The Veil

10-31-08 10 AM

2008-10-16T04:38:00.006-05:00

<BGSOUND src="12%20Horror%20%28Serious%20Drama%29">

When Reggie regained consciousness, he was acutely aware of two sensations as his eyes opened and found Erin kneeling next to him. First, he could feel the hard cool tiles of the floor against his skin and secondly, he could feel shooting pain coming from the wound in his leg. His pants and shoes were piled next to him on the floor down near his feet. He tried to sit up, but Erin laid her hand on his chest and gently pushed him back down.

"I know this has got to hurt, but I think I've gotten most of those barbs out of your leg." she said as she went back to his wound.

Erin had a handful of gauze in one of her hands that she was using to dab up the blood from the opening and the other hand held a pair of medical tweezers that she was using to dig around the wound with. Each time her hand moved the tweezers, the pain would shot through his leg and rack his body.

"Where did you get those?" Reggie asked through gritted teeth.

"There was a first-aid kit at the librarian's desk." she said, "I figured it was probably a good idea to clean the wound and pull any crap out that I could find. I just expect that there'd be so much."

"How bad does it look?" Reggie said as he tried to look over her hands and see for himself.

"It's quite nasty, but I'm not a doctor or anything, so I'm really just guessing."

"Well, I appreciate it nonetheless." he tried to say with a feeble attempt at a smile. "Even with the pain."

She returned his smile and said, "We'll see about that once I get these last few pieces out and then have to clean the wound. That's going to hurt like hell, especially without anything to numb your wound first."

Reggie looked down again. Except for his briefs and his socks, he was naked from the waste down so that Erin could work on his wound. Even from his vantage point, he could see the swelling and redness the sidhe's attack. He winced audibly and jerked his leg as Erin had to really pull hard to get a particular piece out that had gotten itself wedged in pretty good.

"So," he said once his breathing returned to normal. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't look like one of the normal students here. How did you get here?"

Erin remained focused on his leg, trying to be as gentle as she could. "I live nearby and I was on my way to pick up my kids from my ex-husband when I got caught in traffic behind an accident. While I was waiting for the emergency crews to clear the road, all hell broke loose. The next thing I knew giants and monsters were attacking everything in site and killing people who couldn't get away."

"A small group of us tried hiding, but those creatures found us and chased us here to the university. I was the only one left before you found me."

"So what about you? What's your deal? Are a student here?" she said without taking her eyes off his leg, even though she had stopped working on it for a few moments.

"Yeah, I am. I lived on campus here until my dorm was destroyed." He said. "I was actually driving into town on my way to work when I got caught by the same accident you did."

Erin set the tweezers down and started digging around in the first aid kit. After a few seconds she found what she was looking for and began to set things out in front of her.

"Well Reggie, I hate to say this, but the easy part is over. I'm pretty sure I got everything out, but I'm going to have to scrub the wound and clean out the infection to make sure you're going to be alright." She said with as much sympathy as could.

"For someone who isn't a doctor, you seem to know what you're doing."

"I used to be a lifeguard and I had to take a first aid class, which is lucky for you I suppose."

She gave him four pills and one of his water bottles as she continued, "I need you to take these pain killers now so that when I'm ready to clean the wound and stitch it, you won't black out again. I wish I new what those things were that we killed so I could be sure I'm doing the right thing."

Reggie finished swallowing the last of the painkillers and said, "Those things are called the sidhe and I think they're from Ireland."

"How do you know this?" Erin asked as she was began to prep his leg and the wound.

"Believe it or not, but I was reading about all this in here when you and your friends showed up."

Reggie then spent the rest of the hour telling her all that he had read before he passed out again from the pain. The last thing he remembered was Erin saying, "I think I've heard of the Spear of Destiny."

10-31-08 9 AM

2008-10-15T00:46:00.002-05:00

Reggie used caution as he slowly made his way from the safety of the archives and moved closer to the main part of the library where he heard the commotion. He had removed his backpack and had his bat held firmly in his right hand. As he reached the door, he opened it slowly to remain hidden while he tried to spy on the situation.

At the back of the library, three sidhe had cornered someone on the staircase. It looked like an older woman, possibly in her mid-thirties, was caught on the landing of the stairs between the first floor and the second floor. Two of the creatures were below her, blocking her way down, and a lone sidhe was on the stairs above, cautiously closing the distance between them.

Unlike the previous ones he had encountered, these sidhe looked very similar to each other. They were over six feet tall and very lean. Their bodies did not seem to have any hair, and their skin was oily black in color and had a rough scruffy look to it. Running all over their skin were bright veins that glowed like molten rock and pulsed in an alternating rhythm with each other. Each one of them had four eyes and a broad nose that spread the width of their face. Their white teeth were sharp and protruded from their mouths, and looked to be stained pink from blood. Long arms extended from a pointy shoulder and hung past their knees, ending in wide fingers that were covered in barbs and suction cups. None of them seemed to make a sound.

The woman was dressed in torn clothing that looked as thought she had been dragged through a field. Her clothing was very casual, just blue jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt, and a small fall jacket. Despite the fatigued look in her face and her movements, Reggie thought he could see some resistance in her eyes, as though she was ready to keep fighting, despite the current odds.

Letting this woman fight alone to protect his safety was never something he considered. As soon as he realized her situation, he immediately began wondering how he could help her without causing too much noise and risk the possibility of drawing others. Without much time to devise a great plan, Reggie decided the best thing for him to do would be to draw attention to himself and hope that the woman could get away to safety.

As quietly as he could, Reggie approached the two sidhe on the ground level from behind. Luck stayed with him as he got to within ten feet without them making any moves to acknowledge they knew he was there. The direction in which he did approach actually hid him from the higher sidhe’s sight, so he wouldn’t be able to spot him. Of course, the woman couldn’t see him either. Reggie decided that he would grab a chair from one of the nearby tables and smash one of the sidhe with it and then attack the other one with his bat with enough shock and surprise to overtake it before the third one could react.

Silently leaning his bat against the wall, Reggie picked up one of the chairs and raised it slowly above his head as he took a few quick steps to slam it into the sidhe closest to him. As he brought the chair down upon the unsuspecting monster he came suddenly into view and the woman jump back, startled by the sudden movement. This flinch gave the creature enough of a warning to get one of its dark arms up to meet Reggie’s attack.

Although it was able to get one of its arms up to try and block the blow, Reggie was able to build up a considerable amount of momentum as the chair crashed down and into the sidhe, knocking it backwards amid a large explosion of wood pieces. He threw down the remains of the chair that he still held onto and reached backward for his bat.

The second sidhe noticed Reggie, and instead of moving, emitted a blue mist from slits in his neck and on his wrists and proceeded to sink into the floor. Unsure what was happening, he bounded the stair and went after the only one he was aware was still on it’s feet. Seeing Reggie coming, the sidhe embraced itself and dug in.

As Reggie passed the woman and was beginning to ascend the stairs, the monster’s arms came at him quicker and closer than he would have imagined. He was just barely able to dodge the attacks, but it cost him his momentum and forced him to stop, placing his body between the woman and the creature.

The creature attacked again, but this time was able to grab a hold of Reggie’s left leg and begin to pull him in. Despite hoping for the best, he fully expected something of this nature. The barbs on the arm cut quickly through Reggie’s jeans and dug into his flesh. He instantly felt a rush heat and nausea spreading throughout his body. Although this was extremely painful, he had been through enough over the last few hours and he was able to push past the pain and act, bringing his bat into the sidhe’s neck with a familiar authority that he didn’t possess yesterday.

The hands and barbs dug in deeper and the Reggie started to feel himself getting light-headed and sick to his stomach. He dug deeper within himself, remembering what he saw these creatures do to people they defeated and refused to allow himself to share a similar fate. Each swing that he took with the bat became harder and harder; his arms felt heavier and slower and each swing was accompanied by a large grunt or gasp for air. When he thought he couldn’t last much longer, a blue mist began to spill out of the ground next to him and the previous monster rose from the floor.

He stared briefly at the new combatant as he began to panic and sense his eventual death, when the creature’s eyes widened and a large spike of broken wood pierced through its chest. The sidhe crumpled to the floor and revealed the woman standing behind it. The pain in his leg prevented him from concentrating on this development and he turned his attention back to his original opponent and quickly finished killing it with a few more swings from the bat.

The dead creature’s hand made a strange spasm and fell from his leg, but left the barbs in. He could feel his leg getting hotter and begin to swell when he made eye contact with the woman. Just as she was about to say something, the first creature that Reggie had attacked with the chair was starting to stand and blue mist was pouting from his neck as well. Not wanting to fight even more of these things, Reggie was about to jump when the woman moved first.

She was a blur and fury of chops and stabs, and he could just make out the piece of wood that was in her hand. Not wanting to wait for something to discover them or for the monster to some how get the upper hand, he jumped along side her and brought his bat straight down on the sidhe’s head with a bone crushing sound that dropped it right to the ground, convulsion a few seconds longer and then going still.

For long seconds, all that Reggie heard was the panting of his voice and the woman’s. He was forced to lean on his bat as the pain in his wound was becoming unmanageable as his leg began to give out.

The woman rushed to his side and put his arm around her shoulders to support him. She said, “My name is Erin, thanks for the help, but it looks like you’re not doing so well. Is there a place nearby that we can hide?”

Reggie was having trouble focusing on her face, but managed to point in the direction he had come from, “Yeah, we can hide out in the history archives, it’s through that far door and then through another door. That’s where I was when I heard you come in.”

“That sounds great,” she said, “If you can stay awake, I’m sure I can get you there.”

“I will stay awake!” he said, as much to himself as to her. “My name is Reggie, and thanks for helping me. I’ve got some food and water back there for us.”

“That would be great Reggie, I’m starved." Erin added with a tight smile.

