Attack

North America

2019

Colin ran.

There was really no point in doing so, he knew that in his mind. His heart, however, knew only 'flee'. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He had been hired to do a job. Mentally, it hadn't been the most demanding job he had ever done, but physically, it had been hard and he had needed the exercise. It had taken all of his self control to keep from trying to make things better in the horrific working conditions that pervaded the place, but he had gotten exercise. Oh, had he ever! And, he had learned when not to speak up too. A good skill to have when surrounded by people who didn't care about silly things like workplace older people had at least seen bad things happen, so knew that they did. The younger generation? Most of them knew violence from TV, movies and video games. They were always more interested in their feelings than in trying to keep from getting hurt or killed. He had warned the fools a few times, but then one had gotten in his face and physically threatened him, so he had stopped. Driving forklifts while playing with their phones was a bad idea, but none of them cared. Even when the bosses caught them and fired them, so many of the kids just said 'Hey! I am happy! Leave me alone!' They routinely damaged equipment and property. He had been waiting for someone to get killed, because it was going to happen sooner or later. He hadn't actually been shocked when he had seen a forklift driver this morning driving with a lit roll of white paper in his mouth. Probably not a cigarette, either. Colin wasn't always the most rule abiding of people, but there were limits! Driving a forklift while stoned in a warehouse filled with people, many of whom were not paying attention to where they were going, was just insane! Or they wanted to kill someone. After three years of working here? He understood that feeling. Did he ever! A clear danger to everyone around them, but… The paperwork would be nuts and in the end? Who would get punished? He would for tattling on a fellow employee and hurting their had seen such happen many times in the last three had been debating whether it was worth it to report when the screams had started.

At first, they hadn't registered. Colin was tired. He was always tired these days. He wasn't nineteen anymore and could not pull these ten hour shifts every day that the kids took for granted. He had let himself go far too much in his middle years and had thought to get exercise here. He hadn't counted on the bone deep fatigue that pervaded every pore of his body at the end of each shift. The work wasn't that hard, or even as physical as some things he had done, but it was never ending and it ground a person down. Some of the management tried. Some of the safety personnel tried, but every so often, they got ground down too. Some of the management, the newer ones specifically, kept trying to make things better, but the environment was not conducive to change in any way. It was designed for one thing and one thing only. To put the maximum amount of volume through the warehouse in the least amount of time. And then, it didn't help that during the busiest seasons of the year, temporary workers flooded the place. Many of them were desperate or, to be blunt, the dregs of society. He had seen people that he knew were gangbangers and drug dealers come in and many of them get escorted out by police after being caught stealing. Yeah, the place was big, and had lots of dark corners, but the corporation that ran the place were not all idiots, contrary to popular belief. They did take security fairly seriously and there were video cameras everywhere. You might get away with it once. Maybe twice, but eventually, unless you were very good and sometimes even then, you would get caught. He had thought about it occasionally, but in the end? It was a job. Not the best job, but a decent job and the benefits were top notch. The benefits were really the only thing that kept him here. He knew he would burn out soon, if he hadn't already. He wondered sometimes if he had and was just fooling himself. He had seen some really bad stuff here, but screams were unusual even for this place. He should have run for the closest emergency exit as soon as he heard the screams. He knew that. He should have, but didn't. He had wanted to see if he could help. He couldn't and now? He was trapped.

If he had heard gunfire at first, he would have just fled. So many shootings, so many places. Not just in the US although they got the most press. It was almost as if various people in political power in the Western world wanted mass shootings to happen. His mind shied away from that idea but it did make sense in a lot of bad ways. Peace and love were not profitable. Fear and hate sold things. Weapons, defenses, tools for hiding or running away, they sold. Fear garnered more power for those in power. Those who had little power and wanted it often used fear as a weapon to gain it. It wasn't limited to any particular nationality or religion. It was everywhere. He had studied history quite a bit. He had hoped to be a World War II historian, but then, he had realized that no one cared about history anymore. It wasn't 'relevant' or 'pertinent' to their current feelings, so it didn't matter. It didn't fill bellies or make people obey, so it didn't matter.

