This one's a bit of an exposition piece to set some groundwork for expanding the scope of the story now that there's someone around who knows something Clarise doesn't, as well as simply being the first time that I know what's going on, really, and can try to describe it a bit.
Hope you enjoy! Got a busy weekend ahead of me, so gotta work double-time to get some buffer ready for not being able to work all day. Have yourself a lovely day, and see you tomorrow at eight AM! Of, FYI cause it's been a while; Clarise just stopped Emerick from trying to kill her by flipping the bird at him. Kinda made sense at the time.
Clarise's End-Times VII by Mackinley Clevinger, May 4, 2016
“So… you’re not going to kill me?” Emerick looked over his upraised arms, peeking between my two raised digits in the dark of night to try and get an idea of where he stood with me in regards to being beaten to death with my bare hands. Honestly? The idea had its merits, but sadly the sanctity of human life outweighed my wish for revenge for the crap he’d just put me through.
“Ahh, sorry for the… umm…” I smiled at him, able to feel where he’d punched one of my teeth out. It wasn’t a nice smile, more along the lines of something with fins that could actually regrow their teeth when they lost them, unlike poor Clarise over here. On the one hand, I wasn’t going to hurt him. On the other hand, though, anything to put him in emotional duress was fine by me.
“I… I mean, you tried to… to… umm…” I lowered my arms and sank forward, face turning to a scowl as all my aches, pains, and exhaustion broke past the block that the platinum glow and tanned energy had supplied. My vision swam for a moment, the blur chased away by a deep breath that numbed the pain as the tan node refilled my body before cutting itself off again.
Emerick relaxed his stance, dropping one arm to his side and raising the other to scratch the back of his neck, eyes dancing around the rooftop and avoiding me. “I, uhh…” He coughed. “I’m Emerick. Are you okay?” In the moon and star-lit night, my skin shone brighter than Emerick’s, and I could just make out the roughness of unshaved stubble and dirty, curly hair a solid foot above my head.
I nodded at him, eyes cast down in thought for a moment before pulling back a fist and slamming it into the roof beneath me, a network of cracks splitting around my embedded fist as he stumbled away from my kneeling form. I looked up and into his eyes as I jerked my fist out of the cement and rose, feeling the tan energy flow down through me before closing itself off again.
He stumbled over his words as much as he had over his feet. “I understand. Won’t happen again. I promise, Miss… What’s your name?” He seemed apprehensive, as if I’d crush him for asking such an innocent question. No, no, no, Mr. Emerick. I’d crush you for a lot of other things before I’d crush you for that. I turned away from him and looked up into the night-sky, figuring that if I couldn’t respond I might as well just ignore him.
I rose a gentle hand to my throat as my eyes scanned over the multitude of stars hanging over me, a rare sight in a city normally lit-up twenty-four hours a day. There were no other buildings blocking the view, either; it was stunning. Thousands of tiny dots, hanging infinitely far away from me with their own mess of things going on that I couldn’t even begin to fathom…
A movement caught my eye, something distant but not nearly as far away as the stars. My eyes focused on a tiny light high above the Meyers Building, disappearing and reappearing as something pin wheeled in the sky. I gasped and clapped a hand over my silent mouth as my mind filled in the details and I saw the helicopter careening through the empty sky in the distance.
Emerick tentatively stepped up beside me, following my gaze as the helicopter drifted lower over the city and righted itself, the plume of smoke above it visible now that it had stabilized. We watched in silence as it slowly fell, managing to navigate itself out of the immediate city and hang over the empty fields that lay on the outskirts of town before suddenly dropping, invisible to us at such a distance against the ground.
I looked at Emerick side-long, and couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible for what had just happened. “Ah, shit.” Emerick walked up to the edge of the roof and leaned over the low-wall, peering into the inky darkness for a time before shaking his head and turning back to me. “Even if they survived the crash, with that much noise and nowhere to run to…
“How did you even do that?” I looked at him blankly for a moment before shrugging. What else could I do? “Those were good guys, and you just signed their death warrant. Aren’t you going to say anything?” There are a lot of things I would say, some detrimental to the soon-to-be departed and some apologetic, but, altogether, I think I’m going to stick with glaring at the asshole trying to guilt-trip me for not letting myself be killed on three occasions.
In a very mature move, I folded my arms and turned away from Emerick, walking over to the opposite side of the roof to look at the east-side of the city. I liked the fields and the mountains, sure, but the lake was always a relaxing sight. Or, rather, it should be, when it isn’t…
I waved Emerick over and, ignoring the look on his face, pointed at the lake, using my best ‘what the hell’ face. His face drained of annoyance and he cursed under his breath before turning to me. “Uhh… Remember when I said it was complicated? Well, that’s part of it.”
Over the lake there hung a murky, shifting fog that reflected the algae-filled bog-water that had once been clean and clear. The area beside it was a port, with piers, docks, and other nautical things that had rotted and been twisted out of shape, the land seeming to have sunk and dropped warehouses and other buildings into the lake itself, which was now overflowing the shore.
But there were things down there, too. Even from here, I could see currents in the marsh-water of something swimming. Things swimming. A chill ran up my spine at the sight, of the complete decay and ruin of what had been, two days ago, a bustling port of trade between the few cities by the lake. What the hell was happening? Why was it… glowing?
