This is part four of the series Clarise's End-Times, which you can find the start to here. I'm liking it so far, so if you do read it all or already have, let me know what you think! I plan these things very loosely, but try to leave little bits from earlier sections that I can draw into the current one to make the image of a cohesive and planned story, when it's actually just me going 'that's a neat idea.' Likely something to try and move away from in future, but for a first long-story, it's working out rather nicely so far. Enjoy, and tell me what you think! See you tomorrow at eight AM for more. Probably not more of this, but who knows.
Clarise's End-Times IV by Mackinley Clevinger, March 21, 2016
It’s an interesting feeling, giving up control to an autonomous part of yourself that learned its behavior from the shared memory of a horde that ran rampant through the city you call home while you were bored out of your mind stranded on a roof; a part of yourself that had only revealed itself after feeling a nigh-insurmountable hunger that had driven you to nearly eating a man before tearing into your arm instead to shake yourself out of that obsessive feeling, one which you would later give full reign in an attempt to reach a helicopter mid-liftoff because your conscious mind is too aware of how beat up and wounded you are from jumping off a freaking roof out of desperation.
Not something I’m going to forget anytime soon, I’m sure, assuming I don’t die before I can look back on these golden days of yore fondly with the rose-tinted glasses of time, as far away from this damned city as possible. At a resort on a beach somewhere, being served a limitless supply of drinks and food by shirtless hunks who see to my every need, all of which I own after suing whoever I can conceivably blame for being forced into a situation where I’m in the passenger seat of my own head as I still hang in that frozen moment after my feet have left the ground but before I’ve found out whether or not Clarise is going to catch a ride or fall to her eventual death.
My palm slapped against vibrating metal, the impact numbing it for a moment before a deep ache spread throughout my fingers. I clenched my hand with all my might around what must be the helicopter’s landing rails, feeling my body swing underneath it as my momentum carried me along. “Oh… Kay…” Wide-eyed and shaking with nerves, I looked around to see the world spinning around me as the helicopter rose and my swinging came to a stop, eventually balancing out to a steadily rising view of the roof I’d been on, swarming with ragged and bloodied figures. I could feel an ache spreading through my arm at the strain from holding myself up by one hand, a problem I solved by tightening my grip on the rail even harder as I braced myself to look away from the roof and at the city proper.
There were still lights. Not many, but dotted around I could see windows lit up from within, spotlights scanning the city streets from above, a coffee shop surrounded by what looked like police and vigilante defenses; I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of whirring blades above me, but I saw other helicopters, convoys on the ground, groups of flashlights bobbing along side streets far from the more lit-up zones; the city may have been hurt, but it was far from dead. The people who called it home weren’t going to give it up without a fight, that was for sure. We were rising higher, still, a line burning down my arm as my fingers grew sore from holding my own weight. A realization flashed in my mind as I caught sight of my other arm hanging limp by my side; what the hell was I doing only holding on by one hand? This was my life we were talking about here, something I hold very dear and close to my heart. The hell was this arm doing not pitching in to preserve itself as we rose even – my head swam, looking down again. The figures that we’d left behind on the roof were ants now, tiny specks of bloody death and pain.
I heaved with my arm, its entirety flaring with burning pain as I made a grab for the rail with my other arm, just barely grazing it with my fingertips. I let my tensed muscles rest, dropping back to hang one-handed again, not realizing that, of course, falling would pull against my hand. My grip slipped; not by much, but the iron-clad finger strength that had been keeping me from a one-way trip was gone in a blaze of sweaty palms and lost friction. I could feel my hand slowly, at glacier speeds, begin to slip, the vibrating of the helicopter not helping my case for why I should remain safely attached to be accepted by the universe. I ran my off-hand along my pants to clean them of sweat, and was never happier than in that moment to be covered in drying, sticky blood as I repeated the act that had doomed me, pulling myself up in a sudden jerk that slipped my right hand off of the landing rail.
For a brief moment, I hung beneath the rising helicopter, weightless in that brief moment before I would begin to fall, watching the helicopter continue its rise without me. I drew the hand that had held onto the rail down as I swung the other up, body twisting to achieve as much reach as I could get out of it in that tenuous moment. My bloody palm slapped against the metal, the pain and swinging of my body reduced by not, this time, having just jumped off of a roof like a crazed, desperate person. No, this was much classier and affirming of the idea of personal badass-ness than leaving the jumping to a hunger-obsessed version of yourself while, presumably, screaming. Had I screamed? I thought back, breathing deeply to calm my nerves from being on the verge of a heart-attack to just being shot as I let my vision drift across the night-time scene of the city before me. No… I think I’d been too terrified to remember to scream. Speaking of which;
“Hey! If you’re…” My throat was dry, my voice silent to even myself, overshadowed by helicopter blades and the high-altitude winds that were cold as fuck. I swallowed, trying to grease the engines, so to speak, and tried again. “If anyone wants to look down and save me from falling to death, that would be -” I heard a pop, barely registered over the sound of the whirring blades, followed by a whizzing sound that came within inches of my ear; out of the corner of my eye, I saw something flash by and disappear into the night that surrounded us, far above the city. I arched my head back, trying to see above and behind me into the helicopter’s open door, body swinging out to the side and underneath the helicopter as it began to move side to side suddenly, alternating between exposing my body to a view from the side-door and protecting it from the very large gun I could see a man holding now.
