Lauren had heard horror stories of citizens that tried to escape Union rule. Frightened whispers in midnight gatherings of sadistic experiments and skeletal Stalkers. Not as many people discussed the bizarre creatures that had decided to call Earth their new home, but the tales were there too. Vicious tentacled beasts that charged like enraged bulls, parasites that would latch onto your head and hijack your body, three legged dogs with a hundred eyes instead of a head…
She absently nudged at some dirt with her foot. The panic was over and a strange sort of reticence had settled over her. They had gotten a good distance in when the girl-who had identified herself as a writing utensil-declared that it was okay to stop and rest.
Writing utensil. Pen. The pun didn't lift her spirits at all, and she had the suspicion that her sense of humor was degrading too badly for even herself to appreciate. At any rate, she was likely just one of those people that hated the name Penelope and had the misfortune to be saddled with it at birth.
Pen was pacing around the small clearing they'd settled in anxiously, like she was looking for something, or maybe trying to decide what to do next. Lauren, on the other hand, had settled on a tree stump, hands on her knees and thankful that the standard civilian denim protected her from the various poison flora in the forest.
Only mostly. She had already counted out her lacerations through bloody tears in the fabric that stung now that she'd noticed they were there. None of her injuries seemed to be too serious-bruises, pulled muscles and the aforementioned cuts. Superficial things. They couldn't' compare to the awful sinking feeling slowly settling in her chest.
"Lauren?"
She scowled, and stopped when the tug of dried blood on her face alerted her to it. For twelve or so years it had just been "You", "her", and "Citizen", and now it felt wrong to hear her name again from a stranger. Exchanging names meant that you had to start caring, no exceptions.
She decided not to answer, mumbling out a brief "Thinking." and pointedly looking in the other direction.
Pen didn't press her further, for whatever reason she'd tried to get her attention. Lauren couldn't resist looking her way after the few seconds of silence, and saw that she'd decided on scaling a nearby oak for her course of action. It was impressive and ridiculously funny looking at the same time.
"What are you doing?" she asked, voice too weak to be heard. Maybe if she cleared her throat a little, it would be easier to shout. But she didn't want to. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to draw attention to herself, even if there weren't surveillance cameras always hovering overhead. How alone were they, really?
Did a branch snap? Did she only imagine the rustling of some foliage as faceless soldiers came for her?
She whipped her head around and didn't see anyone, but that didn't mean they weren't there. She thought of the dropship, and suddenly it didn't seem like a good idea to loiter in such an exposed clearing.
Her heart was in her throat again. When did that happen? It amazed her how easy it was to go from calm to panicking at almost literally nothing.
"Uh…Hey…" Well, she was going to have to address the girl by name some time anyway. "P-Pen?" she called up, wincing as she got to her feet and limped over. "Do you-do you see anyone?"
Pen didn't respond for a few seconds, and right when Lauren was considering yelling again, she turned back, frowning down at her with her hair dropping into little blood soaked ringlets around her face. "What?"
"Do you see anyone? Like, Civil Protection, or…"
Pen gave a cursory glance over the surrounding area, and then looked back at Lauren. "I don't see anyone."
Of course, that didn't mean they weren't there. "Why are you up there anyway?"
"What?"
She sighed and raised her voice again. "Why were you stricken with the impulse to go tree climbing?"
"I'm trying to see if I can find a good destination for us to head towards."
"And?"
"Tree's not tall enough." Pen shook her head and started to climb down. "I think we should keep going straight though. I couldn't see much, but I think the forest line ends somewhere up ahead."
An even bigger exposed clearing. "Great. That. That sounds fine."
No more consultation needed, apparently. But that was okay; she'd just stare at her feet, and try not to get too optimistic.
…Staring at her feet turned out to be a bit more difficult than anticipated. The change in scenery was refreshing for the most part, she had to admit. Citizens weren't allowed to keep plants growing within city walls, and no one was allowed to take walks in the wilderness. Ever. Maybe it was to keep people corralled and hopeless. Maybe it was to protect them from everything out there that had a taste for human flesh…
She'd missed this. Well, she missed looking at nature—not jumping at every noise she heard that didn't sound like it was from Earth. So far they hadn't seen much to be frightened of—a couple of the multiple eyed dogs that left them alone ("houndeyes", Pen called them) and a few creatures that had attached themselves to some particularly thick tree limbs and let what was probably their tongues hang down to the ground ("barnacles"). The latter were particularly disgusting. She avoided looking whenever they passed one by, but had trouble blocking out the sickening squish of their mouths as they pulled in stray birds that hadn't been careful.
