More Futurisitic Fun Than You Really Wanted, part I of V

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

RAH!!!

[Doktor Howl]

Day 2, later

It was a massacre.

I'd been resting up on some pipes, on a causeway overlooking another pumping station, when I woke to some weird whining noises.  Looking over the side, I saw 6 people in those suits, shining flashlights around.  They were armed like they were in the middle ages...Pole arms, swords, that sort of thing.

If they were talking, they were using radio, because none of them made a sound above the whining of the servo joints in their armor.  One of their lights hit me, and the guy holding it pointed.  The rest looked up, the leader (I presume), opening his faceplate.

"Is that you, Dok?  We've been looking for you since yesterday."

I was just opening my mouth to reply, when they were hit from behind - from the tunnel they'd come out of - by a wave of  nessies.  I grabbed my shotgun and rolled into a firing position...

...But it was hopeless.  In seconds, they were all dead.  They'd killed a few of the beasts, but not nearly enough.  The beasties spent a few minutes tossing the bodies around, then wandered back out of the room.

How had they missed me?  I had made noise getting into position, and I was exposed from the chest up, not 30 feet away from them.

I waited an hour or so, then climbed down and picked over the bodies.  There was plenty of food, and - thank God - water...But no surviving radios.  Every part of the suits were smashed, the wiring dug out, and what was inside the suits?  Best not to dwell on that.

I suppose I could have tried back-tracking them, but that's the direction those critters went, so I left the room through the opposite tunnel.

And then my flashlight died.  

Cursing, I felt my way down the tunnel, which opened into another chamber, the size of which I couldn't quite make out.  There was some light coming in from above, from what looked like another grating, but it must have been night time.

In fact, it was night time, because far above me, the moon came out from the clouds, illuminating the room, and the dozens of nessies not one hundred feet from me.

Oh, shit.

To be continued

[Luna]

I saw this at the top of the "recent updates" list and got a warm fuzzy.

I found new content, and squee'd like a fifteen year old fangirl at a Justin Bieber concert.

I shall refrain from discussing the condition of my underpance.

[Doktor Howl]

I saw this at the top of the "recent updates" list and got a warm fuzzy.

I found new content, and squee'd like a fifteen year old fangirl at a Justin Bieber concert.

I shall refrain from discussing the condition of my underpance.

I just figured out what the nessies are, where they come from, and why they're always one step ahead of the Paynites...AND how to link all the stories together without any contradiction.

Figure I'll do 3 chapters a day for a few days, you know, take the time to do it right.

[Luna]

This is awesome.   

[Doktor Howl]

Day 2, still later

You know, when times get really tough, I think back to the timeless wisdom handed down to me by my mother..."Wear your galoshes", or "If you keeping making faces, your face will stick like that", or "Don't tip-toe through rooms full of prehistoric nightmares".

My sainted mother has always been right about these sorts of things, but I never could listen.  Thinking about it kept making me want to giggle, and I really didn't want to giggle just then.

For some reason, the nessies were utterly ignoring me, as I tip-toed around the edge of the room.  I came within ten feet of one of them, and it stirred a bit.  I scrunched against the wall, and continued on.

An hour or so later, I remembered how to breathe.  And I was puzzled.  I mean, I'm not complaining, but why the hell were the nessies ignoring me, when they massed up against those weird fucking Paynites in their armor?
In their armor...

But hadn't they been grabbing homeless or solitary people off the streets?  They sure as hell weren't wearing armor.  Let's see, I'd been attacked once...When one got close to me.  Not as close as the one in that room, though.  What the hell?

Okay, let's review.  They could only see or sense me when I was close, but they'd go hundreds of yards to get someone in a suit.  They hunted above ground, near the sewers, but only picked off stragglers, usually drunks who couldn't move fast, or people coming out of clubs, etc.

The bums might have been easy.  They're just lying there in an alley, just waiting for a nessie to trip right over them.  The others...What was different between them and I?  No anatomical differences, obviously.  

Okay, stop.  Tie it into the armor.  What were the clubbers carrying or wearing that would attract the nessies?

Oh, yeah.  Cell phones.  The suits have radios.

