Who designed this city? It’s like it was built by a madman
Matthew stared at his now dead phone’s screen as he tried and failed to make heads or tails of where he was, the 18 year old had to his recollection only once before visited London and was struggling with the city's vast and chaotic public transport system.
The general lack of even the most basic sense of direction coupled with a few misheard directions from friendly locals left Matthew walking ever further from his actual destination, down winding cobblestone side streets and perpetually damp alleyways.
Stopping to take a moment and collect his thoughts, there was noone around he could ask for help and the only buildings other than terraced houses were a run down looking corner shop with a broken front window and a pub that was seemingly closed. Matthew looked down into a puddle into his own reflection and let out a gentle “Godammit” as it finally dawned on him just how lost he was.
“Hey, don’t look so glum” the almost shaky voice of a woman called out from behind with a short pause before gaining a somewhat hopeful tone and saying “It might never happen”
Looking up Matthew begins rubbing the back of his head before turning to look at the stranger, he goes to reply but finds himself practically frozen in place as he gets a glimpse of the 30 something year old woman.
Not because of her incredible beauty, not because of her long flowing scarlet hair that seemed to move on its own in this wind less backstreet nor because of her emerald eyes that against all logic appeared to emit radiant light.
Rather Matthew had two distinct and conflicting emotions, one that struck at an almost instinctual level and the other that was far more personal. His guts were telling him to run, to run as far and as fast as he could from this mysterious stranger, every bone in his body was telling him that his life was in imminent danger and yet he wasn’t exactly sure why. He imagined, for a second, that this must be how a rabbit felt as it came face to face with a fox.
It wasn’t fear that would win the battle of conflicting emotions however, it was sadness. A deep, irrevocable sense of loss that drove away his primal fears and kept him rooted to the ground. He couldn’t explain it, he felt as though he knew this woman and yet as far as he could remember he had never seen her before in his life. He had never felt such pain in this life, piercing his heart and soul. He would have cried out, were it not for the pain taking his voice away.
As the woman approached, Matthew looked up at her face, her towering figure coming in at 7ft at least, a full foot taller than him. He noticed the unmistakable pain that she was seemingly trying very hard to hold back.
“You’re lost, right?” she said, her lips quivering as she holds back what she’s truly feeling. Knowing she can’t explain who she is or why she’s here.
“How could you tell?” Matthew says, following a nervous laugh.
“I know what it’s like to be lost” The woman replies, before lowering her gaze, following with “And i have a knack for finding lost things” Matthew doesn’t catch her saying “But usually far too late” under her breath.
The woman places her hand into her pants pocket pulling out a rolled up piece of paper, there is no way it should have fit in her pants, let alone doing so without leaving a noticeable bulge out of the side and yet there was none, it was as if these pockets were bigger on the inside.
“Here” she hands the paper to Matthew “It’s a map, i’m sure it’ll help you find your way”
He hesitantly stretches out his arm to take the gift, fighting against his own body that still was screaming at him to flee. He looks down at the map, seeing it is held shut by an intricately detailed crimson bow.
“T-Thank-” Matthew said, stopping as he looked up to find the woman had vanished without a trace. Looking around he couldn’t see her anywhere and in the few short moments that he had averted his gaze there was no way she could have ran out of view, in this quaint little side street there was simply nowhere to go. “You” he finished his sentence with a mixture of sadness and confusion.
Untying the bow, keeping it clenched in one hand and unfurling the paper Matthew finds the map he had been gifted was anything but normal. At the center of the map was a small arrow which shifted and turned as he moved about, much like what you would expect from the map of a smart phone. From this arrow led a dark red line that seemed to paint a route, “Where does this lead?” Matthew thinks to himself before map answers, the word ‘University’ appearing in the top left hand corner of the paper. Questioning the reality of the situation he “How in the world did it know what i was thinking” the map replied yet again this time with a series of words ‘Desire, Need, Destiny, Duty’.
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He tried to rationalize the existence of the map and the nature of the strange woman, he had seen foldable computers before, but they were nothing like this. Literally paper thin and moveable just like paper. Yet he couldn’t understand who the woman was or why she would give him such an obviously expensive piece of technology.
Struggling with the reality of the situation, denial began to set in as Matthew concluded that this must all be a dream. He’d seen and felt things in the last few minutes that made no sense and so couldn’t be real, he concluded and so with his false assumption in hand he followed the path laid out by the map, determined to see where this dream would take him.
After about an hour of walking Matthew begins to doubt exactly where he’s going and what’s happening, still believing he’s in a dream and yet feeling a growing sense of tiredness from the near half a day of walking he had been through. It’s then that a bright flash of light envelops him and he finds himself screaming out, a blistering cold having completely permeated his body,
Rubbing his eyes and looking around he finds that he is no longer in one of the city's backstreets but was somehow right in the middle of what at first glance looks to be London Bridge.