It would have almost been pleasant to trudge through in relative silence, as long as she didn't think about getting caught or eaten.
"You…you do know you have blood on your face, right?" Pen asked quietly, her head dipping a little in an uncertain glance. Lauren glared ahead, rather than into those puffy eyes, and pushed forward.
"Yes. It's fine."
"Oh." Pause. "I'm only asking because you look kind of like a zombie."
"A what?"
Pen cleared her throat. "You—those, um, well they look like—"
"I know what a zombie is." Lauren wiped her cheek with her sleeve, not bothering to check if she'd actually cleared it off. Her tone seemed to have killed the discussion.
The trees thinned, and, to her decreasing consternation, Lauren found that there were suddenly less branches to smack her in the face. That was nice. There was a bird singing somewhere, and she wanted to sit back on that tree stump back in that clearing and just…listen to it. Pretend that was all there was to the world.
Her foot caught on a protruding root and she let her mood plummet back downward.
There. There was the forest edge. It wasn't as dramatic a transition as she'd have liked, really. Not a whole lot of cover to stand there and look over the opening like a…a…something…that…hid in the trees to make sure there weren't…predators around…
God, she was tired.
A stream flowed through ahead of them, at which Pen gave a vaguely happy little gasp and darted forward. The grass was dying, and as she followed, somewhat more sullenly, Lauren got a good view of the rotting flowers scattered about.
The stream didn't gurgle, or babble, or murmur, so her respect for every nature writer ever went down. It reminded her more of people marching. From the looks of the dirt at its edge, the water level had been higher at some earlier point, and probably dropped recently. A surprising number of paranoid thoughts crossed her mind at that.
She shook them off.
Lauren peered down into the water, as if looking into its reflective surface would tell her how safe it was. All she could see was her own face, staring back up at her like a wounded animal. Or a zombie. There was that scar on her left cheek, the stress lines on her eyes, the—
"When did…?" She reached a hand up and traced a finger around some graying strands of hair. That wasn't—that wasn't even worth a sigh, was it? And that was…sad. She kind of missed the days when this would have triggered some kind of crisis of self-esteem. Now it was a footnote. Maybe there'd be time to act broken up about it later.
"I know it probably isn't safe to wash up with until our cuts have scabbed over. Or drink," Pen was saying beside her, twirling two fingers around in the stream. "Still, it's nice to know there's a water source here. Maybe we'll find some iodine or something and we can come back."
Lauren stifled a derisive snort. She had no idea where it came from. Maybe there was something funny about the word "iodine".
The sun was starting to go down, heavy shadows rising to greet the two of them. At the other side of the water there were more trees, less in number than the forest they had just exited. She could almost see buildings past them. Was that a good thing or not? The Union hadn't converted all the towns into their living centers, and she couldn't see a Citadel from here…
"Is that a town?" Pen hopped over the stream and started forward. "Maybe there are some refugees hiding out there that have some clean water."
"Or maybe they have soldiers waiting to catch fugitives who think there are refugees with water." Lauren muttered, moving to where the stream was thinnest and stepping over it.
"It's worth investigating."
"Is it? Is it really?"
Pen glanced back and gave her an odd look. "You want to spend the night in the forest?"
"It's preferable to a razor train, yeah." Lauren had meant the line to come out with scathing sarcasm, but for some reason it was said instead as an evasive mumble. She cleared her throat and jogged a bit to catch up, trying not to trip as they entered the new tree line. And succeeding, for once. "Best case scenario is that it'll be relatively abandoned. With the man-eating aliens I've been hearing so much about."
The girl shrugged, hair bobbing a little. "Still a roof. My family would stay in little abandoned towns all the time."
"What?"
"What?"
Her family would…Lauren rubbed her temples and tried to get the tired gears in her mind to turn. "You…? Oh. Oh, you were a fugitive already, weren't you?"
"Kind…of. My parents were technically the…Oh, look, we're almost there."
They weren't really almost there, and the attempt to change the subject was so blatant that the conversation dropped like it had been shot in the knee. So the two walked the rest of the way listening to something they couldn't see making distant, unearthly roars, and the odd crow.
Lauren didn't like crows. They were rude and complained about everything.
