All Good Things
So, disclaimer...this is at present the one and only time I have ever put pen to paper, so to speak. This is literally my first time writing something. So A) it's going to suck and B) please let me know why it sucks. Can't fix what I don't know about. Also, swearing. LOTS of it in here. If you don't like that...sucks to be you.
All Good Things
My name is Jason Stanton. At this precise moment I'm laying in the middle of some damned field somewhere, holding most of my intestines in my gut and trying not to roll around on the ground dying so much so this damned memory recorder piece of shit can do its job. It's kind of amazing, it's like time is slowing down to all but nothing, I can think and see so clearly. I'm supposed to recount my life story into this thing when I die, or something like that, so the tech boys can pull tactically valuable intel from it, or so the theory goes. What the fuck ever. I never wanted to be here anyway.
So where to begin? I guess introductions are in order.
Like I said, my name's Jason. Most people call me Jack, I really don't know why. No logic there. I, uh...well, when this whole mess began, I was 22. I was an office drone, working in a cubicle for some shitty-ass company or another. I don't even remember the name. I think I had something I was actually supposed to be doing, but it basically just boiled down to me answering the phone, then putting whoever it was on hold regardless of what they actually wanted. I don't know what purpose that served, but they were content to pay me to do it, and so do it I did. I didn't have much for hobbies, too crappy for sports, I'd play some games and read some but I didn't really get a lot of free time. Worked a lot of overtime. Someone's gotta push that damn button, right?
At home, the place wasn't much. Bedroom, combined living room/kitchen/dining room, bathroom. Simple, but it did the job. Not much to say about town. It was small, no one liked it, but no one could afford to move. The school sucked too much ass for anyone to get enough education to go somewhere else, and so the next generation of "teachers" knew even less than the one before them. Hooray.
Physically I was fairly nondescript. Not that that's really changed much, but we're keeping it past tense. Five foot ten, lean, not like real skinny, but not exactly overweight either, you know? Just kinda there. No real defining characteristics. No scars, I never really went outside all that much, and no piercings or tattoos. The idea just...yeah, I don't really like needles. I don't think anyone actually does. Just kind of a regular Joe Schmoe. Nothing that would make me stand out in a crowd. Oh yeah, and I'm a fox. Red. Suppose that might matter, huh?
...what? Shut the fuck up. Smartass.
Let's see here...oh yeah, the girlfriend. She's pretty sweet. One of those supermodel types, you know? The kind people put up phony naked pictures of on the internet. Plus she's like totally into me. The two of us, we'd jump into her Ferrari and go to her summer home on the moon where we'd make out and have sex on a bed made of liquid chocolate. Life was great. And in case you missed it, that was sarcasm. Hell no, nobody wanted me. And why the fuck would they? So I'd go home, be bored, jerk off to internet porn, and crash until work the next day.
So anyway, the morning that day started out just like any other, really. Alarm went off way too damned early. I stumbled around...you know what? Fuck past tense anyway, this is supposed to be like you're there, or some such shit. So I'm stumbling around the house trying to get dressed, get some breakfast, get a shower...not necessarily in that order...but I like not to be rushed in the mornings, so I always get up early, turn on the news, relax a little while I eat my breakfast. Flipping through the channels there, and it's the usual BS...
"...ock market up today analysts are predicting..."
"...iolence continuing to claim innocent..."
"...freak meteor shower last night with many actually impacti..."
"...has been arrested for embezzling funds collected for a charity fund..."
...boring. Fuck it.
Another boring-ass day. Like yesterday the boss told me that he wanted me to come in an hour early today because he something-or-another and of course I agreed because I was hoping to get Saturday off, which we all know was never going to happen anyway, but dare to dream. So I head outside, it's still fucking dark out, sun isn't even up. Me, I walk to work. It's healthy, which has never been a huge concern with me, but why not, right? Also I'm cheap. It's only a couple miles to work, and usually at this hour the weather's fairly nice out. So I'm walking down the street, listening to some music, kicking rocks at my (imaginary) boss, and basically just doing my thing. To give you some perspective, when you come out of my apartment it's actually a fairly straight shot to work, you just head left. It's mostly a residential neighborhood, little houses and apartments and stuff all mixed up together. Some gas stations and shit. Not too much going on until you head further down the street where there's like the restaurants and stuff.