A sound had Colin stopping short as he came to the end of one of the massive aisles that made up the warehouse and he eased a little out, just enough to look. What he saw turned his stomach, but did not surprise him at all. The kids had clearly thought it some kind of game. Some kind of trick. Some kind of contest. Something. Anything other than what it was. Instead of evacuating, they had congregated. Even in a mass shooting, that was the worst thing they could have done. Here and now? He didn't know what was happening or why, but he knew what he was seeing. The things ripping into the still bodies that lay every which way, some still clutching their smartphones, were nothing he had ever seen. No animal Colin had ever seen on TV, movies or study had ever moved like these things did. He had seen dead people. He had worked as a paramedic and as a Search and Rescue volunteer. Some of those had been very bad, but this-

Colin went still. One of the kids was moving! A teenager like the others. The kid was still alive! The animals paid the slowly crawling boy no mind, clearly focused on their meals or whatever. Then Colin's heart froze as the boy collapsed in a heap and the sound of him falling drew one of the things' attention. Colin was no soldier. Hell, he wasn't armed. This was a no weapon zone according to the company. Silly that. At least three different employees had been carrying concealed guns because they had used them when the animals had attacked. It hadn't done them any good. The problem with any firearm was that it would run out of ammunition. Add to that the noise had drawn the animals attention and well… As soon as the firing had started, Colin had run into the stacks, trying to get away from the attention grabbers. He had no idea what these things were, but had been a Boy Scout way back when and he knew predators when he saw them. He had seen monsters that walked on four legs and ones that walked on two. There were a lot of these things. How had they gotten in here?

The kid was crying and Colin felt his heart break, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn't… Wait a minute! These stacks! He knew them! He had been stowing in these today. A quick glance from side to side and a quick grab had small objects in hand. He knew these isles like the back of his hand and he knew that he could throw over them. Far enough? That, he didn't know. The things were almost to the kid who stared at up them with streaming eyes. Colin shook his head and threw, praying.

He got lucky.

He hadn't really looked close at the object he grabbed, but it was an electronic toy of some kind. Heavy enough to throw, even for someone as sports challenged as he had been. Light enough he could toss it more than two aisles. It hit and made a noise, but then a kids song started blaring out form the impact site and all of the creatures spun to where the toy was blaring out something about being friends. Colin held his breath as the things all ran towards that area. He threw another toy another direction and while this one didn't make music, it did make a clatter and the things split up, going to check both places. Colin darted out of his cover, ran to the kid and scooped him up.

"Wha-?" The kid managed as Colin ran away from the stacks, hoping to find an emergency exit that wasn't chained up. Whatever was going on here had been planned. Every emergency exit that Colin had found was either blocked, which was supposed to be illegal, or chained up, which was very illegal.

"Quiet!" Colin hissed in the kid's ear, not caring if he hurt the kid's feelings. "Can you run?" Colin snarled. He knew this kid. A brat who made it this life's work to insult everyone older than him, which was just about everyone. This fool had gotten one of the decent managers fired after complaining that his feelings had been hurt by the manager asking him to move out of the forklift lane. Yes, Colin ahd to admit, the manager had overstepped. But the kid and his buddies had been carrying on a conversation for twenty minutes in the middle of the forklift lane! They had ignored everyone asking them to move, so the manager had ordered them to. When they had ignored him, he had laid into them. Colin had learned a few new swear words that day and it should have all been good, except this fool and some of his cronies had gone to HR and complained that he had been 'insulted' and 'his feelings had been hurt'. The manager had been fired, almost the same day. As far as Colin was concerned? If he had known this kid was the one- Oh hell, who was he fooling? He had always wanted to help people form his earliest memories. He would have done the same thing. "Can you run?" Colin demanded.

"My leg." The boy said weakly but when Colin checked at the boy's leg, nothing seemed wrong with it. No blood, no broken bones from a quick patdown. Colin set the kid down mid-run. Of course, the brat immediately started to protest.

"Do you want to be food or do you want to run?" Colin asked, more than a bit snide. He had liked Jon, the manager. "I know you don't care about anything old, but here is an old saying for you to think on. 'When a lion is chasing us, I don't have to be faster than the lion! I just have to be faster than you!'."

"You would leave me here." The boy was ashen faced, but he kept up.

"Well, if the shoe were on the other foot? You would leave me to die in a heartbeat. Why shouldn't I act like you? You are hurting my feelings!" Colin retorted as he saw another emergency exit. This one gaped open, but something warned him and he slowed. "Wait-"

"Screw you, you old fart! I am getting out of here!" The boy ran and then gave a scream as two of the things darted out from where they had lain in wait by the door. The kid went down and his scream cut off with dreadful finality. One of the things bent over the body, but the other turned to Colin.

"I may only be an old fart, but I know a trap when I see one. Dad always said the easiest way is the most suspect. He saw enough of that in Vietnam." Colin said soberly as he slowed and stopped.

