Ray

He Was positive he was dead. For the half second that Ray fell through the pitch-black interior of the chemical tower, to the moment he impacted the walkway under the hatch, he was sure he was done for. His entire new life flashed before his eyes, thankfully he didn’t have long to think about it as the fall was rather short.

He slammed into what felt like chain-link fencing, the breath leaving his body with a not-so-quiet wheezing sound. Laying on his back on the catwalk, his chest heaved with its effort to get oxygen to his brain. Oddly enough the structure he was in didn’t smell like much of anything, so breathing was much easier than he had planned on it being. The chemicals being stored here must have leaked out or evaporated long ago.

He was musing on his good luck when he remembered the giant thing on the roof. Holding his breath he listened for any sounds above him. Sure enough, he could hear the feet pounding back and forth across the top of the roof. That monster was probably looking for him. Ray wasn’t quite sure how they tracked their prey yet, but he was sure that they were damn good at finding whatever they were looking for.

After a few moments of what seemed to be purely rage-fueled movements, the feet pounded off to the side of the curved wall. With a loud, long roar that vibrated the very structure under him, the footsteps stopped briefly … only to be followed by a loud impact at the bottom of the building.

The fucking thing had jumped off.

Shaking his head in disbelief, Ray got to his feet. Contrary to everything that had just happened to him he was still alive. Somehow.

Groaning he sat up, taking a look into the pitch black that surrounded him. Yup. Definitely couldn’t see anything. Ray was still completely in the dark about any threats that may be locked inside here with him.

Taking his multi-tool out from his inventory, he gripped the handle to begin looking for the selector button to change its form only to be surprised as it lit up. The light was just bright enough for Ray to see several feet in every direction, just bright enough for him to realize he was in a caged-off safety section of the catwalk.

“Great, Ray under glass,” he grumbled as he tested the door to see if he could force it open. Going with the day's theme, he was surprised yet again when it swung open easily on silent hinges. Apparently whoever built these things built them to last.

As he stepped out, the illuminating glow of the multitool projecting out in front of him, he followed the catwalk to its terminating point at the wall.

“Well … this isn’t getting me anywhere,” he grumbled again, turning around.

Unfortunately, the other side of the cage was locked, preventing him from traveling in the other direction on the catwalk. Examining the padlock on the steel barred door, he jumped backward as the slavering maw of an undead came screaming out of the darkness, slamming into the steel bars that separated them.

Taking a few quick steps back, Ray’s heart was pounding as he watched the thing snapping its teeth in his direction, trying to get through the door and eat him. The door in question, however, didn’t even budge. Once Ray realized that the creature wasn’t going to get any closer to him, he took the opportunity to really examine this one up close.

Contrary to his earlier thoughts, upon close inspection, the previously normal human being wasn’t rotting away. This surprised Ray, as every fiber of his being said if it was dead then it would decay. But this was certainly not the case.

While he could clearly see bone jutting out or outright visible on the undead body, each spot was growing almost what looked to be a fungus that covered it up. Moving up from the legs to the torso, even as the thing stuck its one arm through the grate and clacked at him, Ray noticed a hole torn clean through the body. The illumination from the multi-tool gave him just enough light to clearly see that it was a hole.

The insides were crusty with dried gore, but also contained large amounts of fungal growth as well. Stepping back slightly he took a good long look at the face of the creature. The clacking teeth, the missing eye, and the veins bulging out in its face.

There was definitely something more going on here than initially seemed. Ray thought about it a bit. Even if a zombie apocalypse seemed impossible, it had happened. At least, something so similar had happened that even those alien chuckle fucks in orbit couldn’t differentiate between what was and anything else that it could possibly be.

Getting as close as he dared, with the nasty thing snapping its maw at him, he looked closely at the empty eye socket. Something was … yes, yes there was definitely something moving inside of it.

