This short story (non-linear as I have no plans to link it to anything else), can be applied to any apocalypse as I have seen, read and heard multiple that have ghouls featured.
Writing to me.
Fallout to Bethesda
Wasteland mercy
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
The only mark of passage of time as a man and woman ran through a hell of luminous pools and jagged grounds.
Tick.
Tiiiiiiick.
Tiiiiiicccck.
Ever increasing in frequency and repetition, biting through their skulls as they fled, their breath ragged and furious as they hauled heavy packs.
Tick
Tick-tiiiick-tick
Snarls, bloodthirsty and unending came behind them. Footsteps, more erratic and broken than their own, hissing and yowling- a splash came before them, their focus whipped forward, both terrified. Dodging around pool, its vibrant surface expanding and bubbling as another twisted form came forth to halt and harm them.
Their guns were empty.
Who could dare to dispute the riches of the old world that were sure to be found in the untouched and very dangerous ruins of the outer city. Surely no one with the foresight and common sense would be unwise enough to venture into the ruins. Those who were unprepared and stupid in nature, would no doubt be desperate enough to delve into such a dangerous location for survivals sake.
The pair had been prepared, neither unprepared nor stupid.
They were in fact, rash.
In an attempt to survive their world, the wanderers had delved into territory too dangerous but for the most desperate and foolhardy. Outfitted with armour, survival gear and adequate weapons, the pair had been over confident in their ability to survive and find enough pre-war technology, raw and metals to set themselves up for the future. The older of the two, a man, had been leaning forward to pluck a soft drink off from the top of the machine it may, or may not have come from. Unfortunately, the bottle hit another bottle, teetering on the edge as the pair's eyes slowly widened in the horror the noise could bring.
The empty soft-drink bottle seemed lean against part of the cooler and wall, precariously balancing.
The second figure, motioned to the first, 'move the bottle, put it on the ground or somewhere where it wouldn't rattle' they motioned, their movements frantic.
With a nod, the first figure, the man, shifted around the cooler and went to grab the wobbling bottle- their fingers found nothing but air as the bottle had shifted under its own weight, sending it rolling off the back of the precarious top of the broken cooler, hitting the wall and that one error, would cost both greatly, more than they could ever hope to give.
Faster and faster through the downtown ruins, cement cracked in great chunks underneath them, every step a chance to stumble and be caught. Torn to shreds. Down an alleyway a few blocks from the cooler, the pair squeezed past an overturned car, hopefully, to slow their pursuers down.
Bottlenecked, the creatures (for surely they were no longer human), ravenous dogs as they were, jammed against one another, in an attempt to squeeze through the gap, crushing one another with feral cries.
With hope, the man and woman ran faster, dodging through a gap in a rusty fence- the larger one was caught, the straps of their pack was tangled in the twisted and bare chain-link. Eyes wild and fearful, they tore at the straps that held the backpack on around their waist as their smaller friend tugged and untied the fastenings along the shoulder straps. Screeching, horrendous sounds, of things that were once like them; Human, now no more than withered and skeletal facsimiles of a Human being.
The shoulder straps were free, the buckles, were ironically a sore point the scavengers had an argument before the came to the ruins, might slow them down. Turned out that the buckles had jammed, instead of popping free as they had so many other times in use. Could of helped them that time a giant lizard had found its way inside the pack one night when they camped by an old outdoor movie theatre. The lizard had then tried to attack the man the next morning day, hidden in the backpack.
With a cry of frustration, the larger scavenger scrambled forward, feet pawing at the ground in fear as the hisses, growls and screams in the alleyway grew louder with each passing moment. With a glance down, they could only watch as the knife sawed through the straps around the middle of their frame. There was no time. There was no way they could take on dozens of feral ghouls.
With a heave, the man grabbed a blade from their holster, an odd military blade that was more a form of torture than practical use. Pushing the deactivated blade through the straps, and away from their stomach, they pressed down on the button and clenched their teeth as the blade roared to life in a flurry of jagged teeth- a miniature chainsaw really.
Snap.
The first strap separated into tattered tethers as the motorised knife severed the thick fibres.
Frantically cutting, the smaller figure worked away, their breathing heavy and anxious, cutting as quickly as they could. The air filled with snarls all around them, encompassing the downtown blocks that made up this area of the local wasteland, adding to the ever present ticking of the Geiger counter attached to the smaller figure's waist.
