Chapter Ten:
A Cup of Coffee and Another Arrival
Gunn sipped the cup of hot espresso. Monique was drinking decaffeinated coffee. Apparently she didn't like caffeine's affect on her.
"My mom practically broke into tears last time I saw her," Monique was saying. "She was sad because she had no idea what was going on with me. If I told her everything about me… about the Slayer - me, she'd more than likely send me off to the nearest mental health facility. Tarry Hill, I think it was. My father is probably glad to see me go. I don't think he ever liked me; I was an only child… and he always wanted a boy. Another male that he could relate to. I think he loathed me because I turned out to be a girl."
"He should accept that that's the way God made you," Gunn replied. He wasn't exactly the religious type, but he had been fed Christianity stuff since the cradle, and he probably would never be able to break out of those beliefs entirely.
Monique looked at him like he was insane. She then took another sip of her coffee. The surrounding mess hall was inhabited by Initiative soldiers eating their late dinner after a hard day's work of slaughtering demons of a seemingly endless supply. Most of them looked tired and beat - up. Some looked starved and some looked lost. A couple looked good, but not great.
Riley was eating with a couple of friends and even he looked beat.
"Are you kidding?" Monique said after setting her mug back down on the wooden table they were sitting at. "My father would blow up the Earth before ever allowing himself to believe anything the Bible has to say. He was an Atheist. Same with me and my mother. Too many things to believe to ever believe any one of them."
Gunn looked down at his own mug. He was wearing camouflage pants that were given to him after his other clothes--the clothes that had been torn up during not only the assassination of the Black Thorne member, but the battle in the alley--had been discarded, which had been at some point during his short stay at the medical tent. His upper - body was draped in a black tee - shirt that was a size or two too big for him. Damn hand - me - downs.
"I suppose I see your point."
"You damn well should." She looked at him in the eyes and then burst out laughing. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over a white tee - shirt. "Sorry. I like to joke with people a lot."
"Shouldn't be sorry," Gunn replied. "You never offended me."
"Really?"
"Nah."
"Where I was living people got offended very easily when it came to religion. If I preached Atheism and evolution and stuff like that to them they'd give me a dirty look and get all pissy. Yet they always preached Christianity to me. I'm sorry, but that always pissed me off a lot. I was always polite to them when they talked to me about Christianity. ALWAYS. But they'd be complete assholes to me when I talked about my own choice of having no religion and the reasons behind that choice.
"They just believe they're right so much that it makes me angry."
"Yet you believe you're right?"
"Yes," Monique said. Then continued after noticing what connection he was making. "Not like they do, though."
"No?"
"Nope. I believe that there's every chance that I'm wrong and that I'll be roasting in Hell like a Thanksgiving turkey for the rest of eternity once I suffer a possibly excruciatingly painful death. But, like I've said before, I don't worry about things too much."
"An admirable characteristic."
"Like you said before."
"God sends those who don't believe to Hell."
"Even if they're great people."
"I heard this somewhere before. If you kill someone, the Judge, while at court, will not excuse you from being punished because you have saved someone before then."
"I know, but not believing isn't nearly as bad as killing someone. If you save so many people during life and do nothing but what the common perspective of 'good' is, yet don't believe, you'll go to Hell. I don't think even Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden would be that heartless."
Gunn frowned. He enjoyed having conversations like this, but only when he was making better points than the person he was talking to.
"What do you mean, 'heartless'?" Gunn asked. He wasn't totally religious, but he did believe in some deep part of him all of the things the Bible said. And that part of him was getting irritated that Monique was challenging its beliefs.
"How can you possibly consider sending someone to spend an eternity of torture in a place where fire always burns anything but that? Once you actually consider how terrible that is, not a single soul on Earth deserves a punishment such as that, no matter what they did. From robbery and not being Christian to rape and murder not a single crime deserves such a fate.
"I suppose I am totally convinced that I'm right in the fact that I don't believe Hell exists because it's too cruel."
Monique had a fire in her eyes that suggested she was getting quite worked up. "Okay, okay. Calm down Monique. Maybe we should find a different topic of conversation."
