Only three votes so far, so I am breaking my own rules by updating so quickly, but damn it, my muse won't sit down. The bitch is either sugar high, making the waiting for votes irritating, or in a coma, making updates impossible.
Anyway, I think most of my audience fucked off when the updates slowed to a trickle and then stopped. Here's to reclaiming them.
2. Save it for when more obvious signs of crazy start to manifest.
You eye the can for a long moment. You're not exactly sure how this shit works, but it seems like you can clear your head when it gets real bad by just drinking a small amount. If you can force yourself to drink it instead of throwing it away or whatever. It worked before, anyway.
Sighing, you put the can back in your pocket. You raise your head to look out the front windshield, toward the city. The highway stretches out in front of you like a black river through white mist. Ahead of you, you can sense the source of the pulling sensation. It's vague, intermittent, and impossible to put your finger on, but it's definitely there.
You put the car in drive and swallow long and hard. You're probably crazy for going back. No. Not probably. There's no logical reason to assume Nicole is ahead of you. The only thing you're going on is a supernatural sensation, which could be any number of ...nasty things.
"No reason at all," you say softly, and smile.
Max whimpers from the back at the sound of your voice.
You turn, and smile wider at him, grinning now.
"What do you say, boy? Want to go find our girl?"
Max barks and grins back at you.
"That's the spirit!" you exclaim, turning back around and releasing the brake before pressing down on the gas.
**************************
The old roads. The familiar buildings. Turning east. Figures in the mist. The dogs that watch you from the sidewalks, from the broken windows, from the gutters. They part around you, enfold you, like a family welcoming a prodigal son home.
The fog swirls and dances as you slice through it at fifty miles per hour. Wrecked, overturned cars. A logging truck smashed into the side of a building, it's cargo spilled out across the entire road like a huge broken raft. You turn down a sidestreet and continue east.
Figures ahead of you in the road. They turn and scream. You pilot between them. One reaches out with its vines and scrapes your door. You accelerate.
A huge infected German Shepard running along beside you. He howls and falls behind. Max answers his howl with his own.
You know you should slow down, but a madness has gripped you. You don't know if it's part of your infection or not, but you are not afraid. You only await what comes, and you're tired of waiting for it. You will find what you're looking for, one way or the other.
You scream and Max howls along with you. You hit a bump in the road and laugh.
"I'm coming, you bastards! I'm coming for you!" you scream.
The road disintegrates into rubble. Collapsed buildings, shattered parking lots, twisted metal and stone.
The edge.
The edge of the crater.
You slam your brakes.
The car skids to a halt with a horrible wail. The mist is thinner here. Your eyes begin to adjust. You exit the car and Max jumps out beside you. Your rifle is light in your hands.
You climb the lip in front of you, scrambling now and then. Max hops up ahead of you. You crest the ridge.
Nothing. Empty. Just rock and dirt and ruin. A blast pit of bleak emptiness.
The sensation pulls you still. You climb down into the crater. The footing is precarious but manageable. Max trots along nearby, sniffing here and there at the barren rock and broken pipe.
A broken, ruined deli. The sign is half buried in loose rock. A single picnic table lays upside down and cracked in half nearby. You bypass it, uninterested. Whatever is pulling you is directly ahead, and you are powerless to resist it now.
The center of the crater is just ahead, just out of view. You can feel it. You can feel them. They're not on the surface anymore, like at the last crater. They've burrowed in. Nested.
You're pretty damn sure what's ahead isn't Nicole, now. Part of you, a small, detached and frantic part, keeps screaming for you to turn away, turn back, get back to the car, get the fuck out of here, what are you doing, what are you doing -- but the overriding majority of you only knows a strange savage glee. You're going to look these bastards in the eye. You're going to finally face them. You're not sure at what point this urge took over and suppressed all your normal actions and thoughts, but it was sometime shortly after the Shell station.
The center of the crater grows nearer. You find yourself almost jogging. The mist forms weird figures ahead of you. You briefly wonder if drinking that beer back when you were thinking clearly would have saved you. Oh well. Too late now.
There.
You're close. The nest is just ahead. Just ahead, and down. Down deep.
You walk forward. An odd sound begins to fade into your range of hearing. You're not sure what it is. Almost like a thumping.
Ahead of you rises the mound of dirt, like a giant anthill, at the center of the crater. It is dotted with broken stone and metal. The top is dented, where the hole goes down. Where you will soon go down, to join them.
The strange thumping noise is louder. Somewhere nearby. Above. It's not just one source. Several sources, thumping like drums.
You continue forward. To your end. To your family. To your death.
Max bites your leg.
You scream in pain and fall. The red haze of strange is wiped from your mind like mud being cleared by a bucket of thrown water.
Helicopters. They are coming. You turn and run, ignoring the pain in your calf. Max runs beside you, through the wreckage.
You glance over your shoulder and see the vague outline of a helicopter directly above the entrance to the nest. Something slim and dark drops from it.
The blast wave knocks you upwards and forwards and off your feet and tumbling and heat before the sound of the explosion reaches your ears. You cover your head with your arms as best you can as the rubble begins to rain down on you. Nearby, you hear Max whimper in pain, then go silent.
Something large and heavy lands on you.
********************************************
Something large and heavy is on you. You slowly come back to your senses.
You breath. You are in some minor pain, but nothing serious, you think. You attempt to move, and find it difficult but possible. You throw off the concrete slab that was atop you.
You glance around. Smoking pieces of rock. You see the end of your rifle sticking out from under some rubble and pull it free. You don't see Max anywhere.
Footsteps. You turn.
A man flanked by two more men. They wear black combat armor. Each carries an assault rifle similar to your own. Each wears a strange mask. Black, with a small gas mask built into the lower part.
The front man lowers his rifle and speaks. His voice is static.
"Looks like we got a survivor."
One in the rear steps forward. He twists something on the side of his head, then looks at you through the scope of his weapon.
"Should we call it in?" asks the other one in the back.
"My scopes show him infested. No point. Let's waste him," says the second guy, still looking at you through his green lighted scope.
"Any irregularities?" asks the first man closest to you.
"Nah, he's just a pure strainer," answers the second, lowering his weapon slightly, impatience in his voice.
"But he's not an imitator," the first says, his voice older, more modulated. "How is a pre-bloomer still alive, still human, this close to a nest?"
"Fuck if I care," says the second, and cocks his rifle, aiming it at you.
*************************************
1. Shoot the guy aiming his rifle at you.
2. Shoot them all.
3. "I'm not infected!"
4. "Wait! Don't shoot!"
5. Run.
Poll
4 (66.7%)
Author
Topic: The Ends (Read 59134 times)