Ray
Ray dove off the bench and slammed into the concrete ground, bruising his arms through his clothing as he scrambled forward. Turning to the side his eyes bulged out of his head as he saw that whatever that thing had spit at him had melted clean through the bench and several inches into the ground.
“Josephine! Help!” he yelled as he scrambled to his feet and took a fighting stance.
The thing in front of him made a choked gasping sound and reared back, maw open. He dodged again, cursing as he did so. “Could really use your help now!” he yelled in a shrill voice.
Josephine came out of the door just in time to see the acidic bile plow into the ground where Ray had just been, and summarily eat clean through it. Cursing Josephine ran back inside. Ray was sure she was leaving him to his death, but it was only a moment later when she returned holding a spear. She had converted her multi-tool into a four-foot-long trident with a double-pointed end resembling a fork missing the middle prong.
Reaching back while holding the middle of the long weapon, she took several stutter steps before pitching it forward with all of her strength. The spear flew true, slamming into the hideous acid-spitting undead square in the middle of its face.
It dropped to the ground limply as Ray looked on, impressed with the athletic throw. She must have hit something important.
“Awesome throw,” Ray said in appreciation as he stood up. “You saved my bacon.”
Josephine nodded and walked over to the creature. With the accompanying noises of ripping and tearing flesh, she retrieved her muti-tool. “This creature was outside during the day,” she stated.
“Yeah. It was. I mean, it still stuck to the shadowed part of the street. It wouldn’t step directly out into the sunlight, for whatever reason they avoid it. But yeah, this thing defiantly came out and was more than definitely targeting me,” Ray said with a shiver. “We made eye-to-eye socket contact.”
Josephine quirked an eyebrow in curiosity. Turning away from Ray she said, “You should come look what I found. It is interesting. In addition to food and water, there are many magazines and articles. But some things are not adding up.”
Nodding Ray followed her into the electro station's main building.
The inside was a mess. There were tipped-over shelving units, broken glass, and papers everywhere. Ray could see where Josephine had cleared off a section of the counter and had begun stacking loot that she had found. Mostly water and small snack items. Enough to keep from starving at least. What was of more interest to him, however, was the stack of intact magazines and newspapers piled neatly next to the food items.
Picking a magazine up, he scanned the front page. “China makes aggressive moves in the Pacific. Emmy Awards canceled due to terrorist threat. Scientists discover new crop genes,” he said, reading aloud.
Flipping to the page about the crops he read out loud, “Scientists have recently created a hyper-hydrophilic bacteria capable of utilizing far less water to grow wheat and soy crops,” looking up and meeting Josephine’s eyes, he knew they both had come to the same conclusion. “This was the bacteria the aliens were talking about.”
She nodded, not bothering to respond verbally to his statement. Picking up a newspaper she said, “This is the most recent newspaper I could find. It is dated 2102.”
“That would put my death three years prior to that. I asphyxiated in my ship when the asteroid hit us in 2099,” Ray said, musing over the new information. “No wonder I didn’t know anything about it.”
The woman nodded, then hesitated. Ray looked at her questioningly before she said, “I died in 2109. On the space station. As a refugee from the creatures that had appeared on Earth,” she admitted. “They decompressed the bay to keep the infection from spreading. It obviously didn’t work.”
“What the fuck Josephine? You survived round one of those things and came back for round two?” Ray asked incredulously.
She nodded, “I wanted to help. I took the opportunity. When I fled the planet before there were no … variants that we have seen. Just the base undead. But they were much faster and much stronger than what we have encountered so far,” she explained.
“Maybe they get that way at night?” wondered Ray as the quiet woman just shrugged. “Regardless, I haven’t seen any huge amounts of overgrowth. There are no signs of deep building degradation either. I'm going to say, ballparking here of course, that no more than twenty to forty years have passed. So there are more than likely some people alive left somewhere. I hope.”
“Your analysis is well thought out. You said you were a pilot?” questioned Josephine as she leaned back and crossed her long, well-tanned arms. The corded muscles stood out against her suit.
Ray nodded, “Yeah. I was a pilot up until my … it's weird every time I say. Up until I died. My college days were spent learning how to be a starship structural engineer. It's what I had a passion for. But the industry was highly competitive, and I had no connections. So I leveraged my safety knowledge into becoming a pilot.”