"Sorry," Monique replied after taking a couple deep breaths. "Just thinking too much about things. I wish I was a natural blonde."
"Why?"
Monique looked at him with a smile. "Don't tell me that you've never heard a blonde joke before."
"Oh."
"Yeah. It was corny. Forget it."
"I thought it was funny."
"Liar."
Gunn smiled. "Okay, it was corny."
"Corniest joke you've ever heard?"
"Yep. Cornier than a porn comedy."
Monique smiled. "Ouch."
Gunn sipped his espresso again and Monique sipped her coffee. Then there was a short silence in which they listened to the song that was playing over the speakers placed around the mess hall. It was "Warning" by Incubus.
"So what exactly is your natural hair color?"
"Oh, don't ask."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to even remember it. My hair was ugly. It was the worst color ever!"
Gunn chuckled. "What was it?"
"It was red."
"What's wrong with that?"
"I hate red! No one else saw a problem with it, but I hated it so much!"
"You liked blonde better?"
"I would prefer bleach blonde, but I couldn't find any of that particular dye."
"That sucks."
"Indeed it does."
There was another silence that lasted longer than the first.
"It's getting late, Gunn. I'm just gonna head back to my tent and get some sleep."
"I'll walk you there."
Monique gave him a sly grin. "You sure that's all you want to do, Charles?"
She cocked an eyebrow and Gunn smiled. "I guess I'm crazy, Monique. I'm very sorry, but I'm too tired to take you up on that offer tonight."
Monique looked down disappointedly. "There was no offer," she replied briskly and stood up. Gunn followed her, trying to keep up with her manic pace of walking.
"Monique!" he shouted after her and she slowed just a little. A couple of soldiers glanced at them curiously and then passed on by. Gunn grabbed Monique's shoulder and pulled her around. She didn't look very happy. "What's wrong?" he asked.
She looked around and then whispered back at him. "It's the Apocalypse, Gunn. What you didn't dare specify to me was the word 'the'. If the world does indeed end, then I don't want to die never… having been with… a man."
Gunn looked at her soberly. "Alright," he said and Monique's face lit up.
He didn't even know what had hit him. Not even when his head smashed into the brick building on the other side of the street and he felt blood dribble slowly down the side of his face. Not until he looked back at Monique and saw a creature.
Its head was that of a giant snake and beneath that was battle armor that was a mixture of metal and leather straps. Its arms were two feet long each, and its legs were three feet. As a whole the creature was a mere five feet tall, but still quite imposing.
In its right claw it held Monique by the throat. It was looking at her with mild interest as it choked her.
"Monique…" Gunn exhaled, trying desperately to keep conscious as the pain in his head throbbed annoyingly.
The thing's head snapped back to Gunn at the sound of his voice. It tossed Monique away like a rag doll and then held out its right hand. One moment there was nothing in its hand, then, the next moment, there was a four foot, double sided sword. There were no sparks or colorful specks of light or fairy dust. It was just plain and simple there.
"Charles Gunn," a whispering, hissing voice echoed inside of his head. "My name's Zaerintoleran. Nice to meet you. Your head will be one of my most prized possessions."
If the voice had been spoken aloud, Gunn would've asked if he could repeat his name, but since it was spoken directly inside of his head, there was no need.
Zaerintoleran suddenly charged forth with its sword raised and a strangely human grin spreading across its reptilian face.
One of the soldiers aimed their gun and fired a bullet right through Zaerintoleran's throat. Pink blood gushed outwards and flowed down its body like the Niagara Falls. Zaerintoleran looked over at the soldier who had fired, its smile now gone, and glared at him, seemingly unaffected by the bullet wound.
The soldier looked at the blood, at Zaerintoleran's glare, then at his own gun and then ran off screaming like a woman. Gunn wondered why the soldier had ran off like that just because it had glared at him, but then remembered the voice inside of his head. The same voice must've threatened something horrible to the soldier.
Gunn strained to gain his feet, but failed. One, twice, and then thrice.
Gun fire rang throughout the city as a squadron of troops and Slayers spotted Zaerintoleran walking towards Gunn calmly with clear homicidal intent.
