The Tower

[Eliska Loxalyn]

|| If she was sure of nothing else it was that Simon was considerably heavier than he looked. Or, perhaps she wasn’t in the great shape she thought she was. No chance of that, of course, so it was Possibility #1 all the way. In his defense, the man had been shot in the side and had managed not to die or even completely pass out on her. Though his eyes seemed mostly closed, his legs had yet to buckle and he was still supporting some of his weight. It was slow going despite their combined effort and they soon fell behind. Way behind.

Eli didn’t call for help as she didn’t want to worry little Engie, but there was no keeping up like this. Because she was confident she could fend off anything that came from behind- and so far nothing had- she didn’t fret too much about it. Boston had control from the front and there was no telling what was up there anyways. Probably more of them. As they passed through a section of hall with tufts of cut wires poking out randomly, she scowled and wondered what exactly they were heading into. She hadn’t heard shrieks of agony and no one had come running from that direction yet. All good signs.

Suddenly the still of the hall was disturbed as a man approached from behind. He wasn’t shambling so she opted not to shoot him outright, but pulled her gun just the same. He passed on his way and when she heard the shot, realized someone up there had had the same idea with a different outcome. One arm looped around Simon, the other kept the gun out and gripped in knuckles gone white from strain. Moments later she staggered into the main room and all of its chaos. Boston was cutting his arm open and the majority of the room was watching in disgusted awe. Fun times. It seemed the gig was up and he’d confessed to having been bitten. Duh.

Having little to add to the conversation and too exhausted to talk, Eli sank to her knees in some unspecified, unoccupied corner and took Simon with her. His bandage was soaked in blood and his skin was an eerie shade of gray that suggested he’d had enough exploring for one day. Everyone looked a little worse off than they had the last time she’d seen them, but it appeared they were all still here. There were even a few more. She turned her attention to Simon’s red bandage and gave keeping him alive another go. ||

I have no clue what’s going on, so don’t ask, but we made it. Lie still. I’m going to make sure we didn’t lose any of your internal organs along the way. We can probably try the morphine now if you’re interested.

(It's not my best work and I had to breeze by a few events, but its up and that's about the only way I could get it up. We'll deal, I guess.)

[Leila Darkmoon]

(( Since Turk (BnR) has had to temporarily vacate the premises because of Real Life stuff, I’ll be autoing him with permission. If anyone else needs to auto him, please feel free. ))

*Leila shuddered and looked away, unable to watch as Boston cut his arm open deliberately and began to bleed. She had tried to follow his conversation as he had babbled on about his girl being alright now, but a zombie before, and how she had bit him then, but now he was okay, and so was she..

Confused, she gave Turk a worried look, and he responded with his own look similar to her own.

~Ewww! You’re not like, going to drink his blood now.. are you? I can’t deal with Zombies AND Vampires in one night. ~

Turk shrugged.

~Hey, I’m willing to try anything at this point. All I know is I don’t want to turn into one of “them”.~ He squared his shoulders and looked at Boston. ~How should we do this? I uh.. don’t want to bite you or nothin’ ~

Leila shuddered again and looked around at the others. She noticed Eliska sitting down in the corner with Simon, who, judging by the look of his blood soaked bandages, was in a pretty bad way. Deciding to leave Boston and Turk to their gross exchange for a few minutes, she carried the first aid kit over to Eliska and sat down beside her.

~Here, you look like you could do with this. Can I help?~[/b] *[/color]

(( I know its short and sucky.. but couldnt think of anything else.. and hey.. least its up.. ))

[Boston]

Boston shrugged at Turk’s question, and then pocketed his knife and rubbed the back of his head in thought, “Well, here…How about…” He stepped over to a water cooler in an out of the way corner, tugged a small paper cup from the dispenser, and squeezed several drops of blood into it. He filled it with clear water from the cooler and then swirled the contents, so the blood mixed with the water to form a thin pink concoction.

He held the cup out for Turk, “Here ya go, try a shot of that.”

He folded his arms over his abdomen as he handed the cup off, “So I guess down it, then just go sit outta the way until you don’t become a zombie…The whole concept is really just a theory, so in case it doesn’t work, or if it doesn’t work right away…It’d be best if you weren’t in biting distance of anyone else…” He nodded thoughtfully.

[Zombie Overlord]

A massive pair of decaying legs carried whatever had been causing damage to the surrounding buildings into the open – a pair of legs that once may have been human, maybe once zombie, but was now… simply, a creature of mysterious nature. What resembled muddy dead flesh dropped in massive clumps to the ground, sliding over giant, thin steel plates attached to the leg like patches at various spots. Where the flesh fell too thin, when bone should be visible, there were instead thick metal rods, pumping like pistons and spurting steam from the knees and ankles with each step.

The legs, naturally, led quite sensibly into a humanesque torso of similar make as the legs. The arms, long and steel-plated as well, pumped steam out at the elbows and knuckles. Steel patches spotted the abdomen, chest, and back, just the abomination’s spine spared from the seemingly random placement.

Built into the flesh in place of its spine was a series of pistons as in its legs. They pumped at an amazing rate and shouted out steam every several moments, moving even when the abomination was stationary. A network of several pipes sprouted from the nape of the neck and into either shoulder, each wearing what resembled large steel shoulder pads, adorned with several pipes sticking straight into the air. Every few minutes the ends of the pipes glowed orange and erupted with a burst of steam that almost seemed to burn the very air it touched.

A sheet of flesh fell off the abomination’s chest and exposed its ribs – bone fused with more steel obscured its all too human, albeit massive, beating heart from vision. Another series of pipes jutting from the heart lead into the rib cage, spurting thick steam like all the other metal, cooling the abomination down and keeping it moving.

The neck looked completely constructed – thick steel plates and hinges protected the vital body part, and allowed movement almost easy as a human’s. It led to a thick jaw of bolted steel, cheeks of rotting flesh, and blood red eyes in proportion to the rest of its face. The pupil of the right eye blinked on and off with a dark blue light, and that entire eye spun full circles and looked all over, as if independent of the rest of the face.