Anyway, I'm rocking out to some song about something I've never experienced, sung by some people who've never experienced whatever it is they were singing about, and this cop car just goes chasing past from behind me, heading downtown. Sirens, lights, the works. What with the music and me facing away from it and all, I had no idea it was even coming. Scared the shit outta me. The ambulance that followed it up was even more unusual. I was actually a little curious at this point, especially considering the time of day and all, but I really couldn't bring myself to care all that much. Why? Simple. There was only a cop car and an ambulance. No fire truck. And since no one else was at the office at this hour, that meant that the building wasn't burning down, which meant I still had to go to work, which meant I didn't give a fuck.
All such oddities aside, the rest of the walk, and the morning even, went by fairly typically. And I do mean "all such oddities" because like cop cars and ambulances and stuff went by the place at least four more times in the morning, although I wasn't really paying all that much attention. No one else came into work, no surprise, and no one called, so I found myself contemplating poking myself in the eye with a pencil for like six hours when I decided to go get some lunch. I hadn't gotten far though when I noticed a crowd and some like emergency vehicle lights and stuff. People were doing their crowd-gossip thing, I caught a few little bits of it. Stuff like "not another one" and "heard this is happening all over the place, not just here" and "man I gotta take a dump". Guess not everyone cared. Unfortunately for me, this crowd was between me and my delicious heart attack-inducing goodness, so I shouldered my way through as best I could, and got a fair look at what was going on.
Three cops were wrestling this dude to the ground, and he's just going completely apeshit. But you gotta understand, he's like a little dude, like a really little dude. Some kinda like ferret or something, and he just rears back and throws two of them off him, then grabs the third cop, picks the dude up completely over his fucking head, and then smashes him down into the road. Even over the noise of this guy screaming like the lunatic he was, even over the crowd, you could still hear that crack. The cop isn't moving at all, and you could just start to see small trails of blood oozing out from under him. Aw hell. Suddenly the whole crowd is silent.
It doesn't really last of course, because Freakazoid there rushes the crows, screeching and slashing at people. The whole crowd starts panicking, people running all over the place, screaming and trying to get away from him. Turns out they needn't have bothered, the dude never made it to the line. You ever actually heard a gun go off? Like for real? Trust me, it's WAY louder than in the movies or video games. Sounds like some kind of explosion. Two of these go off, the ferret thing twitches twice and stumbles, but he's still standing. He kind of zombie-walks forward a couple steps, reaching for the nearest person there, and there's one more gunshot. Ferret dude drops, the back of his head wide open, and there's one of the cops, a gray-furred wolf, standing behind him holding the literal smoking gun and gasping for air. His eyes are bugged so far out of his head I'm afraid they're going to fall out. I mean, this guy was freaked. I don't really know if he could legally just shoot someone like that, but considering the guy had just probably killed a cop with his bare hands I don't really think it mattered either. The third cop there had to literally force the wolf's arms down physically, and pry the gun out of his fingers. By this point everything has completely frozen. No one's moving, no one's talking, it's just completely still and completely silent.
I'm kind of curious actually what the cops would have said at that point ("nothing to see here"?) but as fate would have it my life had to be a bit more fucked up than that, because right then this tiger chick in the audience starts just screeching about as high-pitched as it gets. Not like screaming, mind you, some kind of feral animalistic pseudoroar thing. Before anyone can react she jumps onto the guy beside her, knocking him and several other people over, and starts clawing bloody tracks in his chest, and then leans over and bites into his shoulder. Once again the crowd is running and screaming, once again I have a headache.
