Harry’s eyes were wide enough that I could see the whites, even through the grim shadows that painted us in black and white. “Go,” he whispered, voice a harsh grating over the screaming that spilled in from the room beyond. I scrambled to my feet with the help of Jessica’s grip on my arm.
“But…” I began.
“I said go!” Harry’s insistence had us scattering across the room with feet slipping on the tiled floor, but only when I reached the doorway we had come in through did I realise that he had no chance of holding the hostiles off alone.
The double doors buckled with the sound of splintering wood and warping metal, echoing throughout the canteen and stopping me dead in my tracks even as Jessica fought to carve us a way out. “It’s useless,” I told her, peering through the clearing dust brought up from the debris. “You’ll just lead us out into more trouble. The kitchens. We’ll go up through that broken vent.”
“And risk running into whatever killed that hostile?” Jessica hissed.
My original reply frittered away to nothing. “Oh,” I said softly, insides turning to water, “I think it’s far too late for that.”
A few feet from the broken doors lay Harry’s motionless form, having been thrown like a ragdoll. Among the dust and the remnants of our barricade, something crouched on all fours and gibbered in great huffing breaths. I swore under my breath.
“He’s done for,” Jessica whispered behind me. But I was already moving before I realised the meaning in her words, legs like lead carrying me across the room. At once the thing reared up and started its screaming again, and behind it a few other hostiles lurched and tried to scrabble through, but the majority, by now, were in the same state as the one that had almost crushed Harry.
I flinched at a blur of blood and hair and sinew that leapt at me from the corner of my eye, and prepared for the worst.
Then gunshots filled my ears and the creature on all fours dropped to the ground mid-pounce, oozing and shrieking its agony. I flattened myself to the floor, having just reached a groaning – but alive – Harry, and we both turned to see Jessica with her weapon trained on the thing.
“Get to the kitchen,” she said flatly. “If we’re going to do this, we do it now. I’ll keep it off us.”
For once, we didn’t dare disobey.
August 27, 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: apocalypse, blog, creative, creativity, dystopia, fiction, fiction blog, horror, midas plague, project, sci fi, suspense, write | Leave a comment
I opened my mouth to voice my confusion but found a hand clamped over it before any sound escaped. My fingers went to peel the unwanted touch away and, in darkness I don’t remember falling into, Jessica’s shaded face appeared above me. She pressed a fierce finger against her lips and jerked her head towards the double doors at the back of the canteen. Propping myself on my elbows, her hand falling away from my mouth, I followed her gesture. In front of the doors, bathed in the soft blue of emergency lighting, Harry braced his shoulder against the two doors. A slender object – a broom handle, I saw – was shoved between them, preventing entry.
I tilted my head, pleased to note that the throbbing pain in my skull had subsided, and scooted back a couple of inches on the floor as the drums that had woken me thundered up again. The doors bucked and threatened to burst open, but for Harry and his impromptu block barring the way. Not drums. Intruders.
“Hostiles,” Jessica all but hissed under her breath. I scrambled to my feet, shrugging her off when she tried to pull me back. In the commotion I made it across the canteen in just a few quick dashes, joining Harry and adding my weight to the door.
“Thanks,” he whispered, the sound nearly inaudible by the gurgles and savage grunts from the other side. Sweat glimmered on his forehead and his feet skidded as one of the hostiles made a particularly energetic shove at the door.
“What do we do?” I asked, shooting a glance over my shoulder to find Jessica hunting around for anything more to barricade the room up with.
“We can’t hold out for here much longer, that’s for sure,” Harry replied. “But I can stop them a bit longer. See if we can shove one of the tables or something up against here.”
I nodded, not bothering to stifle my footsteps as I joined Jessica in her search. They were outside and they knew we were here. There was nothing else for it.
“How did they know?” I asked, seizing a chair and ferrying it over to the doors.
“Someone decided to go on a midnight stroll,” she said, the venom in her voice palpable.
“Oh.” I rubbed at the back of my neck. “Well at least we know where they are. Better than them wandering around while we’re asleep.”
“If you say so,” Jessica grunted. The two of us lifted a table, carrying it on its side to toughen up our barricade.
“I would have been fine,” Harry snapped at her, “if you hadn’t come spying. This is your fault.”
Jessica barked out a laugh. “Don’t delude yourself.”
“At least I was trying to do something constructive, instead of snooping around.”
I groaned, shoving against the table as another wave of hostiles struggled to break through the door. “Will you two just sto—”
I slid, comically, to the ground as the pressure suddenly eased off. I frowned up at Harry and Jessica.
“Don’t either of you dare laugh.”
Harry’s lips twitched, then all humour wiped from his face
From the room beyond, something started screaming.
August 18, 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: apocalypse, author, blog, creative, creativity, dystopia, fiction, horror, midas plague, project, suspense, write | Leave a comment
The hostile was dead – twice – but that was not immediately obvious. Only once we had disentangled Harry from the mess of hair and bone and exposed muscle, Harry shouting threats, I fighting not to topple over while Jessica stormed through the doors with gun raised, did we realise that it wasn’t moving, let alone trying to attack.
“How did it get up there?” Jessica patrolled the steel shelves around the grate, kicking the broken covering away and largely ignoring the bloody mess before us. I tried to do the same, the soup sloshing around in my stomach in a way that could only be described as worrying.
Harry, meanwhile, was crouched down beside what was left of the body. “A better question would be ‘what killed it’?” he said.
“Be careful,” Jessica said. “You have no idea what it might be riddled with.”
“It did land on him,” I pointed out. “If it was riddled with anything, it’s too late to stop it now.” I slumped against the side of the doorframe, scientific curiosity begging my attention to the hostile but my body refusing to cooperate.
Harry prodded the thing with the end of a metal ladle he’d recovered from a nearby drawer. It had been disembowelled, half eaten, its abdomen a mass of glistening wetness. “Do you think another hostile could have done this?” He asked.
“It’s not improbable,” I said slowly. “I saw one, once, that tried to eat its own face. Or at least I think that’s what it was doing.” I tried not to think about the break room. The ocean of soup grew yet more tumultuous.
“I wouldn’t put anything past them,” said Jessica. “And if another hostile did this to one of them, good on it. Less for us to deal with.”
Harry straightened up. “Yeah, but what if it comes after us when it’s done with them?”
She shrugged. “Better to deal with one than a hundred. Now let’s get that vent covered before whatever it is that took a bite out of this one comes back.”
We nodded and set to work. Replacing the cover proved impossible, but we managed to patch it across with some duct tape and mesh from a supplies cupboard. That done, we covered the body with a tablecloth and securely shut the doors to the kitchen, food forgotten.
I didn’t realise how dark it had gotten or how tired I was until Jessica steered me over to a pile of coats she’d gathered from around the canteen.
“You look about ready to drop,” she said. “Get some rest.”
I wanted to protest but my head hit the makeshift pillows and my eyes closed before the words could form. The sounds of Harry and Jessica shifting around the room rocked me away.
I slept deep, dreamless.
I awoke suddenly, to the sound of drums.
August 7, 2015 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: apocalypse, author, blog, creative, creativity, dystopia, fiction, fiction blog, midas plague, sci fi, suspense, write, writer | Leave a comment
Midas Plague 