Whatever horrible will created this abomination, whatever horrible will kept it moving, allowed it to clear city blocks in just a few short steps, and it stopped at right on top of the tower’s foundation, at the military vehicle that had been parked outside (which was now mostly covered in debris). The blue light in its right eye went out, and the abomination stood motionless – aside from the pistons, which continued to pump life into its body.

Steam erupted from the abomination’s ankle, so hot and powerful that the debris covering the entrance to the lab was thrown clear out of the way. A second hiss of steam was enough to almost completely melt even the thick blast door steel of the door, and a third hiss created an opening large enough for zombies to enter.

Unaware of what was through the door or why they were walking through it, the zombies simply continued to file inside. Every once in a while a handful was wiped out in a burst of steam, but not enough that the survivors in the lab could continue not worrying about what was going on outside.

[Boston]

Boston took a step back and threw out his arms to catch balance when the next tremor shook the lab, and retrieved the flashlight from his bag when the main lights suddenly shut off. For a moment there was panic and Boston held the only light source (under his chin, and he said “Booo~ooo”) – the backup generator and emergency lights kicked on a moment later, along with an obnoxious, blaring alarm.

Assuming it was as simple as the alarm being tripped because the tremors, Boston made his way hastily to the security room to find the shutoff switch. And indeed, he found the shutoff switch easily enough – a big red button, in fact, and Boston let out a laugh, “Ha! I was hoping it’d be something like this.” He smashed the button with his fist and the alarm stopped all at once.

His attention was lifted to the security monitor, then, and he saw the mess the abomination had made of the front door. A mob of zombies ambled down the hallway, towards the second and last blast door – the last separator between the survivors and zombies, and wouldn’t you know it, that door lifted wide open as a result of the electrical system resetting with the tremors.

Panic erupted when the survivors immediately inside spotted the zombies gradually making their way towards the lab, and when Boston noticed all this after returning to the main room, he glanced over to Turk with a bit of a shrug, “What kinda secret lab is this, huh? A simple tremor shorts the circuits and the doors open? Where’s the fuse box around these parts, maybe I can just trip it back.”

Understandably, Turk did not know the location of the fuse box, or if a secret lab should even have a fuse box that was easily accessible. “Well I’m sure there’s one around here somewhere, probably in some custodial closet right out in the open…” Boston muttered to himself as he began walking around the room, always just a bit too calm.

He tugged the bat out of the its sheath and shouldered it, tapping it against the collar of his jacket as he thought aloud, “I suppose the lab is already hidden, so obviously anyone inside is supposed to be here…So I guess it wouldn’t really matter how easily accessible the main fuse box is…” He stopped in front of a door marked “storage”, and decided to open it with a strong side-kick instead of trying the doorknob at all. The door came off easily and landed quite conveniently out of the way, and then he tugged a thin chain to turn on the single light bulb in the ceiling of the small closet.

“There we are…” He flipped open the panel for the fuse box, and since he didn’t know which switch was which and they had been labeled in pencil which had since faded, he started flipping all of them. Several had been off already, and when flipped back on, the lights flickered as power was returned to the main system and the main lights turned back on.

Eventually the main blast door regained power and began to close, so Boston stuck his head out to watch. Slowly but surely the door crept lower to the ground, as if purposely drawing out the suspense as the zombies picked up their pace at the scent of fresh food.

Sparks shot from the sides and tops of the door and it stopped dead about two feet from the ground. The circuit breakers all flipped off and the backup lights powered up once more. “Dammit. We may in a bit of a pickle…” Boston began flipping the switches, but it was no use. The door had overloaded the circuits and the switches kept snapping back to their off positions.

He made his way back out to the main room, and over to Turk. “This place got a back door?” He held his bat across his shoulders, his wrists on either end balancing it, and he winked at Leila.

[Nubaum Turk]

Turk stared despairingly at the paper cup where it lay on its side on the tiled floor. The tremors that rocked the lab had thrown him over sideways, spilling the contents out as he had raised it to his lips. He briefly considered asking Boston for another helping. He also considered taking it, by force if need be.

Turk shook his head. Had he really been thinking of another man's blood as a "helping", a unit of food? Was his mind slipping away that quickly?

A spray of sparks from the blast door brought Turk back into the moment, and the door screeched to a halt before closing. From his seat on the floor, Turk watched the shambling horde approach, meandering from the far end of the corridor, their ghastly flesh given an almost life-like color from the orange runner lights in the hall. Behind the mob, he could more sense than see a menacing presence, a travesty of life made manifest. Their slow, inexorable approach was, to Turk, his own fate coming to claim him. Years spent around death, and to finally be claimed by the dead.

The mercenary lurched to his feet. The lab spun about him, or perhaps it was just him, but Turk's stomach heaved. He turned, and retched into a conveniently-placed wastebasket. As far as he could tell, the bottom of the basket was filled with his own blood. Turk wiped his mouth with the back of a gloved hand as Boston approached.

“This place got a back door?” Boston held his bat, the one with the concealed firearms, across his shoulders, his arms hanging from either end. Turk's eyes locked on a bead of the cop's blood as it slid down the narrow cut in his inner forearm. His stomach tried to heave. The exposed flesh within the cut was pinkish, and glistened wetly. Turk's mouth started to throb.

Turk's stomach settled, and he tried to find something else to stare at. "Uh, yeah...", he glanced about wildly for a moment, then shook his head vigorously. It made his head hurt. "Yes, I think there is." Turk hastened to the nearest computer terminal, and tapped a few keys on the keyboard. The computer, which had been humming quietly to itself, came to life. After a few moments of typing, Turk steps back to allow Boston a view of the monitor.

Displayed on the screen is a schematic of the underground structure. "There," he says, touching a finger to the screen. "It's a ways off, and who knows what's between here and there, but you might just make it if you hurry." Turk glances over his shoulder at the huddled group of survivors. "They'll slow you down. You better get moving. Like, now."

Turk turns and heads to a maintenance closet. He retrieves a roll of wire and a set of pliers, both of which he stashes in his vest. That done, he fumbles in his pocket for the last of his shotgun shells, and sets to loading it as he heads for the blast door. Turk stops and looks at Engie, then Leila, and then turns to Boston. "I'll buy you all some time, but you have to go. Now!" With that said, he drops to the ground and rolls under the blast door.