Twenty must've hit the thing and it didn't even so much as glance over at its attackers.
Gunn began crawling away. Zaerintoleran didn't speed up to catch him; it just kept that same, ominous waltz. It wasn't smiling now. Either it wasn't amused anymore, or the bullets that had torn most of its face off had damaged the muscle too much for it to smile.
Then screeching filled his head. The whispering voice was now howling in pain. The gun fire ceased abruptly and Gunn saw all of the soldiers and Slayers grabbing at their heads and screaming screams that mingled with the screeching in their heads to make a horrifying sound that would keep most of them from sleeping for the next couple of days.
Gunn looked at Zaerintoleran and saw it clutching a spot of its head that was spraying pink blood. Gunn then continued thrashing on the sidewalk and clutching his head in what seemed to be an effort to squeeze the noise out.
There was a loud pop as air filled a very quickly vacated area and the screeching stopped. Gunn tried to get up again and failed again. In the moment before he fainted he saw that Zaerintoleran was nowhere to be seen. It had vanished into thin air.
Then good-bye cruel world. Gunn was unconscious.
Meanwhile…
Ashley stumbled into the city panting and sweating. It was Los Angeles. Somehow she had just ran several miles in just a couple of hours. She was reminded then of "The Mothman Prophecies". In that movie the main character traveled hundreds of miles between twelve and two in the morning without even realizing it. There he had some sort of purpose to stop a bad occurrence from happening. Not a bad movie at all.
Ashley collapsed in the middle of a three-way intersection and got up a couple of minutes later. Even though the civilians were all gone, her instincts kept telling her to get the hell out of the street. So she did.
It was a damn good thing she did, too. Not ten minutes later a tank rumbled by, full of soldiers.
Her unconscious form did not go unnoticed. The tank came to a stop and two soldiers clambered out of the top. They hurried down the tank and ran over to Ashley.
"She's alive!" Riley called back to the two soldiers who were lagging behind after checking for her pulse. Half an hour ago he had been eating a steak in the mess hall as Gunn and Monique had their first date. He snapped his fingers in front of her eyes and she didn't stir. "Unconscious! Let's load her up and take her to the medics!"
The two soldiers helped Riley carry her to the tank. Riley climbed up after the soldiers as they carried the girl above him.
He stopped halfway to the top of the tank and looked behind him. He had thought he had heard something. The sound of rapid footfalls. It was coming from the direction of the city limits.
"Hold up!" Riley shouted up to the two soldiers as they handed the girl to the soldiers inside of the tank. The two snapped to attention. "We might have another one coming."
"What's that, sir?"
"We might have another coming!"
When Riley looked back down the street that led back out into the rest of the world--the street the girl had come down most likely--there was a human form running towards them. No, running was too light a word; sprinting was more like it.
Riley stepped back down off of the tank and waved at the person sprinting towards them. "Stop running!" he ordered. "You're safe now!"
He didn't even think about whether or not the person was being chased by something… or that the person was something to run from. The latter of the two was what Riley should've thought of. Perhaps that would've saved a life or two.
Too many 'should haves'. What happened sucked, but it happened.
As the army of darkness descended upon the soldiers Ashley dreamed of her family and screamed a scream of sorrow that the soldiers did not hear, considering it was in her dream.
Too late Riley noticed the dead features on the body of the thing not ten meters in front of his nose. By that time the doom of the soldiers had already been decided.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Hey, MorbidMan here. I didn't want a super long chapter, so I excluded the rest of what I was going to put in. Don't worry. They're not excluded like deleted scenes, they're just pushed over to the next chapter.
Here's some trivia: I decided to say "As the army of darkness descended upon the soldiers" because "The Army of Darkness" is a great comedy movie directed by Sam Raimi (who has directed the "Evil Dead" trilogy--which includes "The Army of Darkness" as the final chapter--and the spectacular "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2").
I better get to sleep soon. Good-night folks. Hope you enjoyed this and please review. See you all next chapter.