He begins breathing faster and faster as he takes in this new environment, wrecked and abandoned cars of unknown make are strewn about. They seem old, yet have sleek designs that wouldn’t be amiss out of a science fiction story. Oddly the cars wheels, or what Matthew had assumed were wheels were bent inwards at an angle that would make it impossible for them to actually drive the vehicle forward. If it was just one or two of the cars he might have been able to dismiss this as damage, but this seemed to be a universal feature of all of the cars around. He gripped his chest feeling his heart race as he begins to walk forward. Matthew begins to feel dizzy, nauseous even.
Walking forward he steps on something that crunches beneath his feet, sounding almost like a branch or twig yet feeling quite different. looking down he sees that what he had stood on was in fact a human bone, an arm of a long since deceased person, their skin and clothes having seemingly rotted away decades ago.
This dream had just turned into a nightmare, Matthew screamed out in horror and began running, his eyes closed and head shaking as he tried to wake himself up. “This isn’t real” he declared as he crushed more bones in his rush to escape, the street seemingly littered with them. His sprint is stopped short as he smacks right into a hard metallic object, causing him to bounce backwards onto the ground and recoil in pain, if this was a dream it had no right to hurt as much as it did.
Finally opening his eyes again he could see what he had run into, a massive armored vehicle that could only be described as a Super-Heavy Tank was sitting at the edge of the bridge along with numerous other smaller military vehicles. Unlike the cars on the bridge these seemed completely intact, with no weathering that he could notice. Sandbags and other barriers had been set up along the edge of the bridge, likely as a means to block it off. The tank had a strange looking cannon that looked more like a camera than a gun as its primary weapon and appeared to be made out of a light-reflecting material that made the military vehicles stand out among the rest of the ruined wrecks scattered around the bridge and beyond.
Beyond the blockade he could spot a massive clock-tower, it had marked similarities to big ben however it was much, much larger and possessed 13 hours on its face but more than all of that, the clocktower was on the wrong side of the road.
From behind the blockade Matthew could hear a moaning sound, as if someone was in great pain. Rushing to investigate he climbs over the barriers and lands on a number of abandoned guns. Ignoring the weapons and hoping to find someone, anyone who can help him out of this situation.
His hopes are dashed as comes face to face with a walking, rotting corpse. The monster, missing half of its face and much of its body. The creature possessed a note of extreme sadness and anger in its eyes, it takes one step forward and begins to mouth out words that might almost form a coherent sentence, but Matthew doesn’t catch this and is simply horrified by the sight before him. The pained undead screams in agony as it lashes out at Matthew, jumping backward he narrowly avoids being hit, but trips on a fallen ballard causing him to fall. Panicked and fearing for his life he crawls back to where he had came, towards the blockade.
The monster shambles towards him, slow but meaningful in its movements. Every step seems like torture for the assailent as it braces itself against the tank to prevent itself from falling. Backing himself into the barricade Matthew frantically picks up one of the dozen or so abandoned weapons on the floor, he had never even seen a real gun before let alone used one but he figured it was his best chance at survival.
As each moment passed the corpse moved closer and closer, raising the rifle of unusual design he points it directly at the corpses chest and pulls the trigger, immediately a bright flash of light is emitted piercing through and then promptly vaporizing the shambling attacker before continuing on into the nearby clocktower, melting through a large section of wall.
Matthew looked down at the weapon before resting his head on the back of the barricade and taking a deep breath, this all felt too real to be a dream but none of this could be possible, he thought to himself. “I’ll just rest here a while, maybe then-” His thoughts are cut off as unearthly howls and screams begin roaring from all around. There’d be no rest here, for he might have stopped one of the monsters he had just inadvertently wrung the dinner bell for thousands more.
Raising the gun yet again Matthew stood to his feet, noticing he was still clutching hard onto the small bow that had wrapped up his gift. The map was nowhere to be seen, yet for reasons he couldn’t justify had a strong desire to never lose that bow.
Seeing a horde of monsters approaching he pulls on the rifles trigger causing a second flash of light to burst forth, cutting through unseen numbers of the undead. Aiming for the densest group of monsters slowly shambling down the road he pulls the trigger again causing the weapon to emit a subtle ‘bzzt’ noise, he tried again and again to no success. Dropping the weapon he picked up others at his feet but they all refused to fire, they were all out of charge.
Unable to move forward Matthew begins climbing over the blockade as he feels a gush of air over his head and then hears a series of deafening sonic booms. The shock of the noise causes him to lose his footing causing him to fall back, what he sees while on his back is that the horde that was approaching him had been cut down, laid low by whatever had past him.
“You idiot” A voice shouted out from above him, a human figure was floating silently above his head. “You’ve woken up half the city!” The figure began lowering themselves until they came to a rest on the nearby tank. It was a woman, around the same age as Matthew, her short brown hair floating in an unusual manner, reminiscent of the strange woman he had met earlier.
The mysterious savior takes a brief look at Matthew, noticing the untied bow he had been gripping so tight. She sighed before saying “You can’t fight them, they just keep coming.” Jumping off of the tank she lands right next to Matthew with a strange degree of grace.
Handing him her right hand she confidently declares “Stick with me, i’ll bring you to Salvation” Staring back into her brightly glowing icey blue eyes Matthew takes her hand and nods, unsure of the future but hopeful that he’ll escape this hellish nightmare.
— End of Chapter 1