It took a few minutes, but Erin was able to get Reggie back to the history room archives. As she laid him out, the heat seemed to run through him and his whole leg was pounding with his heart. The last thing he remembered was Erin’s eyes looking at him concerned.

10-31-08 8 AM

2008-10-13T22:51:00.005-05:00

Reggie was a bit surprised at the amount of books and information that his university had on Ireland and Celtic mythology. After scouring over more analytical histories, he focused solely on the location of Tara as it was mentioned frequently of late. In a book simply titled “Celtic Mythology” he found more answers than he had hoped for.

First thing he was able to learn is that the creatures he had been fighting actually had names. The giants were called Fomorians and were supposed to have been the original inhabitants of Ireland (although he found this claim made by a few other peoples as well) who were defeated by a group of people called the Tuatha De Danann. He thought the smaller creatures were called Slaugh Sidhe, which according to what he was seeing, were the cursed spirits of the Tuatha De Danann that were forced to live underground with fairies after being defeated by at the last battle of the Ulster Cycle. Reggie thought that would explain the individual nature of each one, as though their exposure to the magics of the fey had been different for each person. The large white dogs seemed to fit the description of a creature called the Cu Sith.

As interesting as this was, it didn’t explain why they were here. He didn’t understand why creatures of the past, supposedly myths and legends of simpler, ancient people who tried to make sense of their world, were suddenly very real and very pissed off about something.

As he was finishing with that book, he checked its bibliography for an idea of where to look next. What he found shocked him, but also seemed to fit like a missing puzzle piece. One of the sources that the book credited was the private manuscripts of the John H. Lamb history archives. That would explain why the university had such a large collection of books on this subject.

It didn’t take him long to find the archive room and make his way to another room within that was devoted strictly to historical documents. As he searched through diaries and transcripts and old photos, he came across an interesting volume that looked like a report called “Prophesies and Legends of Tara and the Sidhe by Connacht Ailill.”

According to Connacht’s paper, he claims to have infiltrated a secret organization that is carrying on the traditions and lore of the Celts after the Julius Caesar ordered all records destroyed and forced the introduction of Roman beliefs and religious practices on the area.

Connacht states that during the second battle of Magh Tuiredh, a part of the Ulster Cycle as it is more commonly known, the Fomorians were led by the evil Balor and the disposed king of the Tuatha De Danann Bres, who was half Tuatha and half Fomorian. Although Balor was killed by the future king Lugh, Bres escaped and remained in hiding until the final stage of the Ulster Cycle when he tried to rally the last remaining people against the armies of the Milesians. Bres was captured and imprisoned in the Mound of Hostages, sentenced to an eternity of solitude away from his people.

As Bres was being sealed into his tomb, he swore vengeance on the Milesians and swore he would one day reclaim the land and the Stone of Destiny would destroy them when he reclaimed the throne on Tara. Connacht claims that if Mound of Hostages is disturbed, it would allow Bres to escape and begin his revenge. In order to make his threat good, he would need to claim the four legendary treasures of the Tuatha De Danann.

The treasure are Dagda’s Cauldron, The Spear of Lugh, the Sword of Light, and The Stone of Fal.

Three of the treasures are said to be buried at Tara, directly beneath the fourth treasure, The Stone of Fal, otherwise known as the Stone of Destiny.

According to Connacht’s writing, he was discovered this information in the private diary of an old man named Curoi Mac Daire, the last of an old Irish family that held title to a large amount of land in County Meath.

Reggie stopped reading as he tried to remember where he had heard that name before. As he was going over the events of the last few hours in his head, he placed the name as the leader of the terrorist attacks on the M3 highway in Ireland.

As Reggie attempted to fit this new piece into the puzzle that was beginning to become very clear, the shattering of glass and sounds of fighting from the library took his attention away.

10-31-08 7 AM

2008-10-12T22:27:00.011-05:00

Reggie had seen enough and looked away form the window. He tried to can some measure of control over the situation by visualizing how the college campus was previously laid out before the carnage of the previous night. When he was finished, he realized he could tell that the morning had finally arrived by the minor brightening of the mists and fog. This made the visibility better, but it was just enough to make a person realize that what they were looking at outside wasn't a dream. From the large window he had a nice view of what his former residence hall currently looked like.

The need to make use of the bathroom facilities pulled him away from the window and off to relieve himself, this time remembering not to flush.

Since the building still had power, he made with way to the librarian's computer which was hidden in a corner of the back office, which would allow him to see if he could get additional information from the Internet with less threat of being discovered. Most of what he came across was just an expansion of what he had read last night.

Somehow a survivor how who was trapped in a high rise in London was able to send out a photo of what was left of the city after the attack by the creatures and the failed attempts by the British military to reclaim the city.

London wasn't the only place that had some of its misery and damage recorded and shared with the rest of the world. Reggie was shocked at the images of San Francisco over the last few hours, starting with the coming of the fog last night and then some of the destruction caused by the combined nightmare forces of giants, and hell's other denizens:

Within the fog, the damages to the central part of the city were extensive. Most of the people in the city went into to hiding as they tried to survive.

Someone had been able to venture out with a camera to get a better view of what the city looked like from the street-level.

Not surprisingly there weren't many bodies left in the wake of the attacks. Reggie had personally seen the bodies being consumed by the monsters and figured this must be how they were supplying the troops with food. Occasionally a victim was left behind.

Reggie was also able to stumble across a few pictures and reports of Chicago. As far as he could tell, it had escaped the devastation of San Francisco, but too was being covered in fog and hidden from the rest of the world.

The freshest photo he found was taken moments before he started his new search and centered on a building at the University of Chicago. He noticed that it too was deserted.

Throughout his search, which had quickly taken up almost an hour, he came across two interesting news articles from earlier in the month that he thought might hold interest into what was going on:

By Cian McCormack, RTE
Published: October 24, 2007

County Meath, October 23rd -- Violence and destruction reigned on the uncompleted M3 highway near the Hill of Tara today. At approximately 6:15 PM tonight, opponents of the project set off a series of explosions shortly after construction workers and engineers had left the site for the night, leaving a pile of devastation and debris all over the work site. As of this time there have been no reported injuries or casualties.

A group calling themselves The Druid Council of The Meath Master Plan have taken credit for the attack and promise greater and more terrible events if the government continues its assault on the history, traditions, and heritage of the Celtic people. In a statement send to us here at the RTE, an individual identifying himself as Curoi mac Daire said the Druid Council will do whatever is necessary to protect Ireland from the danger this needless highway poses.

This marks a dramatic turn from the peaceful protests over the development of the road. Recently a group led by Irish actor Stuart Townsend created a human harp that was photographed from space. That event went off without any conflict.

Local authorities do not have any current leads on those who are responsible for this terrorist-styled attack. Work is expected to resume within a few weeks once the site is cleaned of debris and new vehicles are brought in

The second item was actually a news report that was so hard to understand through the heavy Irish accents of the reporter, but Reggie was lucky enough to find a transcript of the story at the website:

By Aine Lawlor RTE Radio
Reported October 25th, 2007

Approximately 24 hours after what is being called an ecoterrorist attack on the construction of the M3 road in County Meath, all evidence of the destroyed construction equipment has vanished. If that wasn’t miraculous enough all the progress that was made in clearing the land for the road has reverted to its preconstruction condition.

Authorities have completely closed the area and government officials are on the scene searching the area for a cause and any clues. One scientist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, has said “There is absolutely no sign of anything wrong here. Quite frankly, we’re baffled.”

Eyewitnesses say that just before sunset an unnatural fog enclosed the area and obscured everything from outside eyes. Flashes of red and blue lights were reported to be seen inside and then the ground began shaking. Although there are no records of any seismic activity from British Monitoring stations, locals have all reported similar disturbances around this same time.

Afterwards he couldn't find any new stories about this seemingly isolated event that called to him. The connection he felt was bizarre, it was almost like a familiar plea for help or assistance. He was developing a need to find out more and eventually he came across an image of the area as it appeared just hours ago:

The more he looked at the image, the more he realized he needed to learn more about this area and why it was so significant. Why that, he headed toward the books on Ireland and Irish Mythology.

10-31-08 6 AM

2008-10-10T16:37:00.003-05:00

Small creaks and groans could still be heard from the tunnels underneath the remains of H. F. Melctoste Hall as Reggie regained consciousness. He was laying face down on a concrete floor. A few feet ahead of him, he could make out a beam of white light. He tried to get up and stand, but found it difficult as his legs were buried under a pile of dirt, concrete chunks, and debris from the collapse of the tunnel. The wet blanket that was protecting him from the heat and flames of the tunnel had started to constrict him with the weight of the debris. With some difficulty he was able to extract himself from the pile and get to his feet.

He looked at the beam of light ahead and saw that it was his flashlight. After securing the light he looked at the passage and thought that it was very similar to the previous one he was in, but much older. Beyond the smell of smoke that was leftover from the previous tunnel, this one smelled of earth and mildew. The pipes ran in a similar fashion along the ceiling like the previous tunnel and once again prevented him from standing up fully. Along the wall to the right was a map.

After studying the map he discovered that this was part of a system of maintenance support tunnels that were located under almost all of the university buildings. Judging by the map the passage he was in was only a short distance from the library. He sat against the wall and drank some water while considering how he was going to get out of these passages. He had no assurances that the library was still standing, so he couldn’t count on being able to get out there. He supposed that eventually if he followed the passages far enough, he would find an exit; he would just have to be patient and try not to get lost.

He estimated that it was almost 500 yards until he got underneath the library and judging from the map there were several intersecting passages leading to other areas of the campus. As he was ready to leave he realized that he didn’t have the baseball bat anymore. The bat had saved his life more than once already and he felt naked and very vulnerable without it. He spent almost twenty minutes searching through the rubble for his baseball bat before he found it. Being metal it was able to survive the collapse of his dorm intact. Bat in one hand, and flashlight in the other, he proceeded down the passage.