“Very adaptive of you,” said Josephine. “We should secure this place and then continue to – “ she cut herself off and whipped her head around to look out the window. “What is that noise?”
Blinking in surprise, Ray went to the front of the store and listened. At first, he couldn’t hear anything. Then slowly as it built, he could begin to make out a sound. One he couldn’t place, and didn’t think he had ever heard before. It was almost like …
The first set of shade links slammed shut in a massive crash of steel and noise, causing the sound to echo about the intersection and down the streets. Probably for blocks. The noise briefly stopped as Josephine spun towards him, “Get the back one! Now!” she yelled while moving to the next set.
Ray didn’t know what was going on but scrambled to do as she had asked. He had only known her a short while, but he had the distinct feeling she wasn’t one to panic over very much. And Josephine was most certainly panicking right now.
Ray slammed each shade link shut and snapped it into place. One by one each one come down until, just a few seconds after she had closed the first one, the entire electro station had been secured. Turning to look at the woman, Ray found her curled up on the floor in the fetal position. She was crying silently.
Wondering just what the fuck was going on he was about to ask when he noticed that the noise had gotten much louder. The noise was now surrounding them entirely and was much akin to standing in the middle of a river. Like rushing water, but somewhat different still, Ray couldn’t quite place the noise. Until he peaked outside of one of the shade links.
His face went white as all the blood drained from it.
Around the electro, station marched tens of thousands of, possibly hundreds of thousands or more, decaying bodies. Ray saw men, women… even children. Animals of all shapes and sizes from house cats to bears. It was a march of death. A parade of grisly and gruesome undead that was coordinated to the level of a professional ballet. Almost in lockstep they shuffled forward, line by line, as they moved towards the North end of the city.
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He was transfixed, even as in the back of his mind he knew that this shouldn’t be possible on any level for a mindless body to achieve. A rapping on the side of the wall, similar to that on the house, made its way to his ears. Looking over he somehow manage to blanche further, suddenly very happy he had never opened the door.
Standing in front of the door to the electro station was, for lack of a better word, a mouth on legs. It was open, showing serrated foot-long teeth in a mouth ready to pounce on whatever came to the door. Realizing this was no ordinary zombie, Ray returned his attention to the undead parade and began analyzing it. It didn’t take him long to pick out a dozen or more shapes that simply … could not have been natural.
From the mouth’s on legs, such as the one continuing to politely knock on the door, to massive hulking shapes that he couldn’t quite make out. They were as varied as they were spaced out in the grotesque procession.
“Fuck,” Ray breathed.
The moment he spoke the mouth on legs stopped tapping. It placed the side of its head to the door as if listening to anything that could be inside the electro station.
Ray stilled his breathing, attempting to make not even the slightest of noises. He knew that if that thing alerted the horde that they were both dead. Beyond dead. And probably would be, if not torn apart too badly, very undead.
The massive parade of monstrous beings flowed past the station for what seemed like hours. Ray re-evaluated his earlier estimate. There were easily a million creatures passing by. Where they were going he didn’t know, but if they weren’t around here then they weren’t nearby enough to be a threat to him and Josephine.
As the long line of shambling corpses began to decrease, the polite zombie door knocker rejoined the parade. It must have been convinced there was no one inside, either that or someone or something that was giving orders had called it back somehow. Regardless, the electro station was now zombie free.
Just as the last of the trailing undead passed by their impromptu hiding spot the ground shook violently. There were massive fireballs in the distance rising into the air as fierce winds from the displaced air danced through the streets. Ray could swear that he heard the distant crackling of gunfire, but he couldn’t be certain. After several minutes of disruption that too passed and the dusk became quiet and still.
Sitting bodily on the floor, drenched in sweat he hadn’t even been aware of before, he yanked a bottle of water off the counter and downed it in one go. “I need a fucking beer,” he grumbled.
His words brought Josephine out of wherever she had been mentally. Sitting bolt upright she locked onto him with her eyes. “Are they gone?” she whispered with dilated pupils.
Ray looked out the window again, noticing a single zombie shamble by, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “the rest just passed by. Our house guest went with them. It… sounds like there may have been a very short and brutal fight somewhere in the city as well. Some explosions and maybe gunfire. Outside of that, there’s been nothing else going on,” he explained.
