The hovercar flew over an empty street. Snow lay everywhere like a thick blanket and the day slowly started to end. A harsh wind blew from the front and into Henry's face. It's bitewas very cold and the temperature was below zero. He also wore nothing but a patient's gown. Not even a jacket would have helped much. He drove to the left at a crossing and looked at the buildings.
They stood there, lonely and grey. Most of them were officebuildings or huge housing complexes. The weak light of a dying sun bounced off their walls without really enlightening them. He drove among the street and was mesmerized by the buildings lines and shapes. Sharp features were rounded by the snow and lost their sharpness. The snow covered and hid most details at the huge constructions and made them look similar in shape and color. The differences faded just as the slowly dropping sun and everything became grey shapeless blurs.
Combined with the huge speed his strange vehicel inheritated the landscape became blurry, faint and everything lost its individuality. The snow forced everything into conformity and made any shape become similar to everything else. Henry watched in surprise as the first crystalls of snow dropped to the ground and one on his nose. He felt strange, just as if the grey, conforming and muddy snowwould be nothing but a mirror and example of the last two years of his life. The snow seemed to swallow any light but still mirrored his life.
What a contrast.
The snow and landscape delivered not even one single contrast except for that one. Henry felt strange and somehow guilty. The buildings looked like no one would have taken care of them for at least years. Just like he hadn't taken care of his family for years. No one had been there for his three daughters and his wife. But that would change. Henry swore that he would never again leave his family.
Even if it was literally cut in half.
He "flew" past another sidestreet and saw a huge group of undead shambling through it. He knew what that meant: Either the defences had broken and everyone had died or his friends had run out of ammo and had to retreat. The street wasn't on his way, it was rather a detour. But he wanted to do something and carefully aimed the cars front at a group of people. He pulled the heightlever and the car rose to about a humans hight. An evil smile crossed his face as the vehicle raced towards a head. He would make them pay for his familys tragedy.
---
Kim kept holding Ron while running through another alley. It was still a mystery who the person in the mirror had been and how it had disappeared. But Kim listened when people gave her advice. At least when they're mysterious mirrorpeople. She kept thinking about the person that seemed to hunt them: Was it the criminal in his protective suit? She had been held at the throat by him that way once. And it wouldn't be a surprise if he wanted revenge.
She felt bad about what she had done. But Kim knew that something had somehow manipulated her will to make her do such things. It had felt like as if a different person had done the stomping. She knew that nothing could have made her do such sadistic things on free will. As she gave Ron, who still didn't move, a look doubt filled her.
Hadn't she thought nothing could make her want to kiss Ron? The moodulator proved the opposite. And hadn't she thought that nothing could make her date Josh without being an emberrassing liability? Drakken's strange powder showed she could. And that somehow lit her mood a bit: All the things she believed to be out of character had happened when something had changed her. Either by chemistry or mental things.
So she ran further and stopped at a crossing: An enlightened and a dark street with many shadows kept waiting for her decision. Kim took the latter since she believed to be able to hide in the shadows.
Little did she know that other things already did so...
---
His own heart pumped and another one didn't. Max knew it wasn't fair. He gave the street a short look: The five bioartilleries walked closer and one stopped to fire at him. But he knew that a few moments remained for looking around and spotted new enemys:
At least a half dozen of Crawlers and several undead packs. So at least thirty enemys to take care off. He ducked again and didn't pay attention to the direct fire. The girl's life was more important. As he kept pressing he remembered the moment of failure that he had lived through before: Everything became blurry and the girls body reshaped into a grown man's one. It was a cop. It was Jackson.
The environment was familiar: The craters were the same just as the incoming rain of death. The snow started to melt from the immense heat that came from the burning buildings. It started to build streams of blood and snow that went down into the craters his comrades lay in. The bioartillery was not just five but twenty beings who kept firing. He pressed on the man's chest more and more violently while the entire world around him shattered to crimson and grey pieces.
He was in Upperton once again. In the Upperton of the past, the Upperton of his painfull memorys. He was in the burning city:
Nekropolis.