Snap!
The straps were severed, they were free.
Bolting from the fence like the now extinct horse, the man sprinted past the woman, who stopped and unbuckled the pack, pulling out several items and jammed them into her pockets and ran after the man as ghouls finally got a clue and scrambled around the building and were at the end of the alleyway.
The man, still running, grabbed an old and fairly intact pallet against the alleyway wall and rammed it into the ghouls before him. Screaming at his scavenging partner to keep running, keep going. The ghouls crumpled as they were slammed against the wall, the small woman lashing out with the ripped, tearing into the head of a ghoul, leaving a carved trench in its head. The process was repeated over and over, carving into ghouls to varying degrees of harm; losing limbs, torn out throats and gouged heads.
The man braced the pallet with one arm, grabbing a combat knife strapped to his left hip, jammed the blade into the heads of each feral, one after the other. Letting the pallet fall to the debris strewn alleyway with a clatter, the man looked over his shoulder, nodding to his smaller companion, she would have been trampled if they hadn't worked together.
Run. Cut. Kill.
Scrambling through the ruins, the man at some point had taken the woman's backpack, lighten her load and let her be faster. To also use the backpack as an impromptu battering ram when the need had arisen. Though a foot smaller, the woman was stronger than she appeared, but unencumbered by the weighty pack, she was twice as fast as she had been with it on.
Run. Cut. Kill.
The pair ran down alleyways, the streets too full and clogged with pre-war rusted wrecks of cars and remains of buildings. The sharp turns sent the ferals spiralling forward and onto the cracked, and crumbling tarmac. Dead ends, so much backtracking the scavengers faced, their escape routes dwindling as the number of ghouls increased, the noise of dozens sent alerts out to the others in the area.
Run faster. Cut deeper. Kill without thought.
That was the thing about feral ghouls, a single nudge against a tin can sent them into a frenzy, dropping whatever they had been chewing on, or wandering aimlessly in their continued life of un-death. For ever one that the man and woman killed, three replaced in a frenzy of screeching and rasps, crawling out of piles of trash, under bricks and flopping down from buildings and falling onto the ground below without a sound of pain or disagreement. They kept coming, and they would keep on coming.
Trapped.
They had been forced into a street that was blocked off. The only avenue of escape was to quickly navigate through a half destroyed building that had a fire escape to the roof that was barely a hop to the roof of the building next door. Running on near empty, their endurance waning, the man and woman found themselves on the roof, panting and wheezing; the air in the ruins was clogged with dirt and dust from the ferals escapades.
The Geiger counter clicked ominously.
The building before them was their only way out, a clear run across the roof to the other side, down a rickety looking fire escape, across half a carpark full of open and towards higher ground. There was a highway bridge not too far away from the carpark, like all other highways held aloft in the sky, there were large sections that had fallen away over time under weather and duress, leaving islands of relative safety that were usually inaccessible by normal means. The bridge the pair looked to had no other access point other than an old van on the back of a semi-truck.
The woman went first, a quick jump over the gap. She glanced back at the man, a smile on her face, they were getting away. With a reassuring nod, the man held the pack and jumped over the gap, landing with a solid thump. There was an unsettling crack. Glancing down with a worried look, without a second to comprehend what was happening, the roof collapsed under the man.
Wide eyes, the man managed two steps, thudding against the roof on his chest, a crunch as the roof fell out from under him. It the plume of centuries old dust, concrete and dirt, the man clung to the edge of the building, the pack caught in a drain pipe, spilling a deluge of filthy water that had been clogged up for far too many years.
Crying out, the woman frantically grabbed at her companion, barely strong enough to keep herself up, let alone her companion who weighed double her weight on a good day. Squeaking and groaning, the fire escape groaned under the strain of the building, the metal barely clinging to the wall as it held the cracked and broken façade together in a mockery of a bandage. The man looked up at his friend, then glanced down with a heavyset grimace, a pipe had skewered him through the middle, the pipe bent in just the right way that moving upwards was a scratched out option. Looking over his shoulder, the man's resolve deepened, there was a feint glow below him, bathing everything in a green light. The buildings walls were barely holding his weight, anything could bring them down at any moment. Even if the ghouls suddenly left, there was only one option with a wound too critical for his or his companion's medical skills. With a smile, the man shoved the pack forward, it heaved on the pipe and thumped heavily below, landing heavily on a pre-war van parked below the fire escape.
