POV Blair
Location Cave system under Lockerbie, Scotland
‘You should eat that guy.’ The voice whispered
‘I’m not eating some corpse so you can claim part of my soul.’
‘But, you might like it, It looks tasty?’ It questions like a confused child as I look in disgust at the half eaten corpse of a young lady, her crimson lifeblood splattered around the greystone, giving colour to the monotone tunnels we've travelled through for the last few days.
‘Still not eating the copse you freaky shit, even if it lets me complete a contract. I’m not touching any corpse and I’m not selling you part of my soul.’
‘But…’ It starts again before I interrupt it.
‘No buts! Shut it!’
‘If you fuck the corpse I will give you some mind control powers.’ A sweet feminine voice whispers into my mind, a demon of lust if I guess correctly. They come around from time to time but I mainly have to deal with the gluttony demons.
‘Jesus Christ, no, I’m not doing that, the fuck is wrong with you.?’
‘You want to live, don't you? You want to be strong, don't you? Respected, powerful, it can all be yours but only if you do some tiny little things for us.’ The seductive voice whispers into my mind trying to tempt me to complete one of the many contracts the Demons keep trying to offer me. Never in my 30 years have I heard such deranged and quite frankly annoying people, and now they have a direct line into my head to whisper deals and temptation into my mind.
‘Ok, what if you get someone else to eat human flesh? The contract would be weaker but you could still get a consumption ability. Although if you told them it was human flesh we could steal a little more of their soul. Depends on how you want to play it.’ The first demon of gluttony says trying to convince me that cannibalism is a good idea that is fun for the whole family.
‘Why would anyone eat another human?’ I ask, generally confused and disturbed.
‘I don't know, force them, trick them, be charismatic, the more willing they are, the more soul I can take to fuel myself and your contract.’ The Gluttony demon says.
‘There it is, you just want to get stronger yourself. These contracted powers only last a week but you get part of my soul forever.’ I refute.
‘It doesn't have to be your soul, it can be anyone you can get to complete a task for us, like your pretty little wife for example, I'm sure she would be down to do some absolutely scrumptious activities hehehe,’ Lust sniggers.
“You leave her out of this!” I yell out loud causing Sammy, my Wife and her family, who we were in Lockerbie to visit, to jump in fright and stare at me.
“It's ok Blair, just ignore them, I know you won't do any of the things they say.” She says with her sweet caring smile that fills me with warmth that I haven't felt since our baby turned into dust in our arms, even if it was forced.
The horrifying memory of our child’s last moments floods into my mind before I can stop it. Visions of our baby Adam crying while I lay collapsed on the floor from the pain the self proclaimed god Jeremy caused us, excruciating, mind numbing pain just because he could because he wanted to.
I’m surprised Adam's 6-month-old heart didn't give out from the pain but I was so happy he made it that I crawled my way over to him and Sammy forgetting the words that evil man said. When I finally made it to my family on the kitchen floor and held them within my arms to try and comfort my son, my sweet, sweet son, he turned to dust within my arms. Arms that were meant to hold and protect him.
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After that Sammy and I fell into depression, just going through the motions, hiding within my sister in laws house from the undead and beasts that now roamed the land. Sammy's Sister and brother were nice enough at first until they learned I had demons talking to me in my head. They took it as a sign that I was secretly evil and plotting against humanity despite the abilities being random. Or maybe I deserve it for not keeping Adam safe and I truly am meant to turn into some demon lackey? ‘No, I will remain strong, For Sammy, for Adam's memory.’
Now I just had to suffer my in-laws ' glares and whispers behind my back while we slowly walked through the tunnels, careful not to go too deep after encountering our first giant centipede monster and having to run away.
“Thank you, sweety.” I smile at Sammy while ignoring her family as we continue to trek through the dark tunnels, in a desperate hope of finding somewhere safe.
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POV Mathéo
Location Cave system under Abbeville, France
I summon yet another mattress on top of the cave crawler and will it downward to pin the creature to the floor. I smile widely as I watch it wiggle around, clearly struggling under my power. While I originally despaired when I accidentally used my right-hand power creation to touch my mattress and gained the ability to summon and control mattresses I was now quite fond of my abilities.
While I'm sure the regular idiot couldn't use it very well, I have managed to do quite well for myself. I step closer to the struggling creature and form a large spring mattress in its mouth, causing its head to rapidly expand before exploding.