The fucking nessies are attracted by radio.  Or maybe any kind of electronics.  It wasn't just electricity...They didn't fuck with the pumps in the pumping rooms, and they weren't attracted by the feeble field given off by the flashlight I carried.  This explains why all their countermeasures kept failing, why the beasties always seemed to be a step ahead.

Obviously, I had to get this information to Payne.  Equally obviously, I was still lost as hell down in these fucking sewers.   And we still didn't know where the damn things came from.  And, fuck.  By the light from my cigar, I could see that the stairs ahead of me headed down.  Again.

To be continued.

[Doktor Howl]

Day 3

I was, I suspected, very far underground.  Nigel would have been making hipster jokes, if she could have seen me.  I must have made a pretty sight, too...My boots, duster, and hat were dripping with mud, and probably worse things.  I myself was grimy to the point where I wanted to take a bath in penicillin.

I couldn't see a damn thing, obviously...I'd been operating by feel alone, ever since my cigar started glowing a little blue.  Hopefully, there wasn't enough methane to be poisonous, but I sure as hell wasn't going to take a chance with a flame of any kind.

Feeling along the wall, I felt what appeared to be engravings of some kind.  I traced them out..."Kaerlud".  Wait.  Wasn't that supposedly the original name of London?  Just how far had I come?  More to the point, just how fucking far below ground was I?

Then I found the collapsed wall.  Apparently, a portion of the wall had collapsed, exposing a void behind it.  This led, through time consuming exploration by hand, to a much rougher course of brick, in a low-ceilinged ramp.  Down and down we go.

A short while later, I could see light ahead of me.  Not honest sunlight, but a blue glow of some kind.  A moment later, I walked into a room large enough to stand up straight in, which had a passageway leading out the other side, sloping - again - down.

The room was lit by a lamp on a stone table, that was giving off a light blue glow.  At the table, on a stone throne-looking arrangement, sat a desiccated corpse in modern clothes, with a large book in front of him.  All around the table, human bones were scattered. 

One of the skulls had a Roman helmet on it, another partial skeleton was wearing rags of what might be (I'm no expert) Tudor clothing, another clothes that looked like they might have been from the turn of the last century.  All of the bones were in positions that looked as if they had each been pushed off the chair in turn by their successors, who then eventually died and were themselves pushed off by the next occupant, decades or centuries later.

The room felt weird, almost like experiencing a low-frequency vibration from heavy machinery or something similar.  It was faintly nauseating. 

One of the reasons I have lived as long as I have - despite bad habits and the weirdest luck in the world - is that I tend to stop and think when I encounter something weird.  I don't pretend it's not there, but I do tend to look before I leap.  I was really curious about that book, but I was also cognizant of the fact that everyone else who sat down at that table seemed (from the condition of the seated body) to have starved to death.

I don't care how good a book is, I'm not dying down here. 

As I thought about this, I heard footsteps approaching from the corridor opposite the one I'd come in.  I readied my shotgun, but kept it aimed at the floor...Those sounded like human footfalls.

A minute later, a younger-looking man staggered into the room in armor that appeared to be out of power. I noted, with a bit of shock, that I could see through him.  He squinted at me through the weird light (I apparently was translucent to him, too), and said, sensibly, "Who the fuck are YOU?  The ghost of John Wayne?"

I laughed, and replied, "Naw, the name's Dok.  I'm here on account of Payne, but I'm lost as hell.  Who're you?"

"They call me Sams", the man replied, "Just what in the hell IS this place?"

To be continued




(and thanks for permission to use the character, EOC)

[Jenne]

Ah...love the suspense!

[Richter]

 

[Richter]

I think I've finally seen something different.

About a month back I was walking out of the train station to my car.  I'd been on the late shift.  The cocksuckers on the early trains had taken all the parking near the tracks.  So I was walking down through the station and under the bridge, past the cheapest bar in town, and that fucking hip hop club.  Damn idiot place with too many people and too many shootings. 

Kind of the weekly prostration before god.  Walk myself past the dens of the drunk and the den of sin at their most virulent hours, valley of death and all.  Fuck, life trying to force me into idiots again.  Not that I usually have any trouble. Tall enough and balanced enough that a sensible thief will leave me be.  A drunk bum, or a half - cocked homey - g aren't sensible though.

Still, I cruised past the crowds fronting both.  Sliding through, silent as the Marie Celeste.  Luck's holding so far.

