Post by maul on Jan 8, 2008 5:00:51 GMT -5
The street was stale, lost and empty.
Old yellowing newspaper marched across the road like tumble-weed.
The buildings were all worn to shreds; bricks riddled with bullet-holes; wood torn to splinters.
It was the business district, or at least it had been. Until they came; the Specimens.
Across the cracked bitumen of the road; a toppled concrete statue covered most of the police station doors.
It lay in a pool of broken glass, shattered from the windscreen of a small police car parked outside, having hit and rolled to form a rather heavy barrier.
The police station's own windows were barricaded from the inside with not only the iron grille already in place behind the glass but with an additional layer of protection in the form of several building planks nailed hastily to the inner frames.
A weathered British flag hung limp in the non-existent wind above the doorway...in a way it mirrored the feeling in the place - that of desolation and despair and loss.
Miserable grey daylight trembled in through the cloud cover, giving the city a nightmarish lack of colour.
Piles upon piles of bodies were lain out across the ‘T’ intersection in front of the station, coated in maggots and beginning the slow and inglorious process of decay - testament to the events of the previous night.
The stench of rotting flesh was nauseating, however the scavengers didn't seem to mind; the air was alive with the dark buzzing of flies; crawling over gaping wounds and dipping into swollen legions for a taste. Crows would often dare a swoop down to the street for a strip of torn flesh to eat.
Torn human flesh.
Aside from the animals, and those few items of lost significance blowing in the foul breeze - all was still.
No cars could be heard, no shouts from startled human tongues, no gentle warble of background conversation piercing the day.
Then; the stillness ended.
The heavy oak double-doors to the police station slowly opened, their creaking hinges sending the crows skywards in a flurry of dark feathers.
There a single soldier stood, wearing the traditional olive green uniform of the DFA and looking an inch within death.
His hair was dark, but splattered with blood and vomit; cut short to try and avoid maintenance as he had had little time for such superficial indulgence even before now. His eyes were radiant blue - a hoping blue that others would have compared to the sky, if there had been others.
His face was beginning to thicken with stubble; his skin was pale and coated in blood and grime.
A lot of the blood not being his own.
A bandage had been wrapped around his right bicep; a burning wound still smoldering in agony beneath despite having been inflicted several hours ago.
He cast his gaze out across the intersection, looking past the bodies and trying to stare through the shroud of silence coating the day.
They were all dead; his companions; his team. Everyone.
His gaze cut down to his belt where he still held two frag grenades and a Handcannon with two rounds. That was all he had left.
He narrowed his eyes in thought, and set off through those eerie streets.
He drew the Handcannon with blistered fingers, every joint in his body aching as though he had run a marathon. He watched the bodies carefully - partially from experience and partly from paranoia.
He took the leftward bound road of the intersection and made his way along - passing shop fronts that had been reduced to wreckage; glass littered the pathways.
Cars blocked off lanes and choked the path. It was obvious their drivers had been swerving insanely before coming to a violent halt; learning too late that you can't get away with that in a public area. But for the opposite reason than what you would expect.
His eyes were constantly on alert - scanning every aspect of his surroundings; taking everything in.
He heard something.
He stopped in mid stride and stood still, holding his breath and listening through the sound of tinkling glass and rustling trees.
Perhaps it was just paranoia?
Get fucked...you heard something.
He continued along the street, knowing full well that regardless of whether he had heard anything or not he was still an easy target while standing still. His captain had never let him forget that rule; always keep moving was what he had said, as long as you're moving you are still in it.
Well he had been right after all, just a shame that he hadn't followed his own procedures as well as some of those he had been leading.
The Captain had lost his head the night before, having it smashed inwards by the great flailing steel club of one of the experiments. Now he was just another corpse in a city of corpses.
A city of corpses and specimens.
***
He had been married once, a long time ago...before his frequent trips from home drove them apart. He didn't regret applying to the DFA in that regard; it was what he wanted to do. He did miss her though, and wondered if she had maybe found a way to end it peacefully. Rather than suffer the terror of what now roamed the streets.
