Carmine Horizon – Part one

Sharp screams echoed through the walls of the building, causing two heads to turn to its source almost immediately before trading concerned gazes.

There was another man in the room, holding a cigarette in his hand while his cold eyes stared firmly and tiredly outside, through the gray bars on the door before him. He gnashed his teeth against the cigarette once the high cries were turned into loud curses against practically everything its source would remember to complain about at the moment, and almost cringed.

Loud footsteps were practically muffled by the violent vociferations, but once the rusty metal feet stopped in their tracks, the screams had been merely reduced to shaky breaths and whimpers.

Minion hissed. He'd thought he would be able to ignore his Master's dreadful stubbornness, but apparently he had been proven wrong. Once the blue-skinned man had insisted he wanted to be the one to do it, Minion couldn't find it in himself to deny him of the task. And the fish would've been perfectly fine with it, did it not involve the risk of his Master's death – or worse. If only he hadn't closed the damn door.

A loud unintelligible mumble startled the fish, causing him to turn his gaze from the wooden door for a moment. Pale grey arms reached through the bars of the reinforced door with more strangled mumbles, and Minion was positive he saw a smirk creep through the lips of the man in front of it. He brought the cigarette to his mouth and stepped back in order to reach for the fire axe behind him – only to be stopped by a single pistol shot. "Hey!"

His tone was more annoyed than startled as he turned his body around to look at the man behind him, so smug it wouldn't be surprising for him to blow the smoke on the gun's barrel with a smarmy grin. "Wouldn't want you to get your suit dirty"

Bernard chuckled dryly before taking another puff from his cigarette. "You and your manners"

The large-chinned man smiled briefly before placing his pistol back in his belt's holster. "You can take the next one"

A bald man appeared behind the opened door, forehead sticky with sweat, and spoke in a tired tone. "I'll watch her. You get some rest. We still have an hour left" The fish was met with the brown color of the door before he could even finish pronouncing the word 'sir'.

At first he just stood there, black M-16 firmly splayed in between his blue hands, cocked and ready to fire at will. However, as his acid green eyes found the woman's face stained with tears, he felt his legs tremble and decided to sit down on a wooden crate in front of her at the risk of them giving in. She was eyeing down her wrists, red and sore from the friction of the ropes that bound her, tired from struggling against them. The woman's left shoulder was still screaming painfully loudly at her, and thus, evening her breathing seemed like an impossible task at the moment.

She tilted her head slightly to peek towards her right, finding a white bandage firmly adhered to her shoulder. Her head raced as a sudden wave of blurriness crept through her senses, momentarily blocking them.

"Roxanne?"

She was leaning forward dangerously, head almost threatening to dangle downwards. The blue man stood, pointing the weapon at the floor and tentatively reaching to touch her. She cringed momentarily as a stinging sensation overwhelmed the right side of her body. The several scratches and bruises on her legs were now completely numb and forgotten, even the foot she'd painfully twisted earlier – all her brain focused on was that white, burning feeling on her clavicle. And then came his voice.

"I'll get you something to eat. You're going to need sugar if you want to get up in a while" Her eyes found his blue face as fast as her condition would allow, and it took her a great amount of effort and energy she wasn't even sure she possessed to put her lips together and get her throat to work properly.

"Stay" Her voice was quavering practically as much as her hands. She wasn't even sure he had heard her scratchy plea, but she was positively determined to try to get him to listen. It might've been due to the extreme pain, but selfishly or not, she didn't want to die like this, alone and surrounded by four dusty walls.

"Please… stay with me"

His eyebrows rose vigorously as he found the task of swallowing momentarily impossible. He was still turned towards her, standing with the weapon pointing downwards, and it seemed like an eternity before he finally decided to move his legs in her direction. "I will. Let me just tell Minion to get you something"

Once her brain processed the first two words that had come out of his lips, she let her head slump down in a small nod, and swallowed the little amount of saliva she still had left. Luckily, she had managed to avoid biting off her own tongue as he cleaned and disinfected her wound. She had to thank him, but simply the thought of it was tiring her body to unhealthy levels.

