[Naz] Anathema 4

Anathema 4- Escape

Avril

It was dark. I walked through a misty, dimly lit corridor, the mist brooding within the blackness. The hall was straight, the end nowhere in sight. Whispers… whispers in the deep.

Broken thoughts rushed through my mind. It felt like a dream, a dream of a dream. I walked down a lonely road and I had no idea where it led to. This empty street engulfed me; I’m the only one, the city around me devoid of life.

They were all sleeping, sleeping for an eternity, never to wake up again, their dreams infinite and cold. The knife rested comfortably in my hand, the crimson waterfall cut back to a drip. Crimson blood on the floor.

I killed them, killed them all, the maniacal voice inside my head roaring with triumph. I had done the impossible, ended the endless. I had defeated fate, destiny, grace. Life wasn’t fair. That was the beauty of it all.

I had been locked inside that lonely house while they held the keys. I’ve been dying to get out, to explode in my pent-up rage. Unleash my anger upon the world, upon them all. They would pay for all the things they did to me.

And they did.

They were dead.

The klaxon alarm blared deafening into my ears; my eyelids flew open, my pupils dilated in the sudden awakening. The dream dissipated into nothingness as it was supplanted by the real world. The harsher world.

Footsteps splashed through the flooded streets and muddy grass, growing louder amidst the falling rain. Men were shouting vague orders, trying to proclaim their presence over that of the blaring alarm. I grabbed my Shinebow and quickly stuffed on my boots before running out of the tent.

“Hey, Avril!” Iro found me right as the first raindrop hit my dead, “It seems like our stay here has been cut short, they found us.”

“Who found us?” I asked, still a bit groggy and unfocused from my dream.

“The infected, of course,” Iro said matter-of-factly.

Just as he finished his sentence, there was a burst of gunfire from the western side of the city, barely audible over the rain. “Looks like the Corsairs have met up with them. Hope they can last the evening.” Iro looked back from the west, his eyes caught mine, “Looks like we’ve overstayed our welcome.”

The two of us splashed through the Henesian streets towards the northern entrance as the Maple Army rerouted all unites to the west gate. I looked into the eyes of the few soldiers that sprinted by us; their eyes were filled with fear and coldness. Pity so many good men had to be sent to their deaths.

More gunfire erupted from behind us, followed by muffled commands over a loudspeaker that faded into the clouds as a clap of thunder swallowed them up. Suddenly, right as the north gate materialized in front of us out of the rain, a pair of rushing footsteps echoed from across the street.

I tensed my grip on my bow, but then realized it was Ethan, running towards us, waving his arms wildly. He skidded to a stop in front of us, splashing water all over my front; I could see his panicked breathing materialize as he exhaled out.

“Where are you going?” he gasped, out of breath, “There’s a war going on in the west, why aren’t you helping us?”

“They won’t win, bub,” Iro replied calmly, “The sheer mass will overwhelm your people in due time. You’d follow our lead if you want to live.”

Ethan looked at the rain pouring onto the ground for a moment, then looked up into my eyes. Without turning away to talk to Iro, he replied, “Alright then, I’ll come with you guys…”

An uneasy feeling jolted from my brain all the way down my spine right then, and I immediately summoned the arrows from my soul and intertwined the energy with my bow.

“You feel that?” I muttered to Iro quietly, scanning the barely visible northern entrance a few hundred feet ahead.

“What?” Ethan asked unnecessarily loudly, “What’s there?”

“Quiet!” Iro hushed, “Get behind something.”

And then, footsteps, they came raggedly and way too fast. I could hear the feral snarls, their lust for blood was beyond comprehension. Out of the rain, they came en masse. The rain water around them was already stained with putrid crimson.

As they came within range, I released an arrow and watched the golden spear travel hastily to its target, impaling a zombie square between the eyes. Before it fell, I had pierced the necks of two others already.