Several hours had passed since he had hidden in the tunnels and fallen asleep and Reggie began to wonder about the state of the world above. If his insignificant college was being attacked, he could only guess at the damage to everything else.

After only a few hundred yards he came upon the first intersection. As he slowly approached, he thought he heard something. It sounded like a small scratching sound coming from the left opening and he moved cautiously forward, leading with his flashlight. As the beam of light rounded the corner, he caught the briefest of movements as he froze the light on the spot and sent a rat scurrying further down the passage.

“Thank God!” Reggie exclaimed as he let out his breath, “That could have been much worse.”

Those words were hanging in the air when he heard a hiss come from the other direction. He had just enough time to turn when another creature came out of the right passage. Reggie quickly dropped his flashlight and tried to get his bat up in front of him with both hands. He failed.

The creature quickly reached past the bat that as it was too slow to block its attack. He couldn’t tell where his flashlight had fallen, but its light cast a strange angle that gave him some visibility and deep shadows to fight in. Both of the creature’s hands closed around Reggie’s throat as it opened its mouth and revealed rows of black teeth and fangs. This creature was furry like an ape, with a wide blunt nose, huge brow over its deep-set yellow and green eyes, and two tusks that protruded from its bottom jaw. The fur looked to be dark green and grey and it was more heavily muscled than the other creature he had killed.

Reggie tried to push it away, but wasn’t able to force the monster back. He could feel its grip tightening around his neck and it was beginning to get more and more difficult to breathe. His strength was beginning to fail him as the rows of sharp teeth began to inch closer and closer to his face. The creature’s breath came in short snorts and was warm and stale and reminded Reggie of old moldy cheese. With his heart pounding and the edges of his vision starting to fail, he knew that he wasn’t going to last long. As a last resort, he brought his knee into the creature’s midsection and was met with a successful grunt of discomfort that momentarily halted the attack.

With an influx of hope, air, and adrenaline, Reggie unleashed a quick series of three more kicks to the midsection and then brought his foot into its groin region. This caused the creature to back up and gave Reggie just enough room and surprise to grab a hold of the bat with both hands and press it against its torso. As he pushed the creature backwards a few feet he began to angle the pressure downward and move the bat lower towards his midsection. After the bat was almost in the middle of its stomach, he stopped his forward momentum just a bit and then raised the bat up fast and hard underneath its jaw, knocking it further back.

The creature appeared surprised to have found someone that would offer resistance. This second of shock and confusion allowed Reggie to bring his bat up to swing against the monster. His first swing caught it on its arm with a heavy thud and crack which caused the creature to holler in pain. Taking advantage of his offensive, he aimed his next swing at its head and connected with a loud thwack that sent painful vibrations along the bat and down into his arms. The force of the blow was so strong that the vibrations almost caused him to drop the bat, but he knew that would likely lead to his death and he was able to barely hang on.

For its part, the creature didn’t seem too phased by the shot, and looked to be ready to launch another attack. Reggie met this with a series of hard blows to the side of the head and neck, the last one knocking it into the side of the wall and then onto it’s back. Reggie then moved in and brought the creature to its end with a relentless pounding that severely coated the end of the bat in the creature’s blood. Breathing heavily and sore all over, he picked up his flashlight and hurried back along his original route towards the library. Now that he knew the tunnels were no longer safe, he felt an urgent need to get out.

Reggie traveled the rest of the distance without incident and found a small set of steps with a door at the top. He expected to find this door locked also, and he was correct, but the lock was different on this end. Apparently the university was concerned about someone getting locked inside down in an area that isn’t commonly visited, so all the access doors could be unlocked from inside the tunnels, Releasing the lock, he opened the door and found himself in another stairwell, but this one was bigger, and lit. Reggie took it as a good sign that the electric was still on.

Softly closing the door, he waited at the bottom of the stairs for more than twenty minutes just listening for any movements. He spent his time resting against one of the walls and eating his former roommate’s leftover hamburger, a breakfast bar, and a banana and the rest of his bottle of water. He looked at the meager supplies from his backpack and saw that he had three bottles of water left, two breakfast bars, a banana, two apples, and a box of pop tarts. It wasn’t ideal, but it was food, even if it was mostly carbs and sugar. Cleaning up, he readied himself and headed up the stairwell.

The library was the tallest building on campus. It was five stories tall and the top story contained classrooms and administrative offices. The basement used to house the mail room and other student amenities, but they had been recently moved to a more central location with an expansion of the campus. He wasn’t sure why, but this stairwell only went to the fourth floor, the basement, and first floor. Unfortunately for him, the doors of the two lowest floors were locked and chained shut. It left the top floor as his last option for finding a way in.

As he got to the top of the flight of stairs he saw a smeared streak of blood that led into the library from the landing. He looked closely at the scene and sure enough the door was slightly ajar. He didn’t feel he had much choice, so he moved as silently as he could and entered the library.

The trail of blood led into the main walkway and then proceeded down the stairs and out the doors to the campus. What ever happened, the victor seemed to have taken its prize with him outside.

This brought Reggie’s attention back to wondering about the outside and he made his way to the center of the library where a large 3 story window stood to let in light and offered a good view of the entrance to the campus and of Rt. 53 just beyond it. When he got in front of it he held his breath and dropped to his knees at the sights on the other side of the glass.

The entire front lawn of the campus was trodden over and contained many small fires and groups of creatures huddled around them, eating things Reggie didn’t want to think about. He could make out taller, slender figures in dark red robes moving amongst them. Many of the building, specifically the dorms, appeared to be smoking piles of rubble.

From what he could see of the perimeter, they had set up regular patrols of the creatures and some new kind of monster he hadn’t seen before. They looked like large muscled dogs, similar in appearance to a bull mastiff, but they had snow white hair, red eyes, and black and red tentacles the extended about three feet from the top of its back with large sharp stingers on each end. Green vapors seemed to come from their mouth when they breathed. Standing by the road in front of the university were a group of six giants posing as a formidable guard.

“Well, as bad as it looks, at least it’s not Zombies!” Reggie said with sarcasm to try and hide the overwhelming despair he now felt.

10-31-08 5 AM

2008-10-10T16:21:00.001-05:00

Once inside the tunnel, Reggie retrieved his flashlight from his backpack before sliding his arms through it and setting it across his shoulders. He wanted to take the candle, but it was in a small glass bowl and the wax was hot and melted and wouldn’t travel well, so he regrettably needed to leave it behind. Speed was of the utmost in his mind because he knew that there would be no fire department response to this blaze. Eventually this building was going to come crashing down on itself. Throwing the wet blanket back over himself for protection, he began.

He stepped over the body of the creature and moved further down along the tunnel. Because of the pipes running overhead, he was forced to hunch down while he walked, making his ability to move less effective. Although his flashlight was bright and powerful for its size, the smoke was thick enough to make it very difficult to see. For the first few steps, he heard nothing except his own breath and the scrape of his shoes on the concrete, but as he moved further down the tunnel he could hear the building groaning in protest to the heat and flames that were eating at it.

Two hundred feet from his cozy little cot, the tunnel turned to the left and looked to run the entire length of the building. The smoke was even thicker here and the heat from above was enough that sweat was beginning to bead around his forehead. His comfort level was getting worse and worse with each hunched over step that he took.

Reggie began to hear noises all around him now. He wasn’t sure if it was the cracking and groaning of the building, or the slow deliberate footsteps of someone else hunting for him in the smoky recesses of his dorm. Every suspicious noise gave him reason to stop and listen, to wait and make sure that he wasn’t being hunted or followed, yet the increasing heat, thickening smoke, and audible grunts from the building’s foundation made those stops far more brief than he was comfortable with.

Eventually he made it to the end of this tunnel and found another access panel similar in nature to the one from his room that was sure to open into some other student’s closet. He studied it for an instant and placed his hands against it to check it for heat. It felt slightly warm, but less so than the access panel to his room. With his options very limited, he opened the access panel and was met with a wall of shirts, jackets, and pants. A thicker, oilier smoke clung to the air and he could feel the heat on the other side of the closet doors even through the clothing. Feeling trapped and trying to hold down his stress, he pushed the doors open a crack with his bat to look for a possible way out.

The couple of inches he opened the door seemed to let in enough heat to feel like he was in a furnace. The room beyond was lit in yellows and oranges and flames were everywhere. He pushed the door open further so he could get a better look and saw that there was no way for him to escape here. The ceiling above was covered with rolling flames that sent licks of fire out towards him and the closet now that the access panel was open. He could see a body slowly cooking in a corner of the room. It was missing limbs and what did remain of it was beginning to char and sizzle.

The room was soon to be a coffin for the unfortunate victim in the corner, and Reggie thought that if he didn’t get out soon, it might also be his final resting place. He backed into the closet and took one of the t-shirts that was hanging up and tied it around his mouth so that it would offer some filtering of the smoke and then he went back into the tunnels, his blanket covering him.

Once he closed the door, he continued along the same route he was previously going and had only moved a few feet when he thought he saw someone up ahead. The density of the smoke made it impossible for him to tell anything more than ten feet ahead of him, so he proceeded slowly. Water was now beginning to drip into the tunnel from the buildings sprinkler system above and it made the air more humid and more difficult to breathe. He continued ahead without incident for another five minutes, slowly moving against the side of the tunnel wall, when he felt the entire foundation rumble.

The building above him began to shake and he could hear crashing all around him. His instinct for survival pushed him on faster than he wanted to go, hoping to find some exit or last second opening that would protect him. He could now see flames along some parts of the tunnel’s ceiling and he knew he didn’t have much time left.

While the flames did serve as a harbinger of the inevitable crush that was coming, it also provided some additional light. In the end, it was that light that showed him an actual door that he would have missed otherwise due to the smoke and his blanket.

It was a heavy metal door with a large white sign on it, that said ‘Building Maintenance Only.” He moved in front of it and tried the doorknob, praying that it would be open. The knob didn’t budge. As he stood there testing the knob, the building groaned again and the sounds of more crashing came to him as the building began to collapse in on itself.

