WARNING:
VIOLENCE AND LANGUAGE.
VIOLENCE AND LANGUAGE.
Once Upon a Time
It started with a virus.This wasn't the kind of virus that took people and turned them int zombies, although that would have been cool. It was, however, man-made. Courtesy of a single doomsday cult acting on the whims of it's stupid leader, the virus broke free and ravage the land. People and animals fell ill and succumbed to it within a week of becoming infected. Several lucky thousand managed to become immune to the wretched disease and survived the initial outbreak. There were two drawbacks to becoming immune, however.
1.] Their bodies mutated. Some became anthromorphic creatures. Some became monsters. Some didn't change much at all, save for some very subtle shifts that rendered them more than human.
2.] Their life spans altered. Some survived for several hundred years before old age claimed them. Some would advance to adulthood from a baby within a short month. It was all very random. While a few sat back to enjoy the benefits of longevity, others shared the volatility of a fly's life cycle.
Those that survived the outbreak began cleaning up the mess and restoring things to what it once had been. But the virus, temporarily forgotten through the grief and sudden changed, was one that would evolve quickly. Soon it came back for a second round, and then a third ... each time bringing death and changes. By the fifth wave, all of the world had been engulfed and suffered through the effects. Few normal beings and animals remained. Monsters roamed the streets, hungering for flesh, continuously mutating to adapt. They grew. They changed. They learned to procreate. Forced to evacuate their homes, many civilians sought refuge in whatever fort they could conjure up. Roaming beasts showed little regard for their own kind as they engaged in canibalism and mutated even more due to the splicing of viral cells.
Resources are running low. The surviving clans of changed humans are reaching out for whatever they can find ... and burrowing deep to find answers to several questions that still remain. Scientists still seek a cure - some are even trying to find a way off of the planet to restart somewhere else. Lone-wolf civilians make the best of what they can find out in the Wastelands. Still other groups of slowly-growing colonies try to cultivate the land despite the growing, ever-present dangers. While many survivors hide for fear of dying, others are doing their damnedest to break the mold. Cities are rising up from the ash and dusty soil. Groups of hard-working go-getters are attempting to purify water systems which had gone sour due to pollution and bacteria.
But there are the Contras who view everything that does not belong to them as rightfully their's ... and they attempt to take what they want, enslaving or killing those who oppose them. Several civilizations have fallen prey to them already. At night, if you listen closely, you can hear the beating of their war drums ...
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there.
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You'd think dodging around these run-down buildings would get you used to the smell of smoke and ash. Skating around on blood-splattered asphalt would be second nature by now. Tripping on the random body littering the stained earth, long-dead and turned to nothing but bone? Pshhh, those stories were as old as the corpses that conjured them, but they often led to mishaps that would bring laughter around their gathered circles, or a choir of tears ... all depending on what ensued. The continuity of these supply runs could make you get too comfortable with your surroundings, though, and it should never be like that. Thins changed. Some elements of the routine could evolve the following day. A building could fall over. The floor could give out from beneath you. Some new yet-to-be-discovered monster could peek around the corner and size you up for a meal it hadn't eaten yet. It was never smart to assume everything would go according to plan. Thinking like that was what could get you killed. It was what led to fresh casualties among their numbers. It was what brought Windra into her current predicament: sprinting down a hallway with her second-in-command as quietly and quickly as possible.
The dragon-like humanoid had a love-hate relationship with supply runs like these: they were invigorating and kept you on your toes. There was no denying that thrill of adrenaline coursing through thin veins, forcing energy into the four quadrants of your still-beating heart. What a rush it was to continuously push yourself to the limit - crossing that threshold of exhaustion for the sake of your team's survival and the bettering of life for those you provided for, adapting to any challenges and overcoming them like a boss. Sometimes they went smoothly, sometimes they were harrowing ... and sometimes they barely made it home alive. Those same perks to the job were the same things that made you exhausted within a matter of no time at all. A good day could turn bad in less than a second. Suddenly your whole team could go down with the will of something bigger and stronger than sheer numbers alone could handle.
Like today.
In a goddamn hospital.
Windra skid to a halt at an intersecting hallway. A gloved hand extended, the exposed clawed digits motioning for her follower to stop - and he did so in an air of sweat and fatigue. Garth reeked of old blood: it matted his pale yellow fur, giving it a rather rusted hue. When Windra found him huddled in the corner of a room-gone-blood-spa, she was certain that he was dead ... so soaked was he in crimson. But then he moved and spoke, and the dragon anthro discovered the life-fluid belonged not to him but the dismembered bodies of so many monsters surrounding his prone form.
There was one good thing about that mess. It made Garth smell like one of them - so much so that Windra was forced to cover her muzzle when the musk struck her flaring nostrils. It was stronger than ripe decay and her stomach gave a hefty lurch in protest. Will alone was the only thing keeping the few contents of her stomach at bay.
