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 Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:03 pm
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Okay, so I figured my old zombie story would be appropriate here. Now, don't take this as any indictaion of my current writing skills as this was written in January of 2006 and I have very much improved in mood, plot, description, and basically every other part of writing since then. The many plot problems and actions of the characters that don't make sense are obvious to me now, but whatever. It sucks, but you might like it anyway. Oh, and it's not finished cause I got bored with it.
EDIT: Please excuse any firearm term errors. I was just about out of my ignorance phase with firearms when writing this and still have a couple stupid mistakes. I noticed one instance of using "clip" in stead of magazine near the middle. Don't worry, I don't make that mistake anymore.
Bryan Vanderwood stood at the same place he always did during fifth hour Gym in the “piece of s**t waste of time” as he called it: Southern Goldstein High. A Marlboro Red hung from his mouth, wafting a thin stream of smoke from its end. He blew out a combination of the white smoke and the cold air’s condensation with a bored sigh as he glanced at his cheap watch. The bathrooms he leaned against smelled terrible, but were the only place he could go and not be seen, behind the tiny forest that resided directly behind them. Soft, grassy footsteps sounded behind him and his black leather jacket scrunched as he turned quickly, fearing yet another suspension.
The face he found behind him belonged to that of longtime friend, Gabriella Morris. “Gabby, don’t scare me like that,” he said.
“Thought I’d find you here,” she said clutching her book tighter to her chest in an attempt to hold in some marginal amount of warmth. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”
He smirked. “Yeah, right. It’s not like I’m missing anything important.” A long silence ensued as he, again, leaned against the worn, brick wall. “New book?”
“Macbeth.”
“Isn’t that the third one this week?”
“Fourth, actually,” she said, adjusting her glasses. Bryan took in the last drag of his cigarette as the bell for sixth period rung. He and Gabriella begrudgingly walked off to their mutual Algebra III class that they shared a strong disgust for.
Mr. Whitmore began his class in the same fashion as always: with a story about how the day’s particular lesson had gotten him through a real life situation in an attempt to show his students that it would be useful. It never worked. Ever. Bryan crossed his arms over his stomach, sat back in the chair, and got ready for the long haul that seemed to be every day’s nightmare. Even Gabriella, who seemed to do well in every class, quickly turned her attention to her Shakespeare and every sound and movement around her was blocked out.
“Hey, Bryan. You got a cigarette?”
“I don’t give away my cigarettes,” he said without turning, “because I don’t like running out and asking people for theirs.” He turned to the boy he only knew by sitting beside him in that class. “People who beg for cigarettes look like dumb-asses, okay?”
Bryan never considered himself as “feared” by anyone, but people certainly could tell when he wanted to be left alone and he enjoyed that. He wasn’t sure if it was his ghostly green eyes or his full black hair that seemed fairly rare in the area, but people got the message. Two hours of math- and science-related boredom later and Bryan sat on the faded old bus he was so used to that far into the year. Gabriella sat beside him all the way and they conversed about all the random subjects that would seem like complete nonsense to anyone else. Every other second the hatch on Bryan’s Zippo lighter made its trademark sound as it clicked open and closed.
In front of the two-story house that was Bryan’s domicile, he turned in the weathered key and pressed open the door. Before he walked inside, his little black cat dropped onto his shoulder from a post on the porch and strolled into the encompassing warmth of the home with him. “Cold out there, huh Doc?” he asked, absent-mindedly and the cat made a soft meow. Most people wouldn’t believe that a person like Bryan could enjoy the company of such a soft, tame animal like his own Doc Holliday, named after the old west gunslinger. Truth was Bryan loved that cat more than anything and could swear that it understood every word he said.
The household was immaculately clean and spotless in every way, even in Bryan’s room, which made sense with him being almost as much of a neat-freak as his parents, both now at work—one a stock-broker and the other a caterer. It was often a lonely household, but always welcoming. Bryan found a Coke in the stainless-sided refrigerator and seated himself on the plush couch in front of the television in the living room. Doc dropped right down next ho him and curled up to sleep.
Bryan was clicking through the local cable channels as he always did before finding nothing on them and switching to the satellite. There was a bunch of nothing on as he stamped the up button a seemingly endless amount of times. But something caught his eye. A news station was covering an event in the secluded city of Misery, Missouri. They were showing footage of the military research facility and an anchorwoman stood in the shot, speaking into the microphone. Bryan turned up the volume.
“...but the officials have denied any direct information about the cause of this so-called “outbreak.” All that has been said is that the project being worked on in this facility has gone awry, leading to the insanity and strange impulses of cannibalism in no less than twenty workers.
“Supposedly there is a lock-down in effect in the plant and the disaster will be contained, but residents are asked to make preparations to evacuate in case the need arises.”
“That’s... weird...” Bryan mused to himself as he ran his hand down Doc’s coat. Before he could even complete another thought, though, he saw a man in a lab-coat speeding towards the woman on-screen. His eyes were bloodshot and a crimson fluid was leaking down from his neck. The woman with the microphone turned around to the sound of rushed footsteps, but as soon as she faced him he reared his head back and dug his teeth into her neck, ripping off flesh as he pulled back. An instant later and the feed was cut, replaced by a rainbow of bars across the screen.
Bryan instinctively jumped up and gawked at the screen. Doc Holliday, sensing his master’s hostility, raised up as well with claws outstretched and eyes arched in a feline snarl. Bryan waited for the feed to continue and a man and a woman behind a desk replaced the original scenes. “Police and S.W.A.T. teams have been sent into place to seal off perimeters and ensure that the threat does not escape. Residents of near-by areas are urged to pack only necessary belongings and escape to safer areas marked on this map.” The map onscreen showed areas close to Misery, Missouri in a fire engine red and fading into an orange, yellow, and then green as distance got farther from Misery. That said, green areas were pasted with a message reading “Updated frequently. May only remain safe for a limited time!” Bryan found that his location in Goldstein was in the yellow - “Be aware! Recommended evacuation!”
* * *
In the center of Misery, Missouri’s military research department Doctor Alexander Grisham paced back and forth. Over his lab coat was a bulletproof vest and a gas mask covered his mouth and nose. “s**t,” he repeated over and over under the mask. “How did we let this happen? Loggings, tell me what happened again. I just want to hear it.”
“Doctor, I really don’t think that will help anyth—”
“Don’t tell me what will help what! Read off to me what happened!”
Loggings sighed. “Our formula for rebuilding muscle and bone tissue contained a chemical that had to be let into the brain to force it to accept the substance and allow the healing to begin. This same chemical, apparently, alters the brain’s thought processes, forcing it to drive into what we would call a form of insanity.”
“And cannibalism.”
“Yes, Doctor, and cannibalism. That’s related to the rationalization that to rebuild tissue it must be acquired from something or... ingested.”