Frantically Reggie began throwing his body against the door, trying to bust it open. His shoulder still sore, he soon switched to kicking it, but that too was to of avail. Panting and sweating, he tried to dislodge the knob with the butt end of his baseball bat. The cramped quarters prevented him from getting the room to effectively bring the bat down with all the force he could muster and after another ten minutes of this he gave up.

He was surprised that the building was still standing as he stood there before the door, hunched over and panting hard. He started to feel like giving up and had sat down in front of the door in the growing puddles of water when the foundation started to crack and the ceiling began to open up along other parts of the tunnel. From the floor above debris, flames, and even more smoke came rushing into the new openings, bringing heat and certain death with it. Reggie was focused on this when a heavy metal squeak in front of him caught his attention.

The door in front of him was now slightly bent and ajar, having become twisted with the weight of the building pressing down on it. This gave Reggie new hope and he began to kick and push at the door with both of his feet from a sitting position. His legs began to cramp up on him, but the door was beginning to move slowly. The more force he used and the longer he used it, the wider the opening became. When he had almost two feet of space between the door and the frame, he got on his feet and slammed into the door.

Reggie had to slam himself into the door two more times, but the door finally opened another foot or less, offering him just enough space to make it past. As he grabbed his bat from the ground, it felt like the entire world began to shake in a deafening roar. The dorm room fell in on itself and the floors began to crash downward on top of each other. Within a few seconds the tunnel Reggie had slept in was completely gone.

10-31-08 4 AM

2008-10-09T23:23:00.001-05:00

Reggie’s mother was calling to him, telling him he needed to get up for school. Her voice sounded weak and distant for some reason and he wasn’t able to say the things he wanted to her. As he tried to breathe, his throat tightened and the air tasted foul and burned him. He was scared now as woke from his sleep and tried to understand what was happening around him.

It had gotten foggy or smoky and he was sure that the building above was on fire. Since the candle had gone out while he slept, he couldn’t see and wasn’t sure where his flashlight was, so he grabbed his cell phone for light. Turning it on, the first thing he did was to check out the time as he wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. The light from his cell phone said it was about 4:30 am, so he had slept about three and a half hours. It was also warmer, almost uncomfortable. He noticed his clothes were damp with sweat and smelled of smoke.

Reggie knew the smoke was eventually going to be a deathly problem, so he grabbed everything and tried to make his way through the access panel and back into his room. As he approached the access door, he felt it first to see if it was safe. His hand rested softly against the door, feeling the temperature to see if it was even safe to go through. He could definitely feel it was, but he didn’t think it was so hot that he couldn’t try it. Pulling his shirt over his mouth and nose, he pushed into his dorm room.

The room was smoldering and the air was filled with an oppressive heat that rode on barely visible air currents. With his bat in his hand in case he needed to bach a window or something to break out, he slowly made his way out of his suite and into the halls of the dorm room.

The stench of death that he expected to meet from all the earlier killings was now being cooked as the entire floor and the walls of the hallway were covered with flames, blocking any chance he had of leaving the building through one of the doors. With no other choices available to him, Reggie returned to his suite to try and think.

As he entered the suite he noticed the heat had gotten even higher and within seconds of entering, the fire sprinklers went off. It didn’t take him long to come back to the conclusion that he was going to have to try his luck in the access tunnels again.

The sprinklers seemed to working in vain and the fire was eating away at the walls, ceiling, and debris in his room. Reggie spotted another blanket that was mostly intact, laying on the floor. Knowing he really didn’t have much time, he grabbed the blanket and held it up to a sprinkler for as long as he dared, hoping to soak it and use it for protection against the heat, smoke, and fire.

Quickly rapping himself up, he returned to the access tunnels and did his best to close off the door to try and prevent the fire and smoke from coming in by stuffing shirts along the edges and he shut the door and returned to the darkness of the tunnels once again.
10-31-07 5am

10-31-08 12 AM

2008-10-08T23:34:00.000-05:00

Reggie had never killed anything before, for any reason, and even though no one would ever consider the creature that was a few feet away from him human, he was still shaken over killing it. He admitted that the reason he hadn't lit the candle again was that he couldn't bring himself to look at it. Just knowing it was there was bad enough but the smell of mud, foul water, and acrid smoke that emanated from it made it even worse.

He began to wonder more about the events that were taking place and why. He knew it would be very easy to say that the end of the world was here, but he was starting to suspect that there were more sinister motives behind this. He remembered looking at the reports of problems around the world and feeling there was a pattern to everything, something that connected them, but he just couldn't put it all together.

While trying to figure out how things fit together, he noticed something he hadn't heard in a long time. The screaming had stopped, no one was shouting for help or God or anything. It partially emboldened him, partially scared him. What was the silence building to? What would happen next? He had already seen nightmares that he wouldn't have expected to see in a movie, and this was just the beginning.

He decided to light the candle and get out of the darkness. He fumbled around just a bit, but got the small candle glowing. It cast long shadows over the tunnel and the creature looked even more macabre, half shrouded in shadow. He decided that even though he'd keep the candle on, he wasn't going to have it facing him, its dead yellow eyes piercing at him from beyond whatever hell he had gone to. The body had gone stiff and with its extra density, moving it was more involved than he was prepared for. After finishing the move, he was exhausted.

He leaned back against his makeshift cot and wondered what his next move should be. He didn't think it was going to be safe much of anywhere, but he didn't think his current haven was a long-term solution. No matter where he decided to go, he was going to need some kind of transportation and that figured to be the most difficult part of his plan.

His plotting was interrupted by muffled sounds from above. He could tell instantly that it was coming from the creatures due to its low guttural sound and harsh sharp flow. The voices raised and lowered in some type of chanting, the purpose of which he could only guess at. Whatever it's function, nothing good would be coming to anyone human. Just as quickly and unexpectedly as it started, he noticed the ground shaking and then everything abruptly stopped.

From this point he heard nothing else and his mind wandered from the events of tonight, wondering about his parents, and how he was going to get out of this alive. Out of energy and sore, and despite everything else, he drifted off to sleep brooding over his evening.

10-30-08 11 PM

2008-10-07T23:17:00.002-05:00

The double set of yellow eyes watched Reggie closely as he held the bat tightly in a defensive position that would allow him to easily block or go on the offensive. The seconds that ticked by were infinite and oppressive. It felt like he was a giant spring that was being compressed as tightly as it could and then held it securely before it let loose.

Reggie stood his ground, scared beyond belief, waiting for the creature to make the first move. It made no sound or attempt to speak, it just kept standing and staring at him with green pupils and yellow eyes. The agony of each second ticking past without anything happening fed into Reggie’s fear. He wondered how he’d be able to survive once it began to attack and how he’d be able to get away. He knew he couldn’t hide because it had seen him going into the access panel and he would no longer be safe.

“Why is it just looking at me?” he thought to himself. “What does it expect me to do?”

As his arms began to fatigue from holding hit bat out in front of him, he slowly allowed himself to flex his arm muscles in order to stretch and lower the bat a bit at the same time. The slow sudden movement caused the creature to flinch and get into a more aggressive position.

Reggie’s heart began to race faster and he thought, “I wish it would just try and kill me and get it over with! What is it afraid of?”

He pondered that thought while the creature continued to stare at him. His senses came to life again and he was aware of many different acute things. He could still hear the intermittent sounds from the floors above him and down the hall, the scratchy rubbing of its tongues against each other, his heart pounding in his head and chest, and the soft swishing sound of his tail as it move left to right. Then Reggie had a revelation.

“Of course, it’s afraid of me,” he thought. “That’s why it’s not attacking, it doesn’t think it can win. The nasty bastard is waiting for his friends to get here and help him!”

The creature seemed to sense that something had changed within Reggie and took a more defensive stance, trying to get ready for an attack. Reggie narrowed his eyes at the creature and said, “So you’re waiting for your ugly friends to come and help you huh? Something tells me they just may be too late!”

With those last words, Reggie quickly swung the bat at its head and instantly met nothing but air. The creature ducked so fast that Reggie fully expected to connect and found himself off balance due to the excessive weight he put into his swing. That small bit of instability and uncertainty were all the creature needed as it stood back up and wrapped its fingers around Reggie’s throat.

He struggled in vain and wiggled all over the floor before he was able to bring his bat down on the back end of the creatures head. Reggie threw the monster off of him and got to his feet.

The creature was on its back, prone and easy prey. Reggie approached the creature just as it was bringing its head up and he brought down the bat once more. This time his hands were gripped tightly like he was stepping up to the plate. With all his might he brought the bat down onto the creature’s head with a sick and thick cracking sound. Again and again the cracking sound was met with the hollow sounding thud of the metal bat. After a few moments he realized the creature wasn’t moving any more.

Although it looked dead to him, it obviously wasn’t human and he wasn’t sure it could even die. He watched it for over ten minutes wondering what his next move should be when he thought he heard more of the creatures coming towards his suite.

“They must have heard the fight and they’re going to be checking on him,“ He said as he spat on the body.

Thinking quickly, Reggie hauled the body inside the access panel where his supplies were. The beast was much heavier that he imagined, and it took him some time to lift it by an end and move it. At first he wad going to pull him by the feet, but he was afraid the cranial blood would leave a trail. So he picked him completely up and walked him into his access sanctuary.

Reggie went back into his room and tried his best to hide their fight, which wasn't difficult due to the remains of the ransacking that trashed the room to begin with. He could hear the other creatures marching down the hall in his direction, so he knew he didn’t have much time.

He tried to copy things in to the same potion they were before, and even slide his desk so that it looked to be blocking the access panel from the outside after retreating back into the sanctuary. It took ten minutes for the rest of group of monsters to get there and even though they stayed and searched again they were unable to find anything that was amiss.

