Chapter Thirteen: Strange Encounters Day two 10:05 a.m.
Through the trees and bushes, Corporal Lenart continues walking. Coming up to a large iron gate, which is wide open. The gate is attached to a cement block wall, which goes out of view, due to the forest. Moss has found a home all over the walls and up to the gate. The large iron bars on the gate appear rusted and deteriorating, but still in decent shape. Through the large gateway is the burial grounds for hundred of people. All the graves have their own moss, rust, cracks, and chips in them. Corporal Lenart steps inside the cemetary through the large gateway. As soon as she enters the cemetary, people appear everywhere. Hundreds of people, that just appear out of thin air and sit in front of their tombstones. Like the cemetary is showing her what the people looked like, and who they were. All the people sit there at their graves, all of them with their eyes and mouth sewn up, along with pins, needles, and nails, sticking out of their bodies.
Corporal Lenart stops a moment to look over at all the people that have just come to reality again. They all just sit there, looking at her, like they're waiting for her to do something. She starts walking through the rows, looking at the people sitting there, watching her. Suddenly one of them stands up. It's a young woman wearing a trench coat over a black shirt and jeans. She also has long blonde hair, which is sprawled over her shoulders. Corporal Lenart stops, looking at the girl standing before her. The woman then raises her arm and points. Corporal Lenart looks and sees that she is pointing at a mausoleum. The woman sits back down at her grave and continues watching her through her sealed eyes.
Corporal Lenart comes up to the mausoleum. It stands tall with stained glass windows, the colour fading away on them. The large wooden doors have several holes, slashes and marks all over them. She approaches the doors and pushes them open.
Inside the mausoleum, is just an empty hallway up to a pedestal, where two people stand, with their backs turned from the doors. They wear long, dark robes, and have helmets on their heads, with spikes coming out of them. They both look exactly the same, and face down, completely motionless. Corporal Lenart walks inside, up to the pedestal, while watching the two robed people standing there.
When she comes around them, to the pedestal, she discovers that both of the figures there have their hands placed on the pommel of monstrous-sized swords. The swords each have their own markings on them, but appear to be in the same unknown language. Their faces appear to be that of skeletons. Corporal Lenart steps up to the other side of the pedestal, laid out on it is a book. She looks over the book, but the language in it, isn't english. Suddenly her vision darkens and she passes out, another strange vision coming to her.
Inside of a large church, the old organ plays a strange melody, while a priest at the front holds up a child, seemingly six years old or so. He calls out in an unknown language. Looking over at the organ, there's no one there playing it, but it continue to make sound. The priest at the front puts the confused child down on a bowl-shaped pedestal, as if to baptise the boy. In the bowl is a dark liquid, not of any particular colour, but seems dark.
Eight candles surrounding the pedestal suddenly light themselves in a synchronized manner. The boy remains sitting there in the pedestal, just watching the priest, who continues a strange chant. Finally, the priest stops chanting and turns to another pedestal, with a candle on it. He picks up the candle and cups his hand over the top, causing the candle to light, somehow. He turns back to the boy, and walks up to him. The boy sits there, unsure of what's going on. The priest lowers the candle to the liquid in the bowl, which flares up instantly, signifying that it must be gasoline, or another flammable liquid.
The boy cries out in pain as he is burned alive. The priest suddenly has a strange looking dagger in place of the candle and he thrusts it into the child's chest, piercing right through his body. He backs away from the flaming bowl and kneels down, saying some kind of prayer.
Corporal Lenart's vision returns to her. She finds herself laying on the floor in the mausoleum. The two robed skeletons kneel on either side of her, both in the exact same position as one another. A voice speaks to her in her head.
"He made this cemetery. He must be punished for his sins." Corporal Lenart remains laying there, confused.
"Who are you?" She manages to say without too shaky of a voice. The voice returns to her head.
"You do not need assistance now. When you require it, we shall return." Right when the voice stops, the two skeletons disappear.
Corporal Lenart sits up, a little surprised, and confused. She sits there, thinking about what the voice could have meant, or why it told her what it had. She shakes her head and stands up. The doors back out to the cemetary are closed. Corporal Lenart walks over to them, and pulls them open. When the doors are wide open, she becomes completely confused.