[Leila Darkmoon]

*Leila screamed and put her hands over her ears as the deafening alarm suddenly sprang to life and seemed intent on blaring their eardrums with the news that the lights had just gone out and everyone was going to die. Even though the emergency generator kicked in and some small light returned, Engie screamed as well, and ran to Leila’s side. Leila comforted her as best she could with no free hands as she glared at whoever should look her way in the near darkness. She saw Boston wander back to the security room and thankfully the horrible alarm soon went off. Relieved, she smiled down at Engie and reached out to gather the small girl in her arms.

~It’s okay babe. Everything will be alright…~ She tried to sound more convinced than she felt, which was made even harder when the lights came back on and she saw that the security door had lifted up, revealing the sight of a horde of Zombies making their way directly for them. Engie screamed again and buried her face in Leila’s stomach who could do nothing but stare down the hallway with wide, terrified eyes. Beside her feet, Simon twitched as Eliska looked up from her patch up job to follow Leila’s gaze.

~Shit!~ was all she said, before going back to tending to Simon’s wounds. The tremors had sent the first aid kit flying, and she and several others were busy picking up the rolled around items. Simon gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, wishing for this nightmare to end.

Boston returned and said something to Turk who was staring down at the cup on the ground he had been holding in his hands only moments before, before he disappeared again. A few minutes later the door started coming down very slowly and Leila held her breath as the zombies started to gain momentum.

She gasped in horror though as the door closed most of the way before stopping short about two feet from the ground just as the lights went out again. Boston returned in the soft glow of the emergency lights, only to state the obvious that they may be in a bit of a pickle. As he asked Turk if there was a backdoor, Leila shot him a look that would’ve stopped anyone else in their tracks as he had the audacity to wink at her. Glancing down to where Turk was sitting near her, Leila noticed that he really didn’t look good at all. Again, noticing the cup on the floor, she asked quietly

~So… er.. did you drink that or not?? How are you feeling.. cause you look like shit.~

Without answering her, he climbed to his feet and showed Boston something at the computer screen before grabbing something she couldn’t see. With one last look at her and Engie, he told them he was going to buy them some time and then disappeared under the door before she could stop him.

~Well now, that was just stupid!~ she yelled in disgust. Glaring at Boston, she spat ~ What the hell did you let him do that for??? He is going to get himself killed out there!~

As Engie began to whimper again, Leila forced herself to calm down. Besides, it wasn’t really Boston’s fault she realised. She was just frustrated by everything that was happening and her inability to stop it. Taking Engie by the hand, she walked over to Boston.

~I’m sorry.. know its not your fault. Some guys have just gotta play Rambo, ya know? It’s in the blood or something… ~ she reached out to place her spare hand on his arm as her eyes pleaded with him. ~But you are NOT going to bail on us, you hear me? We have to get out of this, and you seem to be the only leader we have got. So do what a good leader does and lead us out of this hell… please??~ *

[Boston]

Boston nodded a little at Turk’s words, staring at the screen, eyes narrowing and brow furrowing as he committed the map to memory, Resident Evil: Outbreak style. Left, left, right, hallway, right there, water cooler (marked on a schematic?), nice and easy, should be simple enough.

He looked up when Turk said he should go alone, and he nodded in agreement – apparently way ahead of Turk, he had already started walking towards the hallway leading to the exit. He twirled his bat in his hand and it landed against his shoulder with the sound of multiple guns cocking, but then Turk’s comment that he’ll buy them time drew his attention back to the crowd.

He glanced over just in time to see Turk rolling under the door, and he sighed; in the same instance he saw the cup on the floor, lying beside a small pool of the light pink concoction. “Well I could’ve gotten you another cup, ya know!” He shouted after Turk, “My body makes it, it’s not like I’m gonna run out!” He rolled his eyes and shook his head, and turned to walk away in that frustratingly calm demeanor he’s maintained throughout the entire story.

But then Leila began shouting at him, and he glanced back at her over his shoulder, “I ain’t his baby sitter, lady. He’s a big boy, he had the cure, standing right there in front of him. He made his choice.” And then eeew, she touched hiiiim.

He wiggled his arm a little, and then shook his head again, “Listen girly, there’s only one chick who I take orders from, and you’re just lucky she told me to save everybody. So if you wanna tag along, be my guest, I just happen to be heading to the exit. I suppose I can not sprint.

He almost lost his footing when a particularly powerful tremor knocked the fluorescent bulbs from the ceilings, but steadied himself with his bat against the wall, “Though I won’t take responsibility for saving the lives of those who fall behind or can’t handle themselves in a zombie skirmish.” He was getting more and more irritated the longer he waited around in this crumbling lab.

He slung the bat over both shoulders again, and started slowly down the hallway towards the exit, following the map he had memorized, “Gather everyone together and keep up, if this building falls down onto my head I’m gonna be pissed. I’ll be the only one who doesn’t walk away from a collapse.”

Another powerful tremor shook the building, and the wall crumbled off the corner Boston happened to be walking past. The pile of rubble avalanched onto his boots, but he simply kicked out of it and continued walking. The structural stability was failing fast, so Boston quickened his pace.

He didn’t need to feel bad for Turk, or sorry that he jumped into a zombie mosh pit to save them, until Boston himself was demolished in the collapse of the tower or torn to shreds by the zombies. Like he said earlier, Turk’s big enough to make his own decisions…Although, Boston never would’ve sacrificed himself for a room full of people he just met about ten minutes ago…Crazy guy.

But so long as Boston honored Turk’s last statement and made it out alive, then all will be well.

But not for Turk...

No, that guy's deadsies...

[Boston]

[CUT TO BLACK.]

An explosion rocks the very foundation of the tower. All sound is replaced by a high-pitched ringing and white noise.

[FADE IN: TOWER]

The blast had thrown Boston clear across the hallway, and hard into the adjacent wall. His head bounced off a glass fire extinguisher encasement, cracking the glass and causing the door to sway open as the force of him hitting it bent the hinge and broke the weak lock.

[OVER THE SHOULDER P.O.V.: BOSTON]

Boston couldn’t hear anything but that ringing and white noise in his ears. Someone must have tripped one of Turk’s claymore. He couldn’t think straight, he felt a trickle of blood seeping down around his ears, he licked blood off his lips and blinked his eyes wide, shaking and smacking his head to get himself back in the game.