Stepping back, Ray turned the multi-tool into its long spiked form. Drawing back, and taking a deep breath to line up his attack, he snapped forward and sunk the weapon neatly into the eye socket. The undead dropped to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut. As it fell, Ray withdrew the weapon.

The thing was fully dead now, but on the end of his tool, there was a long strand of wiggling mass. Honestly, it looked a lot like a plants root to him. Looking at it closely, but not so closely it could touch him, it wiggled fiercely. As if it wanted nothing more than to reach out and sink its tendrils into him. As he watched, however, it slowed down before eventually falling limp. Then it dissolved into ash.

“God above us,” he mumbled staring at the ashen remains of whatever the fuck that had just been. “Its almost like this root was living in that things brain.”

FIRST TRUTH DISCOVERED

WIS +1

NEX CALCULATING – DEPLOY NODE FOR NEX ACCRUAL

The blue screens vanished almost as quickly as they had shown up. Blinking his eyes quickly he reoriented on the dead body in front of him. He didn’t have time to think about anything except for what was in front of him. Not if he wanted to stay alive.

Ray and corpse were separated by a steel-barred door, but it still made him uncomfortable to be that close to it. Taking several steps back, he turned around only to hear the soft click of footfalls on the roof above him.

He recognized that scrambling sound. He had heard it as the skinless beast had fled from him across the rooftop of the electro station. That fucking thing or one of its lackeys was after him. Again. How the fucking kept finding him he had no idea. But he needed to kill the damn thing before it caught him unawares and killed him in turn.

It was do or die.

He took up a position looking at the hatch. The soft clacking of footsteps made its way across the ceiling and towards where Ray was waiting. He followed the sounds of movement with his eyes as it traversed the roof, ready for anything that may pop through the hatch. As the steps grew closer, Ray’s anticipation and anxiety grew. He hoped that whatever that thing was that it wouldn’t be able to navigate the hatch and get inside with him.

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That would really, really fucking suck.

He heard sniffing and scratching at the hatch, then as suddenly as the sounds had carried down to him everything was quiet. Unsure of what was happening, Ray gripped his multi-tool closely. The first time he hadn’t known what he was getting into. The last time it had ambushed him and Josephine had died. He wouldn’t be caught unaware again.

The moment of silence stretched onward. So long that Ray’s world ceased being anything except the hatch. He was so intent on the opening that when the scream rose from outside his heart nearly stopped. With no hesitation at all, before the cry even waned in fact, Ray heard the scrabbling of claws across the top of the tank and down the side of the access ladder against the wall.

Blinking in confusion he paid close attention as the cry died out. Utter silence enveloped the world outside of his hidey-hole. Whatever that was even scared the undead back into their holes. Ray listened intently for any noise that he could pick up. Anything at all that would give him a clue of what was going on outside of the building.

Then, he heard it.

At first, he thought it was the wind and dismissed it. As it drew closer, his mind told him that it couldn’t possibly be what he was hearing. So he ignored it. Then it moved toward him, getting closer and louder every moment. Music of a kind he had never heard before. A song of the dead … a symphony of the damned. It grew closer and louder in a way that was both terrifying and morbidly interesting.

Bones rattled and shook, feet pounded in rhythm, and ghostly wails of souls long lost rose into the air and assaulted his every sense. Ray could see … feel … hear the suffering that those voices had been privy to. Could taste the blood as it ran across his gums and down his throat. The savage taste of flesh as it was chewed and swallowed. The joy of hunting down anything moving … and ending them just to obtain the simple pleasure of a meal.

How this odd music, and it couldn’t be described as anything but music, could convey these concepts Ray didn’t know. Couldn’t fathom or even process would be a more accurate description. The very idea of sound imparting the lasting feeling of eternal hunger was so odd, so alien, that he couldn’t do anything except collapse on the floor and curl up into the fetal position.

The sound seemed to fill the streets around him for all eternity. The ebb and flow of whatever was outside hunted for him. He knew that it hunted for him, the very music told him so. That his demise was the only thing that would appease the creature creating this ode to death.