Outside has completely changed. Corporal Lenart finds herself to longer be in a cemetary. She's unsure of where she is, but by the looks of it, she's in a sewer system of some kind. A green slime has developed all over the walls, and ceiling. The tunnel is made of two walkways on either side of the tunnel, with water in the center. The water looks utterly dirty. It has a brown and green colour to it. The depth of the water is impossible to tell, due to the liquid just reaching down into an eternal abyss. The tunnel darkens away from where Corporal Lenart stands. Looking to her side, she grabs a torch and starts walking along the pathway on the right side of the tunnel.
The water appears unsettled, and bubbles in multiple areas, causing Corporal Lenart to get paranoid of something jumping out at her. Coming up to a corner, she finds that a metal shutter has been placed there, across the walkways. Looking at the water, she decides that she definitely isn't willing to go under the shutter unless she absolutely needs to. The other walkway doesn't seem too far, so she gets ready to jumps across the gap, using a bit of a run. Taking a run, Corporal Lenart goes to leap across the gap, but slips on the green slime when she gets near the edge of the walkway. The water erupts as she plunges into it.
The water feels extremely dirty, and there's hundreds of things floating around in it. Things that are squishy and gross feeling. She starts to panic and splashes everywhere as she tries to reach the walkway. She lets out a struggled scream as something stabs into her leg. It feels round, but has plenty of sharp things sticking out into her shin. She grabs hold of the walkway, and starts pulling herself out, but whatever it is that's holding her, prevents her from getting up. She screams again as the sharp claws dig into her leg. Suddenly the thing on her leg starts shaking, violently. The water around her bubbles and a flash of light comes from under her. The clawed thing detaches from her leg she pulls herself out of the water. Following her, a tentacle with some kind of mouth on it's end floats up, looking limp and lifeless. Corporal Lenart checks her leg where it bit her, and about a dozen holes are punctured into the muscle of her shin. Watery blood is all over her leg, and the wound continues to bleed. She pulls herself up, still able to walk, but with a bad limp. She shakes off some of the water, and picks off tons of green slimy things from all over her body, not knowing what it is, but knowing that it all looks disgusting.
Coming to a door, Corporal Lenart shoves it open. Inside is tons of machinery with some computers, levers, and whatnot scattered about the room. The machines appear to not be working, but look like they could be. She starts limping around the machinery in the centre of the large room and comes to a door, which has bloody footprints leading to and through it, though it's like there was only one foot, because there's only one set of prints. Opening it, she comes to another tunnel, with the pair of walkways around water.
With little other choice, she walks out and down the tunnel, coming to another intersection, but this time there's a makeshift bridge across the water. It's just a metal grating, but better than trying to jump. Further down the tunnel, the two walkways come into one larger one around a few doors,
two on one side, one on the other, and a large gate further down the tunnel. She looks down at
the bloody footsteps which lead through one of the doors, with a label on it reading "Staff Room." Beside it is another door, labelled "Storeroom" She decides that the storeroom might have a weapon in it that she can use to defend herself, if needed.
Coming into the storeroom, there is absolutely no light. She puts her hand on the wall beside the door, searching for a light switch. As she searches, she can feel insects scurrying around on the wall away and over her hand. Finally she locates the switch and flips it up, bringing light into the storeroom.
The light bulbs hanging from the ceiling illuminate rows of shelves, and some lockers. Piled all over the shelves are a bunch of nets, and other random equipment. Looking around for a decent weapon, Corporal Lenart only finds a few things that might do any damage. Then she finds a crowbar and is about to leave with it, but decides to check inside the lockers first. Grabbing the first locker reveals it's resistance to open. Rust has collected around the hinges and holds it in place. Jamming the crowbar into the edge of the locker, she starts heaving on it, eventually prying it open.
Inside the locker is a collection of clothes. Corporal Lenart is about to just turn away from the locker, when she finds a peculiar, black, box on the bottom. She takes it out and looks inside, finding a revolver. It's an old Colt .45, six-shooter, revolver. Also in the box is packages of bullets. Checking the chamber, she finds that the gun is loaded, and seems to be in great condition. She takes a few packages of bullets and places them in her pockets.