Beside me, taking point behind an abandoned taxi cab, Ethan summoned the dark energies learned by Night Lords and produced a mirror image of himself composed entirely of dark matter. He then took three Ilbis and threw them into the horde in a wide arc, resulting in six decapitated ghouls.

But they kept coming. I could feel the fear in Ethan’s mind begin to overwhelm him, making his hands clumsy and faulty. One wrong move and he would join the ranks of the undead. Taking aim again, I released another arrow which sailed through the rain with such force, that it impaled two zombies running one right behind the other, both in the head.

A flash of lightning suddenly lit up the sky, revealing the chaos below. To my surprise, the infected were closer than I had thought, and quickly gaining ground. I could almost feel their ragged teeth graze against my skin. Quickly ducking behind a mailbox, I fitted the tip of a few arrows with an explosive tip. Smiling wryly to myself, I popped back up and fired an arrow bomb.

The weighted arrow traveled at a blazing speed, as if propelled by fire itself. As I watched, it tore through the stomach of a zombie and then exploded behind it, sending incinerated body parts sailing up in all directions. I ducked just in time as a charred arm flew overhead and splashed lamely onto the street behind me.

“There’s just no end to them,” Ethan cried out from the other side of the street, busily reloading his stars. I could hear the panic almost completely overwhelming him. Turning around, I suddenly found myself alone.

Where the hell was Iro…

A rumble of thunder shook the ground as the storm increased in strength. I waited for the echoes to disappear, but they curiously crescendoed. It sounded like the thunder was slowly traveling from the sky to a point right beside me. Looking to my right, I did a double take.

Right before me stood a ball of fire, an inferno raging despite the pounding thunderstorm. It took me a second, but I then realized it was Iro, and he had Super Transformed.

“Let me take care of the rest, Darlin’,” I could see his fiery lips part in a wicked smile. Before I knew it, the heat was gone, and he was only a bright yellow dot in front of us, dashing into and out of the ranks of the infected.

I let go of another arrow bomb and watched as it blasted another group apart. By now, Iro had decimated the undead numbers to about half of its original size all by himself. If only he would stop being a b**** and help a bit faster… I hated when he did that.

Within a few minutes, burning bodies littered the streets in front of the northern gate, slowly being extinguished by the rainwater. A dancing meteor twirled in the middle of the bodies, the incandescence lighting up the murky street like a miniature sun that had somehow broken through the rainclouds.

As the last infected body hit the ground decapitated with a splash, Iro’s flames evaporated and his human form took back over. The residual smoke quickly blew away as a gale swept through the street, bringing another sharp wave of rain.

“The military could use someone like you,” Ethan muttered as Iro came back, holding out his Timeless Knuckle out for the rain water to wash away the crimson blood, “It’s a shame our Buccaneers aren’t as powerful as you.”

“It takes time, son,” Iro replied with a satisfied grin, “And now, let’s go before the infected from the remainder of your army comes and finds us.”

Iro grabbed Ethan by the arm and thrust him forward in a brisk jog through the rain. I lingered behind, taking one last look of Henesys. I would sure miss my home, which was bound to be ransacked by now by the horde of zombies in their lust for blood. As the raindrops kept falling on my head, I felt a shiver down my spine, the first shiver I have ever felt from the cold. Perhaps it was more than that, maybe it was the fact that humanity was slowly being devoured by flesh eating infected denizens, or the fact that no matter how many we killed, thousands more spring up from all directions. Or maybe it was because I was thinking too much.

The gates of Henesys grew far behind us as we entered the boundaries of Sleepy Wood. Behind me, the sporadic gunfire became almost a constant drone as the army engaged the enemies. I could just imagine them dispatching two or three each before being overwhelmed by their sheer numbers.

We trudged into the deepening darkness as the grey sky above us slowly became black. The last I ever heard of Henesys was a resounding explosion and a distant glow of red and orange as a fireball twisted and turned into the night sky.