"I accidentally glued myself to um… myself." - Jim "American Pie 2"
A Cup of Coffee and Another Arrival
Gunn sipped the cup of hot espresso. Monique was drinking decaffeinated coffee. Apparently she didn't like caffeine's affect on her.
"My mom practically broke into tears last time I saw her," Monique was saying. "She was sad because she had no idea what was going on with me. If I told her everything about me… about the Slayer - me, she'd more than likely send me off to the nearest mental health facility. Tarry Hill, I think it was. My father is probably glad to see me go. I don't think he ever liked me; I was an only child… and he always wanted a boy. Another male that he could relate to. I think he loathed me because I turned out to be a girl."
"He should accept that that's the way God made you," Gunn replied. He wasn't exactly the religious type, but he had been fed Christianity stuff since the cradle, and he probably would never be able to break out of those beliefs entirely.
Monique looked at him like he was insane. She then took another sip of her coffee. The surrounding mess hall was inhabited by Initiative soldiers eating their late dinner after a hard day's work of slaughtering demons of a seemingly endless supply. Most of them looked tired and beat - up. Some looked starved and some looked lost. A couple looked good, but not great.
Riley was eating with a couple of friends and even he looked beat.
"Are you kidding?" Monique said after setting her mug back down on the wooden table they were sitting at. "My father would blow up the Earth before ever allowing himself to believe anything the Bible has to say. He was an Atheist. Same with me and my mother. Too many things to believe to ever believe any one of them."
Gunn looked down at his own mug. He was wearing camouflage pants that were given to him after his other clothes--the clothes that had been torn up during not only the assassination of the Black Thorne member, but the battle in the alley--had been discarded, which had been at some point during his short stay at the medical tent. His upper - body was draped in a black tee - shirt that was a size or two too big for him. Damn hand - me - downs.
"I suppose I see your point."
"You damn well should." She looked at him in the eyes and then burst out laughing. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over a white tee - shirt. "Sorry. I like to joke with people a lot."
"Shouldn't be sorry," Gunn replied. "You never offended me."
"Really?"
"Nah."
"Where I was living people got offended very easily when it came to religion. If I preached Atheism and evolution and stuff like that to them they'd give me a dirty look and get all pissy. Yet they always preached Christianity to me. I'm sorry, but that always pissed me off a lot. I was always polite to them when they talked to me about Christianity. ALWAYS. But they'd be complete assholes to me when I talked about my own choice of having no religion and the reasons behind that choice.
"They just believe they're right so much that it makes me angry."
"Yet you believe you're right?"
"Yes," Monique said. Then continued after noticing what connection he was making. "Not like they do, though."
"No?"
"Nope. I believe that there's every chance that I'm wrong and that I'll be roasting in Hell like a Thanksgiving turkey for the rest of eternity once I suffer a possibly excruciatingly painful death. But, like I've said before, I don't worry about things too much."
"An admirable characteristic."
"Like you said before."
"God sends those who don't believe to Hell."
"Even if they're great people."
"I heard this somewhere before. If you kill someone, the Judge, while at court, will not excuse you from being punished because you have saved someone before then."
"I know, but not believing isn't nearly as bad as killing someone. If you save so many people during life and do nothing but what the common perspective of 'good' is, yet don't believe, you'll go to Hell. I don't think even Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden would be that heartless."
Gunn frowned. He enjoyed having conversations like this, but only when he was making better points than the person he was talking to.
"What do you mean, 'heartless'?" Gunn asked. He wasn't totally religious, but he did believe in some deep part of him all of the things the Bible said. And that part of him was getting irritated that Monique was challenging its beliefs.
"How can you possibly consider sending someone to spend an eternity of torture in a place where fire always burns anything but that? Once you actually consider how terrible that is, not a single soul on Earth deserves a punishment such as that, no matter what they did. From robbery and not being Christian to rape and murder not a single crime deserves such a fate.
"I suppose I am totally convinced that I'm right in the fact that I don't believe Hell exists because it's too cruel."
Monique had a fire in her eyes that suggested she was getting quite worked up. "Okay, okay. Calm down Monique. Maybe we should find a different topic of conversation."