Satisfied with having the revolver and crowbar, Corporal Lenart comes out of the storeroom, and goes to the door with the bloody footsteps leading to it. She puts the crowbar down and leans it on the wall to keep it up. Fearing the worst, Corporal Lenart stands there, leaning on the door, with her hand on the knob, ready to throw it open. She turns the handle and shoves through the door, holding out the revolver. Corporal Lenart is shocked at the sight she now faces.
The room appears completely normal. It's a room with a large table in the center, chairs all around, and some basic kitchen necessities. The footsteps end at the doorway, like the creator of them just vanished. She steps inside, looking around. Everything in the room has a light coat of dust on it, but it all looks fine otherwise. Walking over to the sink, she turns the tap, and to her surprise water comes out fine. It looks clean and healthy, but she still doesn't trust it. Turning off the water, she turns around and looks over the rom again, completely surprised as to how the room could be in this kind of order, when everything else she had seen was completely different.
Suddenly, the sink starts making a bunch of strange noises. Corporal Lenart walks over to look at it, and maybe find out why it's being weird. The noises continue getting louder. She reaches over and turns the knob for water to pour out. When she turns that tap, blood comes pouring out of the drain. It's like it's bending reality, coming out the drain and flowing into the spout. Cracks start appearing on the spout, like it's breaking up, but the cracks look strange. They flow out onto the counter, cracking all over and making weird stretching noises. It almost looks like wrinkles, growing over the room from the sink. The 'wrinkles' reach and start crawling over the walls and floor.
Corporal Lenart whips around. The room has become completely infested with the eerie 'wrinkles' and moths have appeared everywhere. They're all on counters, walls, and anything else, all of them crawling over and around each other, but none of them are flying. Something scratches at the back of Corporal Lenart's throat. She starts coughing, bending over in case she's about to throw up. Finally, a moth comes fluttering out of her moth, and the scratching stops. She can still feel it though, as if it has left scars in her. She can feel the tiny legs reaching up past her uvula. The wings dragging on the back of her throat as it climbs into her mouth, and finally exits.
She takes a step and hears loud crunching under her foot. Looking down, she realizes that the
floor has become completely covered with cockroaches, centipedes, spiders, caterpillars, and other bugs of the sort. She jumps, freaked out by the bugs on the ground, and lands on a table, the only place that isn't covered with insects. A sudden burst of blue flames flare up over the bugs. They all start moving quicker, as they light each other on fire and burn to death. The fire spreads out over all the bugs, but appears to be harmless to anything else. Eventually the flames die out, and all the tiny corpses lay everywhere, still smouldering.
The one moth that came out of Corporal Lenart's throat returns to near her. It floats slowly to a few feet in front of her face, then just drops dead right there. It remains floating in mid air, but it turns over on it's side, and dies.
Completely confused Corporal Lenart jumps off the table and rushes through the door. Upon finding there to be no more weird bugs or anything else strange, she falls to her knees and starts crying.
"What the hell is wrong with my head?! What's going on?!" She whines to herself.
Eventually she stops crying and sits up, looking around. She decides to just go to the large door. Beside the heavy steel door, is a key pad, with only three buttons on it. Two of which have arrows and the other a key. Corporal Lenart hits the key button, assuming it to unlock the huge door. The pad beeps and a loud clunk hits the door. She then hits the button with the arrow, pointing up, and the door starts rising. The movement of the gate vibrates the tunnel, dropping dust and dirt everywhere.
The gate opens up to a large pool area, which serves as the waste disposal for the water treatment. However, lots of strange things that couldn't have come from the sewer system lay about in the pool. in one corner is a pile developed on top of an old rusted truck.
Looking in the water in the centre, where nothing breaks the surface of the water, the water looks dark and impossible to determine it's depth. Corporal Lenart approaches the edge of the platform and walks along the edge, coming up to the pile on the truck, still watching the dark area in the water. She reaches into the pile of scraps, and pulls a large pipe out. When she moves the pipe, some things on top of the pile fall over, causing disturbance to the water and loud noise. She stands there, holding her breath, staring at the dark area of the pool, which doesn't appear to have changed at all.
She walks back to where the gate is and holds the pipe out into the water, just moving it around, and seeing if she can touch the bottom with it, which appears impossible. She lifts the pipe out of the water and holds it, ready to throw. Her heart pounding extremely rapidly, she throws the pipe into the water where the shadows are cast. The pipe splashes in and starts to sink out of view. Just before it gets deep enough to exit view, it hits something and floats around it. The water bubbles a little bit, but nothing happens.