It was a zombie that tripped the claymore. A dozen of them had flooded the hallway, and now survivors were being picked off. There were too many of them, too many nameless survivors who had let their sleep deprivation and hunger lower their guards. They were grabbed and bitten with hardly a protest, and Boston immediately recognized that they had to be left behind. He didn’t want to waste any time.

He took a step off the wall and stumbled forward a step, and into the arms of a zombie. It wrapped its decaying arms around Boston’s shoulders and chomped down on his shoulder, but it couldn’t break the thick leather of his jacket. Still groggy from the blast and not thinking straight, Boston hurled his body forward, craning his neck to the side as he rammed himself into the wall, shoulder first. The zombie’s head smashed easily between his shoulder and the wall, nearly crumbling to pieces as the decaying body fell to the floor.

Taking a moment to rest, Boston leaned his forehead against the wall and shut his eyes, breathing heavily, trying to catch his breath and regain his composure. The screams and gunshots that surrounded him were mere echoes, distant noises from which he suddenly found himself detached.

At first he thought that perhaps the fatigue was finally beginning to set in. Having not slept since the outbreak occurred. His heartbeat increased to an almost deadly pace, his entire body burned, his whole system running red hot. His skin was flush and his eyes were suddenly wide. He gasped and panted for breath, and worried that all the zombie bites he had endured were finally catching up to him. His chest tightened and the sound of his heart beating, about to explode, rocking back and forth so violently in his chest, replaced the ringing and white noise.

With a bit of a grunt and a scream, Boston pushed his fists against the wall and pushed himself off it. He spun on a heel and brought the end of his bat down onto the skull of a zombie that had been lunging for Leila, cracking its skull and sending the jagged fragments into its brain. It dropped to the ground and Boston grabbed Leila by the arm.

“Move it, girly!” His voice was frighteningly rough, violent, almost feral as he pulled Leila by the arm so roughly, and dragged her and the little girl behind himself as he cleared a path.

He brought his bat down onto the skull of another zombie in their way, cracking it easily, but overuse of the custom bat over the course of the outbreak had finally taken its toll. The end of the weapon exploded in a small, fiery blast, causing Boston to shield his face, and even throw his own body in front of Leila and the girl to protect them. He kept his arm extended, holding the bat as far away from the three as he could, until it settled down a second later.

The blast sent sharp wood shards and buckshot in every direction. Several zombies in the area found their foreheads or eyes penetrated, they dropped to the ground, and a few shards and pieces of bullet stuck in Boston’s shoulders.

He shouted and threw his head back in pain, reaching one hand back to pluck the pieces of wood from his body and drop them to the ground. He gritted his teeth and looked down at the little girl in Leila’s protection, she looked back up at him horrified, so Boston offered what he tried to make a friendly, reassuring smile.

Then he nodded in the direction of the exit and let go of Leila’s arm, trusting her to follow on her own as he cleared a path.

All he had left of his bat was the handle, which he turned to hold up-side down, and bobbed and weaved through the shambling undead. He ducked under a grab and then shot up to his feet, smacking the base of the handle into a zombie’s chin as if in an uppercut. A new gunshot rung through the crowded hallway, and that zombie dropped. Boston spun and smacked the handle against the back of a zombie’s head, another gunshot; another zombie got it against the temple, one against the forehead, another against the temple, and another under the chin in another awesome uppercut-shot.

After the sixth shot, Boston dropped the bat handle, its ammunition spent. Moving with a newfound, almost unreal speed, he hurled his entire body at a zombie. He tackled its mid-section with his shoulder and brought it to the ground, straddling its chest as he began simply whaling on its face and forehead, allowing himself to get entirely carried away. Teeth gritted and lips snarled in a horrifying amount of anger, Boston pounded the zombie’s skull into the hard cement of the floor until he was just tenderizing its brain against the ground. When his knuckles began to bleed and his hearing returned, he stopped all at once.

[RESUME NORMAL P.O.V.]

Boston let his head loll back, and he let out a long, slow, deep breath as he took just another moment to recoup atop the zombie’s torso. If Leila or the girl were watching closely enough, they may have even been able to see a very thin wave of steam snaking up and out of Boston’s mouth as he breathed out that air.

The zombie Boston mutilated was the last in the bunch immediately between Boston, Leila and the kid, and the exit. At the end of a long corridor they could see some stairs, and a glowing red “Exit” sign – and an open doorway that appeared to lead into a forest, some night sky and stars were visible to the trapped survivors, even from this far away. He had gotten them past the bulk of the zombies in the ambush; those not dispatched by Boston or another survivor were the ones that had managed to find a meal, so were too busy to follow.

Boston stood slowly, threw his arms out to the sides and arched his back, almost literally bending over backwards as he stretched and groaned. When he straightened out, he looked back at Leila and the girl, and they would notice the wild, flushed look on his face and in his eyes. “Almost home, girlies. Book it.” His heart started beating so quickly his chest was visibly bouncing, and both Leila and the girl could hear it over all the commotion. It’s an absolute wonder he hasn’t dropped dead yet.

Boston bounced on his feet a little, suddenly hyped, and then took off sprinting full-speed down the hallway towards the exit. A zombie emerged from a cross-hallway, made a lunge for Boston, but he didn’t even slow down a little. With a bit of a grunt he threw out his arm, catching the zombie’s throat in a clothesline, decapitating it with what may as well have been sheer speed.

Four more stumbled from a cross-hallway just before the short set of stairs, forming a barrier between Boston and the exit. By this point, however, he had built up enough speed and momentum, his adrenaline pumping overtime, he made it look easy when he hopped towards the wall, and ran nearly straight along it. With one hand on the wall above his feet he cleared the zombies easily in a wide arch, and then kicked off before hitting the ground to send his body flying at the corpses.

A strong roundhouse kick cracked the skull of one of the zombies, sending it flying into the wall and then slumping down the floor. Boston drew his gun from the holster on his right before he even landed, and the instant his feet touched the ground he grabbed the back of one of the zombie’s shirts and pulled it back towards himself, jamming the barrel into the back of its skull and firing off a quick double-tap.