"Sorry," Monique replied after taking a couple deep breaths. "Just thinking too much about things. I wish I was a natural blonde."
"Why?"
Monique looked at him with a smile. "Don't tell me that you've never heard a blonde joke before."
"Oh."
"Yeah. It was corny. Forget it."
"I thought it was funny."
"Liar."
Gunn smiled. "Okay, it was corny."
"Corniest joke you've ever heard?"
"Yep. Cornier than a porn comedy."
Monique smiled. "Ouch."
Gunn sipped his espresso again and Monique sipped her coffee. Then there was a short silence in which they listened to the song that was playing over the speakers placed around the mess hall. It was "Warning" by Incubus.
"So what exactly is your natural hair color?"
"Oh, don't ask."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to even remember it. My hair was ugly. It was the worst color ever!"
Gunn chuckled. "What was it?"
"It was red."
"What's wrong with that?"
"I hate red! No one else saw a problem with it, but I hated it so much!"
"You liked blonde better?"
"I would prefer bleach blonde, but I couldn't find any of that particular dye."
"That sucks."
"Indeed it does."
There was another silence that lasted longer than the first.
"It's getting late, Gunn. I'm just gonna head back to my tent and get some sleep."
"I'll walk you there."
Monique gave him a sly grin. "You sure that's all you want to do, Charles?"
She cocked an eyebrow and Gunn smiled. "I guess I'm crazy, Monique. I'm very sorry, but I'm too tired to take you up on that offer tonight."
Monique looked down disappointedly. "There was no offer," she replied briskly and stood up. Gunn followed her, trying to keep up with her manic pace of walking.
"Monique!" he shouted after her and she slowed just a little. A couple of soldiers glanced at them curiously and then passed on by. Gunn grabbed Monique's shoulder and pulled her around. She didn't look very happy. "What's wrong?" he asked.
She looked around and then whispered back at him. "It's the Apocalypse, Gunn. What you didn't dare specify to me was the word 'the'. If the world does indeed end, then I don't want to die never… having been with… a man."
Gunn looked at her soberly. "Alright," he said and Monique's face lit up.
He didn't even know what had hit him. Not even when his head smashed into the brick building on the other side of the street and he felt blood dribble slowly down the side of his face. Not until he looked back at Monique and saw a creature.
Its head was that of a giant snake and beneath that was battle armor that was a mixture of metal and leather straps. Its arms were two feet long each, and its legs were three feet. As a whole the creature was a mere five feet tall, but still quite imposing.
In its right claw it held Monique by the throat. It was looking at her with mild interest as it choked her.
"Monique…" Gunn exhaled, trying desperately to keep conscious as the pain in his head throbbed annoyingly.
The thing's head snapped back to Gunn at the sound of his voice. It tossed Monique away like a rag doll and then held out its right hand. One moment there was nothing in its hand, then, the next moment, there was a four foot, double sided sword. There were no sparks or colorful specks of light or fairy dust. It was just plain and simple there.
"Charles Gunn," a whispering, hissing voice echoed inside of his head. "My name's Zaerintoleran. Nice to meet you. Your head will be one of my most prized possessions."
If the voice had been spoken aloud, Gunn would've asked if he could repeat his name, but since it was spoken directly inside of his head, there was no need.
Zaerintoleran suddenly charged forth with its sword raised and a strangely human grin spreading across its reptilian face.
One of the soldiers aimed their gun and fired a bullet right through Zaerintoleran's throat. Pink blood gushed outwards and flowed down its body like the Niagara Falls. Zaerintoleran looked over at the soldier who had fired, its smile now gone, and glared at him, seemingly unaffected by the bullet wound.
The soldier looked at the blood, at Zaerintoleran's glare, then at his own gun and then ran off screaming like a woman. Gunn wondered why the soldier had ran off like that just because it had glared at him, but then remembered the voice inside of his head. The same voice must've threatened something horrible to the soldier.
Gunn strained to gain his feet, but failed. One, twice, and then thrice.
Gun fire rang throughout the city as a squadron of troops and Slayers spotted Zaerintoleran walking towards Gunn calmly with clear homicidal intent.
