Let me tell you something about myself:
I’m not an incredibly smart guy. The fact that I’ve even made it this far is somewhat baffling to me. I mean, I’ve got endurance, I guess. Not a terrible shot, either.
But when it comes to decision making and thinking before I act... well there's something to be desired there.
While waiting in the classroom, I thought I was hearing something in there with me. Of course, I was already on edge, so this pushed me over my limit.
I stood still, anticipating absolutely anything. And then I heard it. A sneeze. But my brain didn’t register it as a sneeze until afterwards. At the moment, my frenetic mind filtered it through as a threat. It’d come from a closet in the corner of the room, so like the jumpy idiot I was, I fired off a reactionary shot, busting a hole in the wooden frame.
“Yo, relax!” Whoever was inside shouted. They kicked the door open, hands up in a “don’t fucking shoot” position. It was a kid, maybe around 15.
“Oh, thank God,” he exclaimed upon seeing me. “Cops are here.”
“First of all, I’m not a cop,” I responded. “Second of all, get ready to run, we’ve made too much noise here.”
The kid was confused at first, but it didn’t take long for him to realize what I’d meant. I could hear whatever atrocity that’d been lurking in the halls now standing right outside, with nothing but a wooden slab separating us. I raised my rifle as it simultaneously busted down the door.
It was… an inexplicable entity. I’d always pictured what I believed demons or aliens or… whatever other extradimensional creature would look like in my head. An understanding cultivated through exposure to movies and video games. Still, seeing something like that existing right in front of your face was enough to make the idea of staying sedentary in a room cut off from the rest of the world for the rest of your life not so bad.
I can’t think of any pre-existing creature on Earth to compare this thing to, so I’ll just try describing it:
A mass of pulsating fleshy blue spheres joined together atop a mechanical arthropod-esque body, with two bulky robotic arms ending in large claws. Surely some experiment gone horribly awry. Not sure why it was here, though.
The kid behind me got a glimpse of it as well, rendering him utterly speechless. The robot-centipede creature lurched forward, managing to slash open my protective vest like it was butter,
Fortunately, the creature was also a glass cannon. I emptied about half my magazine into its bulbous head, busting open each one of its spheres. It reacted erratically, swinging wildly and undulating its body, destroying the room in the process. I’m pretty sure that I'd blinded it or something.
“C’mon kid!” I shouted at him.
We ran out of the room as the creature continued its destruction. There were a ton of questions swirling around in my head, of course, the main one being where the hell we were heading next. I took out my radio and asked the Officer on the other end if things had settled down outside. No response. But from what I could hear, it sure as hell didn’t sound like it.
“Where are we going?” The kid asked.
Beats me, I thought to myself. “What’re you still doing here?” I asked him instead.
“Well…” he began. “I was in the bathroom when it happened.”
“Ok, still doesn’t explain why you didn’t evacuate with the rest of them.”
“Uh… look, I was watching YouTube in there with my headphones in and didn’t hear anything, alright? When I came out, everybody was gone, and I was hearing weird shit coming from near the entrance, so I found a place and hid. It happens, you know?”
Does it really? I thought. But I wasn’t going to bother lecturing the kid about it. Not the right time or place. Also, I hardly cared, if I’m being honest.
At the moment, we were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Inexplicable, unknown events were transpiring outside, while some kind of creature feature ritual-fest was going on inside. I reckoned that we simply needed to find another place to hide until everything blew over.
If it was going to blow over at all. I did have my silent reservations about it. I didn’t want to admit it either, but the kid being there made things so much more complicated for me. Yeah, yeah, not very heroic, I know.
We turned a corner, almost running into somebody in the process. I had a mini heart-attack as I began raising my rifle again, only to realize that it was another Officer. I stopped in an attempt to talk to him, but the guy just ran right past us, with a near catatonic-like expression on his face.
Of course, that could only mean one thing. Something was chasing him. Begrudgingly, I took a quick peak down the corridor he’d come from, seeing a seven-foot impossibly muscular humanoid covered in purple flames slowly walking towards us. The ground beneath cracked with each one of its steps.
“Where the hell are you going?” it cackled, deep and grating. “You’re just getting a preview of the new empire!”
“Jesus Chri-“
I didn’t let the kid finish his statement, dragging him away and pushing in front of me as I ran. As we navigated through the halls, I was beginning to hear a chorus of voices from the floor above. They sounded like the kids, but obviously not the regular kind. More so ones that’d been transformed through the means of otherworldly rituals.
Truth be told, I was actually planning on quitting the force sooner or later. I had funds saved and a solid plan to go with it. I never wanted to be a career Officer. But I just couldn’t pull the trigger. And look where that reluctance got me. Right in the middle of who-the-fuck-knows what.
Eventually, we found ourselves in another classroom, once again barricading the door behind us. This one had windows, so I immediately ran over, trying to get a glimpse of what was going on outside. But… I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. It was pitch black. I checked the time. It was only 4:30 PM.
I assumed that the windows had been covered up. But that idea was quickly discarded when, through the apparent haze outside, a hand pressed up on the glass. A hand with a bloodshot eye at the center of the palm. It pressed harder, causing a web of cracks to form.
At that moment, it seemed like there was nowhere safe to go. Nowhere to hide. I dragged the kid out of the room once again, only to find the colossal fire-man waiting for us there. He was grabbing the Officer that’d been running away earlier by the neck, choking the life out of him. I emptied the rest of my bullets into the blazing monstrosity, causing said monstrosity to flinch only slightly.
He chuckled, low and throaty, as he dropped the Officer’s lifeless body to the ground.
“Guns are something, aren’t they? A shitty remnant of the old world.”
He stepped forward, throwing a punch directly at me. Despite using both of my forearms in a cross-guard position to block, the impact still sent me flying into the lockers, rattling my bones and singing my uniform, along with the skin underneath.
The kid screamed, darting away from the scene. A good decision at the moment. But at the same time… well, he was pretty much screwed.
I wasn’t in much of a better position myself, trying to find my feet after being staggered by a single punch. The fire-man continued to approach me, eyes fanatic, with a grin that was beyond deranged as the flames roared across his body. I was still trying to pull myself together as he got within a few meters of me.
But then… almost out of nowhere, his head was cranked to the side by a swift, blurry fist, sending him reeling. I looked over to the adjacent corridor, seeing a brawny figure wearing a suit of black body armor and a skull-like mask. He stood there, fist outstretched, with small purple embers resting atop his knuckles from the impact.
“Hey there…” he said through the holes in his mask. “I’m the backup.”
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Credits
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