In any case - it was an empty thought. His only real concern now was that of survival, all other thoughts were merely there to take up time.
At least - that was what he told himself, he wanted to believe he could adapt to become emotionally detached from his environment, but he knew it was impossible. He was human - and there was no way to change that.
Horzine had found a way...
He shivered at that thought and stopped walking once again; he stood outside a massive cathedral towering into the sky at about four stories high. Its huge medieval arched doors stood gaping open in a blank notion of desecration. He could see inside, its corridors between pews choked with the dead.
His fingers had begun to sweat, nervous tension creeping up on him.
Forgive me Lord for I have killed a shitload of people...
Only a lunatic would call them people.
Yes...that is true.
He started moving again, and as he turned back in the direction he had been heading his vision was filled with an upturned Downtown London bus that had been inflicted with a raging fire at some point and been blackened almost to ashes. It lay across most of the road, leaving only a narrow gap on the pathway to make it past.
He crossed the road, gun in hand...his fingers flexing painfully at the lack of rest.
The gap would be an ideal spot to sit behind and wait for someone to step through...
He hugged the underside of the bus, putting his back to it and holding his breath in anticipation. There was no sound coming from the street; an empty silence filled the place.
A crow called mournfully from its perch atop a nearby shop roof.
His first thought was to just jump out and get it over with, but he could not bring himself to do it. It was just like taking off a band-aid - you know it will be easier to do it fast but...
Fuck this. Just do it.
He did.
In a text-book perfect turn he was standing gun posed in the gap and staring at nothing. Beyond the gap was the continuation of the street...filled with more trash and ruin. Up ahead the road split into a new 'T' intersection with what would have once been a very pleasant green park directly ahead.
This park - now devoid of motion was no longer filled with the scent of flowers and freshly cut lawn.
Rot was all the permeated the place.
Several toppled cars had somehow found their way into the park, upturned and burning - setting some patches of the grassland ablaze.
He relaxed a little.
Then he heard the scream.
He spun on the spot, knowing straight away what it was...his fingers were tight on the trigger; the safety practically a forgotten aspect of his weapon.
His eyes roved over the street; scanning. He could see chunks of concrete, aged and abused shop-fronts stretching along both sides of the road, a four-door silver family car almost torn in two lodged into the wall of a Chinese diner. Behind there he saw movement.
"Hey-"
It was too late.
He fired two swift rounds directly into the head of his target and watched in sudden horror as a young woman looking no older than 25 dropped like a stone.
Dead.
The silence following the gunshots was so heavy he nearly felt as if the world had stopped. Even the wind it seemed had died down in tragic respect for the life lost. The crow perched atop the shop had taken flight without a single call; just making its way.
She hadn't been one of them. He had just taken down a survivor.
Fuck.
You didn't know; how could you have known?
Still doesn't change the fact.
His gun slowly drifted back to his holster again; his feelings of security while holding it fading. The only way he had been able to survive so far was basically to shoot first and ask questions later. This was the first time it had not paid off.
He took a good look around himself, watching the deadly emptiness of corrosion take the city. Here he was - presumably the last soldier in London for all he knew, two clips of ammo and a pair of hand-grenades.
He sighed and moved across the street with a heavy heart, knowing he would probably never forget what he was about to see. But he had to see it.
Beyond the crashed silver four-door lay a devastated corpse. Her expression was the one thing that daunted him. He had seen gruel and guts plenty - it was all he had seen over the past 72 hours in fact. But the look on the woman's face was terrifying; somehow more so than what he ad already seen.
Her brain had mostly scattered away from the back of her face, the hollow-point rounds slamming through her forehead neatly and erupting in a cruelly efficient way.
This kill would mark a turning point for him. The next chapter of what he guessed was the most fucked-up story in all of history. The story of what Horzine did to the world – the story of the apocalypse.
***
His headset had been torn to shreds by a near miss two nights ago, however he still held it tucked inside his thigh pocket as it remained functional.