Grisham ran his nervous hands through his hair. “And all because we wanted to keep the men overseas going.”
“Yes, Doctor, it is tragic.”
Grisham paced over to his desk and opened its drawer, revealing an average-sized semi-automatic pistol. He removed its magazine and snapped it back in, finding a satisfactory ammunition count. “I better not need any more than this. Come, Loggings, we need to get out of here eventually or we’ll end up like them. The army’s having choppers brought over here and we’ve got to be on one.” Grisham stepped to the door, an equal color of white to every other wall, floor, ceiling, and door in the facility. The hall outside was empty, but the agonizing shouts of men being eaten alive resonated through them. Grisham shuddered. “And to believe... it’s contagious.” Grisham lifted his pistol as he heard a slamming sound around the corner and turned it, finding one of his old colleagues pressing another man in an identical lab coat onto the side wall. Scarlet and crimson leaked onto and sprayed the pearl walls as the colleague’s eyeteeth pierced the man’s jugular vein. In seconds of gurgled shouting, he was certainly dead. Still the scientist-turned-maniac feasted on the man. When the scientist, identified as Walker, turned to Doctor Grisham, his eyes were filled with malice. He stood back, leaned low, and his eyebrows were arched in a hungry snarl. Grisham was forced to raise his Beretta.
* * *
Bryan Vanderwood’s mind wandered and wondered and couldn’t grasp at what to do. The smartest thing, he thought, would be to leave, right? Recommended evacuation is just a nice way to say “Leave or you’ll die!” right? Bryan stood and ran to his backpack, emptying all of the useless books, most of which had only been opened once or twice anyway. It was lighter than he thought it had ever been. He proceeded to pack canned foods and bottled water into the pack, then tossed in a loaf of bread, his last two packs of smokes, and a hunting knife his father had given him on his thirteenth birthday. “Hunting,” he said aloud as he zipped the pack shut and threw it over his shoulder. The wooden panels of the walls passed in blurs as he walked into the back of the home and to his father’s room where he found the gun safe. It was thick-walled with a broad, durable number dial. He quickly turned in the combination and pulled open the heavy door. Four long-arms lay against the back wall of the steel conglomerate.
Bryan reached his hand out for the shotgun at the end that he had remembered as an Ithaca 37 ‘Homeland Security.’ The full wood stock would make for good stability and the medium barrel length combined mobility with shot velocity. He pulled four red, 12-guage shells from an ammunition box and slid them into the tubular magazine, shuttled the sliding lever back and forth, filled a stock sleeve with spare shells, and dumped what he could into his baggy jeans’ pocket. The safe slammed shut and Doc mewed as they passed through the front door, Bryan leaving only a note behind in case his parents showed up. The air was as cold as it had been all day and stung at Bryan’s skin, but he knew he might have to endure it for a long time.
* * *
Doctor Alexander Grisham held back a tear as he walked past the corpse of the man he had been forced to kill. A fine mist of blood was sprayed across his vest and the arms of his coat and a thin stream of smoke still lifted from the muzzle of his firearm. Loggings behind him was struck by a sickened grimace as he looked upon the fragments of skull and pieces of brain tissue strew along the ground next to the two bodies. Their feelings of sorrow and disgust couldn’t hold them back, though. They needed to get out of the facility and to the waiting helicopter to be brought to safe ground. The longer they took to find safety and devise a way to control and suppress, the more would die. Turning another corner at the end of the hall forced Grisham and Loggings in a face-to-face position with another red-eyed, shuffling psychopath. Pity again welled up in Grisham as he thought that the best cure was only to stop the spread and eliminate the carriers. The men taken over by Project Starfish became mindless shells of their former beings and turned into shuffling despots of murder, vessels that carried the symptom of destruction.
The delayed reaction and slowed thought process brought on by the chemicals allowed Grisham to easily plant a 9mm slug in between the eyes of another former colleague. He was caught up in the sadness now and just wanted to get out. He sprinted ahead with Loggings just behind. He emptied half of the fifteen-round double-stacked magazine before reaching the front gates of the facility and more than a half-dozen bodies lay behind him in those corridors. A single S.W.A.T. officer met him with an MP-5 barrel pointed in his face at the doors, but pulled it away when the doctor’s livid, brown eyes showed his purity from the virus. “I’m sorry, Doctor...”
“Grisham. Doctor Alexander Grisham. It’s fine, soldier, just get me out of this hell.”
“Are there any other survivors? Other than yourself and this man here?”
“I didn’t find any on my way out. You need to send a unit in to know if there are any or not. And make sure you don’t come in contact with them. Any they don’t eat enough to die, turn into more.”
“How does the virus pass?”
“Through saliva, sweat, blood, just about any bodily fluid can do it. A bite almost guarantees its transmission. Make sure your men are covered.”
The nameless S.W.A.T. officer led Doctor Grisham and Loggings to a medivac chopper guarded by three sub-machine gun-wielding men in identical armor. Even in the company of the protectors, though, Grisham couldn’t help but feel uneasy. “Pilot, couldn’t you take us up and let the others be taken in another chopper? We really must get to our backup facility and work on a way to fix this!”
“I have to ask my superiors.” He conversed with the man on the other end of his radio for a few sparse moments before turning back to Grisham. “We’re cleared to set off. Where’s the destination?”
“Goldstein. Not far from here.”
“Not far from here? Is that really a good idea then?”
“It’s the only place we’ve got. Come on.”
The pilot shook his head, but waved off the chopper guards and started up the whirling blades. The sounds of the fluttering blades blocked out almost everything else, but Grisham clutched the handle of his Beretta even tighter than ever. “What if we can’t fix it?” he muttered under the blades’ roar.
* * *
Bryan went along at an even pace with Doc in step. He spotted homeowners on both sides of the road cramming belongings and family members into SUVs knowing of the impending danger. Their fright and knowledge of the situation was probably the only thing that kept them from calling the cops on a seventeen-year-old with a shotgun slung over his shoulder. One of Bryan’s neighbors, Mr. Bowling, slowed down to his walking pace beside him. “Hey, Bryan. I can’t let you just walk away from this. Get in the back, we’ll make room for you.”
“Thanks for the offer,” he tried courteously, “but I need to check on someone first. I’m not leaving quite yet.”
“Just... take care of yourself. Here...” He took a battery-operated radio from a back seat and held it out to Bryan. “You can at least use that to know what’s going on.”
“Thanks, Mister Bowling.”
The man smiled and nodded then sped up down the long road until turning onto another out of sight. “Have to check on someone... Gabby.”
Bryan continued down the quiet road until reaching a turn and taking it, finding Gabriella’s home just a few brick houses down. The car was gone from the driveway, but he stepped up to the door and knocked anyway. A face appeared from the window, Gabriella’s, and the door twisted open easily. “Bryan, hi, what’s going... what’s with the gun...?”