Roxanne vaguely registered the door opening and the robotic suit that carried the blue man's minion coming in and having a short look at her; but her eyes were focused on the tiles under her feet, intently noting how they seemed to blur away from her vision from time to time. Her mind raced furiously with different thoughts of the past hours, of how she got herself into this situation, of what would happen to her now. She heard Wayne's concerned voice in the distance, but her brain was only capable of registering one thing.

She didn't want to die.

"Don't you think maybe there's really something going on? I mean, there's no one at the reception. Or the waiting room. Or the halls" The man in front of her wasn't even sure about how they were going to film this report in the first place, since his hands were now shaking visibly, causing the black camera around his arm to move frenetically.

Roxanne wasn't less shaken aback with this situation herself, but they had work to do, and the people deserved to know what was really going on in the city's hospital. The government had refused to parlay with the reporters or doctors, and it was in her journalistic duty to keep the citizens informed.

Not even a day ago, rumors arose stating that a very transmittable infection had stormed its way into the city, leaving a trail of panic and immediate desertion. Just the panic of contagion was enough to make at least a thousand citizens flee from their houses in terror, leaving the crumbled shadow of what was once a glorious city behind. Streets were deserted, either out of fear or evasion, but the short-haired woman had to admit being a bit skeptical about the pandemic chaos this disease was causing – and James, the man now walking in front of her through the hospital's hall, had himself confessed a few conspirational theories had come to his mind. "Hello?"

However, the fact that Metro Hospital seemed to be completely rid of doctors – and filled with incoherent grunts of pained patients – was tugging on her fear. "Okay, maybe you're right. They probably gave up on these people and evacuated as well. Let's just –"The noise around them increased, along with loud banging on the doors. It seemed like the diseased could smell them, sense them, and were desperate to reach them for some reason the reporter was not keen on finding out.

Roxanne's heart skipped a beat furiously as her mouth began to dry. Her feet backed away slowly, and slimy noise made her note her purple ballet flats were now stepping over a thick red liquid, a trail of it leading to a plastic door beside her. The moment her eyes spotted the door, a hand managed to erupt from it, smacking the white plastic with ease. It was bloody – she unwillingly concluded its owner had probably broken a finger or two with the impact – and deformed. The infection had definitely eaten most of this person's flesh.

She let out a choked scream in surprise, and James immediately lowered the camera to turn it on, completely ignoring the broken door behind him and the reporter's order for him to run. Roxanne was now past one of the several waiting rooms, a stash of adrenaline creeping through her body as she ran for dear life, James not very far behind her. "This is James May from KMCP 8 bringing you an exclusive look at the result of the rumored infection"

His voice was trembling as he ran with the camera under his right arm. At first he forced a professional tone, but once he looked around with the camera and found at least half a dozen infected running after him his voice was forcedly informal.

"James put that thing down!" They were reaching for the hospital's main entrance now, still hot with adrenaline pumping on their veins, and the man decided to forcefully ignore his partner's requests. "Put that fucking thing down!"

He was running backwards now, carefully balancing himself not to fall, and found himself trembling once he spotted the panic in the woman's voice. She almost shrieked at him again, but he didn't comply. "The patients are hostile… violent, even…." He continued his speech, but Roxanne wasn't paying attention anymore. She looked behind her shoulder to find he was falling dangerously behind, and screamed one more time.

She was way ahead of him now, crossing the street and getting as far from the hospital as she could – but he was fading out of her view. "James!"

"Shit!" She heard a loud thud behind and found her cameraman on the floor, recording equipment in his hands as the infected bodies swarmed him, covering him in a crimson mess of limbs. She saw him smacking a few corpses with the camera, but it eventually rolled away – and she had to force herself to stop in her tracks and scream for him. He screamed back and kicked as the diseased piled up on him, each clumsily grabbing a part of the man and ripping out his clothes and flesh with their teeth.

