The Remains

[Roven :D]

Prologue

The man could barely contain his need to wail to let his fear and pain escape, he wanted her to see, but he didn’t figure it wouldn’t matter either way. His legs burned, his throat became dry and felt cracked and his lungs were cold. The man just ran and the man who tells the story scruffs his chin, smiling at the rhyme. Over the clouds thunder and lightning flashed, it was like these clouds had within them a furious god who was going at them with Zeus and Thor to come and fuck everyone up.

“Dude” his partner said trying to keep pace, he panted hard between his words,

“you know that we’re fuckin’ dead.”

Our boy turned as he ran just enough to look at his acquaintance’s expression, it was subtle fear that Lucas could see. Luke just kept his eyes on the empty road, cars were in disarray all over the street collecting dust. Some had collisions, some were filled with decomposing bodies.

“Don’t make your prophecy.” Lucas said between gasps for thicker air. Their haste was only occasionally shortened by their forgetting their situation, quickly thereafter to be compensated with adrenaline and an instinctual motivation that was summed up in the words, Oh shit.

“What happens when we see the snow?”

“We have to get the fuck away from it. We need plastic, a tarp, nylon, something. We need a body suit. We need duct tape.”

They saw Williams Street and turned left into it where there were soldiers with gas masks, two people knelt before them with their hands behind their back, the first assumption was that it was a casual execution. “Fuck, follow me.” this he said with a heavy but soft tone. His fear, his adrenaline had reached the equivalent of a high better than cocaine. He took the sleeve of his arm across the grime covering his eyes as they ran into the yard of a boarded up house and hopped its fence. He waited for his partner but within short moments the sound of a rifle firing filled the air and escaped in all directions. Splinters from the fence flew out and a trickling of blood slid down where they once were. Lucas took a deep breathe and let it out as he turned and ran again to the next fence hopping it, his organs feeling as though they were made of stone and ready to fall through his ass; his palms became raw and ripped and blood began to surface where the layer of skin was coming off.

He saw two people pushing a car, a driver revving the engine and laying down on the gas. Coming up behind them, startling them in a way he had remorse for he did his best to console quickly: “It’s okay, keep going!” getting between them he pushed this car and they joined him. It was inching towards a running speed and the engine, struggling and ripping at its guts to combustion and popping and finally they heard it roar. “Get in!” the driver shouted. They all scurried into the seats, once inside they looked at Luke with heightening distrust. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Lucas, I lived down on Queensborough and Marx.”

The girl in the front seat looked to her mate driving, who was eying Lucas menacingly; “I met him at the party last week, he’s cool.”

He was calmer, he looked back a couple times and the man sitting next to him, a Hispanic was shifting eyes between the driver and Lucas, uneasy. He said nothing and the driver began to dodge the wrecked vehicles. The explosion was like an earthquake, Lucas could now remember, and cars outside the coffee shop skidded under the shaking ground and filled places that didn’t have walls but windows. Vehicles collided with people sitting by the windows of diners and the pool halls lost their balls all over the place.

The most serious of all this business were the soldiers. The soldiers from a different country. They didn’t carry flags, most wore black. Lucas thought hard on them and who they might be and as he thought a gray snow came down against the car. “Oh fuck.”

They all looked back to him, “What?”

“We’ve gotta hurry up, the fallout is starting in.”

“Oh my God it was a nuke?” the girl asked, her mate in the driver seat looked at her with incomprehensible rage. “No shit! No shit it was a fucking nuke! Did you see that mushroom cloud? No fucking shit, Alice! No shit!” she was startled and the eyes of the man beside Lucas began to shift again, left, right, left, right. She said nothing, Lucas just tried to sit back and relax. His mechanical augmentation in his legs would erode as the fallout snow and rain touched them, they would irradiate and he would be supremely fucked. His guts would cook from within and the seams of his skin and the steel that replaced his bones, the hydraulic fluids that replaced his limbs would all bubble and seep bringing with it rotten pieces. This is what he told himself.

“What was that gunshot we heard?”

“They’re moving into the residential areas, there’s no military base on this side of the coast.”

The Hispanic gave Lucas a small Scope bottle. “I don’t want this anymore.”