He looked over his shoulder to see the barrel. “Oh that. For protection, of course.”
“Protection from what?”
“From what? Do you even know what’s going on?”
“No... I really don’t.”
“Gabby, the state’s under a full-on zombie attack.”
Gabriella stood in silence for a moment, just looking at him until breaking out into laughter and almost collapsing on the floor.
“I’m serious!”
She just continued laughing at his statement.
Bryan let himself into the house he had been in several times before, laid down his backpack, and leaned against the door.
“I’m sorry, just... are you crazy or something?”
He didn’t respond, just turned on the little black radio and adjusted it until it found a news broadcast. It was staticky, but the words were easily intelligible. “...evacuation notices have been issued to all surrounding areas of Misery and the government is contemplating setting mandatory evacuation and lockdown of the entire state until the situation is contained. For anyone just tuning in: a disaster at the military research facility in Misery, Missouri has led to the evacuation of surrounding areas. The disaster consists of scientists and workers of the facility being struck by a prototype serum that works like a disease, turning anyone infected into a psychotic cannibal. Specific details have not been released, but be assured: this is no radio play.”
“Do you see what I’m saying?”
“Oh my God, you’re actually telling the truth!”
“Yes! Now pack your s**t and let’s go!”
The radio broadcast and the urgency set in Bryan’s eyes forced Gabriella along fast enough. She rushed to her room and stuffed clothes into her bag, along with a classic Holmes book and the latest from Tom Clancy. Bryan advised against the books, not wanting to weight her down, but she wouldn’t be detracted from the idea. A few non-perishable food items in the mix and they stepped out into the cold together.
“I’d just wait for my parents and go with them, but—”
“Yeah, they’re out of town like mine are. Never around when you need them, huh?”
She changed the subject. “Would you really... shoot someone with that?”
“I don’t know... I mean... After they get the virus are they even really alive any more?”
“You’d know better than me.”
“If they were attacking you, yeah I’d shoot them.”
“Oh well now I feel much safer,” she said sarcastically.
“What, you think I have bad aim?”
The two of them continued walking along the road for an hour before Bryan began to wonder where he was actually going. “Hey Gabby, do you know of some place we could actually go?”
“You mean you didn’t have a place in mind?”
“Not really, I saw just going to make it up as I went.”
“That’s why you’re so bad in school.”
“I’m bad in school because I hate it. So any ideas?”
“How about we make it to Goldstein?”
“Do you know how far that is?”
She had an answer for everything. “We’ll hitch-hike.”
“I have a gun!”
“Then it will be even easier.”
He looked annoyed.
“Put it in your backpack. We’ll make it.”
* * *
The weather was quite nice in contrast to the events that plagued the state and the turmoil it was in. Clear, blue skies blanketed just over the level of the helicopter that housed Doctors Grisham and Loggings as they whisked away from Misery toward the slightly larger city of Goldstein. Grisham ran possible solutions to the problem through his head, but all the ones he could think of would be too slow or just not effective enough. “What if a few bodies get into the river? Misery is right on the border of the Missouri River. If enough contaminated blood gets in there who knows how far this could spread? What if the only way to truly get rid of this is to... no... that’s not an option!” The chopper finally touched down on a helicopter pad sidling the Goldstein research facility and Grisham let Loggings board out in front of him. He stashed the pistol into his pocket and pulled off the heavy vest and his lab coat, not wanting the infected blood, even such a small amount of it, so close to him.
There would be none infected so far away from Misery that fast, or so everyone in the facility hoped and prayed. “Okay, Loggings, start bouncing ideas off me.”
“We create a virus that specifically targets the chemical doing this?”
“And tear up the muscle fibers and brain tissue of everyone it’s used on? Why don’t we just kill them all and burn the bodies?”
“Well that was my second idea...”
“Loggings, you’re mad!” He sighed. “Keep going...”
“Create a circular barrier of police and military that let out only un-infected people and close the others into a small group. Block them in and drop a nuke.”
Grisham was glad that his colleague had been brave enough to say aloud what he was thinking in the chopper, but it still wasn’t an option. “No. We can’t do that. It’s still possible to get the ones not too far gone to come back.”
“What about a kind of... amendment? We create an addition to the serum that teaches the body what it’s supposed to do with what it’s already been given and fix the first mistake. That would even repair any damage done if they were bitten.”
“Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that? Oh yeah, I did, I just knew we didn’t have six damn months to make it!”
Loggings shook his head slowly. “I’m just telling you what comes to mind, okay? Don’t bite my head off for it.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just... kind of stressful when your screw-up leads to... how many deaths now?”
“We’ll figure it out, Doctor Grisham.”
They finally made it to a laboratory room where a sample of the serum was kept. Grisham couldn’t help but wonder what he had done wrong. Every test they had done on the lab rats had gone perfectly. He cringed when he had to slice off Midnight’s front leg, but when he came in the next day and found that it had re-grown perfectly except for the fur he was ecstatic. Apparently humans are more complex than rats. Who knew?
* * *
Bryan, Gabriella, and Doc were still trekking down the roads, when a car passed near and slowed to a stop near them. “Do you kids need to get somewhere?” a kind old woman asked from the inside of an old Volvo.
“Which way are you going?” Gabriella tried.
“Into Goldstein where my son lives.”
“We were heading that way,” Bryan said. “We would sure appreciate a ride.”
The old woman smiled. “Jump on in. I can’t let you walk that far in the cold.”
Bryan let Gabriella in first and felt fairly awkward pulling the shotgun over to his side. “You don’t mind cats, do you?” he asked as Doc jumped onto his lap.
“Oh, heavens no. I’ve got three of them and hope they’ll be okay there without me.”
The speed of the car was many times what they were going as they walked, and all were happy to have a ride. Doc leaned his paws against the window and gazed out at the street and trees and houses as they passed in blurs.
“I suppose,” said the woman, “that you’ve got the same idea as my son, young man. That we’re in more danger than the media’s letting on.”
“Isn’t that how it always is?” he asked. She nodded. “Just be careful with that thing.” Bryan looked out the window and saw the bustling people, all readying their own escape. He felt fortunate, but at the same time wondered if his parents were okay. They were in Goldstein, though. He would be able to find them, or so he hoped. The only other place they would be is heading towards home to pick him up for their escape of the yellow area. “Gabby, do you have your phone with you?”
“Yeah,” she said, pulling the hazed chrome flip phone from a front pocket of her backpack. He took it and quickly pressed in his father’s number.
“Hey... dad? Where are you?”
“Just leaving the office. I’m coming to pick you up and we’ll pack and get out. You know what’s going on, right?”
“Yeah, but don’t come home. I’m on my way to Goldstein now. Is mom okay?”
“Yes, she’s right here with me.”