I smirk, satisfied with the result and my display of power. Nothing, not the undead or cave crawlers has been able to survive against me allowing me to collect these crystals and add them to my ever-growing horde without issues, I almost welcomed a challenge at this point. Sadly no new challengers came to meet me as I wandered the caves, careful not to get too lost.
‘I bet none of the idiots have even thought of fighting the monsters.’ I snort ‘I probably have the most crystals in at least Abbeville, maybe even in the whole of Northern France.’ I grin before heading deeper into the caves and killing a few more Crawlers to add to my horde before my wristwatch starts to beep at me, signalling the end of my allotted hunting time.
While I wanted to keep hunting to increase my body count and watching those beneath me fall to my might I still wanted to complete the challenges, or at least the challenges which weren't clearly a red herring. ‘I doubt anyone would be able to kill those goliath sky monsters. It’s clearly just meant to kill off the foolhardy. But not me, I will live, I will rise to the top, and then, they will finally notice me and know their place.’
I summon multiple mattresses to make something akin to a bed fort to keep myself safe and then take out the treadmill from my inventory and start to run the 160 kilometres. I grin at my genius. ‘Only an idiot would actually run through the tunnels, this was faster and safer.’
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POV Esther
Location Cave system under Abuja, Nigeria
“You deserved it and worse, you pieces of shit.” I spit at the charred corpses in disgust and extinguish my blasing right palm. Now that the fight was done I allowed myself to wince in pain and hold my scorched eye with my left hand and grind my teeth to try and soothe the pain.
I needed to perform a sacrificial burning on my left eye to get the strength to break out of the handcuffs those sick fucks kept me in to use as they please, but it was worth it. So very worth it. The physical strength and heat my fire could now produce easily allowed me to overpower those weak men and sacrifice their fate lines to my fire.
It's just a shame their fate was so small that it didn't give me even a quarter of what my eye gave me for all eight of the fuckers.
‘Pathic bastards until the end.’ I kick the closest corpse and go through their blue cubes to find any food, water and weapons I can before straightening back up and wandering deeper into the tunnels, a sneer of hatred plastered on my face. ‘I need to find more men and fate to burn.’
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POV Matt
Location cave system under unknown location, USA
Things aren't going too well at the moment, I mean they were going great for a bit. Joined a climbing group, made a bunch of friends and even met a girl! And if you can believe it I went on a date with her!
I was so happy I told Tommy all about it at the climbing club until he shattered his and my happiness. She was also messaging and going on dates with Tommy, a fact neither of us knew about until that very moment. Or so he said. I was pissed off and heartbroken and didn't want to be around anyone so I left the club and went on a spontaneous trip into the mountains for a hike to clear my thoughts.
Was I over dramatic? Yes? Did I care? A little bit but I was too embarrassed to head back and apologise so I continued my little trip and was having an ok time surrounding myself with nature and eating venison jerky I picked up at a gas station a few miles back. Until the fucking wheels came out of nowhere and fucked my shit up. The pain caused me to slip and fall down a cliff, more like roll down a big hill but that's less dramatic, and get completely lost within the mountains.
On the plus side, I have a superpower. The downside is that all it does is make me super stretchy and elastic like rubber. I know there are not meant to be bad powers, only bad users, or at least that's what TV told me, but come on! Sure I don't need to worry about pulling a muscle or blunt force trauma any more but I would have liked something to at least help me defend myself from these fuckers!
I dodge to the side and whack the stupidly large centipede with my trusty stick, hitting one of its eyes and making it hiss in pain before lunging at me. A quick unnatural twisting of my body later and I find myself out of the way of the angry bug monstrosity’s attack and perfectly lined up to hit its other eye.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth I bring my stick down and pice it into the bug. I must have hit something important because it suddenly twitched before collapsing in a heap of legs and armour plating.
“Oh thank God for that.” I pant out and collapse to my knees to rest for a few moments dreading what comes next. With a heavy heart and an iron stomach, I start to dismantle the cave crawler for its crystal and for something to eat and drink.
I wasn't happy with the idea but with poor planning on my part and nothing to eat in these bloody caves I needed to make do with what I had, and what I had was a bug's corpse and one hell of an appetite. “I really hope the next event is an all you can eat buffet, with blackjack and hookers. I would kill for some buffalo wings right now.” I sigh and get back to hacking at the corpse with a stone I had sharpened a couple of days ago.
“Welp, at least I can finally stretch myself to 6 feet.” I say aloud to nobody, because I was alone and have been for over a week. “The next Event better not suck this hard.” I mutter in annoyance as I wallow in the irony that I was alone in the apocalypse because I tried not to die alone.