Well, on the one hand, they knew I was down here, finally; only too bad they were going to use that knowledge for evil, murderous purposes instead of Clarise-friendly ‘save my fucking life’ ones. Must be hard to shoot a moving target like this, though. Whoever he was, he couldn’t shoot to save his life, what with the two times he’s missed hitting me by now. If I’m lucky, of which there is likely no chance in hell, maybe he’ll miss and not make me experience the pain of being shot as I fall towards the distant and painful ground. I wonder if there was a way to tell him I didn’t want to eat him? I mean, with the way he was acting, who wouldn’t want a taste of this guy, but still. Something to think about as you’re about to be swung out into the Extreme Difficulty setting at the firing range.
The helicopter jerked to the side, swinging me out from underneath it thanks to the lubrication abilities of semi-dried blood and a grip that might be able to save a life, my vision swimming with blurred cityscape views before pausing briefly to reveal someone dressed very seriously in military garb holding a very scary looking gun, which lit up a few times in my direction without making pain break out anywhere as I swung back down. Wow, he is a crap shot. I should be terrified. Why aren’t I terrified? I’m being shot at while hanging from a helicopter that is taking evasive maneuvers, holding on by a blood-covered hand and incredible finger-strength. I guess you can only take so much of this kind of shit before you adjust to it. Maybe it has to do with that human connection I’d been missing for so long; even being shot at by someone means you’re not digging through horde memories or grabbing at a helicopter railing as it rises all by yourself. Eh, it’s not going to matter why once Mr. No-Aim gets lucky.
I’m swung out again, feeling my knuckles crack as my hand tightens around the landing rail, other arm drifting through the air beside me as my body rises to be horizontal alongside the helicopter, unfortunately not in a weightless way but in a ‘ball attached to the end of a string’ way, right as the ball gets jerked back and watches a man fire bullets in its general direction, missing again. Is he playing with me? What the fuck? Can’t he shoot properly? If this is going to end in me falling to my death, why can’t the guy at least do it sooner so I can be saved from the misery that is hanging by one arm. People are heavy, and it doesn’t get any easier holding yourself up when what you’re holding onto is rising as well. I bet he didn’t even earn that uniform, probably got it at an army surplus store and decided to play the soldier when the chance came up. Asshole.
I swing up alongside the helicopter, glaring down the barrel of his gun and holding my off-hand up in the universally accepted symbol of ‘go fuck yourself’, surprising him enough, it seemed, to save us the expense of all those wasted bullets that would normally have come flying after me as I drifted back underneath the helicopter, cursing the ache in my fingers and arm. The helicopter shuddered, its back-and-forth drifting coming to a halt and returning to a steady-rise. I swung back and forth gently, off-hand still exposing a single digit as I looked up at the under-carriage of the helicopter, thoroughly pissed off. We went through all of that nonsense for nothing? All it took was expressing my disdain for their abilities to make them ease off on killing me? I could see the logic; what kind of member of any self-respecting horde would take the time to judge their prey before eating it, but still. I’ve been taught since birth that insulting people wasn’t the way to go, and now this?
You were wrong, mom. Take that, if you’re still – My ire disappears at the thought, worry blooming in my chest as I get reality-checked. Oh, fuck, I’m about to start panicking. Panicking is never good for someone who’s hanging for life by a single outstretched arm. “Oh, fuck. Oh, crap.” A simple statement, but one I repeat while breathing deeply in-between each utterance, a case of the shakes breaking out throughout my body as it lets in the high-altitude cold and begins to shiver. Physical and emotional trembling while hanging over the city? Don’t mind if I do. I lift my off hand to cover my mouth as I look over the city below me, buildings like Monopoly pieces as I try to find my parents’ home. I hadn’t even though of… Out of the corner of my eyes, I catch a change in the scenery as we arrive to our destination.
The helicopter slows in its rise, coming to a halt vertically as the windows flashing by slow down, the lip of the building’s rooftop and a thin stretch of the night-sky visible past the helicopter’s other landing rail. We were somewhere, at last, which was convenient for anyone who might have had to go along on this ride holding on for their dear life with one arm. Desperation makes the best and worst of us, though, and I discovered something about myself from this escapade: In the face of certain death, my body can suck it up and deal with it. If there were any justice in the world, I’d be free to collapse on a couch with a blanket, ice cream, and all of the internet to watch, but I know that isn’t to be as the helicopter slides towards the building without rising any further. Just high enough to get the landing rails over the edge of the roof, but for any unwanted passengers? This is going to suck.