As it set down in Luke’s hand, his eyes shifted to the brown scared eyes of a drug dealer. “What is this? Wet?”

“No man, it’s acid.”

“So you don’t wanna get caught with it basically.”

“Basically.”

“I don’t think it makes much difference now.” but this wasn’t why the man was giving up his livelihood. He looked away and shook his head, “No man, I can’t sell that to anyone around here and feel right about it, not anymore, not with this shit going on. But I’ll need money, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life when someone goes crazy and starts cutting everyone up.”

Lucas looked at this bottle. A sign was up to the right of the road,

NOW LEAVING CORPUS CHRISTI

and then a tank was out in the distance, in a field by a ranch house where the tiny dark figures of bodies lie on the ground and trucks were slowly filled with soldiers. This tank started to turn its turret with the movements of this car. It was almost over for these people. “Oh my God…Dann—” and there was a deafening sound and for a second there was nothing but this ominous and foreboding sound. The car’s front end ripped right, the car spun and the windows shattered throwing the two in the front out. It stopped, Luke’s ears rang and he felt something wet all over his face, something was burning his eyes. The ringing grew so loud, so loud, louder and louder. As the sound grew he held his head and looking left he managed to crack an eye open, the Hispanic was hanging out of the passenger window in the front. Lucas managed to crack open his other and he realized that nobody else was wearing a seatbelt and that the engine compartment had been ripped off completely leaving the leg room in the front as new exits from the car. Lucas sat reclined there, his face was so wet. Why is it so wet.

Looking down he saw the Scope bottle empty on his lap, his button down shirt was wet at the collar and a great fear possessed him as he faded in and out of consciousness. He couldn’t sleep. He thought of a concussion and he couldn’t faint or pass out in shock. But he did anyways. He closed his eyes and for a moment, his last sane moment, he slept.

________________

His eyes didn’t open as he woke, he heard the throaty discussions of something hellish as it walked around the car, each footstep was loud with the cracking dry leaves, the grass underfoot. So loud. What they spoke of was indiscernible. He opened his eyes, this time with more ease. The sky was vivid with neon lights, like puddles of paint on the roof of the planet and as they were bright they moved like water.

“They were American.” the alien voice trembled against the car, Lucas shuddered and shut his eyes, he shut them tight. There was no darkness he saw a room with a stove and tile floor, when he shut his eyes someone was in front of him, it was her. He opened them and before him was his father and the air surrounding him rippled with the air. He was upside down, his eyes were white and dark veins led to the connection between his brain and the eye. In a split second, with seemingly no movement his mouth was open and from it was like the screaming of children and the sound metal makes when it scrapes against. Lucas wailed in fear, unbuckled the seatbelt. There was a manic fear now, he couldn’t gather his thoughts. The car lifted in the air, his father wasn’t behind him anymore. The grass he stood on wasn’t covered in snow, they had gotten away from the fallout just in time to be nailed by a platoon of unidentified soldiers.

He thought of the Scope bottle and screamed even louder. His screaming began to repeat and echo in his brain, he fell to his knees and held his ears and sobbing uncontrollably he heard laughter. He was in the closest thing he could understand as hell. Who was talking?

He looked around. No one was there. It was dusk but the only way he could tell was the darkness on the horizon. He figured it must actually be colorful as opposed to the sky in reality. In reality. In reality. In reality, in reality, in reality, in reality. “Reality?”

“What?” a voice.

“There you are.” he turned around and there was no one. A magpie flew from a dead tree and as he looked at it, it looked at him and grew fierce, larger. It morphed and change, altered in appearance, it became a hawk. Lucas looked at it, it’s a hawk, it’s a hawk. Relax it’s a hawk. The hawk grew larger as it flew into the wind, he turned away from it. He laid down facing down and rested his head on his crossed arms.
Post Auto-Merged: August 16, 2012, 06:20:53 PMThe Remains

His eyes opened and he was not lying down on his cot, he was awake, still in the air over the road. His body turned to face what was before him, the darkness and the silhouette of a city he vaguely recognized was barely standing, above it the eerie clouds were in a never-ending storm and lightning shot across the clouds. In the air he could hear the sound of jet engines and in the outer city a stadium erupted in flames, providing more light than the meager flashes of  thunder and lightning. It was the brightest thing Lucas had seen in a year. The wild, suffereing screams of people blared through the air  as though it was a scratched record on concert speakers and faintly amongst the screaming. He shrugged.

