After the Pandemic: Tables Turning (1 of 2) (638 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 2 on 14 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Matchstick Man <i like ponies> (View user info) at 2005-04-06 20:08:36 EDT
It was yet another cold day in Canada. Colder still was the secluded and almost unknown Ellesmere Island research lab where Dr. Cale had finally combined the proper genetic sequencing and created a metahuman with almost complete immunity to AIDS, HIV...and the pandemic. Not only was this human completely resistant to the original strains, but its hyper-advanced immune system could counter even the most resistant strains of variant A and B, and though he had no proof, Dr. Cale announced to his two lab workers that it would more than likely resist variant C as well. He would take this prototype DNA sequence into the "production room," a small, sterile chamber used for developing humans outside the womb and growing them at an accelerated rate up until the point of about 10 years old through powerful growth hormone injections and steroids. Though he had a very high (87 %) success rate with this method, his clones only lived to the age of about 40.
This had no hope of stopping him.
He had already created six regular living, breathing humans; four of which had died recently due to pnuemonia. These were just details to him. He had neared the end of his thirty-year project, living in seclusion, growing his vegetables and fruits hydroponically in his basement, with no contact with the outside world for fear of discovery by the leeches. He had erected his facility in the far northern reaches of Canada as a last measure of safety against them; they still had a hard time dealing with cold. Thirty years of hard work had finally culminated to this. He had created the cure to the leech virus that manifested itself as psuedo-vampires and almost-zombies.
He had created a real superhuman. A real human superhuman.
He had run extensive tests on his supercomputer and, assuming everything went as predicted, he had a DNA sample of what would grow up to be beyond "fit," capable of leaping 20 feet from a standstill and running faster than a racehorse. He had created a nerve growth serum a few years back that could enhance couple dozen millisecond reflexes of an average human to a couple nanoseconds, and he was planning on using this, too. He was sure this would work. His human had "grown up" fast, as usual, and was now in a very receptive state of mind. He would run it through the simulations, the learning systems, to teach him English, to teach him how to walk around, to teach it about the leech plague, and to teach it how to fight. When it was through the next day, he walked into the room and placed a blanket on the youngest hero he'd ever met.
"So you intend for me to fight these demons?" the young man asked.
"I don't intend it, the human race requires it," said the old man.
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Since the doctor hadn't given him a name, fearing individuality would teach him to value his own life too much to risk it, the young man had named himself Sky. He looked up at the heavens during the day and figured that if anything were greater, bigger, more untouchable than the sky, he'd change his name to reflect it.
He had been wandering for days after the leeches attacked Dr. Cale's lab. They had found it by following a paper trail of a few emergency deliveries he had made a few years ago. Sky found an emergency fire axe and a large kitchen knife and used them to thwart, he estimated, around two dozen vampires. He'd found an old riding cloak in a closet, and after stockpiling some food into a rucksack, burned the building. The other plague monsters mustn't know what happened here, he reasoned, or they'll come after me much sooner than I want them to.
He had been on the road now for almost four days, with his meager clothes, his meager rations, and his bright red axe. He had not encountered any resistance since the beginning. However, he had encountered an old, abandoned fishing hut on the channel, and within it he found a large stock of frozen fish and several maps of the surrounding area. With his knowledge of where he'd come from, he realized where he was very quickly and determined where he had to go, Ottawa, so it was called, from his teachings earlier that week.
Now, fearsome as he was, Sky was still just a 10-year-old, and when he arrived in Ottawa, no one trusted him. He was instructed to eat an onion on many occasions, and so he did-but he was still young and his mouth could hardly stand the taste. He would seep a few tears after a bite, but he was strong and could hold in any other pain. He found himself in a dangerous situation after staying out too late one night, and having only his axe to protect him, encountered three younger-looking vampires wandering the streets of Ottawa. They were laughing, joking, reminiscing, apparently, of the night before, when they had caught a careless human and feasted. Sky hadn't nearly enough hate in him to attack in anger, but he still stepped out of his hiding spot in the alley, which he had quickly found, and confronted the vampires.
"What you're doing is wrong," he shouted.
"What are you going to do about it, squirt?" one of the leeches muttered back at him. Sky reached behind his back, slowly and deliberately unstrapped the axe from his back, and brought it out in front of him. "You're only a kid, what are you going to do with that?" the monster demanded.
"Let's take him back to the house, use him as a watch," one smirked to his neighbor. He recieved a subtle nod of agreement. Both of these were intended to be secret, but Sky's heightened awareness enabled him to pick them both up. One vampire approached him slowly and held out his arms in a welcoming fashion, but Sky brought up his axe, and in one fluid motion slashed off the leech's head and left arm. The other two rushed him at that moment and met similar fates. Seeing his murderous self, Sky dropped to his knees and considered this last action of his. Thinking quickly, he grabbed one of the heads by the scalp and hurried back to the Luke headquarters he had encountered earlier. He would show that doubting leader, he thought to himself. He would make everyone see how great he was.