So I did what anyone would do in my place, I think. I rushed her. With some adrenaline pumping I shoulder-charged her, slamming her back off of the dude and onto the ground. She starts screaming at me, and I'm just like "Shut the fuck up" cool as ice, and punch her square in the face. She goes down hard.
Heh...bullshit I did. You think I'm gonna go risk my neck for some fucktard I don't even know? Hell no. Like I said...I did what anyone would do in my place. I turned around and ran like hell. Think I might have even pissed myself a little, and I definitely did when I started hearing more of that fucking screeching. I stopped, for some reason, and turned around, and even more of the crowd is freaking out. People screaming and tearing into each other, blood's all over the place, I'm panting hard, gasping for air, and my heart is pounding so hard that I'm thinking that I'm going to be able to manage that heart attack even without lunch at Burger Sovereign.
So, I'm readying my clever plan to just GTFO, turning away from the psychotic scene behind me, and as I turn around the doors on the ambulance just maybe twenty feet in front of me bust open and another one jumps out and starts running right at me. There's something weird about this one, even more than the others, but his teeth seem longer, more jagged, he's got like actual claws going on, even more than the usual, and his fur's falling off in random patches, showing what looks like tiny protrusions of bone here and there pushing up from the skin. His eyes are completely splotched red and black and brown, no white whatsoever, and tiny fucking streams of blood are running down from them, and of course, he's gunning straight for me. So, of course, that's a great time for my legs to decide not to move.
Obviously they started again, but he got way closer to me than I would have liked before rationalish thought returned to me. I bolted directly away from the road, back towards the building line, slipping in between two buildings. This quickly led into some sort of alley maze, and I'm running around corners and dodging trash cans as I can hear this zombie (because that's what I'd decided they were by this point. Never mind the fact that perfectly living people were becoming more of them. Never mind the fact that there's really no logic that shooting a zombie would put it down. I said rationalISH thought.) like ten feet behind me, growling and ramming just about everything I was managing to dodge. I whip around this corner, hop a little wood fence that was there for God-only-knows what reason, and look behind, regretting it instantly as the thing swipes at me so close I can feel my whiskers bend from it. Fortunately it didn't seem terribly intelligent or it would have realized sooner that my tail was well within its reach. However, since fate loathes me, right about then is when the damn lights went on. The thing reaches, gets ahold of the back of my tail, and promptly trips over an old tire laying there, losing its hold on me no sooner than it had gained it. I had just enough time to giggle maniacally at my good fortune before slamming headfirst into the brick wall at the end of the alley.
Everything moved really really slowly after that. It was kind of like being drunk, like way more than is a good idea. The whole world was spinning, and I wasn't really sure which way was actually up. Everything I am seeing is shifting colors, positions, everything. Seeing double would have been a damn improvement. I actually bent over and threw up right there, it was so bad. I had enough sense to roll away from that shit but as I'm laying on the ground, leaning against the wall and moaning I can see the zombie guy getting up from the tire, growling and coming towards me. I really can't say if he was moving quickly or not, time was too outta whack for me to tell. To be honest I'm surprised I can remember this at all, but even still it's pretty fuzzy. No real details, just vague impressions. I know it was coming at me, and then there was this something, and then something else happened and some stuff went down. Actually, I guess I really can't remember it at all. And...cue curtains.
I woke up some time later, very gradually. My head hurt like a bitch, fucking just pounding away with a damned jackhammer in my skull. My eyes felt like they were made of needles, and whatever fuckhole had decided to leave the light on was going to get to enjoy me breaking his fingers off one by one and shoving them right up his ass. I still only had vague impressions at first, subtle sounds and general noise, but it started to slowly come together. I realized I was hearing voices, people talking and moving around, and that while my eyes were in fact not made of needles, I was still going to have to murder whoever left the light on.
A face came into view, and I would actually laughed rather stupidly as I saw him. The same damn cop from before, the wolf guy with the gun. Also someone else behind him, looked like a black panther. A real small one, wearing glasses. The cop guy turned back to the panther and said, "Good, he's coming around." He then looked back at me and asked, "How are you feeling?"
