18+ —「Extinction Of Nightmares.」

[Klamoa]

Summary: One of the few survivors of the government-executed experiment that had spiraled out of control and into a lethal nationwide epidemic of the dead rising and consuming biotic creatures, a group of misfit surviors band together in the hope for survival as the creatures they'd once known as humans, friends, and family gradually become cannibalistic creatures revolutionizing into monsters far beyond the nightmares once joked about many years before.

 

Status: In progress

 

Warnings: Notable amounts of violence (gore), and crimes.

 

 

 

Silence

 

The concrete highways and graveled streets that had at one time been neatly trimmed were messy now, edged with a mat of tangled and broken dry grass heavy with oat bears meant catch on dog's coats or the pants leg of a passerby. Or at least, what may have once been a passerby many months before the mother nature and the world itself had gone to shit. The sun sat silently on the horizon midst a pale sky, abandoned by the fluffy; milky-white clouds that had long ago dissipated in the wake of human's ridiculous downfall. Weeds darkened, leaves curling in on themselves in the absence of rainfall and stubbornly remaining put aside the occasional one or two freed by the prying wind against it's roots to send it falling wearily sideways to the Earth to point haplessly in the direction of the rare gust of wind.

 

Dawns came and passed, but no day. In the gray sky a red sun would appear, a diluted red circle midst bleak grey and maroon blue that gave little light, like dusk; and as each day advanced, dusk would slip back toward darkness while the wind groaned and whistled over fallen weeds and corpses long into the process of decaying to return to the land it'd borrowed from to give it's final and only contribution into the soil it'd stolen from.

 

But yet another one in particular seemed to have halted in this process. A little pasty girl trapped underneath the fallen branch of a tree remained caught there with a long head, her features bony and tight yet further enunciated by the greyed skin set on top of a small neck as stringy and muscular as a celery stalk. It stood in stark contrast to the way her tiny jaw hung loosely-the broken bone and torn muscle on the lower half of her face leaving the fragment of her face jostling freely with every small movement. The ex-child's eyeballs were heavy and protruding; tired raw and red lids stretching to cover them; nose beaked and crooked from impact with the flesh there stretched so tightly over it that the bridge showed white with stretching. Possessing an abnormally high forehead enunciated only by the little patches of hair missing from where it should have originally been, the empty space of the tiny infected's head was lined with delicate blue-black veins at the temples that grew darker and black in color; bulging each time the pupil-less ivory white eyes shifted, standing in harsh contrast as her little lips curled back and her face contorted into a snarl at the shadow that passed over her; the futile squirming to reach out and grab further damaging the thin fabric of a pajama shirt and bottom that gave way to the unrelenting oak keeping her trapped in place.

 

And well? Bryce didn't look at her. Didn't look at it. The thing that had taken over what had once been a her. He turned his head away from the sight and sound, oil smudged fingers wiping themselves off on the rough fabric of well used jeans before lifting to pull the skull neoprene half face mask back into it's original place over his mouth and nose; the feeling of the synthetic fabric against his face a familiar one as he paused to take a breather, setting down the heavy gas can holders onto the ground and squatting into the shade of an abandoned truck to wipe the thin sheen of sweat from his neck and cheeks and allowing his head to drop for just a moment; breaths coming in harsh puffs that fogged up a small portion of the door closest to his head as the lethargic rays of the sun hidden behind the plethora of abandoned buildings--sky scrapers while swathed in dark blue-grey skies beat down at his shoulders and back. The general lack of longer shadows told him that the day was just getting started, couldn't have been anywhere past a later six or early seven in the morning; months of calculating the best time to go out and get supplies told him that much.

 

Hands lifting to rest against the hood before using it as support for his weight; after a few moments spent rigidly perched behind the now useless ford vehicle he pulled himself up; leaning down only to pluck up the tanks of gas from the ground before continuing on his way, the only sign a human having been there now being the track of mud in shoe shapes that disappeared closer to the center of the road. What he wouldn't fucking do for a pint of ice cream and an air conditioner. Trudging along the road he'd spent almost an entire day physically clearing via the tedious process of carefully opening the hoods of cars and tearing out the horn wires used to set off an alarm when handled roughly prior to manually changing the gear inside of the car to make pushing them out of the way easier after picking the doors open. It was upon reaching the larger vehicle in the middle of the road did the tenseness that made his shoulders rigid finally give way to some form of relief. Months alone with a self-mobile caravan as your literal ride or die pal had a tendency of doing that to a person after all.

 

Letting go of one of the gas tanks after adjusting it into a spot where he could trap/balance it between his hip and the vehicle, the hand that'd been holding it fumbled through his pockets until his fingers came across the familiar loop of thin cheap metal and the soft torn fabric keeping it tied to a key. Shortly after the door was unlocked he made his way inside the minuscule bedroom sized transportation device, quietly kicking the door shut behind him and popping open the small storage compartment closest to the door prior to quietly sliding the two fuel cans into the small space underneath the shelves before practically sinking into the small couch's cushions with a shaky exhale. Crowbar carefully unhooked from it's spot angled into a slot of his belt loops and placed onto the worn furniture next to him, he sprawled out with aching muscles before his eyes lethargically shut to lazy slosh of a layer of water lethargically pouring out from the small stream sprung into life that had slowly begun to pour out and into the once dry streets.

 

Only to pop right back open minutes later at the sound that resonated back and into his ears.

 

Eyes swiveling to the door, he sat back upright before listening closely again. Reluctantly standing and walking towards the door, the man cracked it just enough to stick his head out; deep brown eyes squinting into the barely lit roads in search of anything viable moving amongst the underbrush or even the scattered cars now lining the outside of the road devoid of both activity and life in general. What the hell?