His bottom lightly arranged itself on the seat of the motorcycle as he descended, his feat in their correct place, his hands on the handles. The engine roared and started forward for him, and he agreed with the motorcycle and relieved it’s efforts, twisting the grip and driving it manually. This was why the motorcycle was his friend.

The light of the thunder only told him when to navigate through the abandoned cars when there was the least amount of time to dodge them, and he persevered not noticing the difficulty of the situation. He was guided, he had no voice in his head describing the scene, no voice challenging that voice and no wonder of whether or not he was making the voices talk; no he was guided by a smooth recklessness that he had convinced him was the everlasting will of God. His eyes kept him moving in the right direction as he used the activity as a means to any sort of meditation. Taking up any task Lucas found himself free from the persecution and horror of his thoughts.

Amongst the ruins bare bodies lay throughout the city, their eyes nearly completely white, the pupils facing directly upwards. Gunfire was constantly audible in the cities, the tribes of survivors constantly fighting for electricity for a charge and territory. As of lately, the buildings were collapsing; the center of the city marked by the rubble of the former tallest and largest building of the city, the Bio Corporation Headquarters. It had become the battleground of the city with the now useless graphene blast doors standing alone surrounded by the broken skeleton of the once great skyscraper. In the sky, where the Bio Corp. logo’s sign used to hang in full view to the rest of the city in a sickly dark green blaze, the luminescence of the signs remained free standing in the sky without explanation.

The motorcycle stopped itself, the tinted glass of the windows began rippling, the street disconnected from the ground and ascended to what appeared to be another road. The same one seemingly, only there were more bodies. The motorcycle started again and engaged the gas for him, he noticed the speed gauge was no longer on the motorcycle, and only the wind that was beginning to sting his face with the growing velocity remained. He only saw what was directly ahead of him, and in this he was at peace.

The mouth opened as he approached the dark tunnel and when he passed inside of it, absolutely and immediately the darkness ceased to remain dominant as a series of bright flashes of lightning erupted in the sky, revealing to him the silhouette of the city, and what above it what seemed to be an enormous studded and barbed beast gliding through the skyscrapers, strings of flesh that had ripped off of it’s wings flowing with the air. Only for a split second was it noticed and the third reality took over his mind. The flashes of thunder were no long white, but red and the beast was no longer gliding loftily, it was searching menacingly and his motorcycle began screaming.

He quickly jumped off of it and began stomping on it and as he did he heard it’s bones crack. It’s screams were no longer to gain the beast’s attention, they were out of pain. It’s mouth opened and bright, viscous orange fluid sprayed out of it violently until it slowly appeared to become red and finally but shortly, black. The beast had heard and the thunder’s image was synonymous with the flapping of the beast’s wings. This was not his mind anymore, this was it’s mind.

“If God is, then I am God, you are God, the chair I sit in is God. We are all God and until we realize self, we will never realize God. Thou that art, thou that I am.” was bellowed out of the pores and orifices of the beast. He ran in the opposite direction of it’s pursuit, he knew what it meant. His legs clanked as his exoskeleton began to grind against the rusted stress of his chassis. The doors of the abandoned cars swung open and hysterical laughter screamed out out of the speakers of their speakers. It wasn’t one’s laughter, it was the laughter many and not all of them seemed human.

He withdrew his pistol and began shooting bright blue tracers into each car he saw, sprinting. The meter of recharge was slowly decreasing as it fought to stay charged, but the charger was too weak and he was firing too fast. He withdrew his other pistol in his other hand and began shooting at them all, turning as he ran to shoot at the beast who was no longer there. By the time he had completed his twist the beast was sitting before him. It had stopped and it’s wings were spread open, denying him passage.

It’s mouth opened and it’s eyes turned a glowing orange, he heard it’s voice in his mind, but it spoke no language. He collapsed to the ground, paralyzed and the beast lifted into the air, and flew away.

The red light of the thunder remained after it’s shudder and softly illuminated the sky. The steady sound of ground shuddering humming started up from a small tremble to a quake. He knew if he tried to move, he would be able to, but he didn’t. He closed his eyes.