It was just as well. The way the discussion almost headed had started to make her uncomfortable. Pen's face had begun to take on a peculiar sort of choked expression, and Lauren didn't think she would be any good at providing consolation for whatever horrible thing the Union had done to her family for evading them since their occupation began.
It really was getting dark, wasn't it?
If there was something lurking in those dark streets, it would be very easy for it to sneak up on the both of them. Like zombies.
Dammit, Pen.
In a few more steps Lauren could feel the gravel beneath her shoes. The buildings loomed over them and the air had gone relatively quiet. Broken glass and crumbled brick littered the ground and threatened to tear up their shoes. If there was any wind, it might have whistled through the buildings, creating eerie sounds that would keep more imaginative people from sleeping for a few days at least. As it was, there was no wind, and that made the strange noises that attracted Lauren's attention so much worse.
Ordinarily, the dark was not something on her "fear list". In fact, there were relatively few things that she was actually afraid of. Like most sane people, getting eaten alive was one of them.
"Do we pick a building and board up the door?" she asked, her voice constricting a little as it had a tendency to do lately.
"You don't want to explore at all?"
"At night?"
"Evening. There's a difference." Pen shrugged. "I suppose we could find someplace to sleep if you really wanted to."
"I do."
"Any preferences?"
Lauren paused and looked around. Each building looked like a horrifying, architect's worst nightmare deathtrap. Sighing, she picked out the closest, most stable looking building. "Can we go there?"
"We have to make sure nothing's in it first." Without consultation, Pen picked up a piece of debris at her feet, tested its weight, and hurled it through the nearest window—breaking any sense of quiet and causing [what seemed like the whole area] around them to break out into a chorus of moans and howls.
Lauren yelped, jumping as bloodied, humanoid creatures with bulbous—growths?—for heads crawled out of the holes in the wall and succumbed to gravity.
And that image was never coming out from the back of her eyelids.
"Ooookay, wrong building." Pen grabbed her hand again and dragged her back into that feverishly pitched run that she had at the wreck site. The building had a door, which blasted open as they ran past it, out pouring more of the…things, long, clawlike fingers swiping with an erratic, violent propensity towards the two's already quite lacerated flesh.
Lauren cried out, her voice lost once more among the noise. She would have taken anything else, maybe even getting locked in a closet, if it meant she didn't have to run with raw feet and broken down muscles.
She tripped.
Of course she had the common courtesy to let go and not drag the more coordinated runner down with her. The gravel tore at her palms, but the fact that she might have just broken her toe detracted from her awareness of it. There was a crack as someone's foot (although who's foot would it be but Pen's?) connected with one of the monsters that was closing in. As she staggered to her feet she saw it flop down beside them, a human face twisted in terror with the bloated, crab-like animal that had attached itself to their head falling nearby.
Oh.
Oh.
She was being pulled away again, Pen stumbling and limping because she had probably just broken her entire foot, back through the streets with the city waking up in a hideous, nightmarish uproar. It must be a nightmare. It had all the trappings of one, except for the fact that she could feel pain. No, this was real, they were getting away, she could hear them growing farther away the faster they went. With a small bit of morbid curiosity, she slowed and looked back, straining her eyes to see their jerky marionette movements. Not shambling corpses. Close enough for the muscular inefficiency, though.
Wait. Pen thought she looked like THOSE?
"Alright, so, bad move on my part," Pen huffed, and Lauren worked up the energy to glare. "I'm used to headcrabs, but I guess it's different when you don't have a hunting rifle…"
Lauren coughed and shook her head, only able to express some numb agreement. Her muscles were trembling a little as she slipped around the next corner, sinking into a crouch. Pen started talking again, but she was feeling lightheaded all of a sudden and didn't care to hear any of it.
They. Were going to die.
A cold metal rod was being shoved into her clammy fingers, and she stared at it. A loose pipe. What exactly was she supposed to—oh.
Pen nudged her shoulder and pointed up at the wall behind them. Off to the side the whole wall had crumbled, leaving a small pile of brick to climb up to the top level with. Higher ground. They made their way up, Pen picking up a few of the bricks as they went. It had probably been an apartment building at some point, judging by the rows of numbered rooms. Some of the ceiling had fallen through, blocking off the hallway.
They were getting closer—the headcrabs. Lauren could hear them. She stationed herself by the collapsed wall and waited for them to come.