"What's the matter, y'scared somethin's gonna jump out at you?" A voice calls out from behind her, which sends chills down her spine. Grabbing the revolver, she spins around and points it out, aiming a man who appears to be in his late forties, to early fifties. he stands there scratching his head through his thin gray hair. A large cigar hanging out the side of his mouth. He wears brown overalls, with tools all over them.
"Whoa now missy, I didn't mean nothin'. You sure are a little brat to be stealin' other people's things though. That there's my gun. I'd like it back." The old man explains, holding out his hand, "Give 'er here. You might hurt yourself with that thing." Corporal Lenart becomes furious with the old man's last comment.
"I know how to use a gun, you stereo-typical piece of shit." The old man, then looks a little angry, and stares at Corporal Lenart a moment. Then he takes the cigar out of his mouth and holds it at his side.
"Listen here, bitch. That's my gun, and I want it back. You don't wanna get hurt now do you?" Just after he finishes speaking, he ducks and grabs Corporal Lenart's wrist, setting it off. He grabs her other arm and slams her against the wall, stepping on her feet, to pin her there against the wall. The force of the slam causes her to drop the revolver. He puts his nose to her shoulder and takes in a whiff of her hair's scent. "Hmm, you smell dirty. The last ones smelled clean." He tells her, as she struggles to get out of his grip, but he overpowers her. He starts rubbing his face all over her shoulder, then moving to her chest, "I love a dirty girl!" He exclaims as he rubs his face on her body. He opens his mouth and takes hold of a button on her shirt, but he suddenly jerks back, vibrating intensely, and letting out a painful scream. Corporal Lenart pulls her arms out of his grip and punches him in the face, hard enough to knock him over. He lays there, barely conscious.
The old man lays there, dizzy and in pain. His foggy vision watches as the girl who just attacked him walks over to the storage room. He lays there a bit, trying to get up, but can't find enough strength to pull himself up. The woman comes back, in her hands is several long objects. his vision is too impaired to be able to identify them, but she walks over to him with them. She puts them on the ground and takes one, stepping over to his arm. An extreme pain tenses in his forearm as a crowbar is thrust through it. He lets out a scream, but barely has enough strength to breathe. Another similar pain strikes his other arm, then his legs, as Corporal Lenart impales all of his limbs to the ground.
Now with one final crowbar, she leans on it, as she stands over him, leaning on the crowbar, with it placed between his legs, close to his groin.
"Now you listen here, you sick pig! Obviously you don't get what just happened, but maybe you will some day. You think you can just rape someone and get away with it?" She pauses a moment, as if letting him think about it, "WRONG MOVE, DUMBASS!!" She screams out as she lifts the crowbar and drives it into his groin. He lets out another agonized scream, and manages to plead to her.
"Just ... kill me, you whore!" Corporal Lenart looks offended and steps over to his side.
"Y'know what? No, I'm not gonna kill you." She crouches down and starts talking in a more angry tone, "I'm gonna leave you here to beg for the rats to come and eat you alive, while you lay and bleed to death!! But it's just too bad there aren't any rats out here." She express a sadistic frown for a second, "Oh, too bad. I guess you'll have to lay there in pain for a couple weeks before you starve and dehydrate and finally keel over!!" She raises her foot and slams it into his ribs as hard as possible, with a satisfying crack popping out from his torso. She kicks him again a few more times, before he finally goes limp. Corporal Lenart just gets angrier.
"You were supposed to live longer so you could die slower, you bastard!!" She screams at the body on the floor.
Accepting his death and moving on, she spits on his dead body and picks up the revolver. Going back to the waste pool she grabs a large board laying against the wall and pulls it over onto the water. The board smacks the surface, and floats there for a minute, long enough for her to run on it and jump to a pile of garbage, and make it to the other side of the pool, without getting wet.
On the other side, Corporal Lenart enters a small room with a ladder set in the middle of it. She climbs up and exits through the rusted manhole cover, to bring her to the cemetary again, in another part of it. The people sitting in front of their graves have disappeared. She climbs out and kicks the cover over.