____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____

“We need to spend some time apart.”

He knew why.

“Why?”

“We just need time.”

He ended the call and went through every gizmo he had her contact information on and deleted it all. The background of his cellular was the last trace of her existence, he replaced it with the insignia of his party.

She was calling back, he hesitated but answered the phone, “Yea?”

“Wake up, Lucas.”

His eyes opened and he breathed in heavily, he looked around and saw absolutely nothing. This was different, he normally could feel the wind. He felt nothing and saw nothing; all he could feel were his clothes on his body and the gas mask limiting his breathing.

The ground shifted and he could feel himself ascending, he looked directly up and far up he saw the dark red gloom of the planet’s sky. He lost his awareness of time for a moment and realized he was standing back on the road. The beast was gone, no trace of him. All of the car doors were as they were before they had flung open.

He started walking away from the city. In the opposite direction he noticed that there was no silhouette. It was a place of nothingness, an abyssal volume where sparsely spread remnants of the world slept. He had never been to any other place but what remained of the city but he had attempted walking somewhere else he remembered from before. This time he would go further than last time.

He stopped walking and engaged a full sprint and ceased to think in his mind. His augmentations allowed him to run at around twenty-four miles per hour. With every step closer the familiar humming and rhythmic wailing grew louder, as it grew darker the flying figures that spiraled about the road grew more and more visible. He ignored them, though he saw their eyes looking at them.

The deeper he went he would notice that very slowly they would gravitate towards him. Their figures were that of women in black shredded cloaks in flight, arms spread open. He ignored them, he kept running. This isn’t so bad, he thought and right after he did, the rhythmic wailing in the distance ceased and was replaced by the mad screaming of the flying figures. They densely packed around him in flight forming a sphere. The screaming would destroy the ears of an unmodified human.

He was on the ground curled up in a ball. He stopped screaming and when he did, they did. He quickly stood up and they quickly flew away into the darkness. He turned back around to the city, it was nearly unnoticeable, only a faint reflection on a few buildings was visible over the highways.

He turned back around and sprinted towards it.

The ground dropped and descended back down. When it stopped Nicolette was there, she had all visible symptoms but was alive, her pupils pointing completely upwards. The red of her veins were visible at the bottom of her white eyes.

“Why did you do it, Lucas?”

He fell down and scraped the ground backwards to the wall of the deep hole. She stepped forward closer to him as he tried to scurry away.

“You had to drink too, didn’t you Lucas?”

He felt tears coming but he defied them, he closed his eyes and tried to meditate. He couldn’t, she was screaming now. He never heard her scream, ever. It was the most revolting sound he had ever heard. He pulled out his pistol and fired at her, the tracer escaped the barrel and she disappeared. He blinked almost in disbelief. He sat there, still and unmoving trying hard to not think about her. He didn’t notice he was reascending.

____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____    ____

Showing up on the road where the beast had left two Secessionists strode up to him holding their WASR-10 rifles low. The folding stocks weren't pulled out and being a model of the AK variety drum barrels were snuggly fitted into them. "Captain, Sven's been hurt and everyone's pulled back to the sewers."

He looked at his best friend and lieutenant and tried to sum up something to say. "Well, what's wrong with him?"

"He's succumbing to radiation poisoning."

"Why?"

"Because Houston's water system is irradiated."

"We've been drinking out of it for years."

"It's been irradiated for years."

Lucas was quiet, he was right. He looked around and noticed he was sitting at a desk outside, his serving executive officer standing before him. "Where are we lieutenant?"

Lucas looked up to him and he observed his face becoming frightfully amused. He didn't say anything, looking down his nose at him, slowly building up a menacing grin.

Lucas wasn't afraid for a moment but then in a shocking wave of hysterical fear he started up out of his chair, moving backwards, tripping over it completely. He struggled to get up, pulling his pistol out noticing it was his regular pistol and not one that had just materialized as he pulled it out. It was a TT33 Tokarev, a smiley face etched into the slide. He aimed at the grinning man and anticipated his sudden disappearance, relieved and convinced of this he fired; the brain and contents of his Lieutenant's head flung through the air for a moment before splattering across a long stretch of  pavement leading from the place where the disfigured head and body collapsed with a splatter to the furthest shard of his skull.