After he was sure they were gone, he lit the candle he brought with him and he tried to make his hideout a bit more comfortable. Once he had completed that he doused the light and sat in silence next to the corpse of the dead creature with own thoughts.

10-30-08 10 PM

2008-10-06T23:43:00.002-05:00

Reggie jumped back from the spot he was sitting in when he heard the closet doors ripped open and possibly off their hinges. He wasn’t sure how many creatures were in his room, but he could hear them breaking apart the doors and growling in frustration and anger at having not found anyone inside to kill.

“Oh my God, Oh my God!” Reggie shouted in his mind as he knew that less than two inches of wood separated them from each other.

Although he couldn’t see it, he knew his hands were shaking and the bat was quivering in front of him. His senses became more potent and acute as he tasted the dampness of the tunnel’s air and heard the scrapping of the creature’s feet on the short berber carpeting from his room. Reggie’s heart was pounding harder and faster as he waited for the inevitable attack to come at him through two inches of building material that was purchased by the lowest bidder.

Because each second felt like a year, Reggie wasn’t sure how much time had past before he heard the creatures make some growling sounds and then trample away from his room. As he heard them leave his suite, he began to feel relief come to him in waves of exhaustion. Each wave revealed new things; how heavy the bat felt in his hands, the shaking of his arms, and the tightening of his shoulders as he tried to keep the bat out in front of him. Slowly he lowered the bat, calmed his hands, and then let out a large breath.

After many minutes, he fumbled with his backpack and went for the half bottle of water that he had left. His mouth had become dry and scratchy and what water actually made it into his mouth felt and tasted like it came straight from an ancient glacier. Once it he had emptied the bottle he replaced it in his backpack and sat quietly against the wall taking in how close he had just come to death.

Unlike his previous episodes in the car and on the road, he had been awake for all of this and the intended prey of the creatures. But unlike the rooftop, he was trapped with no real place to go, he was cornered and out of options for escape. He knew this even as he had returned to his room still in shock, as he showered, changed clothes, and calmly used his computer to search the Internet. What he should have been doing was getting as far away from civilization as he could, but now that was too late.

The realization that he was going to die here on campus turned his thinking to his family and friends that he would never see again. His parents; who had tried for years to have him, their only child, and worked hard and sacrificed all their time and personal dreams to provide him with the opportunities to chose his own path- it was all for nothing now. Reggie could feel the tears sliding down his face as he knew he’d never smell the cheap lavender scented soap and perfume his mother used whenever she hugged him and told her how proud she was of him. Every activity that his father ever did with him that eventually turned into a lesson or a fable, that bored him and drove him crazy, now seemed to be the most selfless and important thing that his father had passed on to him. He would miss them as much as he missed his father's love of puns or dreams of one day sledding across the cold barren landscape of Antarctica.

It made him think of his friend Keith, who had parents that gave him everything he wanted, and forced him to follow a career that he didn’t want. Keith had always been his anchor whenever he had a fight with his parents, or broke up with a girl. They were friends because Keith admired the freedom that Reggie had and Reggie admired Keith’s ability to see people for who they were and what they were worth. He would probably never see Keith again either.

And then there was Kara McCowell. She was the closest friend he had at school and he had loved her more than he thought was possible. She was unbelievably tall and wide, like a Valkyrie, and had the appearance of a librarian, as though she was the awkward and less than perfect sister of some supermodel. He had been drawn to her instantly, but never had the courage to tell her how he felt and now that too was taken from him. As the world was dying around him, he felt he had lost every thing in his life.

Slowly Reggie realized that he was mourning and falling into hopelessness and pity. He recognized that no matter how bad he felt or how alone he was, the fact that he was alive meant that there had to be others out there as well. At the very least, even if Satan himself now walked on the earth, he was determined to personally determine if his parent’s were dead or not. But before he was going to do this, he was going to need some supplies if he was to try and escape the university. That meant he would have to go back into his room.

The sounds of the attack were almost completely gone now. Every now and then he could hear someone moaning and crying as they slowly and excruciatingly died due to the fact these monstrosities ate their victims alive if possible. Saying a silent prayer to his parents and loved ones, he gathered his meager collection of belongings and moved towards the door.

The door opened silently, but only moved about 6 inches as the other side was blocked with debris. Reggie pushed slowly but firmly on the door and managed to eventually to push whatever was blocking it out of the way just enough so that he could squeeze through the wider opening. Stepping through, he saw that what weighed on the door was part of his desk. From there he saw the room was utterly destroyed. Most everything was torn apart or in pieces. There even looked to be slime, blood, and defecation strewn about the floors and walls from the creatures and maybe past victims. The cliché “it looks like a bomb went off in here” sure applied in this instance.

Reggie inspected the rest of the suite and the rooms of the other guys and they all looked very similar. There seemed to be nothing that remained intact. Depressed, he went back to the common room and decided that it might be a long night, so he thought he would see what he could find that was still edible. The refrigerator was ripped open and laying tipped over on the floor, and the cabinets were torn apart and off the wall. His search produced 3 more bottles of water, a half eaten hamburger from one of his roommates, a few breakfast bars, a couple of apples and bananas, and a box of pop tarts.

He took out his empty water bottle and was lucky enough that the water in the suite was still working and he filled that up and placed it back into his backpack. He also grabbed a cup and filled that with water to drink now. Scanning the area for anything else that might come in handy, he took a dish towel, a steak knife, the breakfast bars and water, and then headed back into his own room again.

He could still hear an occasional scream and scuffle from the floors above, so he did his best to remain silent while he searched his room for anything of value or use. The continued sounds convinced him that he might have to hide out here for quite awhile and he wasn’t sure how long he might be trapped inside the tunnels. With that in mind, he grabbed the remains of his bedding and threw them into the tunnel along with an extra denim shirt and jogging pants.

What he truly wanted to find was his flashlight. It was one of those black mini-maglite lights that would come in really handy while sitting in the dark. It took him awhile and he had to tear up most of the common room, but he found the flashlight and some extra batteries, along with a lighter and a candle in one of his friend’s rooms. Thinking this was probably the last chance he’d get, he went to the bathroom. It took him awhile, but he forced himself to do everything he possibly could. When he was finished he grabbed the remaining roll of toilet paper and was about to head back to his room and enter the access panel when he made his first mistake of the night; he flushed the toilet. This alerted anything listening that someone was alive and moving around in this suite. He also realized that he had left the bat in the access tunnel.

He hurried back to the tunnel and threw his backpack inside and quickly grabbed his bat. He was so focused on making sure he was equipped should he run into trouble that he didn’t hear any of the noises behind him. As he slowly turned around to check his room one last time before shutting himself in, he found death standing in front of him.

Almost as tall as Reggie’s six foot frame, the creature looked at him through yellow eyes and green pupils. Two forked tongues came out of each of its mouths and their tips twisted and danced with each other while the creature bared its sharp rows of teeth to him. The light in the room gleamed powerfully off of the bright red blood on this horns and tusks, with its tail swaying softly and controlled from left to right behind him, making a swift cutting sound with each flip.

Reggie tensed and gripped the bat tighter as the creature began a low gravely hiss and brought his hands up and bent its knees to pounce.

10-30-08 9 PM

2008-10-05T11:10:00.000-05:00

The access panel that Reggie had just closed was nothing more than a piece of thin plywood with dry wall attached to it on a set of hinges. More of a door, it had a crude knob and latch that could be operated on both sides. It was a simple, but effective method for allowing people to get in and out of the access tunnels.

The area Reggie was now in was a stone lined tunnel that ran beneath the entire dormitory building so that maintenance workers could have access to water, sewage, and electrical systems. It wasn't very big, only five feet wide and barely six feet high. It consisted of a poured concrete floor and rough cinder blocks for a wall. With the pipes that ran along the tops and sides of the tunnel, Reggie really had much room than he'd hoped for. With the access door closed, the tunnel was completely dark.

As he sat down against the wall, Reggie could hear the fighting and chaos above him. He felt ashamed at hiding, but he was terrified after seeing first hand exactly what these creatures were capable of, and those images still burned in his head. Having no light in which to see allowed those images to easily pop in at him repeatedly. Each image was accompanied by the sounds of death, pain, and destruction above him from voices crying out for help, relief and, in the case of the attackers, bestial satisfaction and joy.

More and more the voices became easier to hear. Some of the screams and shouts were voices Reggie knew, but would never hear again. Each scream and each growl caused his heart to jump. Whenever the sounds of death or the footsteps of the creatures were closest to him, his skin would tingle and he would sweat profusely, sometimes breathing harder and audibly louder.

Although it seemed to have been an eternity to Reggie, after a few minutes of hiding, he could hear that more and more of those creatures were now on his floor. The sounds of doors being forced open and items being smashed and broken as the creatures searched for live victims hiding in closets or under beds hoping to be missed became a staccato of death and suffering.

He began to measure the seconds in screams and crashes, anticipating them eventually making their way to his own suite and his own room. The darkness began to weigh heavier and heavier on him, each death adding another stygian weight of survivor's guilt.

At its worse, he actually flinched and jumped with every sound. Sometimes he thought he could hear something stirring and moving at the other end of the tunnel. Many times he had to fight the urge to scream out in fear and defiance. He worried that he was going insane and although he could no longer keep any semblance of the time that was passing, he stayed in this state for over thirty minutes. When the pressure became to great for him, he fumbled for his back pack and took out his cell phone, turning it on to provide some light, some safety in which to hold back the madness and panic that were close to taken control of over him.

With the light from his cell phone on, the darkness seemed to retreat just enough to allow him to breathe more slowly and easy. The clock on the phone showed that it was almost 10PM; he couldn't believe how long he had been sitting in this tunnel. He tried to block out the noises around him by looking through his back pack. He found his cell phone charger, a notebook, half a bottle of water, a few pens and highlighters, his Christian Actions and Values text book, and his iPod and headphones. He went over that list of contents dozens of times in his head, trying to focus on memorizing them to block out the noises. This was successful until the creatures entered his suite.