“Honey?” a woman’s voice said. “Are you okay? Are you home? Where are you?”
“A woman passed Gabby and I as we were walking towards Goldstein. She’s giving us a ride there now. We’re more than halfway.”
A sigh of relief could be heard on the other end of the phone. “I’m glad you’re safe. Umm... We’ll get a motel room here and call you when we find one to tell you where we are.”
“It might be better to just listen to the radio and see what happens. You never know when Goldstein will be in the red.”
“Don’t talk like that, honey. Please don’t.”
“Sorry, mom. Talk to you later.”
He flipped the phone closed and handed it back to Gabriella. “Miss, could you turn on the radio?”
“Oh, of course,” the woman said, “I’m curious myself.”
The radio report droned on with the same basic information it had been. No updates. But Bryan noticed a change in himself. His usual cynicism for everything but his cat had subsided and he was forced to open his eyes and realize what was important and what wasn’t. Staying alive was important. Keeping Gabriella alive was important. Hating the world was not.
More and more minutes passed and finally the woman pressed the Volvo past a sign reading “Goldstein.” They had reached the city. Doc Holliday pounced down onto the cold cement sidewalk alongside a host of tall buildings of varying color and size. Bryan and Gabriella stepped out after him, offering their thanks to the old woman whose name they didn’t even know. No sooner did they begin walking down the slate path then did Gabriella’s phone go off. Bryan answered it to hear his mother’s voice once again. “They haven’t had any updates so we’re just going to get two rooms at the Plaza. You and Gabriella can be trusted alone together, right?” He glanced over to her to make sure she couldn’t hear. “Of course. We’ll meet you there.”
* * *
Misery City S.W.A.T. member Karl Rowe had just gotten his orders to travel with a hastily-assembled caravan toward the city limits of Goldstein where government officials were planning on starting a barrier. Too many police officers and S.W.A.T. personnel had been infected at the Misery facility and the virus continued spreading, much to the populus’s dismay. It had to be stopped somehow and Karl and his MP-5 were having to be part of the cure. The unmarked black van waded through tides of traffic only with the aid of the flashing strobe light mounted atop it. Goldstein was only a few miles away, but Karl’s hand nervously gripped around the silver cross hanging from a chain around his neck.
“Come on, Rowe, lighten up a little. We’re all scared but it’ll be okay.”
Karl turned to his comrade, a man he’d known for five years. “Man, you know they’re only givin’ us half the story. You know it’s a thousand times worse than they’re lettin’ on.”
“Of course. But as long as we keep our distance we’ll do all right.”
“These are innocent people, man! I don’t want to have to shoot ‘em.”
“None of us do,” another man interjected. “It’s not up to use to decide, though. We get our orders from the top and we carry them out. That’s our job!”
Karl wasn’t convinced. He just wiped the sweat off his brow and began fiddling with his weapon. He had used it countless times, but never aimed it at another human being. But after being struck by the “virus” were they even human anymore?
The black van finally stopped and the doors swung open, letting the occupants out into the last rays of sunshine for the day. The world was hazed over by a layer of orange from the waning sun. Karl swung the strap of his weapon back around his body and turned his head slowly in every direction. The land was peaceful so far.
“We’re supposed to meet another team here and make up a decent force in case the virus spreads too far.”
“What if it gets past us?” Karl asked.
“Then they’ll probably lock down the whole state and only let out non-carriers. But we won’t let them get past us. Men, you’re cleared to destroy anyone with the virus now. They’re nothing but a threat to humanity now. A cure is doubtful.”
The ten members of the group all looked sickened at their leader’s speech, but they couldn’t disagree with what he said. Their duty had been assigned and there was no use conflicting with it. That would only cause deaths.
* * *
Bryan, Gabriella, and Doc finally arrived at the Plaza hotel. Bryan’s father’s shotgun was now housed in a soft guitar sleeve so as to not look so intimidating and they paced inside. Doc hid in Gabriella’s backpack as they spoke to the man at the counter and found their rooms. Bryan’s mother, Annette, wrapped her arms around him as soon as she saw him in the doorway of their room, as he had expected. “Yes, we’re okay,” he said before she could get out the question.
“Gabriella, where are your parents?” Annette Vanderwood asked.
“They’ve been away on business for the last three days. In Washington. Safer than I am now, at least.”
“Do they know where you are? That you’re okay?”
“Yes, Misses Vanderwood, I called them on the way here.”
“Good, good.”
Bryan and Gabriella explained their story first, then simply rested from the journey that brought them to Goldstein. Night’s twilight blanket soon wrapped the city in darkness, but a peaceful, almost reassuring darkness with pinholes of light poked through. Gabriella and Bryan naturally slept in separate beds and he felt no temptation with the shared solitude as many might have. The only thoughts that could rush through his minds were of doubt and of uncertainty and, as much as he hated to admit it, fear. Bryan and the only things he cared about were in two hotel rooms just outside a kill-zone of rampant death and pressing military. The night was a long one.
The morning sun seemed to hang higher than usual the next morning. But its usual placidity was gone. Shouts rang out in the city. Bryan jumped out of his bed and ran to the window to find a massacre beneath. Police personnel were shooting down attacking citizens that had been overtaken by the virus and gaggle of army chopper stretched across the empty streets, air-lifting people away. “Gabby! Gabby wake up,” he said, shaking her. “We didn’t go far enough, they’re here!”
“What..?” she asked, voice groggy and tired.
“Dammit, Gabby, get up, they’re here!”
She pulled herself from the bed and pulled on her shoes, tied back her brown hair to how it usually was, and threw her backpack over her shoulder. Bryan took his own pack, unzipped the guitar sleeve half-way, and ran through the doorway, Doc right behind.
Pounding on Bryan’s parent’s door roused them from their sleep fast enough and they were out and ready to go in less than a minute. The group dashed down the staircases rather than the crowded elevators and found themselves in the lobby. Outside the cries and gunshots were even louder than from the third story. Much louder. From nowhere a seemingly possessed man grappled onto Adrian Vanderwood and began to rear his head back in the same fashion as the man who attacked the reporter did. This one was too slow, though. Bryan slung the shotgun from its case and swung its stock around, implanting it half-way into the attacker’s skull and landing him on the cold, hard pavement with a gnashing crunch.
With the attacker still lying on the ground, Bryan breathed heavily and rested his shoulders, letting the butt of the weapon slowly tip down to the ground where a tiny amount of blood leaked onto the cement. No words were spoken as no one could think of one to use. Bryan wiped the crimson fluid from the shotgun with a spare shirt and stayed in front as the group continued toward a chopper. As they got closer a S.W.A.T. officer sprayed out a half-magazine worth of ammunition at an assailant just fifteen yards from the group’s position. They started into a sprint toward a helicopter only to realize that it was nearly full. “We can only carry two more,” the pilot yelled over the roar of the blades, holding up two fingers. “You two get in,” he pointed toward Bryan and Gabriella. “You two can take that one over there. They’re both going to the same place.”