The reporter ran for her life, doing her best to ignore the sickening grasp of the knots in her stomach. She panted, tears rolling down her eyes as she looked in every direction for a place to hide and call for help. She trembled, hands plastered against her legs to support her upper body. Quick, short breaths escaped the woman's lips as her deep blue eyes widened with the realization of what she had just witnessed.

She heard a distinct mumble behind her and took note of a living corpse that had dispersed from the others to find her. She didn't even hesitate to bring the fallen street sign nearby against his head, once again tormenting her stomach to empty its remains.

Shit.

Her knuckles turned white from the force she applied on the sign. She wanted to cry, to vomit, to continue getting away from this new-born nightmare.

Eventually, her blue eyes spotted a police vehicle and, looking behind her to make sure nothing was following her path, she entered it with as much as speed as her caution allowed.

"Hello?" She forced her voice to sound coherent as she took the intercom device in her hands and pressed the red button.

"I-I don't know if you're listening but my cameraman has just been attacked… I'm in front of Metro Hospital… Please, is anyone there?" She shook. No one answered as she released the button.

"Hello?" Her tone was frantic now as she looked outside of the vehicle to check if it was still safe inside. She didn't hear a thing from the intercom.

"P-Please, is anyone there?" Nothing.

"…You've got to help us!" She waited and eventually leaned her head against the car's seat. This couldn't possibly be happening. A smidge of rationality flooded her momentarily as she remembered it was still possible to ask for help through her cell phone.

Battery dead.

Roxanne wasn't even sure she felt her own body anymore as she slammed the device against the floor and brought her hands to her face, letting out a scream she'd been holding for minutes.

When a dozen of infected began slamming their fists against the car, she couldn't find any strength to attempt moving, and instead let herself cry. There was no way out of this. No one she could turn to right now.

Then she heard the door beside her unlock and braced the sign in her hands. Her eyes widened once they met a metal hand.

"Are you okay miss?"

A voice. A coherent, living voice. She felt like hugging the metal of the fish's robotic suit as he lowered himself inside the car, a short baseball bat on one of his hands, now redder than black.

"Come on, we need to get out of here" There was another voice, lower and graver, right beside her. She turned to see a blue man reaching out to pull her arm, a black rifle in his other hand.

Megamind. The city's notorious and terribly unsuccessful criminal. She had no idea what the two were doing here, but to be quite honest, she had no intention of finding out until they were safe.

"There's a safe-house up ahead. We were in there, looking for supplies, when we heard your distress call through the radio" The blue man was practically screaming the words through the loud screams of the infected and the blaring sounds of his rifle's shots.

Roxanne did not need to be told twice. She spotted said location and immediately made her way out of it, street sign forgotten. The fish slammed the bat against several corpses that began surrounding him, looking around to check if the woman was already safe, along with his boss.

"Come on, Minion!" The blue man was now standing in front of the door, legs splayed as he emptied the rest of the weapon's shell, only stopping once his faithful companion was inside. He then closed the door and turned around to catch the bat Minion threw at him with a serious gaze. His tight black pants were almost as dirty as his sleeveless shirt, and his boots were stained in red, probably from the amount of kicks in the head he'd given.

Roxanne was still panting, her hair beginning to stick to her forehead due to all the sweat her body produced. She sat down on the floor and avoided looking at the scattered limbs that remained after Megamind was done smacking every pale infected that dared approach the door.

"Are you hurt?" Minion was beside her now, caramel eyes filled with concern, and she replied by shaking her head slowly. The fish's eyes transpired relief.

"Good" She heard the lower voice further away on the room. The bigheaded man was now cleaning his torso and arms, forehead shimmering with sweat. "Whatever you do, don't get bitten"

She shook, not even wanting to remember what had just happened to her partner.

"It's okay. You're not alone. We'll protect you" Minion's tone was comforting, oddly enough, and she found herself nodding, lungs still working like a rapid train.

Megamind sat in front of the table with the radio, and began tuning it again. It wasn't long before the trio heard another voice.

"—fficer Wayne Scott. I am on my way to your position. Please avoid any contact with the infected at all cost and find a safe place until my arrival"