3: Enter Shaun Bezwin
Shaun Bezwin was woken up by screams. These screams were distant, but loud enough to enter his dreams and manipulate his mind's version of a peaceful afternoon with his girlfriend into a nightmare with dead people standing around screaming endless, horrified screams. He had woken up screaming himself.
He was fourteen and considered himself to be the wisest that he ever would be. He didn't fool himself into believing he knew everything, but he knew that his mind was possessed of more knowledge than was average for one his age. He was only slightly overweight and a few of the girls at his school dug him (his girlfriend obviously included). His face reflected a sort of mysterious innocence that he did not have. He was just beginning to sprout a mustache, and his black hair was constantly combed back, giving him an old-school cool effect. Like Fonzi.
His
wardrobe was composed of all sorts of oddities. His shirts ranged from
plain to extravagant. His favorite-and the one he was wearing at the
moment-was a black T-shirt that had a cross and a pentagram beneath
giant, white words: "DECISIONS, DECISIONS." Shaun swung himself out of
his "Star Wars" themed bed already fully clothed considering he slept
in his clothes. He needed to piss badly, but he was transfixed by the
distant screams. Then came scattered gunfire and explosions.
The
bedroom's single window had its blinds pulled down, so nothing but
blue-tinted light could seep through. No images that would allow him to
know what was going on down the street.
Traveling across his small room was a hard task because of the heaps of dirty clothes that littered the floor along with plastic bags that had been used long ago and three empty laundry baskets. Not to mention some clean clothes.
He made it to the door and opened it. In the hall outside was silence and poor lighting to greet him. The ground was beginning to vibrate.
His parents came stumbling out of their room half-awake. His mother was in her blue bath robe and his father was in his boxers. Both looked extremely tired. His father had rumpled brown hair and beard stubble. He was covered in perspiration. His mother had blonde hair that was more well-kempt for even this early, jerk-awake morning than his father's. She was looking around with the eyes of a stoned stoner.
Shaun walked over to them. He was six feet tall to the inch, which meant he towered two inches above his father and four above his mother.
"What's going on?" Shaun inquired, knowing full-well beforehand that his parents had no clue even if they were awake enough to fully understand the question.
"No clue," his father replied in a very sluggish voice. His eyes were bloodshot.
The
screams were much closer now, and Shaun understood that soon the
screams would be coming from within their own house. The dead were
coming for them. The dead from his dream. They would find him and drag
him into their world of torment for all eternity. Grinning skulls with
bits of skin hanging off of them and screaming banshees galore. He
began to panic.
An explosion from down the street caused by a wide
shot fired by a man wielding a 9mm pistol connecting with the gas tank
of a Dodge truck caused his parents to snap awake.
"I'm gonna get the gun," his father muttered and ran back into the room. A lot of crashing and banging ensued before his father reappeared in the hall with their hunting rifle in one hand and a box of bullets in the other. He had a shirt thrown over his back that was not buttoned up in the middle. "Jane, I need you to get the hammers from the basements and nails. A lot of nails."
"Board up the windows?" his mother asked.
"And the doors," he stated. "Go with her Shaun." "We don't have any boards of wood," Shaun stated simply. His father paused to think.
"Then j-just grab some tables and chairs for Christ's sake!" "Okay," Shaun said.
"Grab something wooden and slap it over a fucking window!" "I got it!" Shaun shouted as he sped down the stairs, aggravation seeping into his voice. People didn't need to make the same point twice. It's gotten the first time, move on! He hated people; they annoyed him greatly.
Now that his mind was cleared with the clouds of anger and annoyance, Shaun understood it wasn't the dead coming for them. What then? Terrorists? Rioters? It didn't matter at the moment.
He overturned the
coffee table in the living room and snapped off the legs. The wood was
fragile, but it was better than nothing.
Jane hurried past him and into the kitchen. She went down the stairs. That was the last time that Shaun saw her.
Right
behind her came his father. He had loaded the gun and began to rush
him. They grabbed the dining room table and tore the legs off, which
was significantly more difficult to do with the dining table than with
the coffee table. The screams were now across the street and next door.
Soon they would be screaming. More gunfire was sounding. Fire was
crackling and the light filtering in through the windows was yellow and
orange instead of blue.
"Hon?" his father shouted down to the basement. "Jane! We need those goddamned nails!" There was no answer received. His father lost his rushed mood. "Jane?" he called cautiously.
Shaun
grew a rather large pit in his stomach and he went numb all over. He
knew what his father had not yet accepted. His mother was dead. She
hadn't screamed to let them know of the danger. She was just dead.
His father began to descend the stairs.
"Dad!" Shaun shouted after him. "Don't go down there!" "JANE!" his father's scared voice rang out. Then he repeated himself, this time in shock and dismay. Shaun heard sobs begin to sound above the dying screams and decreasing amount of gunfire.
"DAD GET THE FUCK BACK UP HERE!" Shaun roared. His father was weeping in the basement. Then silence took hold on the house.
Shaun held his breath as he waited for his father's dying scream. Whatever had killed his mother was now going after his father, Shaun had no doubt of that.
"D?" he began. The thundering blast of the hunting rifle cut him off. "DAD!" Another gunshot sounded. Then his father began to scream. There were heavy, rushed footsteps on the basement's stairs. His father appeared in the kitchen with droplets of blood covering him.
"We need to go," he stated as calmly as he could. He was out of breath.
"What the fuck was that?" Shaun thundered.