The woman shook her head, a pat to her cheek, overshadowed by that shift of the building below as her grip loosened. There was too much debris, too little time, the drop was deeper than just a floor or two; it went straight into the basement. There was no way that the man could survive that drop, especially with the tell-tale ticking of radiation. Which seemed to be enough that the distance the pair were at, was irradiating them and giving an average yearly dose in a day.
With a kick, the man shoved himself away from the edge of the building, slipping from the smaller figure's grasp, her cries unheard among the snarls and wailing below. Falling, a look of acceptance and determination, of hope and folly, the man in the same moment pushed the woman backwards onto the fire escape. She landed with a sickening crack, something broke, or at least sprained under the fall. The fire escape creaked under the woman's weight, blood thumping in her ears as she became deaf to all but the screeches of the ferals, trumpet and ecstatic that they had something fresh to devour.
There was a thud, horrendous and heavy.
The feral ghouls all but screamed in delight, their hunger would be sated.
On trembling limbs, the small woman checked her immediate suspicion of her injuries. It wasn't her legs or wrists, her limbs were okay for the most part, a little bruised. Why didn't she have any painkillers? No, she did, they had been in- she shook her head, 'don't think about it', her mind stated firmly, she couldn't dare to think about anything just yet, just move.
The woman struggled to rise, pain lanced through her ribs, and weakly grabbed the fire escape. Her body shook, she must have broken a rib. With bleary eyes, the woman shuffled along the fire escape, praying it didn't break further, nor sheer off the crumbling building and throw her several floors down onto the hard ground- either bricks, tar or cement, there was too much debris and trash to tell, and break her neck.
At a speed that wouldn't stress the warped and abused metal, the injured woman made her way down the fire escape, and each breath sent pain lancing through her, each step jarred her ribs. It was just her luck that more than one was cracked or broken. As she moved at her careful pace, she did her best to put the sounds of the ghouls out of her mind, she wouldn't cope with anything if she kept thinking about her dead friend.
Of course, she had no proof he was dead.
In all likelihood, he survived the fall, crippled, broken-backed and was being eaten alive.
The woman paused and clutched the railing, her eyes burned, her breathing sped up.
Why did she have to think that?
Why did they even-
A screeching grate, the fire escape shifted under the woman's weight. The short figure whipped her head upwards, watching cracks widen around the heavy bolts that drove deep into the brickwork of the building beside her. She swore. Loud and angry as she moved like her arse was on fire, which was rather jerky with her busted ribs and asphyxiation with the clogged dust and dirt. Falling away and breaking apart, the fire escape started to bend off the building, swaying dangerously as the building itself crumbled and fell apart. Plumes of age old dust, dirt, ash and radiated particles blew out with the collapse, the immediate area was covered in clouds thick enough to not see a few feet ahead of behind.
Whatever ferals that had survived were muffled under the mound of concrete, metal and various bits of shattered glass and wood.
Oddly, a number of clipboards seemed to have survived the collapse.
Of course, the woman had not noticed any of this, her mind frantic as she ran along the veering fire escape, the metal twisted and hit the building across the alleyway, the metal grinding and squealing as it gouged into the brickwork. Tumbling down the last level of the fire escape, the woman caught herself on the ladder, crying out as the metal hit heavily against her ribs, sending her mind spinning in a fit of pain.
With a shuddering screech, the fire escape dug into the brickwork, now three-quarters detached and mangled, in hung nearly at a ninety-degree angle, leaving the woman hanging on for her life. Slowly, in the cloud of debris, the small woman climbed down the ladder- most had rusted away over time, and found herself on the bonnet of the van. With her aching body, the woman pulled the bandana around her neck up and covered her mouth, much easy to do when her hands were free.
Climbing onto the roof, sore and sporting too many bruises to count, the woman panted out a breath. Slowly, she turned on her side, and curled up a fraction, not much to aggravate her injuries, yet enough to cope with the situation. They had been careful, planned for weeks, supplies and scouted the sector out.
Their falling had been complacency.
They had, in one moment and action, had caused a cacophony of noise.
And in the end, the scavenger had both fallen; one into death, the other failing her friend and herself.
Why did she survive and not him?
The wasteland was never a just, nor fair place.
There was no bargaining or pleading against it.
It had its own rules and bowed to no one.
There was no mercy in the wasteland.