Bryan looked uncertain, as did the others, but the pilot insisted. “Get in here now! You’ll all be fine if you just listen to me!”
Gabriella realized the situation and pulled herself in with Bryan right behind, Doc in his arms with the shotgun. The pilot seemed to understand. Adrian and Annette Vanderwood quickly got over to the adjacent, army green helicopter and loaded in. Both machines took off into the sky at once. The landscape beneath got farther and farther away, diminishing details into specks of different colors. In only a minute’s time there was yet another clatter, this one unnatural, though. The spray of a sub-machine gun underfoot sounded off, dotting holes in the gas tank and engine of the first chopper like an iceberg to the Titanic.
The pilot struggled to keep the bird in the air, but he couldn’t do anything about it and Bryan, Gabriella, the cat, and six other passengers were spiraling down towards the ground and a sea of green that made up a sparse forest. Darkness now. Bryan forced his eyes open to find, first of all, that he wasn’t dead. He looked over to find Gabriella lying on the ground next to him. Doc was licking at her face until she struggled to pick her head up. Bryan helped her up, but when they turned around, not only did they find that they were the only survivors, but that seven virus-carriers were stalking towards them. Bryan shuttled the slide of the Ithaca 37 back and forth.
“Get back!” he shouted in a deep, firm voice, though he knew he didn’t have a chance. Four rounds in the shotgun and seven of them? Those weren’t odds, it was a losing bet with his life. “Get back, a** holes!” They continued lumbering forward. All of their eyes were bloodshot red and none said a word. There was no gurgled moaning or half-lived shrieks that would have been expected from zombies. As much as it was easier to call them that, though, they had several differences between them. When the man in front stumbled into a labored run one of those differences became apparent. The sudden move forced Bryan’s reaction and his finger jerked backward, sending a hail of shot and a deafening thunderstrike from the muzzle.
The head of the rushing man in front transformed from a normal fusion of skull and tissue to a shower of bits and pieces of bone and cerebral tissue and a pink mist sprayed in every direction, stopping just short of Bryan’s shoes. He was left no time to think when the piercing deafness in his ears left and the other six rushed. The shotgun sent out its volley another three times mostly on its own, dropping the next three men in sequence, but leaving three still running. Bryan clicked the trigger back over and over with no effect, but still he continued in desperation with nothing left to do. Three more explosions rang out in the new silence and the assailants dropped where they stood.
Dumbfounded, Bryan turned around to find Gabriella slumped back on the ground, a smoking pistol in her hands. Her eyes were set widely in shock.
“Gabby…”
The gun clattered onto the ground and Gabriella’s eyes finally closed, but with tears. Bryan knelt down next to her and no sooner did she wrap her arms around him and begin to weep freely. There was nothing either of them could do at that point except finally let out the feelings they had had since they first heard of the disaster. Bryan couldn’t let himself, though. It killed him to do it, but he started to break away from Gabriella’s embrace. “Gabby… come on. We need to get out of here…” He slide the gun she had held into his back pocket, knowing she wouldn’t want to see it.
Gabriella shunned Bryan’s outstretched hand and stood on her own, pulled her backpack’s strap around her shoulder, and stood without word, waiting for him to do the same. He quickly gathered his belongings, reloaded the shotgun, and began walking forward in no real direction. All the way as he walked he couldn’t do anything but think about Gabriella. She ambled on at an even pace but with all the liveliness of one of the virus carriers and Bryan couldn’t help but worry about her. He wished he was able to feel like she did, though. After murdering four people in cold blood, shouldn’t he have felt worse about it? That alone ate away at him.
After several minutes of near silence, interrupted only by fleeing cars, screeching engines and shouting people, screams of death or madness Bryan and Gabriella stumbled upon an abandoned sporting goods store. Bryan had been to the place a few times before and, knowing that it housed many things that could help them on their journey, recommended they break in for a few essentials. Fifteen minutes into the store and all of the canned food items the two of them brought had been replaced with military ration meals—M.R.E.s. Bryan shed his leather jacket for a thick, denim-like urban camouflage jacket lined with wool. Migrating to the hunting section he found one or two shotguns that could easily replace his own.
After several long seconds of deliberation Bryan lifted the stock-less sawn-off combat shotgun variant of the Remington 870 and slung it over his shoulder with its strap just after packing seven 12-guage shells into its mag. From the silence resulting from Bryan’s stillness he heard the distinctive sound of individual bullets being pressed into an automatic rifle’s magazine and walked a few aisles over to find Gabriella stamping .223 rifle rounds into the reservoir of an AR-15. His surprised look was met with: “It’s about survival now, right?” in an emotion-void tone. She didn’t even look up at him, just clicked the fifth magazine into place and set the other four into the pockets of her ribbed combat vest. Bryan handed the PPK she had earlier used to her.
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:05 pm
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After several long seconds of deliberation Bryan lifted the stock-less sawn-off combat shotgun variant of the Remington 870 and slung it over his shoulder with its strap just after packing seven 12-guage shells into its mag. From the silence resulting from Bryan’s stillness he heard the distinctive sound of individual bullets being pressed into an automatic rifle’s magazine and walked a few aisles over to find Gabriella stamping .223 rifle rounds into the reservoir of an AR-15. His surprised look was met with: “It’s about survival now, right?” in an emotion-void tone. She didn’t even look up at him, just clicked the fifth magazine into place and set the other four into the pockets of her ribbed combat vest. Bryan handed the PPK she had earlier used to her.
“You want to know why I have this, don’t you?”
“If you want to tell me,” he said.
She paused. “My mother took a few self defense courses—was convinced that she needed protection from the world and bought this. She taught me with it some, too. I couldn’t help but reach for it when I realized what was happening.” She freshened up the pistol’s clip with .308 rounds and snapped it into place along with a spare ammunition box in her back pocket.
“I have a feeling we’re going to see worse,” Bryan said. His stance showed confidence, but his eyes wavered and sang out that he never wanted to see another one of those—could you even call them people—again… “I just want to warn you… I wasn’t sure if you’d ever be okay after how you looked earlier.”
She simply said, “I know.”