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Seven years after his first encounter with the plague monsters, Sky had found himself a largish claymore in an antique store in Ottawa, and the local Luke Cell leader, realizing the child's potential, had outfitted him with a Beretta handgun and orders to seek and destroy, promising him that once he had killed one hundred leeches, he would be sent to New York, where big plans were being fashioned on Manhatten Island. So far he had only encountered sixty-three leeches in his limited wanderings, watched from far above by the Luke Cell's reconnaissance unit. Sixty-one of them, he had killed, and the other two he had brutally maimed, relieving one of an arm and another of a leg below the knee before they somehow managed to escape.
Tonight's hunt would be different. He had recieved advanced word via ham radio that several dozen leeches would be congregating at an old church nearby to celebrate the rise to power of a new "dark lord," who would rule over the area sprawling to the north for many miles. Apparently he had risen through a bloody coup, and the entire previous regime had been killed. Many dignitaries were expected to attend, as well as the leader himself. Security would be tight, but Sky was sure he could handle it.
Sky got his gun, his sword, binoculars, and several spare clips of ammunition, as well as his new cloak, a full-length black cape that completely enshrouded him in silken darkness if he needed not to be seen. He nodded at the door gaurd at the old mansion where the Luke Cell took up residence and sprinted out onto the road, getting his bearings and within minutes finding himself on a four-story apartment building in a suburbian area overlooking the neighboring church. With his binoculars he was able to see but not hear inside through a skylight on top of the church. He determined that it would be too much of a fall to dive straight in through the skylight, and utterly too risky, considering his limeted view of the inside. Instead he would penetrate the darkness like a hot needle through butter and make his bloody way in through the front. He had heard much about ceremonial security from the luke leader, and from what he could gather, most of them relied "too heavily" on their speed and strength and "not enough" on conventional firepower, meaning that the estimate of about three guns between 40 leeches would likely be accurate. He noted the positions of the gaurds of the front door and made his way back down the elevator shaft of the abandoned building, out the back door, and into the sewer. From there he would make his way about fifty feet down the line to the manhole located almost directly in front of the church, and proceed to create as much hell as a mortal possibly could.
He came to be under the manhole in a matter of seconds, and, realizing that climbing out of it in a traditional fashion would not be an option, stopped to devise a plan. He came up with a stunningly brilliant idea, or so he thought; he would very slowly climb to the top, very slowly pry the manhole cover up to the point where he could lift it, then burst out and throw it at the most prudent gaurd, and charge the other. He nodded to no one, and clapped his palms to his head in an attempt to psyche himself out. He looked up, looked down, and quickly drew a syringe of a PCP variant called "flight" from his belt pack. He had only three doses left of the five he had salvaged from an abandoned lab on the North end of town. He had used one dose in the fateful night when he let two live, ambushing a crowd of a dozen heavily armed leeches about an hour before dawn. The other he had used simply to find out what it did, and discovered that it sped up his reflexes past the already-incredible point they were pushed to, and reduced his pain sensitivity to a hairbreadth from nothing. In short, these syringes contained a hunter's "performance-enhancing" drug. He smiled at his ingenuity and stabbed the needle into his left forearm, pushing down and slowly releasing, then dropping the used syringe in the sewage below. He used a strip of bandage from his belt pouch to cover up the wound, and his hands found the manhole cover. He crammed himself up as tightly as he could and began to judge the weight of the plate of iron. Satisfied that he had a good idea of the weight, he braced his feet, took a deep breath, and pushed.
The weight of his entire body plus the force of his feet pushed down against the iron rung of sewer ladder as it shuddered, groaned, and pushed back with the help of the concrete it was embedded in. Sky shot up through the tunnel like a scared gopher fleeing his hole, sighted a gaurd, and threw. The manhole cover flew straight and true, and in the moment of confusion, Sky rushed the remaning gaurd and cuffed him in the face, hitting him squarely in the nose and feeling the bone break. He brought his sword out in front of him, made the sign of the cross, and drove it straight into the beast's heart. He then turned to the now-recovering leech who had been struck with the manhole cover. The thing had the wind knocked out of it, but was drawing breath steadily now, and positively seeping with anger. Sky turned toward him and smiled.