“So… a few days ago, things went to hell.” Emerick leaned against the wall lining the roof, his back to the sight of the rotting lake. “And besides the horde of undead, people also went missing by the lake.” I couldn’t take my eyes off of the ripples in the water, mind imagining terrible things beneath the waves. “We don’t know what’s down there, lady. We just know people disappear.”
Why was that so much worse than the horde? Why did the idea of being taken beneath the murky-depths fill me with a dread so much worse than the idea of being eaten alive? “The police called the military pretty fast, and they tried to get people out of the hospitals. Nelson Memorial was empty; no patients, no doctors, nothing. Only the second team they sent came back.
“I’m a nurse; I was at Heritage, and we only just got out in time. Holston got hit the worst, though.” I held up my hand in the shape of a zero, face horrified and questioning. “Oh, no. They were there alright. They were closer to the south-side, near where it all started.” At that hotel, in the middle of the day… God, most of the city must’ve been there. Lambs to the slaughter.
“Can you not…?” Emerick held a hand around his throat, an eyebrow raised in question. I made a short cutting motion near my throat, pantomiming a yell, squeezing two fingers together, and then pointing between his legs. I couldn’t quite tell in the dark, but I think his face blushed after a few repetitions of that motion.
“Well, we should be safe enough up here until someone can come get us.” Emerick patted his hand against his waist, nails clicking against something hard. “Military gave me a radio so I could direct people back to the camp they’d set up; help get people out of trouble, y’know? Oughta be able to help us like it did in getting that heli-“ Emerick fell silent, turning his head to look out where the helicopter had gone down. He cleared his throat.
“Oughta help us like it did back on that roof, right?” I stared at him blankly, the memory of fire burning in my arms as I hung beneath a rising helicopter and being shot at making me reconsider how much I valued the sanctity of human life. Lucky for my rising urges, something rattled in the radio, sending Emerick into a panic that distracted me from how easy it would be to crush him.
The pain and exhaustion rose up again within me, and I had to let more of the tanned energy out to keep it in check. I was in rough shape, and it seemed I couldn’t just keep ignoring it. There had to be a limit to this stuff, right? Even if it was unlimited, it screwed with my head. Slowed me down, made me get angry, like…
I looked down at my feet while Emerick frantically tried to make his radio work, thinking about the brief mental-fog I’d fallen into before smashing my fist through the concrete of the stairwell. Something was down there, beneath us, and if the horde had let me tap into their power, then following that chain of reasoning…
Emerick threw the radio down in disgust, breaking me out of my thoughts. I was glad for it; it was hard to think after how much of the tanned stuff I’d let in. “It’s broken, the piece of…” He tried to hold back, but finally let out a torrent of cursing as I stepped away from the shouty-man and looked over the city to the north, where I’d seen my parents’ house, and scanned the scattered buildings for my own.
Emerick slumped against the roof’s wall near where he’d thrown the radio, growling underneath his breath. I could barely make out the actual houses, but I thought I’d found where I lived; not too far from Sable Leasing, a.k.a where dumb-ass got herself locked on the roof. “Looks like we’re just going to have to wait until we can flag someone down during the day. Let’s hope we don’t starve first.”
The words entered my mind, and a rage began to boil just underneath my skin. I turned, body violently shaking as my mouth twisted, trying to vocalize thoughts and feelings to Emerick about the idea of being trapped on another god-damn fucking roof again with nothing to eat, drink, or do for god knows how long. My hands balled into fists, and my teeth clenched shut, grinding except for where I was missing a fucking tooth.
Emerick watched in silence as I began to pace, rage escaping in little bursts of aggressions that cracked the cement beneath my restless feet. “There’s… nothing… we can…” A glare shut him up, before I turned to the door that lay between me and not having to spend another fucking day bored out of my skull on a rooftop. I charged it, ducking low and jerking my shoulder up at the last second in a move that sent me flying down a dark stairwell with a steel door wrapped around my shoulder.
I landed in near-darkness, red-emergency lights casting a soft-glow onto the concrete stairs as I untangled myself from the warped metal and stood, unharmed. I could feel the pain, the exhaustion, the aching from all that I’d done to a body that was small and pudgy, but I also felt invincible and pissed enough to go berserk on anything that got in my way.
I lifted the door I’d shattered and folded it in my hands, listening to the metal squeal as the tanned energy flooded into me, feeling limitless. I’d have to find and thank whatever was giving me this rush; it felt amazing.
I turned and looked up the stairwell, where Emerick was looking down at me with a horrified look on his face. I grinned at him, glad for the fear on his face as the first act of my revenge for all the crap he’d –
A force smashed into me from behind, where Emerick had actually been looking, and sent me flying into the concrete wall, cracks radiating around me as my head swam and I tried to remove myself from the wall.
Something roared behind me, the invincibility I’d been feeling replaced with fear as I registered how much that had hurt me; a new pain, not the old injuries resurfacing. I threw myself away from the wall as a meaty fist the size of me pounded into the wall I’d been in, punching through the concrete and opening a hole that granted us a view of the outside world.
I could hear screams coming from somewhere nearby, their sound sending the hulking form into a rage that left me lying on the floor to rip its way through the cement and chase down whoever had been unfortunate enough to make noise. Emerick ran down the stairs towards me, face filled with fear but coupled with a determined set of his jaw.
“I’ll get people out of here. Think you can take the beast?”
God damn it all. I nodded, and got to my feet.