The first started off from the right, and she only had a few seconds to react at the sound of its muffled roars. Her throat was getting sore from all the screaming, and as she cracked the pipe against the side of its…head, she wished they would approach from the front like decent zombies.
To her dismay, she found that this wasn't going to be a one-hit kill scenario, and she'd only succeeded in making it stagger. A second swing smashed it up against the wall, and she squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't see the distorted, hideous face.
Oh. Too late.
Another backhanded her from the side and the pipe slipped from her grasp. Funny how quickly they could move when left unobserv—it was right up in her face, oh God oh God. She backpedaled as quickly as she could, running her hand along the wall to keep steady and stopping as her fingers snagged on something.
It was one of those glass cases you break for emergencies. With an axe. She wondered how Pen could've missed it. The next few moments were quick and probably pulled something in her arm, but the result was some glass on the floor, a few reopened wounds on her fist and the axe head buried in both the headcrab and, probably, the unfortunate victim's skull.
Its limbs still thrashed around a little when she pulled the axe out.
There were two more to deal with now, and Lauren was concerned with the exhilaration she felt at dispatching them so quickly.
"We're leaving."
Lauren yelped and almost chopped the girl's head off. But then she realized that zombies couldn't talk. Pen, however, was completely unfazed, although there was a greater sense of urgency that hadn't been there before. "What?"
"We have to go, now. Come on."
She couldn't be dragged this time because she still had her hands on the axe, so the two just jogged out of the building at reasonable distances from each other and the encroaching zombie horde.
"I rigged the building to explode." Pen explained, unprompted.
"Oh-What?!"
Maybe this would all make sense in the morning. Some things did. If they lived that long. For now, Lauren could only gape at the pink haired girl and shift her bloody axe onto her shoulder so that her arms didn't get tired as they picked up the pace. "Is this the normal method for dealing with headcrabs?"
Pen thought a moment, looking back. "…If they've infested the place. Which they have. They're a pretty troublesome bunch, sometimes it's the only way to be s—"
The explosion was so loud that a sharp, obnoxious ringing was the only sound that Lauren heard for a good minute or so, the shockwave sending her stumbling back. Although, it seemed more fire based than percussion. It certainly seemed enough to destroy a horde, but she had no experience in the matter. She watched with more morbid fascination as those too unlucky to die in the initial blast were consumed by the flames, writhing and howling. The chorus was horrifying and utterly fascinating.
"I…Well, that's normally a last resort…attracts too much attention…" Pen said faintly.
Revoltingly fascinating.
"Should we—"
"No more rocks." It was a little louder than intended, snapped from her mesmerization and probably because she had trouble hearing it herself.
Pen held her hands up defensively. "All right, all right."
"I don't need any more surprises. Or zombies. Or exploding buildings." Lauren added, glancing up at the towering structure they'd stopped by. Rather tall, with windows that glinted a little in the moonlight. It was a good thing that the two of them weren't standing too close to the wall, because it exploded. An abomination even worse than the zombies leaped out at them from the gaping hole.
The axe clattered to the street as Lauren took in the sight. There was only a moment, but that moment was enough for it to imprint itself in her mind, possibly as nightmare fuel for the next time she tried to sleep. The thing was almost humanoid—stood on two legs, albeit with more joints and hoof-like feet, had two…primary arms, and a head that carried one of the parasitic pests on top of it, fangs sunk deep into its one large, red eye…It had dark, greenish brown skin, slick with blood that might or might not have been its own. The middle of its chest had split open—like the others, but was thankfully covered by an opaque membrane to conceal the insides, one arm on either side of the cavity. Or possibly, what had once been one arm and was now two. Four arms.
There was actually something strangely familiar about its form.
Whatever it was, it spasmed and twisted like an amusement park animatronic that had rusted over and still wanted to enact whatever ghastly dance it was programmed for. Its guttural, resonant screams lanced through the night air and chilled her down to her bone marrow.
Lauren saw green light sputtering on its fingertips, right before it arced through the air and launched her backwards. Her whole body convulsed in pain and her vision swam. It felt like one hundred stun sticks smacking her simultaneously, all set to the highest voltage possible. Right on her stomach. Every muscle contracted and twitched, little spots dancing around her eyes. She'd already gone through her threshold for abuse this week.
So she passed out.
As everything went dark, a thin blue light cut through the air and settled its beam on the creature's head.
She was too far gone to hear the loud crack that followed.