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 Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 1:50 pm
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Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 3:25 pm
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OberFeldwebel Freak_090 Sgt Buckner Freak_090 Call me crazy, but that chapter reminded me of Half-life 2. It reminded me of the first story stare Yea, I remember I never had a chance to play the first HL.. sad I think you can get the whole thing, HL 1 and all expansions for $20? Maybe less. I'll check on steam. Yeah, you can get the 'anthology' for $15 Mind you if you get it through Steam and only download the copy, but the games individually fit on a standard CD and Steam usually has a fast download rate.
Armas, great job of moving the plot. However, I don't think the chapters you post cover enough to really be considered chapters, they only cover two or three scenes instead of a portion of the overall plot. The length of the posts are great for posting, but as far as the real chapters go, I would consider expanding them some. |
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Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 8:55 pm
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Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 4:50 am
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Freak_090 OberFeldwebel Freak_090 Sgt Buckner Freak_090 Call me crazy, but that chapter reminded me of Half-life 2. It reminded me of the first story stare Yea, I remember I never had a chance to play the first HL.. sad I think you can get the whole thing, HL 1 and all expansions for $20? Maybe less. I'll check on steam. Yeah, you can get the 'anthology' for $15 Mind you if you get it through Steam and only download the copy, but the games individually fit on a standard CD and Steam usually has a fast download rate. ROFLMAO!!!! dude, if it was that simple I wouldn't have this problem. My computer can barely run CS 1.5 Armas, great job of moving the plot. However, I don't think the chapters you post cover enough to really be considered chapters, they only cover two or three scenes instead of a portion of the overall plot. The length of the posts are great for posting, but as far as the real chapters go, I would consider expanding them some.
Oh, dang. |
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Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 5:36 pm
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Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 6:05 pm
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Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 6:19 pm
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 6:24 am
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 6:30 am
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Quote: By the way, your friend Neil caught a bad sunburn. He's pretty light-skinned to it's not surprising with all that walking around.
Quote: Ridley flipped the phone closed and looked at it. Canada, eh?
Quote: Charity pulled the sound-insulating earmuffs down from her heed onto her ears
Quote: Just as the locks innards of brass and steel components
GRAMMAR NAZI AWAY! |
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 1:40 pm
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Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 9:16 pm
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Posted: Sun May 10, 2009 9:22 pm
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Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 1:34 pm
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Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 3:44 pm
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More? Well... okay. Longish, actiony chapter follows:
Chapter 17
Neil turned off the cool water flowing from the shower head and the radiating heat returned almost instantly. He looked at himself in the mirror and noted the off, thicker texture and blatant redness, as if his skin had been cooked by the previous days' heat.
"Why didn't I think of sunscreen?"
Neil pulled on the clean shirt and jeans and left the underground bathroom, bumping right into Ridley.
"Hey, Neil, so you're there."
"Uh, yeah.”
"Man, your face is all red.”
Neil nodded.
"That's what happens when you get sunburn. Sucks."
"Felix said he's going out into the town for food and is going to find you some sunburn gel stuff."
"Okay.”
"Do you know where Eagle is?"
"No, haven't seen him since before I went down here. He said he wanted to smoke but couldn't do it inside and didn't want to go outside. Well, I mean obviously he didn't."
"Hm, okay."
Ridley turned and passed through the preacher's underground bedroom, up the stairs, and eventually back to the main room. People across the area were more active than before, but still wandered when they walked and sulked when they sat. Spirits were strong, but low.
"He wants to smoke, but he doesn't want to do it inside and can't go outside, so... the tower! Of course."
Ridley strode across the sanctuary and climbed the ladder to find Charity in her usual position hunkered down by the sniping table. Boxes of ammunition still piled up and the laptop's shell was open, displaying a graph and numbers changing every few seconds. A tiny, plastic weather vane was mounted by the large opening and connected to a port on the machine.
"Hey, have you seen the guy I was with? The big one?"
Charity said nothing, just raised her cheek from the stock and pointed a finger downrange.
"Down there."
Ridley walked up behind the table and spotted the little figure that was Eagle running down the street side with a backpack and a shotgun.
"Down there? What the hell for?"
"He's helping Felix bring food back."
"But we almost got killed down there last night!"
Charity shrugged and put the stock back against her shoulder and put her eye to the relief.
"Why'd you let him go?"
She replied quickly that time.
