“Well, there it is,” Christa shook her head looking at the two people standing in front of her. Both of them had seemed to have forgotten their surroundings, which one might point out was an alleyway that had a dead man in, surrounded by a city that was apparently tearing itself apart because some sort of A.I. had decided that it needed to be done for who knows what reason, and it was using the city's own population to do this.

And these two idiots were sharing some sort of moment.

“Move Dammit!” she slapped the both of them in the back of the head, which in turn caused their heads to smack together with a nice solid thump.

“Ah, What the fuck Chrissy?” Monica rubbed her head and looked at the other woman reproachfully.

“In case you two have not noticed we are in the middle of what might be a fucking apocalypse and we really, really need to get moving so get your fucking lovey dovey asses moving before I make you move them,” she growled as she put Monica’s arm around her shoulder and pulled the wounded woman along seeing as she was still a little wobbly on her feet. “Matt,” she called out and was surprised to see the man already standing beside her, bloody gun held easily like he had been born with it in hand. “We need to get to fourth and junction, its the third building in the block,” she said and watched as he nodded and looked up towards the sky, or rather he was likely looking at the hallucinogenic map projected in the upper corner of his eyes.

“We need to avoid east forth, there is a mob there in the thousands,” he said his hand came up and scratched his cheek, and he either didn't notice that his hand left a bloody mark on his face or he didn't care.

“Shit, we will have to rout around the southern mall complex then,” Christa growled, dragging the wounded Monica with her. “If we could get some sort of transport-”

“The city automotive A.I. has placed all transportation on lockdown, nothing is going anywhere,” Matt replied. Well shit, this was going to hell faster than Christa’s last relationship… she shook her head, the dark tangle of hair was like a storm cloud that seemed to frame those golden wolvish eyes. “How far is this safe house?” he asked.

“Four blocks.” on any other day it would have been such a simple task to travel those four blocks, but today, with the city convulsing in its own death throes it might as well have been over twenty miles. Matt unconsciously went into a half crouch and began a forward march, scanning all areas and possible ambush areas. It was something he had been doing for years and years in his caser games, making it second nature to simply fall into the proper behavior.

“Follow, we have to get moving like you said Christa,” he motioned for them to follow. “Stay behind me, and if anything happens call out to me, and I mean anything, got it?” he looked at the two girls, both of them being so strong, so brave how could he be anything but?

It was after all only four blocks.

Four blocks in hell.

***

Simon Tralo looked at the unconscious man at his feet, blood was leaking out of his nose and his arm was bent at an angle that was painful to even look at. He knew this man, and he also could guess the reason he was here, same one Simon was.

He was going to hurt that fucker.

It was the only thought in his head the past few hours that didn't hurt, it was the only thing he could focus on that didn't drive a stake right into his eyes and into his brain, he couldn't even think of why he wanted to hurt this Matt, even doing that caused the stabs of pain.

His eyes tracked over to the knife, it had been kicked off to the side, the last two inches of the blade was covered in blood, and it had left a circular track on the concrete where it had been kicked away and had spun, causing the tip of it to scrape against the ground.

Curls of red blood.

He leaned down and picked up the kitchen knife, not even bothering to wipe the blood off of it. He didn't even think of it, seeing as thinking of anything other than hurting him caused such debilitating pain. With the higher reasoning parts of his brain shocked into silence he fell back into the primitive hunting instinct that is dormant in all men. A feral light lit his eyes, a snarl formed on his lips.

Hunt.

Yes, he would hunt.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

***

Matt peered out from behind the cover of an alleyway dumpster, the road they were on had once been called the electric hall, seeing as there had been rows upon rows of stores that held and sold nothing but electronics. That had been before whatever they eventually decided to call this catastrophic disaster. Now instead of brightly lit window displays, the street was an empty husk, full of shops that were now broken looted messes. As he peered around the corner he had the feeling he was playing N.E.O. what with all the destruction and chaos the city was in.

It would take a long time to get back to the normal rhythm of life after something like this.

The only people he saw were a few stragglers, the carrion crows of the mobs that had trashed this area of the city, they were picking through the bones of the shops looking for anything that was left which was worthwhile. Well, that and squabbling over who found it first.

This, however, was not the most disturbing part of the scene, it was the corpses that lay there motionless in the streets. Most looked like they had been trampled, one or two had obvious slash marks but in his field of view there were at least five people who died senselessly, and countless others surely through the city.

This had to be stopped.

“Let's move,” he said and rounded the corner gun raised body lose, he dropped to a knee and swept the entire street first right then left. Everyone besides one man was all too far away and to busy to notice the three people that had just come out of the alleyway. This man, however, looked like he had not to long ago been some sort of well-mannered businessman, his nice suit was now covered in blood, and it looked like he had somehow gotten ahold of a shock baton. The black polymatt object looked like a billy club with wiring around it, they were often used by street gangs in turf wars. Heavy mean sons of bitches that would not only knockout or kill from the sheer weight of them but also provided an immobilizing electric shock that would discharge on whatever it hit.