A huge building that stood just a few meters away from him collapsed and sprayed sparks over the entire street. The hot small dots set down on his shoulders and hair as he kept ramming his flat hands upon the dying mans chest. His own breathing was fast and loud but its noises died underneath the immense crackling of fire that ate through lumber, steel and flesh.
The greedy moans of the undead hallowed over the street and into everyone's hearts. The bioartillery kept them pinned and they couldn't do anything against it but wait. Wait until the vile enemy came in gunrange. A crater received a full hit and threw its content in a fountain of fleshy chunks, bones and cloth over the entire former street. As his hands kept going down once more he witnessed another craters crew panicking.
Four of the five men ran away and, as Max knew, into their safe deaths. The streets marble got thrown up in bizarre rythms and two fell to the shockwaves of explosions. One of them simply dropped sideways like a heavily hit puppet while the other kept making slow steps forward. His body twitched before simply collapsing like a bunch of potatoes.
The other two were cut down by the supreme firepower of multiple biomachineguns. One's chest received multiple hits into the back and exploded its entire content upon the ground infront of him. Pieces of lungs, bone, gut and soul splat out of him like a smashed water melon. A young marine didn't duck away in time and the emptied body clashed on him and flung them both into the craters deepest point.
In these points the mustardgas from the first firingraid lurked for victims. The poor young man started to caugh violently as his lungs were burnt away by the heavily aggressive acid. The gas was a so practical invention that only the typical human brain's sadistic efficience could have thought it out:
The gas was colorless, didn't have any taste and couldn't be seen. It stayed in the air for hours and killed even in minimal doses. Max could understand why such gas was forbidden by the conventions of genf. From the things he had heard it was already bad but in that moment he truly experienced why: It either murdered its victim over hours and made it suffocate by its own foamy and blooddripped lung's remains or just burnt them away within a few minutes. It depended on the dose. Max didn't know anything that could get the gas out as soon as it had entered the lungs.
Another mean thing was that the gas only became fluid through the lung's warmth. And it got acidous as soon as it became fluid. But it wasn't really fluid, neither was it just a gas anymore. It was too fluid to just be spat out but too airlike to just be coughed out at the same time.
He hoped that the poor guy would become unconscious before dying but knew that it wouldn't happen that 'nicely'. He stopped thinking of it and focused on his task. The dying man's face was illuminated by the dancing and flickering light of the burning buildings around them. Everything burned: Houses, ships and even a few scorched corpses remained from the last bioflamer's attack. They lay in positions that clearly showed they had fought for long time agianst the hungry biologicly enhanced napalm.
James came from the crater that lay before the one Max was in and threw himself down beside him. He got up and yelled something but Max was still deaf from a near explosions shockwave. James grabbed his arm and pulled him up what forced Max to just run among. As he turned his head around he saw two things.
The entire street infront of them was in flames. Dark shapes with flamers and red flaring eyes kept lashing their hungry fires in long streams at the ones who hadn't ran away when James had. They were too late. No one had noticed the Dark coming close. James had told them about the black shapes with weapons, about their inhuman precision, painresistance and invulnerabitlity.
The flames seemed to be the shape's home because the flames lashed over the ground and moved among the Dark's steps. It was like as if a painter would simply roll over a wall with his roll. And the Dark were that roll. The flames were small and only a few centimeters high at the Dark's feet but rose to meters behind them. There where at least a dozen of these immortal and soulless killers.
Max had always wanted to wear a such flamesafe mantle, gasmask and helmet. He had always wanted to just burn the undead away. The craters were still filled with cops, marines and armed civilians. The dark moved their faintly blue glowing muzzleflames towards the craters and the faint blue strings grew to huge yellow walls that filled the craters. Max saw one of the poor cops trying to crawl away from the oncoming hellfires.
His legs were nothing but scorched stumps as the Dark kept coming closer without really paying attention to the poor man. The flames greedily moved over the mans body among the Dark's pace until they covered the full person. It became nothing more but a black thing that moved until it gave up and kept lying.
Max suddenly lost the wish to use flamers and mantles.
More and more craters in the 'first line' got torched out and more people died to the humanmade flames. It seemed clear that normal fire couldn't do such things. That it couldn't be so brutally and mechanicly efficient. Everything happened within mere seconds but the screams of the dying burnt themselves into his mind and heart. No one who survived whould forget the day that mankind itself lost its right to live.
