You grabbed the backpack from the bursar as he held it out to you, quickly wrenching it open, reaching inside it, seeking the contents of it that you most required. You needed your revolvers, you needed your ammunition, you needed the belts for holding spare bullets. The two shotguns strapped to the side of it were going to take time to load fully, though they'd be useful against these things. These were tainted humans and Anne had mentioned tainted humans before, she had mentioned the corrupted humans that seemed to share the same taint as the things that went bump in the night.
They were once human, but no they were human no more.
Once human, but still vulnerable to the same things that they had been once upon a time. Even if they had rapid regeneration like the Enlightened, they lacked the immortality that the Enlightened had been given. They also lacked the control over their corruption, over how it was induced that the Enlightened seemed to have. They were twisted mockeries of their former selves, while the Enlightened had been carefully corrupted as to maintain their form and most of their prior identity.
You quickly strapped one of the belts about your waist as you retrieved it, tossing a revolver to the bursar along with a small bag of ammunition. "If you don't know how to use that, you'd better learn quickly," you stated, knowing it was all the advice you had time to give. You grabbed the second revolver from the backpack as you located it, holstering it as you quickly detatched one of the shotguns from its fastenings against the side of the pack. "You take this," you muttered as you tossed the shotgun towards Anne, along with a bag of Ammunition that you had confirmed belonged to it. "Start loading it now, and be ready to a loaded part of the cylinder if something attacks you."
You looked at the other shotgun, then up at Joy as you did so, frowning slightly as you knew that she had no idea how to load this thing at a reasonable pace. "Joy, you accompany the bursar, grab something suitable to use as a weapon if you can," you started, though the bursar was fast to interrupt, his uncertainty and unhappiness over your choice written all over his face as he spoke.
"Surely she would be better off with a gun, if she is to accompany me?" he asked, glancing between you and Joy as he did so. "Are you that addled by your head injury that you do not see the fault with that plan?" your hand moved to your forehead as you frowned. You didn't have time for this.
"Joy may not look much, but you're safer with her than you are with us," you paused, gesturing to the side of the fallen train as you did so. "You two go around the outside, I'll try and get atop it for a vantage point. Anne, you watch my back," you paused, hissing briefly as another scream filled the air, a scream of agony that faded out with a gurgle. "We need to save as many people as possible."
With that you ran to the side of the train, flicking your revolver's cylinder out as you loaded a handful of bullets into it quickly, pushing a few bullets into the belt before you stopped beside the ladder leading up, towards what had previously been the underside of the carriage. As you reached the top of it, taking a few steps forward as you briefly turned your gaze skywards, looking up at the clouds as they drifted overhead. You took a deep breath as you steeled yourself, knowing that you were going to have to do something that you didn't enjoy.
You were going to have to fight things that you would have preferred to reason with.
You had to act in this manner though, to save the people who had become their prey.
Your first step forward was followed by another, and another, and another, your body hurtling forwards as if posessed by an unknown force as you ran along the toppled carriage, as you leapt from it, over to the next carriage. Even as you landed, you twirled about, putting bullets in the heads of the most immediate things alongside the carriage, preventing them from climbing inside it.
Three bullets, three dead monsters.
Potentialy hundreds to go.
The sound of gunfire roused the more immediate of them as they turned towards you, as they started swarming towards the carriage, leaping aside it, clambering upwards. They were too slow though, too disorganised to prevent you from taking advantage of this to crush a couple of their heads against the carriage as you slammed your foot down, before you ran and jumped to the next one.
Three more gunshots followed as you shot at the first of them to get up onto the carriage you had just abandoned, two of them dropping while the third shot skimmed by one, missing Anne by inches. Anne yelled something, something that was drowned out by the sound of her shotgun going off as she aimed down into the crowd, slowing them down even further. Despite their twisted, bloated forms, they seemed to go down just as easily as a person, if not easier. They were larger targets, after all.
You flicked the cylinder out as you started to reload your revolver, backing away from the advancing horde as they clambered atop the carriage opposite, as they hopped across to your one. You were almost done reloading when you felt your back bump against something, as gnarled arms wrapped about you, though you were fast to swing your head back as you headbutted the thing that had grabbed you. There was a howl of fury as those arms slipped from about you, as you span around to see the thing stood there, ichor spewing from its broken nose.
You stepped back as more started to climb up before you, while the group behind you continued to advance, while more of them hammered at the sides of the carriage you stood atop. There were more than you had expected, many more, yet this wasn't going to stop you. Surrounded as you were, there was always the option of jumping into the crowd that least expected it, making a stand without the height advantage.
Your body twisted about as you leapt from atop the carriage's roof, as you rolled as you landed and sprang to your feet again, your revolver raised as you went to put a bullet in the nearest one. Your gun was batted from your hand by it, while something else landed on your back, its bloated mass weighing you down as you staggered, as more of them piled atop you. You fell, weapon just out of reach as you felt the crushing weight of bodies atop you, as you felt claws raking at your sides, as you felt teeth seeking your neck.
You knew that a bite to the neck would end it all, that you would loose consciousness from bloodloss, that by the time you recovered that everybody would likely be dead. Your struggling was in vain, despite how you fought valiantly against them as the weight of their bodies was too much and your efforts merely seemed to stave off the inevitable.
Or so it seemed.
You, along with the collective group atop you froze as you stared ahead in horror, as one of the train carriages was uprooted by a mighty blow, spinning as it bounced along the ground towards you. It bounced along the ground as it hurtled towards you, barely passing over you as it slammed into the ground near you, as its unyeilding mass dislodged a vast number of the things atop you, before it crashed into the carriages behind you.
You could hear agonised groans from the things that had survived this, pieces of wood and metal falling, and Anne's screaming as she sailed through the air, having had the carriage she was on struck by this, before she landed a short distance from you with a crunch. You elbowed the last of the things atop you repeatedly as you dislodged them, as you scrambled forward to grab your pistol.
You twirled about as you grabbed it, two shots meeting their mark as you put the two things that had still remained atop you out of their misery, before you crawled over to Anne. "I really hope those two are taking advantage of the fact all these things are trying to eat us, to rescue people," Anne muttered as she rolled over, groaning softly as she did so. "Trust you to pick the spot the things had already fed in first," she added, glancing up as she did so.
"I think we have other things to worry about," you muttered as you struggled to your feet, following Anne's gaze as it fell on the heavily twisted form of one of the corrupted people that had attacked you. It was a towering mass of muscle, discoloured flesh with a vertical maw that took up most of its torso, a maw lined with fangs.
"Why does it have to be so ugly?" Anne sighed, glancing around before cursing under her breath, turning towards you as she bit her lip. "This isn't good, I lost the shotgun when that thing tossed the carriage at us."
Eyes opened up all over the things body as it started to lumber towards you, its maw opening and snapping shut again over and over again. Horrified gasps caught your attention, prompting you to turn as you were greeted by the sight of a small group of people being lead away from the train by a familiar pair of figures. Joy had at least done a better job of locating survivors than you, it seemed, though survivors were not your most immediate concern now.
This thing was, a thing that you could feel a sense of insatiable hunger from, a thing that these creatures must have been trying to feed.
You needed a course of action, you needed to decide if you were going to attempt to deal with this monstrosity, with these things and find any other survivors, or if you were getting out of here before they overwhelmed you again.
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Topic: They told me I could be anything... (Read 78946 times)