When he heard the thick wooden door to his room break apart with a loud explosion of force and splinters, he immediately shut off his cell phone light, put it in his backpack and held onto the aluminum bat with everything he had.

Fear and adrenaline pumped loudly in his ears as the creatures completely destroyed everything in his dorm room. Reggie didn't know how intelligent they were or if they understood the things they were destroying as they looked to see if anyone was hiding. Their grunts and growls were gutturally deep and it seemed as though he could feel their vibrations through the stonework against his back.

It wasn't until after the door to his room was forced open that he heard them speaking in a low harsh language that he couldn't make out. For some reason he couldn't identify, he didn't think they were that smart. Even though they were talking in some kind of language, there were just as many growls and grunts and snorts mixed in to make him suspicious. He heard his computer and desk being thrown to the floor and smashed. Something big was thrown against one of his walls, and he could hear the mattress on his bed being torn into and thrown aside while they searched for him. As they were systematically ripping his room apart he realized that they didn't have to be exceptionally smart to kill and destroy.

His room grew silent as they apparently had destroyed everything they could possibly touch in his room. Reggie thought they were going to leave until he felt the shock of his closet doors being ripped apart by the hungry creatures.

10-30-08 8 PM

2008-10-03T14:49:00.003-05:00

It didn’t seem to matter where Reggie searched on the Internet, each report was as incredible as the previous one. Chaos was certainly reigning over the world and he felt like he was stuck right in the middle of it. After fifteen minutes of this, he began to grow suspicious of everything.

‘Was this some kind of hoax?” he thought, “Or maybe there really were some isolated strange events, but they just brought out all the idiots and attention seekers?”

The part of everything that seemed to trouble Reggie the most was the fact that as he dug deeper and followed more individual stories, they seemed to be confirmed more and more by others to the point that he began to accept them, even the absurd, such as the video clip he found from a Chinese news broadcast just hours ago.

London Attacked, Cut Off From the World

October 30, 2007
By James Macharia, The New Zealand Herald

Stunning pictures from the British destroyer HMS Exeter show the city of London burning and under siege from large flying objects that look to be enormous birds or lizards. The entire city is covered in a thick black fog that has so far blocked all visual observation of the events taking place in the city.

Commander PAE Paul Brown, the commanding officer of the Exeter, sent a report to the French News Service J'abandonne requesting any and all information its news helicopters may have gotten. The French government and media are cooperating with Commander Brown and are maintaining a silence on the whole issue until both governments have a better understanding of events.

Japanese satellite images only show the London area becoming increasingly foggy starting around 7 am GT with very little out of the ordinary. Rumors persist that some enhanced images show scenes of destruction, violence, and chaos of a biblical proportion.

The HMS Exeter was returning from duty in Norway when the attack began and was unable to get close enough to land to assist. The New Zealand Herald has learned that the Exeter captured some members of the attacking forces, but aren’t releasing information and have repeated denied this report.

All attempts to make contact with anyone inside London have been unsuccessful via telephone or electronic means. Radio transmissions have met with equal failure and for the present it appears as though the entire city is cut off from the rest of the world.

International research groups stationed in Antarctica have taken aerial footage from various different satellites that show exotic and horrific creatures massed and charging through the streets of the largest cities. The death toll at this hour is already estimated to be close to twenty million, but there is of course no solid way to confirm this at the current time.

Reggie began to wonder if everything that was now wrong with the world hadn't started in Ireland or Great Britain somewhere. He thought for sure that if the world were going to end is some type of demonic apocalypse it would be located in the Middle East or a former Soviet state, yet signs were pointing to that area as the source.

Everything he thought he knew about the world had changed dramatically in the last few hours. As he tried to wrap his head around that information he wondered why there were attacks in the US as well. That led him to question why the tiny little town of Romeoville would be under attack also. He was curious as to what secrets or importance this place held or if what he saw tonight was a common experience throughout the entire country. He soon found out with the help of a South African website:

US Under Attack! Who Is Responsible?

Mail & Guardian Online
31 October, 2007

Reports are coming in from numerous sources that the United States is under attack by an unknown source. Reports of massive power outages and explosions in most major cities are being confirmed through Internet sources from residents in or near the affected areas. All major news sources have gone silent since yesterday. Attempts from outside sources to contact anyone in the US via telephone or radio have remained unsuccessful.

If the numerous Internet reports are correct, it appears that the US may have joined other countries such as Ireland, Norway, Great Britain, and Germany to a surprise ground attack that is still fighting to gain control over the entire nation.

International research groups stationed in Antarctica have taken aerial footage from several different weather and science satellites that show images of exotic and horrific creatures massed and charging through the streets of the largest cities. The death toll at this hour is estimated to be close to twenty million in the US alone, but there is of course no solid way of confirming any of these totals at the current time.

As Reggie finished reading that last report, he began to hear shouts, screams, and the pounding of feet from the floors above him. Unsure of exactly what was happening, but fearing for the worst, Reggie went to investigate. The sounds were much louder in his common room than they were in his room, but they still seemed to be concentrated from the floors above. As he was creeping towards his suite's front door, he became very aware of how alone and defenseless he truly was at this stage. He had nothing but his hands and the furniture in the room to protect himself.

Wondering what he should do, he decided that privacy was a hindrance to his potential to survive and he immediately went into his roommates units. He didn't want to make a lot of noise, so his search wasn't as thorough as he would have liked it to be. There seemed to be screams coming from the other end of his floor now too.

He was only in his second room when he found something that he thought would work, his roommate's aluminum baseball bat. It wasn't much, but he felt confident swinging it and it was light enough that he could swing it fast, hard, and for a longer time if he needed to. He grabbed the bat and went to the main door of the suite, filled with more ambition and resolve than he would have thought possible.

As he moved to the door, he could hear shouts and fighting coming from close by. Looking out the peephole, he saw one of his neighbors, on his back and dragged by his feet past his door. He recognized what was dragging his neighbor. There were more creatures like the ones he had hid from by the fence, but now they were in his building and Reggie new what their agenda was.

Through the peephole he could clearly see their leathery skin was warted and covered in slime or puss. They had coarse and greasy long hair that hung about their face and shoulders. That's were the resemblances ended though. Some of the creatures had protrusions on their arms or legs or back, some had tails or horns or stubby wings, still others had multiple arms, legs, or eyes and mouths. It looked as though the pit of hell had begun expelling its legion onto his floor.

His resolve quickly gone, Reggie retreated into his room, shutting the door and locking it. He was wondering what he should do next when he remembered that his closet had an access panel in the back that allowed for workers to get at some of the pipes and infrastructure that ran throughout the building. Gathering his bat and his backpack, Reggie went into his closet, shutting the door behind him, and opened the panel door to the access area and sealed it shut behind him to the sounds of his neighbor’s pain and last breaths.

10-30-08 7 PM

2008-10-03T14:05:00.004-05:00

The world seemed to be still, as though it was collectively taking a deep breath like a child preparing to receive a shot from a doctor. The red glow that was rising in the sky, visible through the fog and directly above the Midwest Generation electrical power station had formed into a glowing ball of energy expanding in the night sky. The energy swelled, twisted, and separated as it grew. Its color started off as bright red, but then changed into a fiery orange that was almost yellow towards the center and a cooler looking deep red along the edges. It’s twisting and separating continued until it formed into a horrific fanged face that resembled a monstrous jack-o-lantern. This image hung in sky for several minutes before it slowly faded into the mist.

“This night just keeps getting better.” He said sarcastically.

Despite the darkness, Reggie decided to continue to his dorm room at H. F. Melctoste Hall. The moon was still providing sufficient light to see and he made his way across campus without any incident. He was only about fifty feet from the dorm when the electricity came back and the lights and sounds from before returned. It removed the eeriness that he was beginning to feel and brought back some much needed feelings of comfort.

Although he could hear other residents throughout the building, his path to his basement room was undisturbed and he was able to enter without incident. His room was actually what they called a shared suite, which meant there were four bedrooms connected to a central common room with a mini kitchen, refrigerator, and a community bathroom. His room was in the corner farthest from the common room and bathrooms.

Melctoste Hall was one of two newer buildings that the university had recently built to accommodate a growing student population. His building suffered from being booked a semester before it was really ready and as a result, rooms in the basement didn’t get windows. This initially caused a great debate at the university on the grounds of safety and fairness, but when the pricing was lowered and the age requirements increaseded for students in those rooms, most opposition ended. Reggie grabbed a drink and headed to his bedroom.

After a few sips of water he throws his backpack and belongings on his bed and looks in the mirror. His shirt is torn and covered with dust, dirt, and dried blood. His jeans don’t look much better. His hair is matted down and caked with dirt, blood, and pieces of glass and his face is suffering from numerous cuts and small bruises.

As he studies himself in the mirror his shock finally wears off and he begins to feel all of his fatigue and pain from the past two hours. His hands are sore and burning, and his shoulder and neck are both stiff and sore from the seat belt in his car. He’s also incredibly hungry.

Before he did anything else, he decided a shower should be his first priority followed by some clean clothes and then something to eat. Looking over what he has left in his food cabinet, he settles for a ham and cheese sandwich and a bowl of waffle-flavored cereal. After two helpings of each, he washes it down with a quart of orange juice. It is a typical meal for him and his roommates. After eating, he decides it’s time to see what the news is saying about all of this, especially with Halloween being the next day.

Every channel, both on the TV and radio is nothing but static or snowy screens. Thinking that maybe there might be a loose connection to the TV, he triple checks all the cables and wires, but everything appears to be correctly in place. He switches back to the radio, trying to find some frequency to come in but despite a few instances of brief interruptions, he finds only static, and that includes the universities own radio signal. The thought of not being connected to the events outside, as horrible as they were, begins to unnerve Reggie. Slowly, he’s beginning to wonder if he is totally alone from the rest of the world.

