Wednesday, July 29, 2009

#0041 | 07/29 | 10:30 AM

Worst fucking case scenario last night. A Freak - a dog - somehow got inside the central building in the middle of the night.

We lost someone - Sean - and it was all because me and Anna weren't fucking armed.

We only found out it was inside around three, but of course, it could have been wandering around much earlier than that. God only knows what might have actually gone down if an entire pack of the fucking things had gotten inside. We we were lucky only one got in.

Lucky and incredibly fucked.

It was a call from Anna that awoke me.

She told me to call the others and warn them to stay inside their rooms. A dog-Freak had gotten inside and was wandering around the first floor corridors.

When I asked her where she was, she told me she was in the infirmary - with Monica. I asked her what the hell she was doing there, and she told me she had to come down and help protect Monica - she was effectively defenseless after all.

When I asked where Colin was (he slept with Monica in the infirmary these days, and it seemed strange that he wasn't... well, killing Anna to be honest) and she told me he wasn't downstairs.

MIA.

Had she tried his cell? No, she responded. That would be senseless as his cell phone was lying on a table downstairs, in the infirmary. Discarded.

First, I called Sean. It was the obvious choice. He was certain to be downstairs, playing commando near the armory, the ultimate target. Shit. The bastard hadn't slept in days. His paranoia has been running his ass ragged.

So...

If he happened to fall asleep down there. Sitting on the stairs in front of the armory...

And a big, bad old dog happened to trot along...

Shit!

Shit, shit, shit!

The phone rang silently five times on the other side before going to a nameless voice-mail. I called again, twice. We kept the phones on vibrate as a rule these days. Seemed smarter. At night, the last thing we wanted was to attract undue attention because of the sound of a stupid ringer.

But Sean didn't answer and that could mean two things. Maybe he'd fallen asleep, as was likely, and the vibration simply wasn't waking him through the cloth. Or maybe a certain doggy had come along and ripped out his neck.

There wasn't any time to waste, the situation was already dangerously fucked. I couldn't even bother to try Henry and Hector, I'd have to hope Anna would dial a warning in their direction after me.

I stepped out into the upstairs corridor. The door clunked uneasily, and I cursed at the noise that emitted. But that couldn't be helped. I had to move.

The darkness was too thick for my eyes. I couldn't see anything at either end of the hall, only the darkness that permeated everything. But if I stood still for a bit, my eyes adjusted slightly. No colors - but forms emerged quietly from the void.

Enough for me to assume I was alone. I was counting on my ears to cover what I couldn't see. And since I didn't hear the raspy panting and growling I associated with the dog-Freaks (and wasn't having my throat torn out), I assumed I was alone.

Anna said the beast was downstairs, and I believed her. The only problem was where downstairs. Could be anywhere from the central building first floor to the administration building...

And I was, of course, unarmed.

I walked down the corridor, toward the west, toward the staircase above the armory. Hoping to find Sean. But thinking that a loaded assault weapon would be ever better.

The place is littered by the way. Over turned chairs, tables, not to mention all the trash... books, notebooks, binders, crumpled paper... all too easy to step on something in the dark.

Make a sudden noise. A click. Maybe a tack. Or a thunk. Then I would stand there in the darkness, defenseless, my breath hitching up as I waited. Waited for the hot taste of foul breath lapping at the back of my neck.

I stopped at the top of the staircase. Waiting. Straining to hear. To sense life sprawled somewhere. A big lean lump sleeping unknowingly at the foot of the stairs. Sean.

And then and there, I really did hope he was alive.

All the shit he'd done to me and Anna recently put aside, I found myself yearning quite plainly to not have to see his grizzly remains decorating the stairs. Because he was a comrade. And I'd seen too much death as of late. I hoped...

Snort.

I blinked, uncomfortably, and stepped forward. Looking down, toward the floor a story below. Above, a large window provided a pale glow of light via the moon, and illuminated Sean, lying on the stairs, completely out. Snoring plainly yet silently. He rifle held loosely in his hands.

Alright. Alright.

I stepped down the stairs, carefully, stumbled on the last step and almost fell, but caught myself on the railing and managed to proceed. My left ankle a little worse for wear.

I stood above Sean and considered kicking his awake, but thought against it and leaned down over him. Nudging him carefully but forcefully, I repeated his name a few times before his eyes fluttered open uneasily, and he awoke.

And boy, was I not the one he wanted to greet him a good morning.

He pushed me away and swung the rifle in my direction, stepping away, toward the first floor corridor. He told me to stay back, and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing here.

I tried to explain about the dog-Freak (acutely aware of how loud he sounded in the night), but before I got the whole thing out, he told me to shut up and put my hands in the air. Then, he proceeded to make more absurd assumption. Immediately saying that I had been attempting to murder him while he slept and was trying to liberate some arms to do away with the others.

Unreasonable.

I tried again, to reason with him, and actually got the entire situation out while he eyed me nervously, but he laughed.

No he didn't.

What?

Oh.

Sean's eyes popped into wide O's as he turned around, to face the source of the seedy little laughter we heard, that had clearly not come from Sean at all.

But he was too slow.

In a split second, a large pointed jaw appeared from behind, from the corridor, and wrapped itself on Sean's now exposed neck.

Flick. Twist. Break. And he was no more. Poor bastard.

I didn't wait, I jumped over the railing, skipping the steps entirely and landing on the floor. I reached for the small handle that opened into the make-shift armory and threw the narrow door open.

Reaching inside, I groped for the visible bundle of metal bodies lying piled on each other and brought out the first automatic weapon I touched.

Twisting out, back toward the beast, I raised the weapon toward the Freak (it was standing over Sean's corpse, feeding gruesomely on his spine) and clicked on the trigger.

My body had readied itself for the significant recoil I expected. I couldn't hear anything through the adrenaline (god my ears felt searing hot) so I didn't know it at first, but the lack of recoil tipped me off. There was no recoil. There was no recoil!

There was no magazine tucked into the slot!

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Sean, I knew then, had been careful to unload all the weapons. Aww, fuck him. (At least the door hadn't been padlocked).

Had the dog been gunning for me, it would have had me there. There simply wasn't enough time to cover turning around, looking for a proper magazine, clipping it, turning back, and firing.

But it wasn't, so there was.

And I unloaded on that fucker with a rain of flying metal.

It took the burst with a piercing wail, and flew upwards, toward the stairs, toward the second floor.

I say "flew", but I know it was just a jump. A powerful jump albeit, but a jump nonetheless. Still, with the amount of air that thing achieved within a small amount of time, it was too easy to believe the thing could fly.

The heavy sounds of body hitting grounding and I knew the thing was wounded. But alive. And trying to get away.

Fuck that.

I chased it up the stairs, the fast fuck, and saw it sprinting out into the second floor corridor. I followed as fast as I could with my hurting ankle, and entered the corridor in time to see Hector, standing outside his door, flashlight clutched in hand. The dog-Freak rounding down the dim hall in his direction.

I raised my weapon and I fired a burst.

Knowing full well that I was probably going to hit Hector with a slug too. He was directly behind the dog. Directly in the line of fire.

The dog slammed into him, and then my rounds slammed into the dog, and it collapsed. A giant form lying in the hallway floor.

I waited a few seconds, afraid that the thing had managed to kill another comrade before it was felled, but I moved eventually.

"Get this fat bitch off of me, shit."

Alive.

I went to his aide and helped heave the extraordinarily large corpse off of him.

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