The last thing he had heard was from team Alpha – assigned with Northern London containment, and that had been yesterday. Not only that but they had been in serious trouble.
Their team had suffered heavy losses similar to his, and a Marine going by the call-sign “Razor” had informed him that only three members of their team still remained. They had shacked up somewhere in the Northwest to engage in some form of temporary surgery on a wounded comrade; that was the last he had heard.
Now as he glanced up at the highway road-sign “Northern District – Take Left Exit” he felt a pang of serious guilt and anxiety.
He hoped he would not be finding them dead – though his expectation was for the contrary. There was little chance; his own survival he considered a miracle fluke. Something that technically shouldn’t have happened however it had.
Even though Alpha still had three members (two not counting the wounded) the Specimens outnumbered them 100 to 1 on every front.
He hadn’t slept since the first night. At least not properly, but even so he still had enough wit about him to know that in all likelihood he was on his own.
He had taken to route 132 in response to the incident back in the business district. It was more open out on the highway, and it gave him more time to react – allowing judgment of whether or not shooting first was the correct strategy.
It felt safer this way, in that regard anyway, even though being out in the middle of a highway in broad daylight was still massively stupid he knew he was just as likely to be killed in any other location as well and tried not to let it bother him.
The breeze smelt slightly more pleasant out there as well – not so much a potent reek, more like outside a rubbish dump than standing in a burnt, wet morgue.
Cars were everywhere. The highway was more choked with them than in town, seemingly everyone had tried to make it out.
Seemingly everyone had failed.
Blood stains and long winding trails could be seen across nearly every car, testament to vicious and brutal murder. Windscreens had been smashed in, car doors ripped off, tyres flattened and frames twisted.
It made traveling along the highway more like walking through a twisted steel maze.
His feet ached already, and he had only covered a few kilometers since setting off from the station (or what was left of the station) but still he plodded onwards – never once thinking of making a step-back. There was no time for retreat – there never had been.
There hadn’t even been time for a proper evacuation.
The last that was heard was that majority of the populace was either dead or missing. Horzine laboratories were the official ground zero. That was where the first few teams had been sent in an effort to detonate the facility and destroy whatever could be found there.
As it turned out, they had encountered more resistance than what had been planned. Perhaps it had been sloppy organization or maybe just plain bad luck – but the first blockades had not lasted 24 hours. They had been fucked over and scattered.
His Unit – Delta, probably the largest single surviving unit remaining after being deployed on the Western front had not fared well since then; he could only assume that a similar fate had befallen his comrades.
Up ahead a massive supertanker carrying what would have once been an economical asset (now simply a flammable liquid to be used at one’s own discretion) had toppled and caused an almighty pile-up in the centre of the roadway, blocking the entire highway. Cars had slammed into each other as thick as seven cars deep in some cases, with no trace of any bodies left rotting in the driver’ s seat…
Where had everyone gone?
He supposed the Specimens had to eat something – he just hadn’t thought they really were cannibals despite being told several times that ‘biting’ had been involved. That was probably how they had managed to survive, and would continue to survive as long as people were around. The only way to kill them…was for everyone to die. Or get out of the country – which wasn’t exactly easy when the country was surrounded by water.
Also, there were some specimens who no longer had any sort of…’ordinary’ intake for nourishment and seemed as though there had to be directly injected sustenance in order for them to continue functioning – which was strange indeed.
So far he had never witnessed a ‘tired’ Specimen. All of them seemed to immediately possess incredible energy from the word go till now without any visible method of rejuvenation. The only thing even remotely impaired had been what his fellow soldiers had dubbed the ‘Skrake’ – a living incarnation of the fucking Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Some genius at Horzine had designed a creature that sported a fully functional grafted chainsaw instead of a left arm. It still looked mostly human, aside from the motley skin and grotesquely diseased eyes that screamed in torment that could never be abated.
They were most commonly sighted wearing a butcher’s apron – apparently the twisted fucks at Horzine had not been without a sense of humor. So to prevent the Skrake from getting whatever remained of its underclothes (if any) dirty while raking through human guts; it had been given a neat little apron.