For a moment he was in disbelief but after twenty seconds of looking at his best friend's body he knew he was just fucking with him and that he had as a result, been trolled although the remaining fact of the entire situation was his lieutenant was permanently banned from life.

"Why?" he asked.

He refused to break down in tears like he would be expected to. No. It wasn't necessarily intentional, he thought. He walked further down the street away from the desk and climbed into an uncovered manhole. Climbing down the ladder he heard only his steps as he descended into the sewers. Walking down the path to a door he twisted the handle and stepped through to the other side. A collection of saddening gas masks looked over to him, to his left and right hands came to relieve him of his burdens. Slipping his trench coat off he felt a wave of relaxation, of relief.

"Where's Doug?" one of them asked.

Lucas turned around and looked at him through the eyes of his gasmask for a good few moments before saying,

"I shot him."

There was a stillness about the spacious but filled room. Two dozen people slowly got quiet.

"It was an accident."

"That's it?" a girl asked.

"Yes."

"I loved him."

"So did I."

She was cracking up in tears. "How could you say that you apathetic bastard!"

He looked around the room and everyone looked at him confused, but with a sense of familiarity with this behavior. "I can't say anything else, I can't bring him back and I can't make anyone feel any better. We'll have to carry on without him."

"It's not that simple!" she screamed, turning as she allowed herself to fall to the ground.

"It is for me."

"Why?"

"I don't know, it just is."

He walked to his bunk and laid down on his back, locking his hands together with his fingers. He looked to his left, a girl was crying, a man was comforting her and one of the few people without gas masks had his off to swallow a second shot of gin. He laid his head back down, controlled his last exhale and closed his eyes.

Yes. Yes you're right it certainly has been strange since the Bomb.

"So." she put a cigarette in her mouth and lit it, looking up at him from the cigarette she winked, "Whatsup baby?"

He stood there, dress clothes, black trenchcoat and red beret donned he reached out to get a drag and she handed it to him with a subtle smile. "Where to?"

"I guess we're going to the coast."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yup."

"I can't believe..." she began but Lucas didn't listen, he observed the sparrow bathing in the ashtray. As it dipped it's head in the ever thick smoke as though it was water small whips of gases streamed out of the smog. It was very interesting to him and it fascinated him to a point of devoted attention.

"Are you okay?" he turned to her and blankly stared for a moment before realizing what he had done. "Sorry."

"No it's alright you do that sometimes, I don't think you can really help it."

He was quiet.

"I made dinner."

"Oh yeah?" he seemed to perk.

"Yes its in the oven, still a bit warm." and standing he walked over to the oven to open it; in this moment he thought of the Bomb. He recalled how thankful he was that he was staying in a Hotel stockpiled with food with his girlfriend, two best friends and their girlfriends. Opening the oven he saw a void, there was nothing there and it did not have a shadows mercy to the light; everything was black. He looked at Nicolette and saw she was watching him. She had a very big smile, bigger than the way it usually was and her eyes had appeared to become less noticeable. He after a few seconds found himself trying to perceive her eyes, knowing he could see them but failing ultimately. It confused him and he felt a surge of fear in his body. He looked back down to the void.

"Baby."

There was no answer.

"Baby!" he shouted somehow kindly, he turned to look at her and saw her an inch from his face. Startled he fell backwards and he tripped backwards over the oven door. Landing awkwardly and painfully he struggled to get up and pushed her.

"Are you on something?" she asked.

He looked around, he was in the living room. Grabbing a knife he pointed the blade to his neck, "Stay the fuck there."

Lucas' eyes opened, a deep breathe was brought in and a feeling of emptiness came over his chest.

He laid there in his misery and lethargy before standing up and washing his mind of excessive despair Lucas rose from his rest and grabbed his dufflebag from under the bunkbed. Leaving only two people looked at him out of the nine that were awake; he considered it to be something of a sign. He grabbed the keys to his Ford Ranger, a mannequin he had known of in a trunk near the tables of the common house he had just left; loading his tent, dufflebag, ammunition and bicycle he started the engine of his truck. The mannequin had acquired attire in his absence.