While contemplating that thought he grabed his portable radio and decided to head up towards the roof to try and get a clear signal. Most of the dorm's residents are in their rooms behind closed doors. As he passes the rooms he hears different things; some people are talking in low hushed tones, others are crying and trying to console each other, and then there is the damned and dumb who are using this as an excuse to party and act irresponsible. Sadly, there are more of them than others.

Once he makes it to the roof, he goes to the center of the building and tries to find a signal on the radio. Almost everything is static, but he is able to get two faint signals that are completely useless to him. One is apparently a Hispanic radio station that’s playing some song, but there must be trouble at their studio because the track is skipping and playing the same few notes over and over. The other signal he picks up is someone frantically talking in a language that sounds like it’s European. He can’t make out anything that the man is saying, but his fear and doom are conveyed clearly.

Reggie’s feelings of isolation have increased at this turn of events. The feelings of exhaustion and pain weigh even heavier as his last hope of finding information seems to have left him. Walking to the edge of the roof, he looks out at the trees and after a few minutes of pity and fear he notices that the only lights in the area are those at the university, apparently the backup generators are keeping the entire campus powered.

“Total blackout! That’s what must be happening.” He thought to himself.

He had just started to feel better about the situation and was contemplating how long the university could run on the backup generators, when he heard a screaming voice in the air behind him accompanied by the familiar flapping of leathery wings. Just over the trees of the field behind the residence hall, he could make out a nightmare approaching through the air. Being six stories above the ground gave him better visibility due to the mist being thinner at this altitude.

The voice belonged to a woman, wrapped up in a tentacle that was attached to an inky sphere with wings. This creature had just pulled the woman out of the car that it had wrapped up in another arm that ended in a giant taloned claw. The car was almost crushed in half by the power of that claw. The blob that was the main body of the creature seemed to contract and expand with each heavy flap of its wings. Reggie couldn’t see any eyes, but he could make out dozen of gaping maws with rows of pointy yellow teeth.

One central mouth was larger than the rest and opened wide while the tentacle brought the doomed women into it. Her final screams dominated the air of the campus, hanging in the mist as though it might become a permanent fixture, but they became muffled as the mouth closed down on her with a wet, bone-snapping sound. Reggie could hear shouts and screams coming from a few of the rooms below from people who had also witnessed that scene. When the monstrosity got to within one hundred yards of the building, he could hear the crunching and tearing of the women’s body as it brought her remains into one of its smaller mouths.

For reasons he wasn’t sure of, fate picked that moment for his radio to pick up a signal from the Emergency Broadcast System. As it’s loud, high pitched screech filled the air, thousands of eyes blinked open on the creature and it began to flap towards Reggie and the rooftop.

The night’s ability to paralyze him was no longer effective after all he’d seen and been through; instead he looked around for the door down stairs. Judging by the speed of this latest nightmare, he saw that he had no chance to make it to safety before the creature made him his next snack. Reggie decided to try and run to an open area of the roof so that he could jump and dodge out of the creature’s way as it came to him.

Looking over his shoulder as he ran, he saw another tentacle grab at the car in its claw and rip off one of its tires and throw it at him. Its aim was poor as the tire hit the roof more than twenty feet from him. As he stopped in his tracks, he realized he was still holding the radio that had gotten the monster’s attention in the first place. Having no other plan and nothing to lose at this point, he flung the radio over the opposite side of the building and made a run for the stairway door.

Each step he took towards the door was accompanied by a whoosh and flap of the creature’s wings as it flew closer and closer and then finally over and past him. He never looked back as he got to the door and ran inside. He didn’t stop until he had exited the stairwell a couple of floors below as he was half convinced that thing could ooze it’s way in and get him.

The floor he entered was full of people talking about what had just happened and the end of the world coming. People were exchanging ideas and theories and asking Reggie what he knew since he had been out on the streets when this started. As everyone was talking, a girl came out of the stairs from the floor below and started shouting.

“The Internet is up! People from all over the world are talking about what’s going on!” she said in a hurried manner.

Instantly the hallway began to empty as people ran back to their rooms to get to their computers. Reggie followed suit and went downstairs to his own computer. Most of the major American news sites were down, but he figured this to be a side-effect of the power outages. Most of the reports were coming in from Europe and Asia and remote parts of the US and Canada.

As Reggie searched, he repeatedly came across reports over the last few days of strange creatures and troubles around the globe. Great Britain seemed to be particularly in the hold of chaos with trouble originating in Ireland. One of the reports he found said:

A Warning of Terror or Elaborate Hoax?

By Cian McCormack, RTE
Published: October 26th, 2007

Two days after the strange phenomenon in County Meath, the self-proclaimed saviors of the world have issued another statement claiming responsibility for the attack and clean up of the M3 road construction site. This time they state that if construction is resumed at the location, they won’t be held accountable for the actions that they will be forced to take.

British officials aren't releasing any information on the group that calls themselves The Druid Council of the Meath, saying only that they are investigating the authenticity of their threats and that they have yet to determine who was responsible for the explosions along the M3 road last week.

The next report he read picked up on the previous article and shed more light on the subject:

Rebellion in Ireland—Coup A Success?

By Shane Hegarty, The Irish Times
Published: October 28th, 2007

After British authorities publicly stated that the Druid Council of Meath was unable to back up the threats it made, they forced construction to resume on the M3 road in the disputed section of County Meath. As soon as construction workers started clearing the land again, the entire area was covered in a thick red mist that obscured everything before a new series of explosions and quakes took over the area.

As emergency agencies responded to this new attack, a robed figure claiming to be the ancient Celtic Druid Curoi mac Daire, somehow appeared on British TV and made the following announcement:

“The British government and their Irish puppets may very well have doomed the rest of the world with their ignorance and careless actions, but The Druid Council of Meath will not stand by and allow for our ancient land to be overrun by the forces of evil.

From this point forward, we will now be the controlling sovereignty of Eire. We will give all those who oppose this rule until midnight October 30^th to leave. In order to protect all Fair Folk from the repercussions of piercing the veil between worlds, we will be closing the land in order to muster our defenses at Rath na Seanadh. You have until then to make your own decision.”

Shortly after this message was delivered over both television and radio airwaves, all government buildings in Ireland crumbled to the ground and were absorbed into the earth. The ancient Celtic ruling fort, The Rath of Synods, then reportedly grew out of the ground and now stands as detailed in legend. All attempts by news and film crew to approach the area is met with resistance from robed figures and newly grown forest that blocks all vehicle access.

British forces are already organizing and preparing for an assault on the ancient ruling site of Celtic kings.

As Reggie contemplated exactly what this meant, he looked at his clock and saw that he had been back at the dorm for an hour and he was more afraid than ever.

10-30-08 6 PM

2008-10-02T23:11:00.005-05:00

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The acrid smell of sulfur and damp mold welcomed Reggie back to the night as he regained consciousness. Before his eyes can fully adjust to the fact that his car is now laying on the road upside down, he feels the weight of his body against the shoulder harness of his seat belt. His neck and shoulder are already stiff and filled with a dull ache and an occasional shooting pain.

Looking around, he sees two dead people halfway inside of his car. Their torsos are inside and their legs are tangled and splayed through the windshield onto the asphalt beyond. The first body is a man that looks to be in his 60’s. His face is caked with blood and chunks of glass and his eyes are open and staring out in fear, his mouth and teeth clamped down upon his outstretched tongue. Next to him is another man that looks to be in his mid 30’s and in similar condition. The younger of the two men is less than six inches from Reggie, his death wail silently screaming into his face. The air is heavy with the scent of excrement wafting from the lower portion of the bodies.

Reggie’s first thought isn’t to flee, but he’s struck with the realization that he has never seen a fresh dead body before, let alone two riding shotgun upside-down in his car. Fear grips him on all sides and he tries to scream. Instead of the large wail he is expecting, he feels his breath taken from him and his abdomen tighten as his stomach launches its contents violently out of him. The vomit sprays all over the face of the younger corpse and what’s left of his windshield, finally rebounding back to Reggie. As his stomach continues to lurch and heave, his nose and throat start to clog from being upside down, causing him to panic and gasp loudly for air.

Frantically Reggie attempts to get out of his seat belt. He struggles with the buckle, fear, and lack of air and after a few minutes, hands shaking, the vomit covered buckle opens. His freedom comes with a heavy thud and he crashes on his head. Grabbing his belongings and then twisting his body past his two hitchhikers, he’s able to get himself past the remains of his windshield and out into the night. Free of his car, he rises to a crouch and peers past the driver’s side tire to get his bearings and see what has happened around him.

The street is a battle ground, filled with the remnants of burning cars, torn asphalt, and bodies strewn everywhere. Still a bit unsteady after vomiting and choking, it takes him several minutes to focus on the large shapes in front of him that are moving farther away. Occasionally the mists swirl and he’s able to get a better look at them as they continue to toss aside cars and devastate anyone they find. Taller than any living thing he’d seen before and densely muscled in the manner of a walking tree trunk, their skin appears rough and leathery with coarse dark hair covering their arms, chest, legs, and back. The large wooden club that each of them is carrying is covered in thick dripping blood. Bits and pieces of automobiles are mixed with body parts and embedded into the clubs in many spots. Occasionally they let out a low guttural moan with each swing of their club, sending more cars and bodies into the air.

Wondering what he should do, Reggie decides that since he is relatively close, he should try to make his way back to campus and the safety of his dorm room. Digging his phone out of his pocket he tries to call one of his friends back at school. Despite his phone being fully charged and in a reliable spot, he’s unable to get a service provider. A large crash behind him signals a new wave of attackers coming in his location. Unfortunately he finds himself caught in the middle as the giants that have passed him are heading in the direction of his dorm room.