The people who couldn't escape the wall of fire, which were all but James and Max, screamed in a way no mortal being should ever scream. They began in the normal deep male voice, slowly got highpitched until to the point of a young boy and then faded. The effect was produced by the fire that ate through the skin and body and then into the lungs.
All victims literally screamed their lungs and soul out. The flames weren't human but were created through human hands. They burnt the body that held the soul faster than said spiritual sessence could escape. Normal fire couldn't and didn't want to consume human souls. Everytime a crater got torched the mustardgas got incenerated and made a huge washing wave towards the opposite direction. Which was the direction the people tried to run to.
It rose in huge fountains and incinerated the few that had made it to get out. It seemed like the gas itself would be angry about not being allowed to kill like it wanted to and took bloody revenge for it. Max was surprised that no drop of blood was left in, on and around the burning victims. It boiled inside the veins and arteries to torment the poor souls even further.
And the other thing was the man he had tried to reanimate. He was alive and stretched his arm towards the running lateteen. The eyes showed fear and pity. Max started to turn around but James grip got hard like iron and pulled him further. So he ran away together with the elite Swat officer and let the man die. He blamed himself for it as the man was consumed by the hungry wave of seemingly living flames.
He had kept calling Max's name again and again even while burning. Max learned that even souls could fall to ashes.
Suddenly everthing became 'normal' again. The terrible screams of the dying stopped, the flames stopped their crackling and the snow became snow again. Someone was shaking him and he turned around. It was James, but his stern and focused face slowly wandered into the one of a young woman. He tilted his head aside and looked closer as the background's apocalyptic flames stopped and got replaced by the numb grey of the heavens.
Max looked down and saw the young lady resting in his arms. Her chest rose faintly, then it rose again and after that once more: She was alive! His eyes went back to Tara and he noticed that she yelled something. He didn't understand what she wanted and watched how her arms flayed around.
He saw a different girl lying on the crater's rimm and pulled her into the barely safe hole. A venom-stinger stuck in her stomach.
---
Shego didn't want to be carried around by Drakken so she stood up herself. She used her good arm to keep the blanket around herself and slowly rose. Drakken's eyes followed her and he seemed to be ready for something. Shego didn't know what exactly he was ready for but it didn't matter. Her 'bad' leg started making contact with the ground and everything happened like it should. Then she redirected the weight.
She was about to congratulate herself when her muscle started hurting heavilly. She gritted her teeth and tried to resist but failed. Her entire body let loose and she collapsed. A painfull cry fought its way through her teeth as she expected to impact on the cold snow. But that didn't happen. The pain in her leg was like a cramp: It became stronger as soon as it started and didn't go away.
She fell forward and suddenly halted in midair. Her eyes opened and she made it to prevent herself from crying even though the pain was ridicolous. Something warm held her stomach and lower leg. She turned her head around and saw that it was Drakken. He kept breathing much and pulled her onto the bench. Shego didn't want to and tried to get his arms off herself but didn't make it.
Drakken dropped her on the bench with her legs on his lap. Shego lit her good hand up and was about to throw a bolt of green energy at him when the pain in her leg slowly left. Her eyes widened as she saw that the reason was that Drakken somehow massaged her muscle. It was strange how he did it but it felt nice. And it got the pain away. Somehow. She kept staring at him in confusion.
It was like a cramp: The pain slowly died away until it was not much anymore. It was still there, just like small rivers that stayed after rain. Drakken released her leg and Shego got up. After that she turned until she sat beside him. He froze terribly. Her brows furrowed as she remembered the Himalaya 'incident'. Slowly she opened the coat and held it towards him. Drakken looked confused.
"Come on take it. I've got the blanket."
"But-"
"NO but it's just gonna be like... never mind. Just take the stupid coat."
He still didn't take it so she solved the problem just like she always did when Drakken didn't listen. She lit her hand up. Drakken quickly took the coat on and Shego watched him while doing so.
"I always thought only your face was blue Dr. D."
"Huh?"
"I just thought you'd got some soap in your face once."