The two remaining zombies turned to face him at that point and lunged, but one was met with the barrel of Boston’s gun in its mouth. He fired another double-tap, blowing the back of its skull clean off, and then the fourth chomped down on his arm, causing him to drop his gun.

He easily outmaneuvered that last zombie, though, spinning around and grabbing its neck under his armpit, bending it over backwards so it stared up at the ceiling. With a quick and easy wrench of his torso Boston snapped that zombie’s neck, and then dropped its body.

He retrieved his gun from the ground and tucked it back into its holster, then waved both hands at Leila and the little girl, urging them to continue on. “Door’s wide open!” He hopped on his feet for a moment longer, then turned and sprinted up the stairs, taking them three, even four at a time.

Finally in the night air he drew his gun and panned left and right, looking up into the trees, aiming in every direction as he made sure it was clear while Leila and the girl caught up with him.

“Let’s go…” Boston took another look around; left, deeper into the forest, or right, back towards the city… “This way.” He waved his hand and began leading the girls to the right. He intended on finding a nice, small vehicle in the city that the three of them could use to escape…Since they were traveling with a giant crowd anymore, Boston was confident that he could get them out of here.

The tunnel had let them out a few blocks from where the lab’s entrance was actually located, so they could bypass the bulk of the zombie apocalypse gathered there and, more importantly, that giant steampunk zombie.

[Boston]

Boston’s free hand grabbed Leila’s hand, who in turn grabbed the girl’s hand, and they booked it through the forest. The zombies all seemed to be gathering at the entrance of the lab, so it was a fairly straight shot back into the city.

“We’ll grab a small car…” Boston glanced back, and when he noticed the little girl having trouble keeping up, he ducked down mid-run and scooped her into his arms. Holstering his gun, he cradled the girl to his chest, and spoke easily as he bobbed and weaved through the dense trees, “Stop by my place, pick up my girl…Then we’ll hit the road again.”

He stopped on the edge of the forest, finding himself about to step onto a back road on the outskirts of the city. A couple backs of buildings and alleyways were visible in the dark, the sound of the steampunk zombie and its massive army heard just blocks away.

Boston’s eyes were still as wide as ever, and the girl in his arms was visibly frightened when she felt his heart beating so quick. She had known firsthand the signs of someone turning, and recognized them all too plainly in Boston. The veins on his forehead and throat were bulging and pulsing, the whites of his eyes were turning a sickly yellow, and his entire body was heating up to the point of turning the sweat that dripped off his forehead into steam. She struggled against Boston’s strong arms, and he knew exactly why, but he made sure she couldn’t get away just yet.

“Over here…” Boston spotted and rushed over to a pizza delivery car, the logo for the local pizza joint lopsided on the roof. He opened the passenger side door and sat the little girl on the seat, buckled her seatbelt, and then shut the door. “C’mon, c’mon, in, in, you girls gotta get going.” He spoke quickly, his tone of voice obviously rushed, as he slid over the hood and opened the driver’s side door for Leila.

“No matter what anyone shouts, do NOT stop to hand out any pizzas, got it? If anyone asks, you’re all sold out.” Despite Leila’s protests, Boston was easily able to overpower her. He pushed her into the driver’s seat and then shut the door, speaking to her through the rolled-down window now. “Here’s my address,” he wrote something on the back of one of his business cards, “go there and find Melissa Boston, alright? She’s got the cure in her, too.”

“Wait, what!?” Leila shouted and tried to open the door, but Boston held it shut. “What about you!? We aren’t leaving you here! Get in!”

The girl tugged on Leila’s arm, then, drawing her attention, and she just shook her head slowly. She pointed up at Boston’s face, and Leila finally noticed his signs of turning. She immediately stopped struggling against the door, and fell silent with her hands on the steering wheel.

“Get outta here, girls.” Boston spoke through a slight smirk, “You’d better not waste any more time, if my girl turns into a zombie, too, I’m gonna be pissed. Find some way to get that cure outta her.”

“But what’re you gonna do?” Leila asked, twisting the key in the ignition and starting up the engine.

“Well…” Boston shrugged and then pulled the gun out of his left holster, the small green light going out with the quiet hiss of steam and hydraulics. “I’m gonna take on Steampunk. It’s my final big boss fight.” He pulled the gun out of the holster on his right and cocked the hammer back, and winked. “Tell my girl I didn’t go out like a punk, yeah?”

“Oh!” Boston shouted, and put his guns on the roof of the car for a moment, “And give her this.” He flipped open the lid on his messenger bag and removed the police badge, handing it to Leila, before shoving the bag into the back seat, “Tell her I took this off a zombie cop and to keep it safe, if I get back we’ll use it in our roleplaying.”

Leila’s eyes went a little wide when she took the badge and stared at it, “You mean…You just took it…?”

Boston chuckled and shrugged, then took his guns back into either hand, “Well it’s not like he needed it anymore, and I’ve always wanted to be a cop…But remember all that, yeah, gal?”

Leila nodded and was about to thank Boston for everything in a particularly touching and heartfelt scene, but Boston didn’t leave her time for that. He didn’t know how long he had left, and certainly didn’t know how long his girl had left.

“Alright, let’s go!” He grinned and ran in the opposite direction Leila would be driving, heading towards undead army and Steampunk.

Leila didn’t seem too broken up over not being able to say her goodbyes, she understood the urgency as well as anyone. Her foot mashed the pedal to the floor and the car peeled out before taking off. A power-slide found her and the girl on a relatively clear main road, and they tore down the street, heading for an off-ramp leading out of the city.

Boston, meanwhile, was more or less “parkouring” towards Steampunk at the entrance of the lab. He jumped onto a dumpster and kicked off the wall, leaping over the heads of a dozen zombies that flooded the alleyway. He holstered his pressurized gun mid-air and grabbed onto the bottom rung of a fire-escape ladder, using it as momentum to swing a bit further, and he brought himself down right on top of a zombie. His boots pushed flat against its chest and cracked it open when he landed so hard on it, kneeling at the same time, pushing the barrel of his gun against its forehead and fracturing its skill. Before the zombie could realize what was happening and make an attempt to grab at Boston, he fired off a single shot.