The DFA had not taken seriously enough the threat they posed at first and had paid dearly for it.
Personally, he had only encountered one of them, and it had not been a very long encounter in any case. He had blown its head clean off in a millisecond – dropping that thing like the sack of bio-organic shit that it was.
***
Late afternoon; sundown.
This was one of the most demanding times of the day, when all senses needed to be alert. He was not sure where they had gone but only presume there was some period of rest for them as well. There had to be for them to still be as active as they were currently.
He had made progress steadily since leaving the highway and coming up along the road leading to his destination at the Cinema complex.
He wanted to sit down – needed to sit, but he couldn’t and just wore on with his legs about to give way. His eyes were growing more bloodshot, even blurry.
He blinked back the waves of drowsiness and stopped. Standing in the eerie street filled with much the same scenery as every other part of town.
Chaos.
Along each side of the road were two relatively unscathed rows of cars, blood splattered across the road in periodic trickles. Concrete gibs and fragments littered the place from what he guessed must have been from LAW explosions, or perhaps even grenades. Trees decorated the sidewalks in neat rows, their leaves of course in stark lively contrast to the rest of the decaying city.
He was so envious of their ignorance. He wanted so badly to not have anything to do with what was going on.
He raised an arm up to rub his eyes, and try to bring himself back into reality – where the world was against him and his actions (or lack of action) had dire consequence.
A scuttling sound. Naked feet.
He whirled on the spot and drew the Hand-cannon in one swift move, firing directly into the woman-shaped blur of distorted air that had crept up behind him while he had taken his guard down. All of a sudden there were more, half-a-dozen burst from the shadows and advanced, DFA had tagged these ones Stalkers for obvious reasons.
He could hear them fine, clambering over the cracked concrete towards him, light bending and refracting across their eerily mirror-like skin. It was seeing them that was the problem, as he needed to do the latter in order to shoot.
Too late.
The gun was swatted from his hand, as were two fingers of his right fist – cleaved as though they were made of dough with a vibrant splash of fresh hot blood.
He screamed in agony and tripped backwards as more fuzzed shapes began slashing with their impossibly sharp nails, tearing apart his combat fatigues. They were leaping over the cars, having hidden from the view of anyone walking along the road and yet still being able to follow easily. He wriggled backwards, as they grabbed at his legs – one came lunging down from atop the hood of a car and landed a crushing blow across his face.
His nose was sheared open in a sudden flood, and five deep slits were carved into his face in the angle of attack. This final attack sent him down to his back where they proceeded to pin him in place by grabbing his arms in vice-like grips.
His heart was beating at a million miles an hour. He was going to die. He could feel them holding him even though pain was telling his body to shut-down. He almost wanted to give in and pass out, but knew there was hope yet. He wasn’t done.
Give up! You are about to die! You are about to watch them cut open your chest and eat your fucking heart!
If I can just get to the grenade…
He struggled with all his might, but to no avail.
He saw the refracted arm of a Stalker rise high in the air and plunge straight down towards his stomach.
Time slowed for him that moment. He shut his eyes in dismay.
He knew what was going to happen next, he could see it all with crystal clarity: that claw was going to penetrate his stomach.
The stalker would rip his intestines out like fat white sausages. The others would proceed to desecrate his body in any matter they saw fit. He was probably going to be alive for a few horrible seconds during all of it, watching as they tore his skin open in deep wounding slashes and spilled pints of blood awash. His skin would be peeled back and torn away, muscles gleaming red and delicious underneath. His ribs would be cracked, maybe smashed in or perhaps dragged outwards as to reveal what lies inside the chest cavity. Bones would be broken, nerves severed, and then finally in agonizing horror he would die…
A quiet whizzing sound grew steadily in volume to a sharp whine.
He opened his eyes in time to see an arrow fly directly into the blurry space occupied by the stalker that would have ended his life and emit a horrid wet THUD.
Blood that was far too hot to be human jetted outwards . It was almost burning hot.
To be Continued…
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