Drakken gave her a mean look and turned his attention back to the buttons at his chest. After that he turned around and moved closer to his injured assistant.
"The world's qonquerer stands before you!" He proudly announced and pressed his chest out.
"Wannabe-qonquerer!" Before Drakken reacted with an angry rant Shego pressed on his blown up stomach and made his lungs pump out. He quickly grabbed his stomach and fought for air after dropping to the ground. She watched it for a few moments and got bored.
"Dr. D stand up."
No reaction came. Instead he kept breathing hard.
"Get up dammit!" Again he didn't react. Shego rolled her eyes and got out the trumphcard: She immitated Drakken's mother:
"Drewbie! Get up!"
Drakken immediatly snapped up and looked her.
"Mum?"
"No luckily not."
Drakken gave her another mean look after standing up. He got the snow off his coat and looked critically at his coat if there was ANY piece of white left on it. Shego just rolled her eyes at Drakken's stupid obedience to the villains digest and its rules. One of these was that a villain wasn't allowed to have white on his dress except for lines or zippers. She was sick of that her boss kept obeying these stupid rules.
He walked close to her and spoke:
"I gotta carry you Shego."
"WHAT?"
"Well you can't walk yourself so-"
---
Drakken didn't know what he had said in his usual 'Drakken-ness'. Shego got boltstraight in a quick move. But she hadn't thought of her muscle so she collapsed again while yelling from the pain. The blueskinned man bent down to catch the woman that served him well. If one ignored the snappyness and the problems she had with authority. In this case HIS authority.
Drakken barely catched her and carefully got her injured leg up in time to prevent the cut muscle from cramping. He knew it would be a sort of pain not even Shego could resist against. The 'best' thing that could happen to her was that she fell unconscious again. But Drakken wasn't a Doctor for nothing. He felt how Shego resisted against his attempts to force her on the bench but won after a short struggle.
He was amazed that this woman could actually have enough strength to fight the pain AND him. Shego finally acted like a normal human and not like one who had strange superpowers and was a handtohand specialist. Finally her hands gripped the muscle in futile attempts to press the right spots. Her intense gripping only made it worse: Both because she moved her injured shoulder and because the pain made her press violently into the leg.
Drakken pressed her hands away and put her down. After that he pressed the muscle's strings back into the right order. Shego kept breathing hard and rested her arms in a way that didn't stress the wounded shoulder. Her head sank down and she looked at Drakken who knelt before her. One could easily mistake the moment for a man who asked a woman to be his wife.
Her eyes were filled with sifferent feelings: Pain, fear and hate. But there was something else. It was deeply hidden and Drakken saw it for the first time: It was Shego's soft side. The truly human part of her. It was just the part she never showed. He wanted to ask her about that part but knew that her pride wouldn't let her. And that her pride would make her hurt him. Badly.
So he decid to let the topic rest. He knew that telling her she was a liability would be the worst thing to do. Drakken could just tell her that but decid against it. Already the fact that she hadn't yelled at him because of his skillfullness in being a liability was reason enough to don't do that. He sat down beside her and put the blanket back around her. It had dropped onto the bench when she had stood up.
Shego looked at him as he did so.
"Wha-"
"Shego this isn't easy but I've got to carry you."
"No you-"
"AH AH AH!" His eyes narrowed and that silenced her. "There are no henchmen around to do that remember?"
Shego laughed a bit. "Great joke Dr. D. You finally get some humor."
His brows furrowed. "That was no joke! These idiots will get no pay this month!"
Shego rolled her eyes: "They won't need paycheques anymore."
His face showed even more confusion.
"They're dead Drakken. Remember?"
Drakken looked sad and turned his head away. Shego quickly regretted her words. A long silence follwed and she felt more and more uncomfortable. Both from the cold and from being exposed to eventuell enemies. The pain was there, too of course. She began to freeze lightly and snuggled deeper into the blanket. Drakken shivered heavilly and rubbed his hands. Shego knew they had to leave.
She gave him a look and their eyes met. Both stared into each others eyes for a few seconds before looking back to the street and their house. It looked just like before the blackening. Drakken stood up and walked towards it when Shego yelled at him:
"No! It'll just get dark again!"