He was alone. The thing stalking towards him was larger than he was and faster than he was. But… Colin knew this area of the warehouse too. The shipping docks had been his haven for a while. For a couple of years after he had been hired, the docks hadn't cared about silly things like feelings or skin color. They had only cared about getting the trucks filled as best as possible and out on time. That had changed recently with all of the corporate focus on feelings, but he knew this area. As the creature closed in, he strode to the side of a metal chute that led to one of the closed loading bay doors and pulled out a long metal pole. Getting onto the conveyors was a very bad idea. Putting any piece of fragile human flesh up there was too, as fast as the smiley faced boxes moved down the conveyor line and then down the chutes, but they got stuck with dreadful regularity. Stoppages were bad here so, the company had provided poles to push the boxes clear and keep fingers away from things that would rip and tear. They were not the sturdiest of things, these poles, but they were longer than his arms and far more importantly? He knew what to do with them. He collapsed the pole into its storage length, six feet instead of twelve and then spun it in his hands. It wasn't a true staff, but it was what he had. Colin was going to die, he knew that, but he would die on his feet. His first sensei would be proud. Well, not proud for Colin getting himself trapped and eaten, but proud of him not gibbering and begging.

The pole spun in his hand as the thing moved towards him. He hadn't gotten any good looks earlier but this turned his stomach. It was not furred, scaled or fleshy. It was all of those and none. Not mammal, not amphibian, not reptile. What did that leave? This creature was unlike anything he knew. Anything he had ever seen. It hissed at him like a snake as it set itself it charge and he readied his staff. Twirls and spins were for showing off. For TV and movies. Real staff fighting was all about position, balance and leverage. He had never fought anything like this, but he had fought all kinds of people in dojos and had done fairly well for himself. He had talked with his sensei about fighting animals, but he never had been forced to. His sensei had a time or two while hiking and reach was a constant in any hand to hand fight. Or, hand to claw, in this case. Colin settled his mind as the creature started to tense and then, he moved even as it did.

It was impossible to describe to anyone who had never done it. Who had never fought an equally skilled enemy. Colin had only ever done it in a dojo, but his sensei had been a friend of his dad's and the pair had served in Vietnam. Colin had always been frustrated as child and martial arts had been a means to learn control for his temper, at least at first. But then, he had started enjoying it. Not the hitting or hurting parts, but the skill involved in striking only where he wanted to. Anyone could throw a punch and if they were strong or got lucky, they could hurt or kill someone. His teacher had always said it took no skill to kill. It took skill not to. Colin's weapon was pathetic. He had no way out of this trap but he was fighting and he was hitting the thing. He wasn't sure whether or not he was hurting it, but he was connecting and avoiding any return attacks with teeth or claws. He connected with a good strike that sent the creature reeling back and felt hope flare, only for it fade as a growl sounded and the second creature joined the first.

"Ah well." Colin sighed deeply. He had tried. He spun his staff in a flourish that would have had his sensei beating him black and blue or making him do pushups for at least an hour and then stilled as a voice sounded from behind him. Male. Odd.

"That move was pretty, but dumb." Colin didn't dare his eyes off his enemies and the voice spoke again, this time in a cold, commanding tone. "Down!"

Colin had never heard actual command voice before Jon had used it on the brats standing in the forklift lane. He had heard about it, of course. He hadn't been sure what his dad and friends had been talking about when they spoke of 'the voice that would be obeyed' and sometimes thought it a joke. Jon used command voice on the brats that night and Colin hadn't thought it a joke anymore. He heard it again now and didn't even think of disobeying. He hit the floor, even though every instinct screamed at him to roll back to his feet, raise his pitiful staff and guard himself. Good thing he didn't listen to his instincts as a whirling thing flew just over him to slam full on into both of the creatures. Er, no. It cut into them and through them. Some kind of flying saw?

The saw flew back over Colin, missing him by maybe a foot and he tracked it with his eyes as it flew straight to the hand of a someone who caught it in mid spin as if such were perfectly normal. Not a human! Where the face would been on a human, a short horn jutted up above what was clearly armor. Colin stared at the human shaped thing that wasn't human, but then soft purple light eclipsed his sight and he heard another voice. A kinder, female voice spoke.

Naptime.

That wasn't aloud! That was in his head! For some reason, he wasn't afraid when he fell asleep.

This is a sequel of sorts to my Warframe fanfiction 'The First:Gathering' set in between its two acts.