Bryan didn’t know much about pistols, but took a medium-sized Glock 17 from a shelf along with a few spare magazines and ammunition—he heard Glocks were decent. If someone had been watching from outside they may have thought of Gabriella and Bryan as robbing the store without shame, but both were convinced a hundred percent that the items they had taken were necessary for their survival—they had seen too much to take the situation lightly. And they still hadn’t figured out why one of the despots had shot down their helicopter. Were their brains really advanced enough to initiate the action for their sadistic purpose? Apparently…
The spray of Karl Rowe’s automatic weapon seemed endless and stopped only for the time it took him to snap the magazine release lever and press in more ammunition. The green grass seemed now to be tinted with crimson along every inch and his comrades were feeling almost as low as he was. Somehow Karl’s body remained pure of the vile blood of the virus carriers except for the silver cross hanging from his neck, stained with the plague of the despots. It sickened him. And still his sub-machine gun bursts were met with his tears. He had told himself a thousand times that they were dead, merely standing corpses, but that didn’t help any. He still had the stabbing, numbing feeling that he was a cold-blooded murderer as bad as any they give so much attention to on the channel four news.
A break in the action finally let Karl drop to the ground from emotional rather than spiritual weakness. The weapon’s hot barrel seated on his leg, but he noticed no pain from it.
“Come on, Rowe. Your sadness is affecting everyone! Maybe you’re right about what you’re thinking but we don’t need everyone getting righteous on us. We have to do this!”
As Karl looked up at the man, his sadness had been replaced by disgust. “Gettin’ righteous on us? You’ve gotta be kidding me! Are you tellin’ me that I’m right and we still have to do this? Are you tellin’ me that we are murderers and we’re going to keep doing this? Forget it, Michaels, I’m leaving. I hope you get out of all this okay.” Karl stood and slung his weapon along its strap over his shoulder. He took a few magazines, a few rations, and hopefully, he thought, his self-respect as he paced off in a random direction of Goldstein.
Doctor Alexander Grisham sat in one of the seemingly identical swiveling chairs in the room that’s walls were washed with a white that rivaled that of his usual surroundings. His fingers picked apart the inter-workings, cogs, and tiny pieces that made up his Beretta pistol. His mind was lost in thought and he had to keep his hands on something. “Possible solutions?” he asked the silent air, knowing there would be no response. "Is it kill the parasites and kill the hosts? Then why not just kill the hosts? Sure we could nuke them and solve some problems but we’d have litigation up our asses for years. Innocent deaths, billions upon billions of dollars of the tax-payers’ money down the tube, and the country would tear itself apart from fear of its superiors. The conspiracy theorists would have a field day with that!” Grisham’s ranting was interrupted by the beeping of his cellular phone.
“Is this Doctor Alexander Grisham?”
“Yes,” he said meekly, “speaking.”
“This is Leonard Fitzgerald. I’ve been told you’re the man to talk to about this.”
“M-mister President? Umm…”
“Well what have you come up with?” he asked, still sounding more shocked than irritated.
“I have… nothing to report.”
“What would you suggest right now, based on your knowledge of the situation?”
“Everything I’ve thought of only leads to one inevitable conclusion… sterilization. The Army, S.W.A.T., and police forces have done well holding back the spread, though. Please don’t make any rash decisions…”
“Doctor, the President of the United States isn’t allowed to make ‘rash decisions.’”
Grisham snapped the phone shut and reasted his forehead upon the desk. “Sterilization,” he said to himself. "The longer we wait… the bigger the bomb, right?” He stood without hesitation and took a few turns in identical hallways to find the research department where five men were still analyzing the serum.
“Anything?”
One of the men looked up. “Nothing. No progress.”
Bryan, Gabriella, and Doc stepped forward at an even pace. There only plan was the knowledge of the epicenter and to get away from it. So they plotted out a linear route: the opposite direction of Misery. An hour’s walk from the one side of Goldstein where they found the sporting goods store let them come upon Southern Goldstein High. Bryan wasn’t pleased when Gabriella purposed that it would be better to go through than around, but it was a fairly large area.
Bryan led, Remington 870 at the ready as they passed through a side gate into the central, expansive courtyard. The cold breezes and silence made the air daunting and viscous, but as far as Gabriella and Bryan knew, there were none of the virus carriers in the immediate area. Still their fear was understandable. They continued on until coming upon the exit gate on the opposite side, but Bryan heard a rustling in the nearby bushes. He swung the shotgun’s barrel around in the direction and called out: “Come out now!”
There was a pause and the brush stopped quivering until a boy stood up from it, holding up his hands, saying, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” He paused. “Bryan, is that you?” Bryan lowered the weapon and sighed. “Louis, what the hell are you doing here?”
Bryan remembered the boy from the previous day, the one that had asked him for a cigarette in math class: Louis Stevenson. “Man, what are you doing with that thing? Oh, hey Gabriella,” he said, smoothing out his disheveled, brown hair. She sighed a bit at his pathetic attempts to look good in front of her and impress her.
"The only reason I'm alive is because of this thing," Bryan answered harshly.
"What are you doing, anyway?"
"We're leaving, of course."
"Do you have food?"
"Some... why?"
Louis waved them over and turned around to walk through an apparently unlocked door. Bryan and Gabriella found the door to lead to Mr. Whitmore's office.
"He's got a a f**king hoard of food in his desk, not to mention," Louis pulled a drawer from the man's desk and lifted two bottles onto the top of the desk. Gin and vodka. Top shelf stuff, too. "Maybe we could just hold up here until the wave of 'em passes by. Even when the food here runs out the caffetirea's packed."
"Yeah, I don't know about that," Bryan said as he slung the shotgun around his shoulder by its strap. Gabriella was just as uncomfortable as he was.
"Man, what do you have against me, anyway?"
"Doesn't really matter. It's a stupid idea to just sit he--" Bryan stopped mid-sentence and turned to open the door. Outside the action of one of many virus carriers opening the gate matched the sound Bryan heard.
"They're here," Bryan said and tried to close the door before the man noticed. It was too late, though. He took Whitmore's chair and jammed it under the doorknob and slid his shoe into the crack. Gabriella's AR-15 was already in her hands and ready to fire, but she quickly moved to push a book-case in front of a window. "Louis, give me a hand with this!" she ordered and he quickly rushed to her aid. Bryan rushed to shove desks in front of the door and book case and hoped it would be enough for a while, but he knew it wouldn't. Only a few seconds passed until thuds and clamors struck the barricades from outside. There was absolutely more than one.
Bryan shuttled the slide of his shotgun, but after ten minutes of being on edge and the barricades becoming no looser than before he couldn't help but relax his shoulders. They weren't breaking through, but they were still trying. "They can't get through," he said. Gabriella also rested her arms and looked over at Louis, who was practically drowning himself in vodka. Finally he leadned against Whitmore's desk and gave a long, satisfied sigh. The room was silent except for a thud on the door and book case every three seconds.
"What now?" Gabriella asked, though not addressing anyone.
Bryan lit up a Morolboro and held one out to Louis. "We sit here."
"For how long?"
He didn't answer, just sat on one of the desks and leaned the shotgun beside him and the Glock pistol beside it. He looked calmer than ever, but was really more terrified than he had been the entire time.