He pushed off that zombie and sprinted down the crowded alleyway, hurling his shoulders left and right, body-checking and tackling zombies out of his way, a regular steamroller as his over-powered body worked overtime. He jumped up and kicked his feet horizontally along the wall once more, getting another good arch going as he ran along the wall over the zombies’ heads, and then kicked off just before the end of the alleyway.

He drew his pressurized gun again, landing as he spun on the ball of his foot, firing several shots from both guns into the crowd of zombies. The gun in his right hand fired normal bullets, each one finding a new home in the center of a zombie’s brain and dropping the undead. The pressurized bullets which were ejected from the gun in his left hand pushed into the zombie’s skulls like the others, though a moment later, began spewing gasoline. A small spark clicking inside the bullet a moment later detonated an explosion, which spread to the surrounding zombies, and took down several of them at once. This effectively clogged the alleyway with the undead, leaving Boston just a moment to reload and assess the situation.

He dropped both empty clips from his guns and replaced them with fresh ones, letting them click and hiss into place as he craned his neck back to stare up at Steampunk. Its head was well above the roofs of the surrounding buildings, and Boston rubbed the back of his head in thought. “Jeez, that thing’s tall…I guess I didn’t really think this out, did I…” His eyes panned down to the creature’s ankles, where he saw the pistons pumping. Without a second though Boston grinned, and started full speed towards that ankle.

His adrenaline pumped overtime, and he knew he was doomed anyway. As far as Boston was concerned, he didn’t need to stop and think about whether or not something was a good idea, whether or not something was a plausible idea, and whether or not he would survive trying.

He hopped onto the roof of a car and then towards the piston, arms flying out to the sides as he must have leapt at least twenty feet straight through the air. He landed on the piston, wrapping his arms loosely around the pipe it pumped along, and then when it thrust up to its full height, he quite simply let go. He allowed it to hurl his body higher into the air, bending his legs and jumping up in time. At the same time he fired a few shots from his pressurized gun into Steampunk’s leg, the bullets imbedding in the rotting flesh around that piston, and exploding.

Some of the mechanical parts busted and twisted, the ankle buckled and Steampunk screamed out in a particularly fierce zombie-groan. It spotted Boston as its mechanical, glowing red eye whirred and locked on to him, steam erupting from its joints as it lifted its arm to swat at him.

Despite his sudden newfound super-human strength and speed, Boston was unable to dodge in mid-air. The hand smacked him and hurled him higher, sending his body spiraling wildly. He couldn’t help but laugh at his situation, a boisterous and joyful, whole-hearted laugh. He had never felt quite such a rush as he was literally thrown stories into the air, and really, the whole situation was just too crazy for Boston to believe.

He held his arms out straight, firing both his guns whenever he thought they were pointing at Steampunk, and several of the bullets actually landed in strategic locations. Many of the bullets landed in its neck and shoulders, the explosions that resulted strong enough to weaken the moving parts holding it together. Its neck snapped to the side and its head soon rolled clean off its body, tumbling to the ground, and one of its arms soon followed. The buckled ankle from earlier gave way under all the stress, and Steampunk was brought down to its knees. The glowing of its red mechanical eye dimmed.

A final spurt of steam erupted from its gaping neck, the force of which sent Boston flying even higher into the air. It burnt his clothes and skin, nearly melting the flesh off his body. His shirt burnt away as if paper suddenly lit on fire. The tape holding his many bandages melted and his exposed wounds gushed from such serious overexertion.

Bits of flesh tore off his body and his blood streamed into the sky, flying higher than his body in a gruesome parade of ribbons. Boston managed to catch glimpses of Steampunk collapsing to the ground and falling apart at the seams, reduced a writhing pile of flesh as his vision went blurry, and he allowed himself to slip out of consciousness. He wouldn’t be awake for his descent back down to Earth.

As he drifted off, an oddly placed, serene little smile found its way over his lips and he wondered about several things; namely, where that Steampunk came from…It was obviously constructed…Maybe Leila would find out, and they’ll be able to engineer a cure from his girl.

Melissa was safe and healthy again, and soon Leila and that little girl would find her…Maybe Melissa would take up care of the girl, once all the zombies were done with…As the credits scroll by the audience would see Melissa and the girl a few years in the future, practicing magic tricks and playing video games…Then maybe Leila would stop by and they would all go to a picnic together…

“What a pleasant thought to die with…”

[Boston]

Leila and the girl may have felt the ground rumbling as Steampunk collapsed, defeated, but they didn’t pay it much attention. The girl was starting to doze off, finally, and Leila was too focused on taking the right exit once she had gotten on the highway.

“Exit 160, exit 160, c’mon…158…” The highway was mostly clear of cars, and there were just a few zombies shambling around on the shoulders. “159…There! Ha!” Celebrating what she considered a small victory, Leila shimmied in her seat as she turned onto the exit ramp. It led into a corporate downtown section, and Leila then began looking for the appropriate street signs.

Her eyes widened and she rolled up the car window when it began to rain again, for the first time since the rain brought the infection. She closed all the vents and made sure the car’s air conditioner was off as the rain began falling heavier than it ever had before.

She had to drive a bit slower through this section of the city, swerving carefully around abandoned and burning cars, and simply pushing carelessly over the few zombies that still meandered in the street. Though as she drove over the zombies and noticed how they were beginning to act on the sidewalk, a worried, confused expression crept over her face.

Instead of groaning lifelessly and walking with their short, quick stumbles, it sounded as though they were beginning to actually scream out in real, human pain, and their gait was straightening out. More and more zombies began flooding the streets, crawling out from under cars and stumbling out from the alleyways, their groans turning into sharp screams of pain, their legs straightening out. Some of them fell back down to the ground and curled up, crying, sobbing as they died, while some of the less decayed zombies simply sat down on the sidewalk, and screamed out at the top of their lungs.

“What’s…” Unable to form a complete thought, Leila simply didn’t try. She was confused, to say the least, by what was happening…

And then she jumped, startled, when someone who appeared mostly human approached her slow-moving car and banged on the windshield, “Please, help…!” This man shouted, his words audible, but he was obviously showing signs of turning. His teeth were rotting and falling out, his left eye nearly hung out of its socket, and his cheeks sagged, the flesh about to detach.

