest with his shoulder, shunting him outside. Frank drew back with his shirt on fire, slapping at his shoulder. Mikey smacked the flames from existence.

We turned back to the walking dead, and saw that it was walking no more. It had collapsed on the concrete drive, and was dissolving rapidly; in seconds, all that remained of his presence was an ominous black stain on the driveway.

Mikey and I glanced at each other. "We weren't here," he said.

"This never happened," I agreed.

"You didn't see us!" we both shouted in the general direction of the neighbors, and together we pulled the garage door shut.

The man with the afro was pulling off his flame-thrower backpack. He set it on the trunk of Frank's car. "Well, this has easily been the strangest day of my life," he said.

"Same here," agreed Frank.

The man offered his hand. "Ray Toro."

"Frank Iero."

"And you?" he asked, extending his hand my way.

"Gerard Way," I said. "Mikey's brother."

Ray smiled slightly. "Pleasure killing strange dead creatures with you."

"And the same to you," I agreed.

He dropped my hand and looked around at us. "Normally I would kick you out now, but instead I'm going to hold you hostage. Explain where that thing came from, and how you found it, and why it was chasing you. And how the hell did you catch it?"

We began to explain, telling him about my encounter in the restaurant and the ensuing chase scene. Toro mentioned that he had seen men like the walking dead before. He had just assumed they were normal people...well, not normal, but at least completely human. And alive.

Knowing that there were more of the dead out there concerned me. I felt something rising in me until suddenly I spoke. "We have to kill them."

They had been talking, about what, I have no idea, but they all stopped and stared at me. "Kill what, Gerard?"

"The dead. We have to destroy them."

They looked confused. How could they not understand? "We're the only ones that know about this, right? We've got to..."

"Gee, the police probably know about this, they probably keep tabs on them or something..." Mikey was saying.

"But they're not doing anything!" I exclaimed, rising and slamming my fist onto the table. "If they know, they're doing nothing. This is our task. We can stop them." I was calming slowly, sitting back down at Toro's table. "We can find them. Capture them somehow, and destroy them."

Mikey was giving me a concerned look, but Frank said, "You're right, Gee. We should do this."

"We can?" Mikey asked.

"We could, potentially," Toro was saying, looking, I thought, like an absolute mad scientist in his white coat and his wild hair, leaning forward across the table as he explained our weapons strategies. "Concealed weapons. Incendiary rounds. We could experiment, find out their weaknesses and if there are other ways of killing them..."

Thus began our first ever meeting of My Chemical Romance. We chose the name because of Mikey's statement, "If we told someone about this, they would think we were high on something."

We parted with an agreement to stay in touch and to scout each day for at least an hour each, searching the streets and the establishments of the city for the living dead.

There it is. Chapitre une. What do you think? I wrote this back in the summer, so I still have material I need to upload. Best get back to work. Stay loud, Killjoys!

xoxo,

Rebel Rose