"Because he wanted to. And because we need food. All of us. Him, me, you, Felix, your friend with the sword, and the other forty people down there. Are you saying he shouldn't do it?"
"Well I mean... no but..."
"It's clear up ahead," Charity said into the receiver. "Just keep on the straight path, don't take any side roads."
"Okay," came back through the radio.
Charity watched the crosshair pattern just behind Eagle. He held the double-barrel tight in both hands and glanced down every side-road he passed.
"Take a right. Okay, Felix, Eagle is going to be coming your way. Open the door and wave to show where you are. There's none of them around right now."
Eagle took the next turn and saw the hand coming from the door, first one on the right. He slipped inside and they both barricaded the door before anything else.
"Good," Felix said, "you've got the big pack. We might be able to do this in one trip if we really cram those cans in there. Come on, they're over here."
Eagle pulled the backpack off and followed Felix through the desolate home. Lamps and tables were knocked over through the house as if the previous occupants had left in a great hurry. The television was even still on, though Felix had muted the volume.
"Right here," he said. He pointed at a cupboard stacked up with canned food, and then another. "Start with the stuff that looks most edible. Soup first, canned turnips last if we've got the room."
"Sure. I think I c'n manage."
Felix and Eagle grabbed the cans by the twos, stuffing them into the packs in the most orderly way possible to get the most space. When full, each pack weighed thirty-five pounds easy. Felix took hold of his receiver and looked out the window.
"We've got the cans. How's the path look?"
Charity waited a moment, surveying the area.
"Bad. About ten wandered into the path to the underground passage's exit."
"What about the path straight back to the church?"
"That one's even worse. Twenty or thirty along those roads."
Felix sighed.
"And if we shoot one, they'll come swarming..."
Charity guided the scope's view along the roads, then back to the house Felix and Eagle were holed up in.
"Actually," she said, "there's about twenty along the way, but not many surrounding those roads. Less to swarm you. If you took the direct way here you could clear a path and just get inside before it gets too bad."
"Do you think so, Charity?"
She waited again before answering. Checked the road, and again to be sure.
"Yes."
"Okay. I trust your judgment."
Felix put the receiver back in his vest pocket and looked over at Eagle.
"We're heading back. Ready?"
Eagle tightened the straps on his pack and curled two spare shotgun shells into his left-hand fingers.
"Ready."
The two exited the house and started down the road the opposite way both had come just as Charity pulled her earmuffs over her ears.
"I'll take the farthest ones down the roads from you," Charity said, "you take the closest."
The road was another dirt path with homes on both sides, most identical but some unique. They stood well to wall the legions of infected men and women within the labyrinth-like shape of Vista Hill. Felix drew his brace of revolvers as the first gray-skin came in sight and blasted him down just as Charity's rifle thundered from the church tower. The path was clear as far as the eye could see, but round the next corner stood a dozen, all of whose attention went to the two running among them.
Eagle shot down one in his path and Felix took two others while the one at the end fell without a head among the boom of the Springfield in the distance.
"There's a lot of 'em," Eagle said.
"Not more than we can handle."
Felix emptied his right revolver into two more ahead and reloaded it from a full-moon clip on his belt.
"We're almost there. Keep it up!"
Eagle blasted another one and the stock of the shotgun kicked into his shoulder, but he didn’t feel it. He and Felix ran between a group of three on the sidelines, ignoring them. The radio sounded from Felix’s receiver with a crack of static.
“Felix, there’s a problem.”
“Don’t tell me that,” Felix said into the microphone.
“There were a pack of infected in a big house along the next road. I couldn’t see them inside it before. But they’re out on the road now. At least another dozen, maybe two.”
Felix stopped and shot one ahead of him as clouds rolled in across the silky blue skies.
“Well start taking them out. Switch to the Garand, they’re close enough now.”
“Okay.”
Felix returned the receiver and pulled a grenade from a pocket on the vest just as Eagle shot a stumbler coming near.
“We’re boxed in?” Eagle said.
“Yeah.”
Felix tossed the grenade in the air a foot and caught it.
“Well that’s why we have box cutters.”
Felix popped three Magnum bullets into the chest of the last one at the end of the road and turned the corner to come face-to-face with another of them, mouth wide, eyes crazy—the face of a cannibal and of a lunatic. Felix had no time to think of anything. He just swung the back of his heel into the side of the stumbler’s knee and shouldered him backward onto the ground. As the stumbler tried to pull himself up Felix shot a hole clean through his forehead and looked up to see the dozens down the road.