Twenty must've hit the thing and it didn't even so much as glance over at its attackers.
Gunn began crawling away. Zaerintoleran didn't speed up to catch him; it just kept that same, ominous waltz. It wasn't smiling now. Either it wasn't amused anymore, or the bullets that had torn most of its face off had damaged the muscle too much for it to smile.
Then screeching filled his head. The whispering voice was now howling in pain. The gun fire ceased abruptly and Gunn saw all of the soldiers and Slayers grabbing at their heads and screaming screams that mingled with the screeching in their heads to make a horrifying sound that would keep most of them from sleeping for the next couple of days.
Gunn looked at Zaerintoleran and saw it clutching a spot of its head that was spraying pink blood. Gunn then continued thrashing on the sidewalk and clutching his head in what seemed to be an effort to squeeze the noise out.
There was a loud pop as air filled a very quickly vacated area and the screeching stopped. Gunn tried to get up again and failed again. In the moment before he fainted he saw that Zaerintoleran was nowhere to be seen. It had vanished into thin air.
Then good-bye cruel world. Gunn was unconscious.
Meanwhile…
Ashley stumbled into the city panting and sweating. It was Los Angeles. Somehow she had just ran several miles in just a couple of hours. She was reminded then of "The Mothman Prophecies". In that movie the main character traveled hundreds of miles between twelve and two in the morning without even realizing it. There he had some sort of purpose to stop a bad occurrence from happening. Not a bad movie at all.
Ashley collapsed in the middle of a three-way intersection and got up a couple of minutes later. Even though the civilians were all gone, her instincts kept telling her to get the hell out of the street. So she did.
It was a damn good thing she did, too. Not ten minutes later a tank rumbled by, full of soldiers.
Her unconscious form did not go unnoticed. The tank came to a stop and two soldiers clambered out of the top. They hurried down the tank and ran over to Ashley.
"She's alive!" Riley called back to the two soldiers who were lagging behind after checking for her pulse. Half an hour ago he had been eating a steak in the mess hall as Gunn and Monique had their first date. He snapped his fingers in front of her eyes and she didn't stir. "Unconscious! Let's load her up and take her to the medics!"
The two soldiers helped Riley carry her to the tank. Riley climbed up after the soldiers as they carried the girl above him.
He stopped halfway to the top of the tank and looked behind him. He had thought he had heard something. The sound of rapid footfalls. It was coming from the direction of the city limits.
"Hold up!" Riley shouted up to the two soldiers as they handed the girl to the soldiers inside of the tank. The two snapped to attention. "We might have another one coming."
"What's that, sir?"
"We might have another coming!"
When Riley looked back down the street that led back out into the rest of the world--the street the girl had come down most likely--there was a human form running towards them. No, running was too light a word; sprinting was more like it.
Riley stepped back down off of the tank and waved at the person sprinting towards them. "Stop running!" he ordered. "You're safe now!"
He didn't even think about whether or not the person was being chased by something… or that the person was something to run from. The latter of the two was what Riley should've thought of. Perhaps that would've saved a life or two.
Too many 'should haves'. What happened sucked, but it happened.
As the army of darkness descended upon the soldiers Ashley dreamed of her family and screamed a scream of sorrow that the soldiers did not hear, considering it was in her dream.
Too late Riley noticed the dead features on the body of the thing not ten meters in front of his nose. By that time the doom of the soldiers had already been decided.
()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
Hey, MorbidMan here. I didn't want a super long chapter, so I excluded the rest of what I was going to put in. Don't worry. They're not excluded like deleted scenes, they're just pushed over to the next chapter.
Here's some trivia: I decided to say "As the army of darkness descended upon the soldiers" because "The Army of Darkness" is a great comedy movie directed by Sam Raimi (who has directed the "Evil Dead" trilogy--which includes "The Army of Darkness" as the final chapter--and the spectacular "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2").
I better get to sleep soon. Good-night folks. Hope you enjoyed this and please review. See you all next chapter.
"I accidentally glued myself to um… myself." - Jim "American Pie 2"