"But... But it's cold!" Drakken replied while making some sort of male dogpout. Shego rolled her eyes.
"Then we'll just find another house."
"But my whole Snowman Hank collection is in there!"
Shego sighed heavilly. Drakken came back and sat down again. Suddenly his face lit up.
"What about a piggyback ride?" He asked like a little child that wanted candy.
"NO I won't carry you that way like I did on your last birthday! I still remember the backache I had after that!"
"I mean reverse Shego!" It clicked in her mind.
"No! NO you WON'T!"
But it was too late. Drakken had already gripped her tigh and bent down infront of her. She unwillingly gave in and let his hands grip into her knees. He slowly got up and made a few steps.
"Yeah... goes... Shego what do you mean?"
"Huh? What?"
"Robots that carry other robots with deathrays piggyback!" He grinned his stupid grin. It was kinda sweet sometimes. Sometimes.
"Then you'd need two robots for one deathray AND the princess would take down two bots with one strike each. Think of something better Drakken."
The doctor stopped grinning and thought for a few more moments. Shego pointed towards a building and Drakken started to walk.
"What about robotic bees that got deathrays as stingers!"
"No."
"Awwwww..." Drakken had seen the building before but hadn't noticed that it lay at least a half kilometer away. "Awwww..."
"Shut up and go! Maybe you finally lose some pounds." Drakken straightened his arms again and mumbled:
"YOU should lose some pounds-"
Shego's smile faded and she lit her good hand up just a few inches infront of his face. The other hand kept resting on his chest.
"WHAT? What did you say?" She growled at him.
"Uhhhh... Nothing Shego! You're... errr... as light as a feather!"
"That's what I want to hear. Faster!" She put her feet into his hips like a rider into her horse what made him groan a bit.
---
Kim ran into a shadow and hid. The person came around the corner she had passed just a few seconds ago. It surprised her since it had been at least ten seconds behind her. It only walked in its steady pace and never ran. So Kim was faster than it but strangewise it always got up in time. It seemed like the man would come closer everytime she didn't look.
It turned around and looked into the street. Its eyes flared and it stepped into the shadows that lay between two lamps. She expected it to step out of the darkness but it didn't. Her brows furrowed as she saw black dusk, fog or smoke coming over the street. It looked like a small wave of thin blackness that whirled, twisted and seperated into different round streams of black stuff.
Kim hadn't seen something like that before: It seemed fluid but was still gaslike and nothing but moving blackness. The streams went into different shadows around her and disappeared within them. Kim kept looking around and hoped that it hadn't seen her. Thoughts came: Was that still a normal human? Could that criminal have powers she didn't know of?
Ron mourned and his head rose. She turned around and saw something behind him: Red dots, flaring, hungry and longing. She got up and the memory of the photo came up: The intense feeling of threat among the dull emptieness inside her came back. Kim realised that it was the same feeling she had have had when the person had stood behind her.
She got up and ran out of the shadows without looking back. She somehow knew that the darkness filled with red points as shapes formed within them, far away from the human eye. She got her infrared goggles on again and gave the street a look:
The shadows, among the darkness itself, moved. The dots were points in chunks of something that seemed to grow within the darkness. And somehow the shadows increased in their blackness. It felt like something was drained from them, something that everything had. Everything within the blackness moved. Normally everything got a different color through the goggles but the darkness stayed perfectly black.
Like as if nothing could change the fact that it was pure blackness.
Suddenly a part of the blackness moved into the light and it took the shape of a human form. The shadows moved around it and returned to their point of origin. But the shape remained. Blackness moved away from it like cold that flew from an iceblock or fog that stood in a harbour's bay.
The fog dropped from the person's shape as it started to step forward. Two red dots flashed from nowhere inside the person's 'face'. A huge machinegun grew out of its right arm as more shapes stepped out of the shadows. More and more pairs of red flares grew out of and within the darkness. Kim felt that the temperature around her dropped very far below zero.
She kept running away but another shape suddenly stepped away from the corner. Its feet glid over the snow without moving it and its weapon rose. Kim jumped into the air as it shot and the bullets flew by just like the immensly loud hammering. Her foot rammed into its head but didn't find any grip. It didn't react in any way. Her foot went trough the head like as if it wasn't there. But it was there. Somehow.
