A/N: Hello again! Just as promised, I have Chapter Two ready to go. Quick warning: It gets somewhat gory here, and Marcy lets loose some pretty wicked swears, so heads up if that isn't your thing. Also, I do not own Valve, blah blah, see Chapter 1.
A quick note: Originally, I stylized /word/ here as a strike-through, but won't let me do that in this format, so I had to make do. However, I'll make this story available in Googledocs when it's finished, so you can read it in the original format. Otherwise, I duly present Chapter Two.
I'll spare you the tedium of me taking inventory, or of all the dusting I had to do, or the time when I had to chase a badger out of the outhouse with a broom. (Well, the last one was less tedious, but I digress.) This might be a story about survival, but there are hundreds of books out there about that sort of thing, and they're probably better-written than this one. Go read them. Now.
In the meantime, I won't write about the every-day bits ('Cept maybe the badger, but that's for another time.) I'll skip to about a week after I arrived, when things started to be less about MRE's and dust, and more about zombies.
You know how I mentioned my genre-savvy earlier? And how it told me something nasty was on the way, as soon as I heard about the Green Flu? It was right. Two days after I got there, whenever I flicked on the radio, it was either CEDA warnings about quarantine, and safe rooms, and all that crap, or just people, crying out for help. They'd be miles off, sure, but it hurt me all the same to hear them. From what I could catch, the virus was way beyond Philly, even past where I stopped for gas. I stopped listening after a while, and just thank whatever God was up there (And Dad, of course) for The Cabin.
Besides the radio messages, I'd settled into a fairly peaceful routine, keeping myself occupied and the Cabin running. Get up, exercise, eat breakfast, (MREs, yum-yum) do laundry, take inventory…
It all just ran together, anyways. Looking back, I don't even remember those first 7 or so days. I only start remembering things in detail after the Helicopter Incident.
On that fateful morning, I woke up to the sight of the world burning.
Well, not the whole world burning, actually. Just a little part of it. A pillar of smoke, anyways, from south of The Cabin, and fairly deep into the woods.
Crap.
I was dressed and out the door within minutes. I didn't take much with me but my handgun (Which I always had on me, in any case) as I wanted to see what the hell was going on. The day was surprisingly warm for a Maine October, so I was wearing a light sweater, cargo pants and my usual combat boots.
It didn't take me that long to get to the source of the smoke; it was only about ½ mile from The Cabin; and even then, I could easily see the cause through the nearly-bare trees, their leaves stripped by the change of the seasons.
It was a helicopter.
Not a functioning helicopter, of course. It had landed in a clearing, like the person piloting it had actually tried to make a landing, but had failed miserably. It seemed to have skidded on impact with the ground, diving nose-first into a boulder. The dented blades spun lazily in the wind, and smoke poured from the dead engine.
There were no other sounds was the whistle of the wind, and the occasional pang of the rapidly cooling metal.
"Hello?" I called, listening for, well, anything; Threats, call for help; just a sign that there was something alive in there.
Nothing replied.
I tried to calm the rising feeling of panic in my chest, as I edged closer to the chopper.
Helicopters don't just crash for no reason, Marcy. I thought, my alarm growing by the minute. Something made that thing take a nose-dive, and it might not have been just engine issues.
I looked into the downed copter through the side. The inside was fairly dark, but I could see a dim outline of the interior.
"Hello?" I called again, the sound of my voice making a tinny echo around the helicopter.
Still, nothing.
Testing for stability with my foot beforehand, I climbed into the aircraft, carefully scanning back and forth for, well, anything; Salvageable items, bodies, even a zombie to fight.
There weren't any zombies, but I spotted a flash of beige on one of the seats in the back. It turned out to be a manila folder, full of files, and heavy in my hand as I picked it up.
There was something stamped on the cover, but I couldn't make out what it said through the gloom. It was probably important, though, so I stuffed it on my inside sweater pocket for later.
It was only then that I noticed the blood on the floor.
My heart rate went up by a factor of 10, and I actually had my pistol out and in my hand. I wished, desperately, that my dead-calm mode would come on, but fate decided to screw my ass over at that point and leave me to stew in my rising panic.