"Say good night," he choked out. A flash of silver and crimson shot out into the night. The silver retreated under Sky's cloak and the crimson ran brightly down the front of the church. Sky cracked the front door and four more vampires became quite alerted. Sky ducked around the door as the leeches rushed out, and stabbed three in the back, following that up with a forehead tap by a silenced beretta to take out the last. He sheathed his sword, walked in, and proceeded to make his way up to the choir loft. The vampire warlord was saying something about a "new order" when he suddenly stopped. He grabbed desparately for his chest, but it was too late. The .45 calibur silver bullet had already left an exit wound the size of a small grapefruit. Sky smiled at his gun. A very talented but very crazy young man back at the mansion had bored out the barrel and modified the clips to hold Magnum rounds, but Sky preferred to follow the old legends and use silver bullets. In addition, they made the blood flow a lot faster, for some reason. The entire congregation was stunned for a moment, and then the leader's aide and personal bodygaurds succumbed to bullets through their hearts. The master of ceremonies soon followed, as well as eight audience members, six of which were shot through the heart and two across the jugular. Sky ducked, reloaded, and holstered his gun, in favor of the sword, and charged toward the choir loft door as it was flung wide by angry vampires now alerted to his presence. The first ten went down with not a sound made and the following dozen went down in much the same fashion. The anger quickly turned into panic as the leeches turned their backs and seven more went down from fatal gunshot wounds. Sky jumped out through the front window and did his best to stop the bleeding, killing thirty more monsters before breaking a hard sweat. The rest managed to get away, but Sky was content. All he had to do was return to base by way of the rooftops and bring the leader to the church in the morning.
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Sky woke up at roughly 4pm, as he intended, and proceeded to the front courtyard to take the leader and a small company of men to visit the scene of his unadultered chaos the night before. As they reached the area, Sky was shocked to see three vampires cleaning up the mess. Responding with every last bit of primal fury in his veins, he seized his sword and charged them. The suprised "type-c" vampires had no time to react before they were dropped with many fatal gashes through their torsos and necks. The captain had no option but to smile on this action. This show of pure malevolent violence against the greatest enemy to peace ever known, combined with the blood running half an inch deep when he opened the church front door, made him very impressed indeed.
He turned and opened his mouth, "Sky, you're a magnificent soldier, that you are, and I'm sad to lose you. Now that you've done this, we will have very little do up here," came out. "I'm sure there will be more for you to do in New York City, though."
Sky smiled the most genuine smile of his life as he took the keys to the leader's plundered Honda and made his way out to the parking lot to begin his sojourn.
User Reviews
Submitted by notyou (user info) at 2005-07-12 19:15:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2005-05-12 17:56:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I have just got done reading these all and I have enjoyed them all. Great work everyone, +2's for all!
Submitted by getyourvoltronon (user info) at 2005-04-08 19:58:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Reminded me sooooo much of Devil May Cry.
Submitted by matchstickman (user info) at 2005-04-07 18:34:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
there were going to be more but the lab was destroyed, and as for his predecessors, they were pretty much normal humans created to help create him
:/
i do the best i can to use the most specific language i can
Submitted by hcp28 (user info) at 2005-04-07 12:38:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I wonder what happened to the other ones that were produced. Did his brothers live or die? Were they super human as well? This is good and has a lot of potential.
Submitted by Dannie (user info) at 2005-04-07 11:32:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I lost the rythym of the story in strange wording at times. I would have loved to see it broken down in to more installments to really enjoy the "history" of the character.
Overall very, very good. I look forward to the next.
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-04-07 10:19:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
excellent
Submitted by Revolutionman (user info) at 2005-04-07 00:41:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Potential potential potential.
Submitted by matchstickman (user info) at 2005-04-07 00:41:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
i have a bit of a skewed style of writing, you could say; when i write action, it bunches up.
if you ever have an adrenaline moment like that, you understand that things just become a haze and you can hardly distinguish one moment from the next.
i'll try harder on part 2...hopefully i'll pump it out before the weekend, then maybe start another line.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-04-07 00:04:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"He looked up at the heavens during the day and figured that if anything were greater, bigger, more untouchable than the sky, he'd change his name to reflect it."
That was a great line. Best line in the whole bit. It's totally cool that you used some of my ideas and terminology in your post. Good concept, interested to see where this goes. Thanks, guy.
HOWEVER, I have to mention: You need to pace your action scenes out a little more. Your 'action moments' consisted of large, bulky paragraphs, which made it read almost like a relentless run on sentence. Break it up into smaller paragraphs, and it should be easier and more exciting to read.
Submitted by matchstickman (user info) at 2005-04-06 21:45:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
sorry about guard...years of torment by europeans with bad english.
other than that thanks much
Submitted by shadowofthedivine (user info) at 2005-04-06 21:01:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
not bad boy
one point, guard is u then a.
that just bugs me
Submitted by stardamage (user info) at 2005-04-06 20:31:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Whooooooaaaaaa.
This was wicked good. Keep on, please!
Submitted by matchstickman (user info) at 2005-04-06 20:18:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
sorry forgot to back-link
http://www.ubersite.com/m/63663 The Enemy of My Enemy (Pt. 5)
http://www.ubersite.com/m/61238 Introduction