We shouldn't even be in this situation, Windra thought to herself with chagrin throwing itself from every crack of her mind. The golden rule was to never go into hospitals unless they'd been completely cleared out - there were far too many variables to make the missions go sour. But they'd gone through this area the day before and it had been emptied of all baddies to wreck their day. Something had changed overnight to bring the whole goddamn horde back through the double-doors three floors below.
Which was another thing. Windra and her men had taken the extra precaution yesterday to chain all of the entrances shut and padlock them for extra security. They were all still sealed when they came this morning. Well, all of them save for the entrance. And the chain had been snipped clean through!
Should have backed out ...
But their need outweighed common sense. There was no medicine back at HQ and a flu was ripping through their surviving numbers like a tidal wave of disease. Not to mention their medical supplies were running low - they needed splints, morphine, and various antibiotics that they'd bled local abandoned pharmacies dry of months ago. So like good soldiers, Windra and her men had pressed on. And they'd succeeded in getting their supplies ... and losing four people to the hungry Prowlers tucked neatly out of sight.
Windra and Garth were exhausted and sporting wounds of their own. The tabby cat hybrid shouldered the satchel of goodies : he'd tied it tight against his bag to keep it from rattling about. Stealth was the key here. Prowlers were devious bastards who would jump on anything that moved. But their sight was crude. They relied solely on sound ... which wasn't good for two anthromorphic beings clad in heavy gear made to resist the sharpened, starving fangs of mouths keen on ripping them to pieces. Windra's gun had been rendered useless due to an earlier encounter and had been flung aside ages ago. She was equipped only with her hunting knife and fire-breath (the latter of which she refused to use. There was no telling if oxygen was still coursing through the cylinders within the hospital, and if any of them were leaking or left on ... Turning the whole hospital into an erupting fireball was definitely not a good idea.) Garth, with his ears pinned back against the hood enveloping his aerodynamic skull, clenched a semi-automatic rifle to his side with the precariousness of one holding a newborn cub. He dared not fire it for fear that retched maws would set upon them from the shadows ... but the cat was useless in wielding a dagger.
Welcome to disease-Earth several thousand years in the future, where incurable viruses ravaged the once-flourishing landscape ... where friend became foe due to pathogens that deformed their bodies and ruined their minds ... where the struggle for resources turned clan upon clan ... and where radioing for help would lead to imminent death (gotta love those noise-sensitive monsters!).
More specifically, welcome to what, once upon a time, had been Chicago.
Windra peeked around the corner slowly. Though it was daylight outside, most of the hospital's windows had been boarded up as part of some last-ditch effort to keep the oncoming monsters at bay some decades ago. As a result, darkness filled every location except where cracks in wooden boards allowed the sun some refuge inside. Electricity still coursed through underground pipelines n certain places. Evidently it still powered (at least part of) the hospital. A single swaying light-bulb down the hall flickered as it moved, providing illumination every half-a-second. No creature was enveloped in its uncertain glow.
All clear.
Windra beckoned Garth to follow her with a flexing index finger. She kept low when skirting across the ragged linoleum floor, carefully keeping oversized-boots from stubbing in the oblong cracks that ruptured what should have been a smooth surface. These cracks mocked the claws of some large creature, but the scars were old. Something had been through here - something really, really big. But that was a long time ago: telltale blood smears where something had been dragged along the floor and walls were so old that they crumbled upon touch.
So mission ... Find the stairs, get the fuck out of here. Where the HELL is Zero? There was one more member to their living group, but he had scouted ahead in hopes of finding an exit somewhere, clearing out danger as he plowed through. The wolf/husky mix was slick on his feet with the maneuverability of wind itself. You could never hear him coming.
But he'd split from them a half-hour ago and should have been back with them by now.
It was evident that Garth wondered the same thing from the nervous expression struck against his pinched features and narrowed feline eyes. That thick tail of his refused to remain still as it swayed to and fro violently.
Nevermind that. Focus!
Windra stared ahead. There was something on the wall ... a placard with the traditional imagery used for an emergency stairwell! About damned time. The arrow pointed to the right at the end of the hall, but caution dictated -
SHWOOOF!
A gust of wind cascaded down her back. Alarmed, Windra spun quickly around, mouthing a caustic, 'What the actual fuck?!' to Garth
Which would have been fine and dandy, had Garth been there to receive it. That single drop of blood on the ground where he once crouched wasn't going to answer back for him. Terror sprung Windra's heart into a fleeting sprint. Where was he? What happened to him? The strangled gurgle of a moan that erupted above broke her thoughts and, with the swift shift of her gaze, Windra had her answer in the form of four glowing yellow eyes.
"Well fuck."