The thuds and clamours grew more frequent and louder. Were more of them gathering? How many now? Twenty? Fifty? Bryan's knee bobbed up and down with his anticipation and nervousness. He wouldn't let himself show his fear. Not in front of Louis and definitely not in front of Gabriella. He was lucky when Louis spoke up.
"I'm scared..." he said with a straight face, eyes on the vodka bottle. The thuds grew louder. Shouts started now. And it got louder in the small room. Bryan puffed on another cigarette and bit his lip until reaching for the gin bottle. He was scared too. And the fear showed in Gabriella's eyes, too.
The thuds grew louder. And louder. Bryan's hand quivered with the bottle in it. The alchahol did nothing to calm him. Louder than ever! And finally the dam burst--the desks shover away and the heavy book-shelf filled with literature toppled. Bryan leapt to his feet but Gabriella had already begun express-mailing 5.56 caliber lead slugs to the heads of the attackers. First class! Bryan took the Glock's barrel and held it out to Louis. "You know how to use one of these?" Louis smirked and slid back the slide, taking the magazines Bryan offered to him. The onslaught had begun.
Bryan yanked back the trigger to the impressive Remington 870 and let a hail of shot into the right atrium of "zombie" number three and all of the surrounding areas. Louis hesitated at first, but quickly realized what was going on and dropped one of the attackers where he stood.
"I had a thought," Bryan said over the gunshots. "Don't let their blood get on you if you can help it. Wouldn't that be how it travels?"
There was no response, but there didn't need to be. Louis and Gabriella had heard. And they kept blasting, though more cautiously than before. Blood seemed hard to avoid in the sterile white room turned crimson cesspool, though.
Infected cannibals flowed from the window like locusts and the group of three handled themselves well enough for a while. Louis even proved to be a decent shot. But that could only last so long with thier luck. The door smashed open. Louis was quick to react and the Glock in his hands functioned perfectly to turn well-formed skulls into bits of marrow and a spray of a thousand fluids. He was disgusted with every shot. Gabriella alternated her Semi-automatic rifle fire between the door and window and Bryan's Remington was a pain in the a** to reload. Louis and Gabriella got magazines, but he had to load shell by shell and have the others cover him, which he hated. And where were grenades when you needed them? Doc hid in the drawer of Whitmore's desk and held his paws over his sensitive feline ears during the onslaught. He knew his master was in trouble, but couldn't do a thing about it.
The group became more and more pressed for quick and accurate shots and Louis was sliding in his last seventeen-round double-stacked magazine. Those things were endless! Bryan had to load a shell, chamber it, fire, and repeat with no time to load multiple and Gabriella was running low on those flesh and bone tearing, tumbling, magic 5.56 rounds. The three were backed up against the only safe wall in the room and let loose everything they had, which wasn't much. But as Bryan let the last blue shell he had in the weapon fly smoking to tap the ground with its dulcet tone, the last enemy fell and matched the sound. Everyone leaned against the wall and slid down to the ground. They were finally safe. They reloaded.
Gabriella was the first to stand. "Let me check ahead. I have the most ammunition and we have to get out of here." Bryan didn't object.
"Hey, Louis... I'm... sorry about earlier... you know snapping at you over the cigarette. I had plenty to spare..."
"Eh, don't worry about it."
"No seriously. I saw that. When you shot the one that was closing in on me when one was so close to you. You could have helped yourself first but you made sure I was all right."
"Well we're even then. Let's see if Gabby found anything."
The two of them stood and Bryan lead to the door.
When Bryan looked out the broken door-way he found only emptiness and a thick layer of clouds. None of the monsters coulbe be found. Louis shouted behind Bryan and he turned around to see one of the carriers biting into Louis's leg, uncovered with his shorts. Bryan kicked him off and pulled Louis away to shoot the man. Louis looked at his wound and pressed his hands to it. "Bryan, it bit me! It f**king bit me! What's going to happen?" Bryan said nothing but his eyes betrayed hom to the words he didn't say.
"I'm infected aren't I? That's how all of them get infected, isn't it? Isn't it!"
"Yes..." Bryan answered.
A tear fell from Louis's eye. He knew he was finished--destined to be one of them in no time. But he stood confidently. "Bryan. You have to shoot me."
Bryan backed up. "What? No!"
"Come on! Please! I can't turn into one of those things! You have to kill me!"
"I can't do that! How could you even ask me?"
Louis grabbed bryan by his jacket and held him inches from his face. "I can't be one of those things! I can't! Please, you have to do it!" Tears had welled in his eyes now and his pleading was right from the heart. He was literally dead serious. Bryan shut his eyes tightly and knew he had to do it. Otherwise he would just have to do it when Louis became one of the creatures. Louis knew Bryan had understood and took a piece of paper from Whitmore's desk to begin writing. In a minute's time he had finished his goodbye letter, rolled it neatly, and clutched it in his hand. He stood back in the room and nodded to Bryan. Bryan gave him one last cigarette and stood in the doorway. He held the shotgun up and looked down the iron-sights to find Louis's head right in the center and his eyes closed. Bryan closed his own.
"Do it, man. And you damn better not regret it."
Bryan wrentched his eyes together. Hesitated. And fired.
Gabriella walked up a minute later to find Bryan leaning against the closed door to Whitmore's office. "What was that?"
"We found... another one of them."
"You're okay, though, right?"
He paused. "Yeah..."
"Where's Louis?"
"He wants to stay back and hold out here. Come on, let's go." He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her along to the courtyard.
"Wait! I should at least say good bye to the guy that helped us stay alive, right?"
"Come on," he said, firmly. She didn't resist. The two of them hopped the fence on the end of the school.
Doctor Grisham watched from hiding as his workers did nothing. Nothing at all. Rather than work on a cure or a solution they were doing little more than twiddling their thumbs.
"I really hate this, you know, Mack?" one of the men said.
"How the hell do you think I feel about wiping out the entire populus of Missouri? But we take orders from people that control everything and when they say to control the population we control the population. I didn't like it six years ago, either, but I did it, right?"
"Yeah, and two big buildings worth of people are dead and their families mourn the deaths to this day."
"Shut up, DeVasher. I didn't say my conscious is clean."
Doctor Grisham stood from his place beside the doorway. "What was that? Your conscious!" He pistol-whipped DeVasher onto the ground and stuck the gun barrel into his ear. "Mack, you tell me what the hell is going on or I blow his brains out! He had as much to do with it as you!"
"No, no! He didn't do any of this!"
Grisham shot Mack in the leg and let him writhe in the pain that was nothing compared to what he had, apparently, caused. "Am I serious now? Do you believe I'm serious now? There's plenty more limbs to choose from, Mack!"
"I'm not saying anything! I can't!"
Grisham shot the other leg--the knee-cap. Mack wouldn't be walking any more."