When her eyes dropped lower, she noticed his shirt torn open, and his belly split open wide in a crude tear. Intestines and his stomach dangled limp, and a moment later the man fell to the ground, writhing as he died.

He was obviously showing signs of turning, but turning…Turning from human to zombie…or zombie to human…?

Turning onto the appropriate street, Leila was able to drive a bit faster as this side-road was a bit clearer. The girl sat up, suddenly awake, and crying, “What’s happening! Why’s everyone screaming, what’s going on!” She panicked and looked all over, then ducked her head and just peeked her eyes over the car door, peering out the window.

“Just keep your head down…We’re still okay…” Was all Leila could think to say as she drove, ignoring the death-screams that had suddenly began echoing throughout the city.

Eventually Leila and the girl found themselves in a nice residential area, and she parked the car in front of Boston’s house. There didn’t seem to be any zombies, or rather, any decaying humans, in the immediate vicinity…So she stepped out of the car, no longer fearing the rain, as she concluded that it was actually turning zombies back into humans…But does it mean an end to the whole mess…?

Holding the little girl’s hand, Leila walked her to Boston’s door, and knocked loudly. A moment later it was answered by Boston, a perfect picture of ideal health, and Leila’s mouth hung open wide in shock. The girl shouted, remembering that he was about to turn, and hid behind Leila, wrapping her small arms around her legs for protection.

“Honey, you order a fly trap?” Boston called over his shoulder to Melissa, who was stretched out on the over-stuffed sofa playing Resident Evil.

“No, that’s what we bought all those tiki torches for, remember?” She didn’t look up from the screen, sitting forward a little as she became more focused on what she was doing.

“Oh yeah…” Furrowing his brow, Boston reached his hand out and pushed Leila’s chin up, closing her mouth for her, “Oh, it’s not a fly trap, it’s a hippie…” He nodded slowly, then asked over his shoulder once more, “You order a hippie for some reason?”

“What the hell are you doing here!?” Leila shouted suddenly.

Boston shrugged, “Well it’s my home, I live here. Things any better out there?”

“Yeah, much…” Leila nodded slowly as Boston motioned for her to come inside.

He was still wearing his black slacks and singed red leather jacket; he hadn’t put a shirt on yet, so Leila could see that his torso was completely healed, hardly even a scar marred his muscular, hunky physique. “You’re no doubt wondering what happened, so let me fill you in on the details…After all, story continuity is important.” He fell back down onto the sofa beside Melissa, and motioned for Leila to sit on the adjacent recliner.

Leila sat slowly, her gaze shifting between Boston and Melissa. Melissa sat up suddenly, upon noticing the little girl, and her eyes went wide as saucers, “Oh, how cute! You found a little orphan girl!” She laughed quite joyously and sprung over to the girl, pulling her suddenly into a tight embrace, nearly squeezing the life out of her as she spoke so quickly. “Don’t you worry little girl, you can forget all about your parents being killed in this horrible zombie apocalypse! We’ll take care of you here, from now on! You must be starving! Come on, I’ll make you some dinner!” Melissa grabbed the horribly confused little girl by the hand and led her into the kitchen.

“Cute kid…” Boston nodded towards the girl and grinned at Leila, reaching over to pause Melissa’s game as she stepped away, “Makes for a nice ending for everyone, yeah? All that’s left is for you to go live on a beach, shouldn’t be too hard to find a nice beach house to squat in, it’ll take forever to get this whole ‘zombie’ thing sorted out…By then nobody will remember whose house you just moved into.”

“Boston…” Leila tried to interject.

“Sure, then maybe as the credits scroll by, someone else from the story, someone who we all thought was dead, will show up with his back to the camera and walk towards the house to join you…” He nodded slowly, “And we all get the feeling like, ‘Those two are gonna be just fine…But maybe there’ll be a sequel…’ Yeah…”

“Tell me what happened, Boston!” Leila demanded, snapping Boston out of his narrative state.

“Oh, right! Okay.” He sat up and clapped his hands together, “So, let’s flashback.”

[CUT TO TOWER: EXT. – EARLIER TONIGHT]

Boston was hurled into the air by Steampunk, spiraling and laughing wildly, higher and higher into the sky as the steam ate away at his clothing and very body. Eventually he fell silent, consciousness slipping away as his guns slipped from his hands. His body working overtime enhanced the reproduction of his blood, and so an inordinate amount for any one man gushed from his wounds. His blood was dissolved into the intense heat of the steam and carried up into the sky, into the water cycle.

The amount of steam which had been evaporating from Steampunk had caused the water cycle to speed up intensely. Thick clouds formed over the city, and then all at once they popped, bringing the rain. Boston’s blood evaporating into the steam mixed with the rain water naturally, and thus, the cure rained down upon the city.

However, this cure wasn’t some magical serum which a zombie drinks and becomes human. It simply reversed the process. As in the original rain, when water touched a human they became a zombie – when this second rain falls onto a zombie, that zombie becomes human. Their organs begin to function, rational thought and feeling returns, but their bodies do not heal. The rain turns zombies into decayed humans, decayed, living, breathing, bleeding, gasping for breath and screaming out in agonizing pain humans. The once-zombie-humans writhe on the ground and quickly bleed out, unaware of what has happened, or why they’re dying. But they die nonetheless, and it spreads, as the rain is carried over the entire city.

And before long Boston’s cure would be in the water cycle enough to be carried by the wind currents, and spread throughout the globe – delivering the cure to any neighboring city, state, nation, country that needed it.

[CUT TO BOSTON’S HOME]

“So, there ya have it.” Boston nodded slowly and sat back on the couch, grabbing a particularly fancy, ornate-looking pipe from the nightstand beside the couch. He lifted a small wooden container to its end and tapped the contents inside, then proceeded to blow bubbles out of the pipe’s front. “From what I can gather,” his ability to maintain a serious conversation while smoking a bubble pipe was amazing, “my blood worked its way into the water system and so should be worldwide after a little while…”

At some point during his story, he had drawn a diagram of how the water cycle works in crayon. A crude drawing of Steampunk with big red arrows pointing out of its neck, and the word “evaporation”, which led into big, fluffy gray clouds. Another large red arrow pointed to more gray clouds, which led into thick blue arrows pointing at the ground. These were labeled “Healing Rain”, and it pointed to a dozen little happy smiling stick figures standing atop the bodies of zombie stick figures. He tacked it up to the wall.