But it could have been hundreds as far as Felix or Eagle were concerned. They stood all across the road along the length of it, appearing to clog the passage from beginning to end.
“Maybe this wasn't a great idea after all...” Felix said. He pulled the pin from the grenade and hurled it into the crowd. The blast and shock wave made the ground thump in the middle of the passage, sending shards of metal through tendons and brains and dropping five or six. Eagle blasted two in the front down and made a few behind them trip, but was floored to the dust of the ground underfoot as something heavy and human-shaped dropped on top of him. The being moved faster than the others, gnawing away at the air as Eagle gripped round the crazed body's neck. Felix slung his foot around into the thing's head, snapping it even with his shoulders and lobbed another grenade.
“Oh God, this is too much!” Eagle said, shrugging out from under the thing.
* * *
“There's too many of them!” Ridley said as the ping sounded from the ejection of another of the Garand's en-bloc clips. “I'm going down there to help. Somebody's got to open the door for them, right?”
Charity stamped another clip into the Garand and glanced back at him for a fraction of a second.
“Then go, but take Felix's Galil. You'll need it and so will he. And don't let any of them in here.”
Ridley looked around the room and saw only one other weapon. Must be the Galil, he thought. Looked like an AK-47 with black furniture and a cut-out stock. He picked it up by the grip and slid down the ladder, ran across the central room of the church, and opened the barricaded double-doors. There were only three stumbling around right outside the church. Ridley looked over the controls of the rifle and fired off a wild burst into one of the things.
“Whoa, this thing gets s**t done...”
He managed to take down the other two more gracefully and ran down an alley while Charity popped away at some of them from above. Ridley shot a host of the stumblers along the alley and came out on the road between Felix and Eagle's position and the gray-skin horde.
“Felix, Eagle, over here! It's clear behind me!”
Eagle let off another two shots before Felix ran behind him into the alley.
“Charity told me to bring you this.”
“Great, my Galil. Thank you.”
Felix holstered the brace of revolvers and took the black rifle. Pulled the magazine, clicked in a new one from the satchel Ridley had brought. There was a change in the wind—metaphorically and literally. A quiet breeze swept through the alley and the group regained advantage.
“It's all down hill now,” Felix said by the clatter of a fresh 7.62x39mm cartridge entering the chamber of his rifle. Ridley, with only his little .22 pistol, took the rear as the others jogged down the alley. Neil was down on one knee in front of the church door, directing broad-tipped deer-slaying arrows into the gray-skin hordes. He saw the group from the alley and waved.
“Quick, get over here!”
Ridley, Eagle, and Felix made a mad dash for the door as Neil pulled it open. Just in time for the horde to close in. The four of them backed towards the doorway, shooting as they went. The horde closed in, reaching and groping and gnashing their teeth like deaf and blind cannibals. The group kept them at bay, but they were innumerable, unceasing. Relentless. Felix reloaded at the same time as Eagle, and Neil was between arrows when it happened. Perhaps they could smell it or perhaps they just knew. But when two of the gray-skins had a perfect opportunity for a bite, they moved on. Past the group of defenders and through the doorway to the church foyer. They had a bite, they knew. But somehow they knew beyond it was a feast.
“Get those doors closed!” Felix yelled under the gunfire. The other three shot and even resorted to kicking to push the mob back, then forced the doors closed and locked them, careful to also wedge the 2x4s under the doorhandles.
“Don't let them through, but don't shoot!” Felix said.
Neil saw it then—a point of light that wasn't there. Something clicked. Something said “Now.” He tugged at the sword grip from the sheath tied at his belt and gripped it like a python on a goat.
The book said draw power from the earth. Said let the curve of the blade do the work for you. Said not to cut your target, but cut where your target is.
The blade gleamed off the fluorescents and caught the first gray-skin on the back of the neck. Severed his spine, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. Neil let the sword complete its arc and brought it back around—left to right—slicing both calves of the second one pounding at the inner door. Ridley, Eagle, and Felix just stepped back and watched as the stumbler dropped backwards. And sunburned Neil with those eyes wide with fear planted the sword through the thing's skull and into the wood beneath, silencing it.
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