"We need to go NOW!" "Jesus fucking Christ mom's dea!" The front door in the dining room flew off its hinges and hit the ground hard. What entered the house then was a monstrosity that Shaun could not accept.
It was twice the size of a Saint Bernard. Its pinkish-gray skin was loose over the upper-half of its dog-like, muscular body. It had no eyes or nostrils. A mouth was exposed under a large fold of skin at the front of the monster that was full of hundreds of needle-like teeth. Its two front legs were small claws that looked very sharp.
That in itself was not so hard to accept. It was easy and entertaining to look at if a bit frightening. But… what made this thing so horrifying, so unacceptable, and so unbelievable was the lower-half of its body.
A robotic anus met the warmth of the air, supported by two large, robotic legs. The shiny, gunmetal gray of the creature's hide threw Shaun's mind off. Biomechanics were not that advanced yet. That combined with the fact that he had no way of stating why the biological portion of the creature existed scared him and confused him. This in turn angered him.
The creature that reminded Shaun of both a dog and a bull at the same time launched itself across the room at a surprising speed and landed on top of his father, who was closer to the biomechanical dog/bull than Shaun was.
Crimson liquid speckled the room as his father's face was chewed off by the dog/bull. Shaun didn't hear the screaming, but he knew it was there to be heard.
The hunting rifle had fallen from his father's grip and was now conveniently at Shaun's feet. His eyes traveled to it, then back to the scene of his father being murdered. He slowly bent over and grabbed the gun. His father was dead now and the dog/bull was chewing a dead body, oblivious to Shaun's existence.
Shaun slowly took aim at the monster's mouth with the gun, then trailed upwards slightly. He believed he was aiming at its brain-if it had a brain-so he thought it would be a one-shot kill. So he pulled the trigger confidently.
The kick of the gun made him lose grip on it and it clattered to the ground. The dog/bull yelped-that's right, yelped-in pain and took four leaps back to the door before turning around, reddish-black blood seeping down the rolls of fat and skin that made up its head. It then emitted a grunt. Shaun wondered how it could see him, or anything for that matter. He saw no eyes. But the dog/bull charged dead-on towards him.
It overturned three still-standing chairs in the center of the room where the legless dining table sat, flipped-over, and leapt higher than it had before at him. It obviously meant that to be the distance-closing leap for the kill. Unfortunately the dog/bull did not appreciate its own obviousness and did not anticipate Shaun getting out of the way in time.
Shaun doubled back and grabbed the
hunting rifle from the floor, cursing in his mind that they didn't have
a 12-gauge shotgun. Foreseeing the kick the gun would give with the
pull of a trigger, Shaun kept hold of it even after squeezing off two
rounds.
One hit the dog/bull in the inverted knee of its front-right
leg and made it yelp again. The other shattered its upper-jaw and
caused the oddly colored blood to spray everywhere.
Shaun wondered what caused the color of this demon's blood. A strange sort of hemoglobin? He shook the thought off. To try and understand this creature would be to accept its existence. He realized that the word 'demon' felt right in accordance with speaking of this thing. Of course it wasn't a demon-it was a biomechanical creature-but that word felt so… so right.
An imp was a small demon. Shaun momentarily considered using this term for the dog/bull hybrid, but decided against it. Imp didn't feel right in accordance with the dog/bull.
He began to chuckle. He looked at his father's body and burst out laughing. Tears of grief sprayed out of his eye sockets, but he was laughing heartily as he cried. It was as though the world's best gem had just been cracked in earshot of him.
Then a brown demon with four eyes and claws for hands and feet burst into the room and leapt onto the wall. It climbed up the wall quickly and dangled from the ceiling.
"Hey, imp," Shaun greeted the demon. He wasn't shocked by this new creature; it wasn't nearly as horrific as the dog/bull. His running feet carried him out of the room as a fireball whipped past his face, singing his eyebrows and severely drying his eyes. He groaned in dismay and began to blink. The tears were helping, but his vision was still blurred.
He turned to the entrance of the kitchen he had retreated into and aimed the gun at the fast-moving brown shape. He popped off a shot and got the imp in the shoulder. It hissed and leapt onto the wall just above the doorway leading into kitchen, letting it reside out of his view as it recovered from the gunshot.
While the imp recovered, Shaun's vision cleared. When it reappeared, Shaun blasted a bullet through its head. Brain matter and blood painted the air behind its head. Then it collapsed heavily on the floor.
Shaun thanked videogames and bee-bee guns for training him in the world of aiming. His eyes continued to water over his dead parents, but his mind wandered. He needed to get out of there. He needed to survive.
He needed to get to Reeda's house. His girlfriend. He had forgotten about her until that point. Now she took up his mind. He ran to the phone and dialed her number, but the phone was dead.
Shaun grabbed the box of bullets his father had set down before helping with the dining table and reloaded the rifle quickly. It had a ten-bullet clip and he had used seven of said bullets.
He then grabbed two kitchen knives and tucked them into his jean pockets. After that he went outside and into the Hell that Earth had become.
He was the first to discover that floating, flaming skulls weren't the only horror the sky had to offer.
It was a head the size of a large man. It had four small horns extending from the top of its cranium. One green eye was set in the center of the floating head. Its skin was red and folded with fat. A very large mouth peeled open as the cyclops spotted Shaun. Teeth were exposed.
Shaun charged down the chaos-ridden streets without ever looking back. A ball of static-electricity soared out of the floating head's mouth and exploded on the ground right on his heels and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He ran in the general direction of Reeda's house as Hell engulfed Earth.