They both froze for a second as a notification appeared in their vision:
EVENT – ZOMBIE HORDE SURVIVED
KILLS: 0
ALLY LOSSES: 0
DEPLOY NODE TO ENABLE HEX DEVELOPMENT
NEX CALCULATING – DEPLOY NODE FOR NEX ACCRUAL
EVENT SURVIVED: YOU WISELY STAYED HIDDEN - WIS +1
“Well fuck,” Ray grunted out. “We seriously need to find a place for this node. It wants to give us all this stuff, hopefully, stuff we can use, but we can't even gain access to it until the damn thing is installed.”
Josephine nodded in agreement and stood up, wiping the tears on her face away. Her red-rimmed eyes made Ray feel guilty. About what exactly, he wasn’t sure. But he felt that way nonetheless. “Yes. We must find a place, and soon.”
They stood there in silence for a few moments more before he said, “Right. That was terrifying. Let's, ah … let's get ready for bed. Neither of us has gotten much sleep, and it's clear this place will make an ok base as long as we don’t get regular zombie armies marching past us.”
The woman just nodded silently.
“You know, you would make a great mime. All action and no words” said Ray sarcastically. He sighed deeply and, having mellowed out a bit, follow up with, “But you take action when you need to I suppose. I don’t know what kind of trauma you went through, or what caused you to break down there. I can't understand it, not fully, but if you need to talk I am here. And not because I am the only man potentially alive on earth.”
Josephine choked out a laugh before schooling her emotions once more. “I will talk when I have something to say. But thank you.” She laid down on the ground behind the counter, and as Ray went to find his own sleeping accommodations he heard her say, “You’re not so bad for potentially being the last man on Earth you know.”
With a small grin, Ray headed into the back of the store. Deciding that he wasn’t quite tired yet, he explored a bit. Finding a bunch of boxes that were on shelves that hadn’t been opened yet, he pulled them down and began going through them.
He found nearly forty bottles of water, jerky, several full and unopened boxes of rice, and more instant noodles than he had probably ever seen before. Putting as much as he could in his inventory, he was upset to discover that the items had only stacked to twenty. He was, however, happy to see that while the boxes of rice weighed far more than one freeze-dried noodle they still stacked to the same limit.
“Funky System,” he grumbled. “Maybe there is a way to increase this whole inventory ability? Apparently, I can increase my strength by using that NEX stuff. Hmm,” he trailed off in thought. Looking up at where he had taken the boxes down from, he noticed that there was a wall safe embedded there.
“Now that … could be a decent windfall,” he muttered. Standing up he walked over to the safe. He tried the handle first to see if it was unlocked. After all, it sometimes paid off to start with the easy stuff first. Unfortunately, it was still secured.
Taking out his multi-tool, he thumbed through the select until he found the pry bar. As the tool took shape, Ray realized that it would be too large to use to pry open a safe this small. Searching through the options again, he found what looked to be a hand wedge of some kind. Guessing that the tip would be small enough to get into the crack, so he chose that tool.
As the tool formed in his hand, Ray put it up to the safe but had no way of getting leverage enough to force it open, even though the tool fit into the crack of the door of the safe. Frustrated he grunted and crossed his arms. Then he stared at the tool. The change tool indicator was still flashing at him.
With a savage grin, and with the tool still being inserted into the door of the safe, he moved it to the pry bar option and hit change.
With a cracking noise, the safe split open as the force of the multi-tool changing simply broke the entire container in two. The pry bar being far too large to fit into such a small crack, it popped the door off and punched clear through the back of the safe. A wonderful tool to have on hand in any situation.
“Work smarter not harder,” he muttered with a grin.
His grin was accompanied by a whistle when he saw what was inside the safe.
***
RAYMOND ‘RAY’ FINNEGAN
RACE
HUMAN
CLASS
NONE
NEX
CALCULATING
LEVEL
1
PHYSICAL STATE
FATIGUED
MENTAL STATE
DETERMINED
ATTRIBUTE
BASE
CURRENT
NEX TO INCREASE
STRENGTH
5
6
50
AGILITY
3
3
30
POWER
0
0
100
WISDOM
4
5
40
LUCK
2
2
400