I responded with a highly intelligent "ugh" and sat up fully, immediately regretting it, but managed to keep myself upright. The world, however, rotated at the point, sending me falling back over to my side. Completely not my fault. The cop reacted quick, managing to grab me just after my face hit the floor, and helped me to sit upright again, now with yet another ache to add to the list. As the world started to settle I was able to get a better look around.
The room we were in was fairly small, concrete from the looks of things, and really utilitarian. There were a few bunks in the room, over at the far end to my right, all looking like some kind of military deal, gray metal with simple green blankets. Gray metal lockers lined one of the walls, just opposite me, and the gray metal door was to their left, over in the corner. To my left, against the wall I was leaning on, was a table. Guess what it was made out of. A handful of folded up chairs completed the ensemble. There were no windows that I could see, a dim flickering bulb in the roof provided illumination. Oddly enough, to the right of the lockers looked to be a copy of that poster from the X-Files, with the flying saucer and the stupid slogan thing. "I Want To Believe". I chalked that one up to my serious cranial trauma and just took it as more evidence that I was going to die.
As far as I could see there were four people in the room, counting myself. The one person I hadn't seen before was a rather plump mare, wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt, sitting on one of the bunks. Light tan, with long brown hair, she wasn't overly tall, and was hugging a pillow and rocking back and forth sobbing quietly. Looking back at the other two, the cop looked about like a cop would look, clothes-wise, except for the large gashes clawed in them. I could see bandages underneath his uniform top, or at least what was left of it. I hadn't really noticed before, what with all the homicide and all going on, but this dude was pretty solid. Looked to be at least six feet, and two hundred plus, definitely muscle. I decided to put him above the mare on my "don't fuck with" list. The panther was sitting in a chair over by the lockers, arms crossed and grinning, oddly enough. He was wearing a baseball cap backwards on his head, and sunglasses propped up there over it, along with a black shirt with some kind of logo or another on it and frayed jeans with a hole in one knee. He was a bit younger looking, high teens. But he was also a real little guy, five foot and a half maybe, I'd give him 130 pounds at best. Probably less. The dude was a damn twig. I don't know what point the sunglasses served, seeing as he was wearing prescription ones, but I guess maybe he just thought they looked cool.
As I came to the panther hopped up and came over, offering a hand with a wide grin.
"Sweet dude, you were kinda touch and go for a while there. Name's Fred Benton, but everyone calls me Titan. I, am your savior."
His voice definitely reeked of ubernerd. You know, the kind of higher-pitched, "I'm almost twenty but my balls haven't dropped" voice? I glanced at his hand, and then took it slowly, looking back at him and more than a little confused.
"Titan? Really?"
He kind of paused a little and shrugged, saying, "Yeah, you know, everyone. Well, mostly everyone. And like, not to my face or anything. But on XBox Live they definitely do. Yeah. Titan. 'Cause, you know, I kick total ass."
I turned and looked over at the cop, who at least looked a little more rational than this guy, and mouthed "Titan?" to him. He shrugged, shook his head, and just kind of rolled his eyes. Fortunately, he also elected to intervene.
"Name's Tucker. And that one over there," he siad, jerking his thumb at the mare on the bunk, "is Sharon. As far as I can tell, we're about the only survivors in this area." I must have still been a bit loopy, because what I had just seen, just been through, and what he was saying, really weren't coming together for me.
"Survivors? Of...of what? What the fuck are you talking about? Some psychos or something?"
"No." he replied, shaking his head. "It's bigger than that. We can't be sure yet, but I think this is happening across the entire world."
"It's the zombie apocalypse dude!" the resident expert elected to chime in, adding another reason why I wanted to punch him. I also decided the lights were his fault as well. He was still grinning, like he had just declared we'd all won the lottery. "It's the end of the fucking world."