She dropped through the thing with a surprised yelp and fell into the snow. Ron slipped out of her arms and something held her leg. Kim looked at the manlike shape. It slowly and steadily turned around and more of them rose out of the dark street behind her. A grey fog covered the ground as more and more black pillars rose and black shapes stepped out of them. Their red eyes flared up as soon as they left the pillar of darkness. The maybe ten red orbs created a strangely inaudible symphony of hatred.
Ron slowly rose as the shape stopped turning around. Its helmet seemed to be part of its head and showed no detail. The eyes drained something out of her. Kim looked down and saw that her leg was slowly being pulled into the thing's middle. It's red flares torched themselves into her mind and heart. Kim pulled her leg away again and again but it didn't help.
Instead her leg got drawn into the blackness deeper every time she tried to free it. The other shapes came closer and the pressure within her mind increased. It felt like as if she would explode from inside. Suddenly Ron's hands gripped into her armpits and pulled. He struggled heavilly. The thing before them seemed to feast on his desperation like on a rare delicassy.
Kim got an idea while she was nothing but a pawn in a struggle for power. It was not a good idea and but it was an idea nontheless.
"Ron give me the grappling hook!"
Kim saw that more shapes came closer. Some of them had the shape of someone in a mantle and small blue flames came from gunlike tubes they held. Three of the blackened men stood around her and simply watched as she tried to not get sucked into the shape. Her mind got squished like a huge sponge. It felt horrible.
Ron handed her the hook and she looked around. Another shape came closer without making any noise. Kim felt the heat from its gun's thin blue flame. It fought against the immense coldness the shapes had around them like an aura. It stopped a few feet infront of her just as the others had and simply stared at her. The pressure within her increased immensly as she felt another hand pressing inside.
No place was in sight. It was horrible. Kim couldn't believe that there was no place where her grappling hook could find grip. No wall to bash into, no door's grip to link to and no ventilation shaft to jump into. There was no escape. She looked at the shape and felt her panic rise. Its eyes kept staring at her and Ron who had started to pull at her once again.
She felt no hate against these 'people'. They seemed to follow an urge, order or instinct. She remembered that she couldn't truly hate even Drakken and Shego. No matter how often they had tried to kill her or her family she just couldn't. It was their nature, their motivation. They were evil and cruel but somehow even they obeyed rules of ethic. She couldn't understand why they just didn't use guns or or boobytraps.
But that wasn't the time for such thoughts. The hook was there just as a target. She had gone through many dangerous moments before but this was a different form of danger. These things represented a new form of evil. They were the indefeatable, immortal and always returning darkness. They used guns. And as the information from Wade showed they killed with no remorse. And that only a photo of them could already threaten her in a way she still didn't know showed that they were powerfull. Maybe too powerfull for the girl that could do anything.
She didn't want to do it. It was against her ethics and morality. But she would do it. Because it was the only way to save Ron's and her life.
Kim aimed the grappling hook at the thing, closed her left eye and shot. It wasn't different from all the other times she had shot the thing except for that she shot at someone this time. The hook left with the familiar sound, it flew through the air like it always did and impacted the head. It didn't really hit the thing's head since the hook seemed to just vanish in the darkness of it.
The sucking around her leg seized and she got up. The hook returned. Or what was left of it, which was just the rope. She took Ron's hand and ran towards a corner. None of the shapes had moved. Kim didn't know why but she sensed that they kept eating on what they had taken from her. The pressure seized but it was still there. The further they ran the more and more subtle it became. After a few minutes it became nothing but a subtle shadow in her mind.
A shadow that would never leave.
They ran past the car and Kim kept a safe distance from its shadow but Ron ran into it. He seemed to be drawn to the darkness. She was about to yell something when he vanished in the shadow. Her eyes widened and she just stood there, stunned. Then Ron came out of the darkness with a huge machinegun in his hands.
"Hey KP look what I found!" He said happily. "Maybe we can keep these things off us with this!"