Ray didn’t know how long he sat there in the darkness, eyes wide and breathing shallow. It seemed like an eternity. An eternity was spent in the mind of something that had nothing on its mind but eternal slaughter to appease a hunger that simply could never be satiated. A mouth that devoured not just someone’s flesh, but what made them human, to begin with. An eternity listening to the sweet whispers of death, begging to be let inside and lull him into a sleep that would last forever, with promises that the flesh they left behind would be reused. After all, what being needed their body after they were dead?

He lay there, curled into himself, making the smallest target possible. At some point during the session of mental and emotional torture, however, Ray took note that the music seemed to dim in intensity. Over the next few moments, it grew quieter and quieter, before eventually fading into obscurity altogether.

Ray lay there for a while longer as his mind reassembled itself. The music had shaken him to the core. He wasn’t aware that anything, even the stories of demons and fictional descriptions of the purest of evils, could possibly describe the depths of darkness he had just experienced.

He would get to where he needed to go, plant this damn node, and ensure that he hunted down and killed the fuck out of whatever that had been.

Struggling to his feet, he managed to stand up on shaky legs. He turned to the hatch that he had fallen and reached for the bottom rung of the ladder that led down the side of the barred catwalk. Turning to the side to ensure that the undead he had killed didn’t need killing again, he froze. The body was gone with nothing but a pile of dried blood and scattered flesh remaining. He peered into the darkness.

And whatever was in that pitch-black hellhole stared right back.

Ray had no idea what was there. He couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t quantify it in any way. His mind simply couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at, but his instincts told him that whatever was there was so far beyond him that it was a death sentence to remain there. So he ran.

He tossed his multi-tool up through the hole and sprinted up the ladder as quickly as he could, his every survival instinct telling him he needed to get the fuck out of there. Now. Getting to the top of the ladder, he flung open the hatch and burst into the sunlight. Ray flung himself out of the hatch, rolling head over heels onto the metal roof. As he spun, he saw a pale clawed hand dart back into the shadows of the hatch.

There had been no noise, no sound, nothing giving him even a remote hint that he was being pursued outside of some sixth sense that told him to get the hell out. It was far more terrifying than the skinless monstrosity that had killed his companion.

Shaking with fear, he quickly stored his multi-tool and began moving towards the other side of the hatch. He gave the hole a wide berth as he traversed around it to travel down the far longer ladder on the side of the chemical storage building. Whatever made this its home had nearly made him the main course.

Getting to the side of the roof, he traversed downward, noting that there was some significant damage to the ladder. Several rungs were bent in the middle with others missing entirely. It was as if something with immense weight or strength and grabbed or stood on them with impunity. If he had been a safety inspector he would have shut down the building immediately until it was repaired.

He delicately traversed around the damaged pieces of the ladder, eventually getting to the bottom and encountering the remains of the security grate. Shaking his head at how strong whatever had come up the ladder after him had to have been, he simply dropped the last five feet to the ground. Landing in a crouch with the sound of crunching gravel, Ray took a good look around him.

Not seeing any threats he stood up and brushed himself off. With a deep breath, he started moving forward toward his destination. He had to be cautious as there were far more dangers than he had initially thought. He only hoped that whatever had tried to find him last night wasn’t hunting him like the skinless wonder was. Regardless, he was possibly the only hope for humanity, as edgy as that was to even think.

He shook his head and slapped his cheeks. “Let's do this mother fucker,” he said, encouraging himself aloud.

He had a node to plant.

***

RAYMOND ‘RAY’ FINNEGAN

RACE

HUMAN

CLASS

NONE

NEX

CALCULATING

LEVEL

1

PHYSICAL STATE

HEALTHY

MENTAL STATE

DETERMINED

ATTRIBUTE

BASE

CURRENT

NEX TO INCREASE

STRENGTH

5

6

50

AGILITY

3

3

30

POWER

0

0

100

WISDOM

4

6

40

LUCK

2

2

400