can you tell us how many "kill choices" we've avoided so far?
Not that many, honestly. A few that would have led to a do or die choice to get back on track.
3. Move in, aim for the center of mass, and fire another shot. No chance of missing now.Stepping quickly over to the downed creature, careful to stay out of reach of the flesh-vines, you stand over the Faceless, aim down at about a forty-five degree angle, and put another slug into it.
SCREEEEEEEEEEeeeeee!!!Wow. It didn't like that. The vines spasm about, whirling and twisting madly like a forest of worms. Whatever momentum it had toward righting itself is long gone. The body rolls over back and forth, and you can see some kind of greenish-red liquid staining the ground under and around it.
Quickly grasping that this is your chance, you tell Nicole to get in the car as you dance around the Faceless and it's grasping vines and get in yourself. Quickly, you speed away, leaving the damaged creature behind you.
"Well, that could have gone worse," you say.
"Much worse," Nicole agrees. You glance at her. She's looking at you, but looks away after a moment, out the window.
About five minutes later, you pull over to the side of the road. Time to check out that crater.
Better take Nicole with you. No telling if more of those things are around. You grab your pipe, gun and knife but leave the rest of your supplies in the car.
Smoke is still rising from the crater, but less so now. You're almost out of daylight, so you hurry through the wreckage of your hometown. There's almost nothing recognizable this close to the blast. Everything is pretty flat and featureless. A few bent street lights are still standing, their glass like broken teeth scattered below.
You approach the small hill that must be the edge of the lip. Telling Nicole to wait here, you begin to climb. Your legs should be screaming protest, but oddly, you feel better than you did back when you first found the car. Maybe you just needed the food and water.
As you crest the lip, the first thing you notice is the crater is fairly small. It's maybe about a quarter mile wide, and almost perfectly round.
The second thing you notice is the bodies.
Hundreds of them. Hell, maybe even over a thousand. Men. Women. Children. Most of them horribly broken and twisted, you'd assume from the blast wave. In addition, there are thousands of body parts mixed in with the rest. Arms. Legs. Heads. Unidentifiable parts.
The third thing you notice is the worms.
Fleshy worms, not unlike the vines sprouting from those faceless in appearance, but much, much larger. While the vines were maybe half an inch around at best, these worms range in size from a foot wide to some over three feet. Also, unlike the vines, they have mouths. They are twisted around, inside of, and through the bodies.
They are eating them.
The smell hits you. Then the sound. A relentless grinding, slurping, chewing noise. In the center of the crater, the bodies are denser, piled higher.
You bend over and vomit, the bitter taste a welcome relief to the taste in your mouth previous.
As you right yourself, you see a Faceless, a good distance to your left, on the lip of the crater. Not either of the ones from before. He is carrying a body. Not with the arms, which remain pinned against the chest and torso, but with the vines. It is the body of a much larger man. The vines are wrapped around the body, tightly. Despite the weight difference between this Faceless and the body it is carrying, the Faceless does not seem to be suffering any difficulty in moving, still walking in that strange bow-legged gait. As you watch, it dumps the body down into the crater, then turns and leaves the way it came. It does not appear to notice you. In the distance, you can see upright armless figures moving in the crater amongst the bodies and worms.
The setting sun casts a red haze over all this, and you cannot think of a hell any different than this one you stand in now.
Nicole is standing next to you.
"They feed the birthed," she says. "They eat what they cannot take."
She is crying. You reach out and cover her eyes.
"Come on, sweetie. We're getting away from all this."
You turn and leave. Behind you, the feast continues.
You make it back to your car. The sun has set. The sky is still light, but not for much longer. You need to get going.
You turn on your headlights and head back to the north. You do not see the male or female Faceless from before. Some time passes, you are not sure how much. The ruination starts to decrease. Some buildings remain partially standing, there is even a blasted tree or two.
Nicole is asleep beside you.
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1. Head to the vet. You need medical attention and supplies. Other survivors might be there, as well.
2. You need to get as far away from here as possible. Forget the vet, lets go to Oregon. Or the hills. Or anywhere away from that crater.
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Location: Northern California, ruins of your hometown (Blasted Road)
Health: Poor (Possible unknown internal injuries) Left eye destroyed, left arm cut
Assets: Lead Pipe, change of clothes, contents of wallet, Nice watch (Showing 8:02), Revolver (3 bullets) Swiss Army Knife, Roughly one day's worth of food and water (Snack food, but granola and beef jerky, that kind of shit) Car, roughly 2/5 a tank of gas
Skills: None that would be useful spring to mind. Damn the school system!
Members in party: Nicole
Nicole:
Health: ???? Assets: Clothes (Strangely, they do not appear damaged) Skills: ????
"They" encountered:
"Faceless"
Form: Humanoid
Attacks: Vines
Resilience: Survived being hit by car and run over, being shot in the head
Speed: Low
Special/Notes: Central nervous system does not seem to be present in the head (Does it have a nervous system?) Damaged it by shooting it in the torso
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Author
Topic: The End (Read 57569 times)