“Pretty good, right?” Boston spoke through one corner of his mouth, bubbles floating up to the ceiling.

Leila was exasperated, she was tired, hungry, and as much as she would have loved to laugh at Boston’s antics, she just wanted answers. She snapped her fingers several times to get his attention, “Hey, Boston! Here! Pay attention! Why are you alive!”

“Oh yeah, I got so caught up in my awesome illustration, I forgot the most important and awesome part…Okay, back to the flashback.”

[CUT BACK TO TOWER]

Shortly after the rain began, a faint whistle could be heard from the sky. Boston’s body, having fallen from who knows how high up, landed on the soft pile of zombie bodies that had fallen in front of the tower. He landed quite comfortably on his back, his wounds miraculously healed, leaving not so much as a scar.

He gasped sharply, inhaling so much air his lungs felt as though they were about to pop, and for a moment he worried that he would drown in the heavy rain. He shouted as he felt his broken bones popping back into place and fixing themselves, his smashed internal organs returning to a fully functioning state as he writhed and squirmed in pain for several long minutes.

Once it was over he released that large breath, and stood on shaky legs. Panting for his breath back he stumbled off the pile of zombies, dusting his jacket off, and picking up his dropped guns as he made his way towards the tower. He holstered them, and stretched out his arms, finding the small bit of shrubbery behind which he had hidden his motorcycle. Naturally, it was still there, and completely untouched, even though the tower had fallen around it.

[CUT BACK TO BOSTON’S HOME]

“And so I just rode my motorcycle home.” Boston nodded “as a matter of factly”, puffing on that bubble pipe all the while. Melissa walked out of the kitchen with a plate of sandwiches and the girl in tow, both giggling. “Ooh, sandwiches!” Boston grinned and placed his pipe aside, grabbing a sandwich and eating quickly.

Leila took a sandwich from the plate when Melissa offered, and then Melissa sat on the couch, and the girl crawled onto her lap, eating a sandwich rather quickly. Melissa giggled again, and raked her fingers through the girl’s hair, straightening it out, “You’re so cute! Can we keep her?” Melissa looked up at Boston, and Boston looked over at Leila.

“Well I guess she became the girl’s charge, it’s up to her…” Boston looked at Leila as he ate his sandwich.

Melissa looked at Leila with great big puppy-dog begging eyes, “Pleeeease!”

Leila laughed, and nodded slowly, “Yeah…Yeah, once things get straightened out it’ll be important for her to have parents again…” The two seemed a bit goofy to Leila, but she could tell that they would be caring and attentive…If Boston would fight Steampunk for the sake of the human race, then she could just imagine what he would do for the sake of just one little girl.

“Yay!” Melissa shouted and hugged the little girl tight, who had suddenly become quite giggly and happy. Her young mind quickly took great comfort in being in a warm, safe environment after such an ordeal. “Oh, sorry, all we have in the kitchen right now is peanut butter. I didn’t wanna take a chance after the virus broke out, so I got rid of everything that could spoil…”

And for several moments, the four simply sat and ate their peanut butter sandwiches in silence.

“But…” Leila finally spoke up, “That doesn’t explain why you don’t seem injured at all…”

“I can explain that,” Melissa spoke up.

Boston nodded and sat back, once again taking up his bubble pipe as his girl began to speak, “My girl’s wicked smart, she’s a biological engineer.” He tapped some more bubble water into the pipe and handed it to Melissa.

Melissa giggled, and began puffing bubbles from the pipe, “Thanks for filling in that plot-point, babe.” She turned to Leila and took the crayons Boston had been using, sketching out some diagrams as she spoke, “As his body was starting to shut down, trying to die from all the injuries and fatigue he had suffered over the course of the past few days, the cure in his body started working in sync with the zombie virus that he also had growing in him, from all the bites.” She drew a stick figure Boston and wrote “C’s” and “Z’s” around him, then drew interlocking lines between them.

“So what we have, is…The zombie virus decays flesh, and the cure stops it from decaying…” A “Z” with an arrow pointing at a “C” stopped short, “So the current working theory is this: The zombie virus decays, the cure makes your body stand neutral, and when you combine the two, when the two come together in a single body, when both are naturally produced by a single host, they produce the third effect: A natural enhancement of the host’s body.” She drew a new image of Boston, still a stick figure, arms thrown out in a “strong-man pose”, with large muscles bulging up from his arms.

“Thus explaining the healing, the awesome parkour moves, the strength, so on, and so forth. His appearing to turn was actually the virus and the cure merging together and working out the kinks.” Melissa held up the final picture, which was of Boston with a little cape and mask flying over the city, the words “Super powers!!” below him.

“Pretty awesome, right?” Boston and Melissa sat back and relaxed against the couch, as if the bubbles had relaxed them, and Boston draped an arm around Melissa. “So now we just wait it out here, ‘til the TV comes back on and the news people tell us it’s safe to go outside again.”

After that, it was only about a week until the TV and radio stations returned over the airwaves and the crisis was deemed over. Religious fanatics claimed it was a purge, a second flood, for the obvious reasons, and claimed that the curative rain was brought down by God.

You can imagine how Boston let that go to his head.

Boston and Melissa went back to their lives, plus one little girl they enrolled in school and raised like a normal happy family. The opposing forces in Boston’s body eventually became dormant; whether the cure eliminated the zombie virus, they eliminated each other, or kept each other in check was unknown, but it hardly mattered. The zombies were finally back where they belong: Safely inside video games and movies, so they figured they didn’t need to worry about it anymore.

And then one day, Leila thought that Boston’s wrap-up sounded pretty nice – claiming a bit of property on a beach, after such a zombie-filled mess, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

And so one morning, while she was enjoying breakfast on the veranda, a silhouetted figure, a man, a friend Leila had met and fought with against the zombies during the outbreak, approached the house.

~Fin