He was raising the club over his head, and bringing it down onto the body of a man over and over again. The corpse on the street was not really missing his head, it had just been smashed over and over until it could no longer be recognizable as anything more than a mangled pulp of flesh, not even retaining the shape of a head any longer.

He stopped his senseless beating of the body and looked up at them, his eyes were glazed over like he was no longer seeing anything around him, and perhaps that was exactly what was going on, maybe his sanity had fled him. He raised the shock baton and screamed at the top of his lungs, charging straight towards them.

“Matt!” Christa cried out, he looked back at her but she was staring at the man charging them, bloody hands, vacant eyes. Matt closed his eyes for a second before raising the pistol.

P-taff.

P-taff.

Two shots rang out, each hitting the man in the middle of the chest, causing him to fall backward, the club bouncing away out of his hand down the road making a racket almost as loud as the gunshots. Matt walked over the man, he was still alive, wheezing now as blood filled up his lungs. A small trickle of it ran out of his mouth, and he gurgled, causing it to bubble as he tried to suck air into his rapidly filling lungs.

P-taff.

The gun barked out another report as Matt put the man out of his misery. Everyone looting the buildings had stopped moving, frozen like deer in the headlights. Matt raised the gun and pointed it at the closest one, which caused the man to dive for cover before fleeing the area. A quick sweep around the area caused the looters to all scatter and flee, they were after all opportunists not suicidal.

Yet.

“Matt!”

”Lookout!” Both Monica and Christa screamed out his name, he turned just in time to see a blur of a man barrel into him in a full tackle. He was lifted clean off the ground and slammed back into it with such a force he lost the grip on the gun causing it to skitter away across the road a good five feet out of reach. The attacker was on top of him, legs straddling either side of his torso. Matt blinked the shock out of his eyes and watched almost in slow motion as the man raised his hands above his head and brought them down.

He didn't even see the knife, he just moved instinctually, his hands shot up and grabbed the man’s wrists stipping the decent of the blade as it lunged for his neck. Matts' eyes swam in and out of focus, but even without sight, he knew he had to hold onto those wrists no matter what. His attacker had the advantage, however, seeing as he was on top he could put all of his weight into the blade, pushing down with his body and all Matt had to keep it from plunging into his neck was the strength of his arms. The man lifted his weight off of Matt’s lower abdomen and pressed his chest into the hilt of the blade. There was no way in hell he would be able to hold that blade with this guy's full weight behind it, so he did the only thing he could, he pushed it to the side as he allowed it to drop.

“MATT!” Monica cried out in horror, from her angle it looked like the blade had sunk into his neck, but Matt didn't have the time to reassure her that he was not dead, the blade had struck against the concrete, shattering the first two inches of the blade and creating little pieces of shrapnel that felt like someone was burning him as they cut open his face and neck. With a growl, Matt tucked his legs under him and kicked the man hard up and over. The momentum and force of the kick coupled with the man’s unbalanced weight distribution caused him to flip up and over Matt’s head and land on the other side in a wounded huff.

Rolling over quickly Matt got to his knees and pushed himself up to a sprinters start and pushed off just as the other man was getting up, he hit him in the gut with his shoulder,returning the favor of there introduction, he slammed the man into the wall of a store building, and was about to pull back to hit him when the jagged end of the knife slammed into his trapezius muscle of his back as the man reached over Matt’s shoulder and slammed the blade down. Matt’s vision flashed red and he stumbled in his attack as his brain was overcome with the flood of pain and warnings his body was now generating.

The increased speed at which the adrenalin was causing his heart to pump made blood squirt out of the wound around the embedded knife. Matt’s higher thinking processes shut off as he grabbed the man by the neck and slammed him as hard as he could into the wall, over and over and over again as his instincts to lash out at the thing causing his pain took over.

When he came to he was holding the limp and unconscious body aloft in a single hand, slamming him into the wall, still growling. Slowly he allowed the limp form to slide down the wall and lay there, he bent over allowing the sweat and blood on his face to drip off making a rose-colored pool on the clean white sidewalk.

“Matt?” Monica’s voice sounded so scared, and to the beating drums in his ears, so far away.

“I'm fine,” he said turning to her, and he saw her wince at the cuts on his face and neck, he tried to reach around to grasp the handle of the knife that was sticking out of his back, but it was just out of reach “Could you please-” he moaned the words, as the adrenalin in his system faded, allowing the pain to be fully felt.

“God damn,” Christa whispered as she gripped the blade, “do I just-?”

“Just pull it out,” he whispered, as he gritted his teeth, he had no idea if he screamed or not when she pulled out the blade, he was to busy trying not to black out from the pain as it left his body. “Well then-” he panted, looking up at the two girls from the ground where he sat, “who the fuck was that?” Christa checked the man’s wallet.

“Simon Tralo, know him?” she asked.

“Nope never heard of him in my life,” Matt shook his head, “Well. I would say this day couldn't get any worse but I have no wood to knock on, let's go two blocks down, two to go...” he picked himself up, scooping the handgun up with his uninjured arm.

Two blocks to go...