Kim didn't want Ron to have a weapon. It made him a different Ron. A Ron that wasn't HER Ron.
"Put that thing away Ron. That thing behind us dropped it."
"But-"
"Maybe it will... I don't know. Do something to you."
Ron acknowledged her worries and looked at his 'trophy'. Then he gripped it closer and said:
"I'll only use it if I have too! And if we find someone who can use it better I'll just give it to him. How about that?"
Kim wasn't comfortable with it but had to agree.
"But Ron! Guns only kill people! They take everything from you! Everyone you love and everything that's dear to you!"
Ron ignored her protest and kept standing where he was. Kim sighed and let her shoulders sink. When she looked Ron smiled at her.
"I'll be careful I promise. And I surely won't have to use it."
Kim sighed again. "Fine. But you give it to the first person we meet!"
"Booyah!"
---
Another burst flew among the area and two of the undead fell. Then Max moved the machinegun on its bipod for mere centimeters and a crawler stood at notch and bead sight. Again his weapon fired its loud sawlike rrr's. The creature screeched as bullets cut through it and it rolled into a crater in the blink of an eye. A shouldermove later an undead came in sight and got mowed down just as the others who had come out of cover.
After that he moved his shoulder a bit further to what he had wanted to shoot at first: One of the three bioartillerys that had walked out of its protecting crater. His eyes spotted the huge creature even through his mudstained glasses.
Tfrrrrrr his mg made and the thing just fell forward. It was a disappointment since Max had expected it to explode. He and his machingun scanned the area but only saw undead who shambled onwards. But the crawlers kept waiting for him to reload or make a similar noise. He turned his head and saw what lay behind him:
Bonnie sat still just like she had done before. The girl with the stinger in her stomach lay unconscious. The bandage he had made to stabilise the stinger wasn't soaked with blood which was a good sign. Tara looked at him with his bolt-action rifle in hands. He knew she wanted an order, advice or anything. So he took his left hand from the mg's shoulderpiece and led the single index finger before his lips. She nodded.
He gave the area another look. The arti's were in cover and waited for them to get out of their crater. They hadn't expected the humans to have weapons. And especially not such powerfull and precise ones. He aimed at the different undead that came from the main street. A short burst fell one of them and Max saw any of the maybe half dozen of impacts on its body. One cut the right leg off, another one cut a chunk of his throat off. And the other four shredded his chest and made huge pieces of bone and flesh decorate the street behind it.
Max smiled. He was proud of his accuracy with the machingun fourtytwo. He finally didn't fail at something.
Tfrrrrr his metallic deathbringer made while throwing more lead at the walking dead. It had been a group of five undead who had stood very close and shambled in the same rythm. He moved the weapon sideways while controlling its fullautomatic hammering. All the bullets cut through flesh and he watched them being cut into pieces with morbid fascination. He had aimed at the waistline and the weapon proved its name:
The saw.
Bullets impacted mere centimeters away from each other in a long horizontal line. The bodies couldn't resist the multiply heavy blows. Flesh rit and bones broke as the bullets cut a clear line into the bodies. They were simply ripped intwo. It was like a huge sword would have cut them. The saw wasn't as 'clean' as a sword so the undead's waists or hips simply got ripped out or off.
A young woman in a thin top and jeans with bare stomach lost her waist and hips. The legs fell to the ground since they had no conection with the body. If one put the untouched upper torso upon the cut off legs it looked like the top would cover a strange midgets jeans. A thick man dropped huge parts of his guts as multiple layers of fat remained on his legs. One normal man lost only one leg and collapsed, dead.
He had walked up the craters rimm so only his left tigh had been 'cut'. The other leg remained still and stood like a cricket on the ground. The bloody stump of a shattered pelvis remained upon it. The entire group had found the ultimate death. Max was satisfied since he knew they wouldn't just keep crawling towards him and his protected ones. It was a strange fact that undead who got hit by his mg and the bolt-action died like normal people.
---
The vehicle crushed a head and Henry smiled. His hovercar sped on and he turned around for another ramming. He laughed loudly as the skull of a former young man got squished like a melon. The bloody remains decorated the cars front in a morbid red. After having bashed all undead people's heads he sped on to the mall.