My eyes followed the smeared trail of bodily fluids up to the ajar door of the helicopter's cabin. Gripping my Glock tightly, I forced myself to walk towards the doorway, nudging the door open with my foot, but too reluctant to enter.
I steeled my nerves, and shoved myself inside, dreading what waited my there, and aiming my pistol at the first humanoid thing I saw.
There were no zombies there.
It was much worse.
A dead pilot.
A very dead pilot.
A very very dead pilot. You don't go on living when you have your internal organs torn out like that.
Shit. I was on full Panic Mode now. Shit shit shit shit fuck shit shit…..
My heart was going a mile a minute now, and my internal cussing was enough to fill a Navy's quota for a year, but I still somehow had enough resolve to take a look at the corpse.
All the vital organs—the heart, the liver, the stomach, you name it—were either missing, or shredded. Blood smeared the controls, and the pilot's head was slumped against the remains of his chest.
What struck me as odd was the clawed nature of the body. Not bites, but swipes…
I realized, with fascinated horror, that they were almost catlike in nature.
What kind of… thing would do this?It couldn't be any kind of animal… could it? It certainly wasn't a zombie, if anything. What kind of zombie would claw a person open with cruel efficiency, and abandon the scene of the crime?
My nerves getting the better of me, I ducked out of the compartment, leaving the body where it was, staring out of the blood-stained window that had once showed the sky.
I leaned against the now-shut compartment door, trying not to hyperventilate. I was in a cold sweat, and my gun hand shook badly as I attempted not to panic.
Through my thoughts of fear and terror and fuck, one thing burned clear, through the rest of them:
Whatever did that is still around here.
This was quickly followed by another, screaming in my head over all the others.
Get home. NOW.
New place.
Not like old place. New smells here. New feel. Old place had different smells. Smell of burn. Smell of sick. Smell of prey.
New place smells like dirt. More green and brown things here. Old place was black and grey. Hard under feet. New place is less hard.
No prey here. Old smell of prey on my claws, but that was too long ago. Need new prey.
Smells of small things. Not hungry for small things.
Smell ground. New ground smells. Funny smells.
/Doesn't smell like the city/
Make tall brown things. Different than tall things in Other Place. Tall things in Other Place were much taller. Tall things here are less tall. Not gray. Smell different. More here, too.
Climb tall thing. Smell better up there. Use claws, dig into tall thing. Higher up here.
Sniff.
Smell little bit of burn, far off. Smell little squeaky things. Not-prey.
Wait.
Sniff again.
Smell something.
Smell… prey! Scared. Not running, but ready to run. Moving. Coming closer.
Jump from tall thing. Roll. Come closer to the smell of prey.
Mine.
I walked as quickly as I could without making noise, my gun out and my knuckles white from gripping it. My whole body was screaming at me to run, but I paced myself. I wasn't being chased, after all.
Yet.
I didn't want to attract any unwanted attention, anyways, with my blundering and crashing through the woods. Besides, whatever had gotten to the pilot might be the kind of thing to chase you if you ran.
Still, I was on edge. Every sound made me jump, or flinch. Every whistle of the wind was a moan, or a growl, and every birdcall was a scream.
Something snapped to the left of me.
I turned, emptying an entire clip into the nearing moving thing I could see, without any hesitation.
When the click click of my trigger hitting an empty chamber brought me out of my panic-and-adrenaline induced trance, I took a moment to look at what I was actually shooting.
It was a squirrel.
A dead squirrel, as expired as my good friend the pilot back there. (Six bullets in the body will do that to you.)
The adrenaline drained, and I breathed a small sigh of relief, as I silently scolded myself for panicking so easily, and wasting an entire clip on a stupid rodent.
Pull yourself together, Marcy. I thought as I reached for a new magazine. I wondered if Dad was watching me, laughing his ass off at me, going nuts over a dumb squirrel.
It was only then that I heard the growl behind me.
A/N: I know this one's shorter than the last chapter, but rest assured, I'll have the next one up and going in a day or two. Thank you to all readers; please leave a review and like if you enjoyed it. Every view counts, so please recommend this story if you liked it. Thanks!
-Author