I get to the lot, rows of painted lines under an overpass, half lit orange by failing lights.  Plenty of shadowy corners.  Now, light SEEMS like a charm, a defense.  It isn't, just gives away your position to anyone not in it.  I ignore the need to cling to it, and let myself move smoothly through the shadow, my eyes growing accustomed to the dark. 

Yes, I am paranoid, thank you.  It's a game I play with myself.  Let the nerves run only on pragmatic channels, rather than shaking me apart.  Who am I fooling?  There's no shitheads waiting here.  The predators, even the weak feeders, will cling closer to the herds.

Then I see a figure, hunched against one of the supports.  No chance to slip away unseen I keep going on steady and deliberate.

"Hey mate, got a light?"

Fuck, crossing the light to me, I'm more visible than he is.  I shake my head.  A heavy clang nearby, a street grate, I don't let myself get distracted. 

He moves in, I settle back a step balancing my weight. 

To do what?  Fucked if I know, the nerves just kicked up high.  That hand move, a knife?

Then something strikes in, like a snake.  Grabs the shadowed figure, engulfing his whole head, dragging him back like the weight of a body is nothing, into the shadow, out of the semicircle of illumination.

Did I see that?  MY feet and hands work mechanically as I turn and go, back to my car, starting the engine. 

"Nothing", I recite to myself, like a mantra. 

"Nothing."

Two deep breaths, lock the doors, and I pull out.  Punch on the radio to the local college station, the merry beat of a Belle and Sebastian track driving off the shock.  Some things you just have to let go, not wonder bout too hard.

I pass back through the lot, and even that collapses.  A heavy drain grate, tossed aside haphazard across the parking lot, a glint of steel next to it.

Two points, luminous in my headlights like cat eyes.  Then they're gone.

[Eater of Clowns]

Not for the first time in his life, Sams stole.  All the stories he'd heard from people about nicking a pack of gum he'd never had.  No, he knew he was stealing.  Again, it was from the Paynites.  They wouldn't mind.  Ever since things went a bit awry up above there's been a lack of bodies to fill these lovely suits of armor.  He didn't power it up; didn't want anyone back in his old Operations noticing a rogue suit walking about.

It had been a very long walk.  Even with all the running for his life he'd been up to lately, this armor was heavy.  Better a tin of meat than a squishy bit of it when it comes to Nessies, though.  He gave up on the map not long after he realized that the neat little lines on the page bore little resemblance to the winding, dark alleys of this underground world.  Hopefully if he ended up lost he'd be able to at least use it to find an exit.

Why were there so many?  They poured out of that school too readily.  We made sure of it, making all that noise, but they had an army it seemed.  That wasn't just some response to disturbance.  Either that school was directly over a nest, or they were massing there intentionally.  What better way to find out than a stroll through the sewers?  It wasn't exactly any safer in Southampton proper any longer.

A great number of dead faces and horrors from the night swam across his eyes in his exhaustion.  He even saw a light.  He followed it because, well, heading toward an imaginary light made as much sense as any of the other aimless turns he'd taken in the sewers.  It was blue and never grew past faint as he neared what appeared to be a sizable room.

Slowly, in case this was the nest, and as quietly as he could manage in all this metal, he crept forward.  In it were corpses, and a book, and a lamp, and a book, and a man.

The man was pointing a shotgun near his feet.  He wore a long coat and the lamp on the table behind him seemed to, no, did make him brighter.  He was ethereal.

Sams' knees shook in exhaustion and fear.  He made ready to run but realized, quickly, he'd never get far.  The apparition was measuring him up.  Sams' eyes flickered over to the big, ancient, beautiful book again, then going back to the translucent man standing before him.

"Who the fuck are YOU?  The ghost of John Wayne?"

[Luna]

I am all kinds of happy to see this rolling again.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

This makes my day a lot less shitty. Must get rolling on the Khara bits.

[Luna]

Side note, and moment of "huhWHAT" this morning.

Read a review of the Winnie the Pooh movie this morning.  Last paragraph:

The version of the feature I saw was preceded by a very charming short called "The Legend of Nessie,"

I haven't had enough coffee for that shit, yet.  Images of Kanga, being torn apart and devoured...

[Doktor Howl]

Not done with this, just very busy right now.