Pulling out he looked at the door,at the entrance an oddly familiar fetus was lying in the shadow of a doorway. He looked at the mannequin, "So what's your name."

He stared. He was full of fearful faith.

"Quincy."

"You're fucking with me."

The mannequin had a straight subtle smile as he spoke without words. "Look I know."

"What do you know?" Lucas said with an intense glare, "What are you supposed to fucking know? You're the by-product of oil and vain consumerism.

Quincy appeared to be offended. Looking away Lucas began to consider his words and turned to him, "I'm sorry,  I'm a very crass, eccentric and unserious person and I let that get in the-"

Quincy moved for the first time, the head snapping right, the eyes closing, the mouth opening and as it opened Quincy choked becoming more and more lifelike.

"You're getting a little too serious about this." said Lucas. Fingers were beginning to appear coming out of Quincy's mouth and he had came to appear as a regular man; with a first coming out of his throat. Lucas reached for his knife letting his next will guide him. The knife went into the head of Quincy and the forearm sticking out appeared to be very uncomfortable. Lucas parked the truck and looked at the forearm, it was a girl's. He examined it with a certain fear of the familiar, searching for the mark he found it. A freckle on what was probably the left hand. Remembering he nearly screamed out in tears. Before he could complete more than a sob he drew his pistol, his mind hummed with incomprehensible emotional and mental pain, severing him from his peace. He shot Quincy in the head, the resulting brain, bone and blood forming a smiley face. Lucas grinned wide and for a moment, looked left to right trying not to break out into hysterical laughter. He shot at the chin twice, the head was still quite regular looking spare the entrance wounds and slightly lopsided cranial structure (and of course the missing chunk of his head). He stopped to himself when he realized he was  doing this against a bullet proof car window. He was then very upset with himself. "Fuck, what's wrong with me?" angry at his wastefulness and hygiene he digressed and kept driving with her arm coming out of the mouth of Quincy.

-------------------

Time passed, the truck seized. Lucas slowed down, turning off the ignition and looking to his right. The arm of Nicolette was limp, still hanging out of Quincy's mouth. Lucas assumed he'd been sleeping because he hadn't said a word but now that he thought about it, he realized that he couldn't speak because her arm his mouth was full of his dead lover. So, shrugging off the pain and guilt of touching her he grabbed the wrist of the arm and pulled and with a second yank it gave spilling blood all over Quincy.

He coughed out words, inanimate but a semblance of life persisting in his features, "Took you -- ugh -- long enough! Why didn't you do that earlier I could've suffocated!"

"You don't have lungs, Quincy."

"It made it no less uncomfortable, if I had a stomach I would've thrown up all that blood."

"Shut the fuck up Quincy." and indeed, there was silence.

Lucas opened the door and stepping out the ground wasn't there but there was no fall. He panicked for a moment, but it subsided as he failed to feel the wind in his hair and his guts being thrown up into his chest. He slowly descended, as he did and as he went lower the floors and walls of Harris County Jail's building 701, tank 7F1. It was filled with blacks, as it was and usually had always been. They weren't aware of him as his feet reached the ground and he saw himself, sitting down at a table, eating old orange peels. He'd just shown up.

Behind his former self, the ground opened wherefrom a cloaked woman rose. She was petting his hair, she lurched a step closer and massaged his scalp intently, gazing down, her hands traveled to his ears where they stopped and once still she whispered. It was a disturbing sight, Lucas knew there was a purpose behind her whispers, a reason for her presence and a reason for his. He approached her and aware of him, startled she turned. The long ratty black hair was hiding a hideous, maggot-infested, mummified looking face; her screaming wasn't of fear but to intimidate. Lucas wasn't intimidated. He stepped forward towards her faster, his feet coming down against the ground heavier and heavier up until he was within reach. He grabbed it by the neck and slammed it against the table, his arm and her body setting through the form of his old self. Through the back and out the chest it was as though his form wasn't of matter, there was no friction, no touch. She was silent, but her silence, inviting questions and showing surrender wasn't satisfactory to Lucas. He went on to pummel the face, the maggots exploding under the sudden impacts and the rumbling growl of pain rumbling like the sound of an angry castrated boar.