"Son of a b***h!" He grasped his other leg in pain and couldn't decide which one hurt more. He groaned and writhed around and the expression on his face--the pain on his face was unmatched. "Please! Stop! I'll die if I tell! I can't tell you anything!"
"Mack!" he bellowed in frustration. "Dammit, tell me! I can do worse than kill you!"
"I can't tell you!" Mack cried, begging. "I can't tell you!"
Grisham wasted no time in shooting the man in the groin. Grisham could definitely do worse.
"F**k! F**k! Son of a b***h! How could you do that!" He was in all colors and shapes of pain now and about to drop into unconsciosness from the pain. Not that he wanted to live anymore anyway.
"Tell me! Now!" Grisham wasn't asking anymore.
"Okay! Frank Prior! He's the one that's the head of this whole thing!" His words were between gasps and sobs. Grisham put the man out of his misery and dragged DeVasher out of the room so he wouldn't have to see the mess. "Frank Prior. You'll wish you were Mack when I finish with you..."
Bryan, Gabriella, and Doc stepped down the somber asphault stretches of Goldstein, leaving the high school behind. The only thing on Gabriella's mind was where they were going and if they would be able to escape what was behind them. Bryan's mind was stuck on his murder. All of the "zombies" were thinking outside of rationality--they were lumbering killers that feasted on anything in their path. Killing them could be justified, but Louis? What did he do? Bryan was wracked with guilt and he knew he couldn't tell Gabriella about it. There was nothing she could do but get emotional and slow them down more. She had enough on her mind, right? Bryan's fingers twitched around the shotgun.
After an hour of walking the three of them had long passed Goldstein and wound up in a small town. It had a few wells and old clothes lines and overall it looked like technology's wave had spared it. They continued walking. High above in an old fashioned church stood a man of around twenty four with revolvers at his hips and a cigar in his lips. The girl beside him held a rather large rifle. "Sir, there's more of them. Permission to fire?"
The man puffed at his cigar. "Granted."
Down below Bryan roused himself from his self-hating long enough to see the glint of a high-precision scope in the church's tower. He grabbed Gabriella's arm and yanked her to the side just as a tremendous roar jutted from the firearm's muzzle and a large patch of dirt behind them kicked up. They ran to cover behind one of the houses lining the main street.
"Damn, missed. Should I draw them out?"
I smile played on the cigar man's lips. "I think you've had enough fun for now, Charity. Let me have these." He drew the revolvers from his thigh-holsters and slid down the ladder of the church's tower.
Bryan was breathing heavily behind the thin walls of the old home.
"What was that rifle?"
"From how loud it was? Maybe a .50 caliber. That's kind of extreme if you ask me." He carefully peered around the wall, but only for a second--he had an idea of what he was dealing with and it wasn't smart to keep looking too long.
"You picked the wrong town, my friends," the man from the side of the house said, guns drawn. This time Gabriella pulled Bryan down and out of the way of the two bullets and the sonic booms. They darted around the side of the house again to be missed by a hair by another rifle shot. It was not a good place to be in. Bryan wanted to start shooting, but he knew he was dealing with un-infected humans--mistaken un-infected humans that thought he and Gabriella were carriers.
"Stop!" Bryan yelled. "We're not carriers! We're not infected! Stop shooting!"
The man with the cigar considered this. "Are carriers capable of speech like that?" He leaned against the wall with Gabriella and Bryan on the other side. The girl identified as Charity fired again from the rifle. She missed entirely, but it served to make Bryan and Gabriella cringe.
The man with the cigar walked out from behind the wall and called up to Charity. "You can stop now, I think we may be wrong about these two." He turned towards the wall where the others were stationed. "You can come out. I won't shoot you." He slid the revolvers into their holsters. Bryan hesitated, but leaned his head around the corner some to see the man--faded blonde hair pulled back and short, black jeans with revolver holsters, and a gray combat vest covering bare skin. "So you're not carriers," he said. "My mistake."
Bryan cursed. "Couldn't you have been able to tell that before you started shooting at us?"
"You have to understand that this state hasn't really been sane for the last little while. Come with me to the church tower--you can meet Charity. We're not exactly safe out here." Bryan followed the man to the church and up the ladder to the tower where a girl just older than him stood by a large, black rifle.
"Sorry that I didn't introduce myself. Felix Riboruba." He held out his hand and Bryan reluctantly shook it. "My job doesn't have a strict definition but you would probably relate it to bounty hunting. This is my apprentice."
The light brown-haired girl with smiling eyes held out her hand as well. "Charity Hutchinson."
"Apprentice?" he asked, taking her hand.
"That's right."
"What do you teach her?"
She answered. "Combat techniques, military strategies, sniping, survival."
"Why?"
Felix smiled and removed the fired shells from his revolvers to replace them with new ones. "Because... it is necessary for civilians to be ready for bad things to happen. Did you see any police presence here?"
Bryan shook his head.
"And military? Of course not. They're all at the epicenter trying to keep this from spreading. And doing a fine job!" he laughed. "So since the announcement it's just been me and Charity defending the city. She can get everything in the open with the Beowulf rifle and I can get everything in hiding with these little beauties. You two are welcome to stay if you pull your own weight and help us now and then."
"We really should keep going," Gabriella said.
"At least don't go 'till morning. Night's closing in and it'd be bad to be out there now."
Bryan hesitated, but agreed. He was tired. Gabriella was tired. And a safe place for the night would be a blessing. "All right, we'll stay."
Felix nodded. "The first floor is boarded up nicely and nothing will get by our watch so feel free to get some rest. I'll call you up here in a while whenever Charity needs some sleep."
Bryan let Gabriella go down the ladder first, then took to it himslef and the two of them settle into the fairly large room. Every window was, as Felix had said, barricaded quite well and secure. And several families were huddled together that he hadn't noticed before. Many were praying.
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:26 pm
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 8:36 pm
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 8:49 pm
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 8:54 pm
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Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 11:26 pm
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ArmasTermin Old Lord Brocktree Ugh, I hate when people use the Misery line, I find it to be retarded. I like living in Missouri though. I'm not saying Missouri is a bad place to live. Frankly I've never been there. I have a friend that lives there and I think she likes it, but... like I said: bad pun.
Still annoys me.
Where's she live? i've been to alot of places. (just town name, no need for anything more) |
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Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:06 am
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Old Lord Brocktree ArmasTermin Old Lord Brocktree Ugh, I hate when people use the Misery line, I find it to be retarded. I like living in Missouri though. I'm not saying Missouri is a bad place to live. Frankly I've never been there. I have a friend that lives there and I think she likes it, but... like I said: bad pun. Still annoys me. Where's she live? i've been to alot of places. (just town name, no need for anything more)
I don't remember, actually... I wrote it down somewhere but I can't find it right now... I'll put it up later. |
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Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:12 am
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Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 11:27 pm
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Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 6:20 pm
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Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:46 pm
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