With his eyes on the party of giants ahead of him, Reggie began searching for a path over the mile between where he was and his dorm room. Running between piles of debris that consisted of cars and at time, their former drivers, Reggie slowly makes his way along the road, past the brightly lit local high school. By the time he was able to skulk past the high school, the amount of destruction had greatly diminished; most people were able to detour away from the massacre by taking Taylor Road away from the scene. Reggie briefly wondered if it was even worse for those going that direction because the streets lights were out and he couldn’t see anything farther than fifty feet.

As the carnage decreased, he began to run out of places to hide and was forced to consider another strategy for getting back to the safety of his room. The road he was traveling, Rt. 53 was about to split two old limestone quarry areas that lined the road. The quarries were bordered by a buffer along the road that consisted of a thick overgrowth of trees, bushes, and out-of-control weeds behind a serious chain link fence lined with razor wire and barbed wire. He decided to trust in the continuing darkness that was mixing with the red mist and hide from shadow to shadow and have some room to run than find himself trapped against a fence.

Reggie had gotten almost three-quarters of the way past the quarries when he noticed two things. The first was a sense of relief that he could no longer see the giants through the fog; the second was terror as he realized that he could hear a crowd of gibbering, throaty voices quickly coming up behind him. A quick look behind him showed a writhing mass of smaller creatures, possibly an unruly mob. Unsure what to do, he realized he was going to have to get off the road and risk traveling the rest of the way along the fence.

Reggie quickly made his way off of Rt. 53 and moved along the perimeter of the quarry, crouching and moving as fast as he could along the fence. Unable to risk running as fast as he could, he felt the wave of creatures closing the distance between them. Almost at the point of panic he found a patch of medium sized, overgrown weeds and small bushes against the fence that would have to serve as a quick hiding spot.

Pressed against the chain link fence, he could see dozens of the humanoid figures as they moved in his direction, as though they were following the path that the giants had cleared for them. As he watched and listened, he noticed that they always stopped when they reached a body pile or automobile. It wasn’t until they were close enough to see them that he understood these were not humans, but dark creatures that were stopping and checking for any survivors. Hoots, hollers, yelps, and an occasional guttural howl would escape from the group when they came across someone still alive. They would all immediately swarm the body and feast, all the while the victim would spend its last moments in pain as it filled the air with their screams and cries for God.

When the creatures moved to within two hundred feet of him, he began to notice they weren’t much more than five feet tall, sinewy, and bestial in appearance. As they moved around the bodies on what was left of the road, he could just catch glimpses of fangs, horns, sloped brows, slimy skin, and slits for nostrils. Once again frozen with shock and fear, he could feel the panic begin to build within him with each step they made towards him.

Reggie was almost certain that making a run for it would only draw attention to him and lead to a pursuit he didn’t think he could outrun, yet he no longer felt safe in his bushes. He began to search the area around him for a miracle of any kind when he noticed an access gate in the fence a few yards from where he now stood. There looked to be space under the gate that might allow for him to slip through and into the thicket of trees beyond site from the road. As he made his way towards the gate, he grabbed a few larger rocks in case he needed to dig out more room for himself.

Once he reached the gate, he was able to slide under with a very minimal amount difficulty, although he took his time so as not to shake the fence and draw attention. With only moments to spare, he got himself through and hidden from the road as the horde of creatures, some dragging various body parts with them and eating as they moved, passed by without noticing him and trampling over his former spot. It took him several more minutes before he was able to get a handle on his emotions and start making his way towards the college.

The expanse of trees was less than one hundred feet and it took only moments before Reggie exited out into the open again. For some reason the fog was thinner here and he could see to the other side of the quarry, approximately eight hundred feet directly in front of him, but he was going to have to travel at least three times that distance on a dirt road around the sides of the quarry to get to a point in which he could try and exit the area and head back towards his dorm. He wasn’t sure how much time had elapsed since he left his car on the road, but he guessed it was just under a half an hour.

Looking out over the quarry, the fog swirled with the air currents and he couldn’t make out how deep the bottom was. The sun had set awhile ago and the last daylight was now fading below the horizon and he was being swallowed by the darkness. The waning moon was penetrated the mists just enough to provide some light to guide him. He checked once again to make sure he was alone and set off on the road.

After he had walked a few hundred feet, he came across a white construction storage truck. He couldn’t think of the proper name of this type of truck, but it looked like a full size pickup truck with most of the bed taken up with storage cabinets. He thought it was strange to see a truck just sitting along this dirt road unattended, so he slowed down and proceeded towards it cautiously.

He came upon it from behind and as he got closer he could hear the radio blaring out static from the open driver’s side window. Moving closer until he could see the hood of the truck, he noticed it was smeared with blood. He could see a pair of boots on the ground in front of the truck. Thinking someone might be injured, he quickened his pace and came around to the front and let out a yelp of surprise.

On the ground in front of the truck where he expected to find an injured body, he instead found a pair of legs without a torso lying in a pool of blood. There were flies buzzing all over and the top of the waist looked like it was bitten in half. As he bent down to get a closer look, he heard the sound of a giant pair of wings coming from the quarry. He quickly moved back behind the truck and lay on the ground next to it.

Whatever portion of hell that rose out of the quarry was hidden from Reggie by the mists, but the loud flapping sound and the thick giant swirls in the mist from above told him that there was a pair of large leathery wings attached to it. Reggie continued to lay still until the flapping sound gradually grew fainter and farther away. Once he felt safe, he got back up and looked again at the remains of that body in front of the truck.

“Well that puts two and two together,” he thought, “I definitely don’t want to be here when that thing returns.”

He thought about searching the truck for a flashlight to use the rest of the way, but decided he didn’t want to provide anything that might want to eat him with a shining beacon. He decided to proceed quickly and jogged the rest of the way around the quarry, stopping frequently to listen for more noises. Once he made it to the other side, he quickly got to the fence and forced his way underneath the chain links by digging out the dirt with the rocks he had in his pocket from before.

The other side of the quarry backed up against a small residential subdivision that was usually very quiet. There was only one road that went in and out of the subdivision, so the only traffic you saw was from the residents of the houses. With everything that had happened tonight, Reggie wasn’t surprised that it was quieter than usual with no traffic on any of the streets. He noticed that the porch lights were still on at most of the homes and took it as a good sign that power still remained.

As he made his way through the subdivision, he gained sight of the university campus and the airport that was a part of it. Everything looked normal with the lone exception of a flaming mass of metal, which looked like a helicopter that seemed to have crashed short of the runway near the east end of the campus. As he passed the wreck on his way to his dorm room, he made out the Newsradio 780 logo on one of its doors. It was actually the only door that remained and it had what looked like claw marks on it and the outside of the rest of the helicopter body. He decided he didn’t want to know what the inside looked like.

He made out the outline of his dorm building just a short time later. Although the campus was quiet, he could still see and hear people in their dorm rooms listening to the music. He thought it strange that no one had on the news. As the bells of the campus chapel began to ring in the 7:00 hour, Reggie was knocked to the ground by a silent force that was immediately followed with a huge explosion. The lights on campus and in the immediate area flickered and then went dark. Reggie got back to his feet and looked back towards where he left his car. In the sky above where the power generation plant was Reggie could see a huge red glow rising towards the sky as darkness took the campus.

10-30-08 5 PM

2008-10-01T22:20:00.004-05:00

The sun was slowly dying into a blood red sky as night began to make its way down the horizon. Reggie Macart was driving to work after completing his last class of the day at John M. Lamb University when he noticed an unusual fog obscuring the road and concealing the bumper-to-bumper traffic that had no business being there. Caught unaware, he didn't have time to get out of his lane and take the residential streets to work, so he reluctantly joined the gridlock.

The setting sun stabbed at the fog as it weighed down over the world, creating a fine red mist that draped the fraying sky. Reggie imagined the there must be a horrific accident ahead of him to have stopped traffic like this on a Tuesday. The blue and red beacons of flashing lights in front of him signaled that emergency vehicles were working vigorously to save lives. It was unusually hot and humid for the end of October and Reggie found that he needed to roll down his window to cool off.

The electric motors of the power windows emitted a low whine as the dusk crept into the car, accompanied by screams and shouts that were barely audible over the night sounds and activities of the rescue operations up ahead. Curious as to what was going on, he turned on the radio to see if the accident had caught the attention of the local radio stations.

Almost twenty minutes had passed as Reggie jumped from station to station, listening for the different traffic reports in hopes of learning something about what had trapped him on the normally congestion-free road. While he anxiously hunted the different frequencies, he became increasingly agitated with the delay that was undoubtedly going to make him late for work.

Looking at the car radio's clock he saw that it was now 5:47 pm and the area newsradio station would be giving their listeners a traffic update as part of their "Traffic and Weather on the 8's." Annoying commercial jingles that hocked everything from legal advice to cure for social and physical inadequacies blared from the speakers once he tuned in the station.

The final rays of the sun winked out as it hid below the horizon for the night. The red mist had thickened as he sat in his car listening to the radio. While the mist danced and swirled on invisible currents it also cloaked the helicopters that Reggie was now faintly aware of overhead.

Closer to the accident, he could see the very large, slow moving shapes of the emergency vehicles. The flashing lighter had become harder to see through the thickening mist, which was thickest to his right, in the direction of the shallow valley of the Des Plaines River. Almost a mile away, the river bank was crowded with the building lights of the utility company and the shipping barges that often docked and loaded in the area. The Autumn temperatures often conflicted with the river's waters and the surrounding land nearby was often cloaked in the thickest fog, even when other areas were clear.

Despite the fog's thickness, Reggie thought he could make out a faint orange light glowing in one of the prairie fields ahead of him, but not too far from where the accident appeared to be. As he watched the light slowly seem to get brighter, he thought he could see large shadows passing in front of the light. Soft but forceful vibrations gently rocked his car, causing the air-freshener to sway from side-to-side. Before he could ponder this further, the news station had finished the weather and began their traffic report as a female voice breaks in:

"This is Jackie Swike reporting from Chopper 780 high above Rt. 53 in Romeoville. Traffic is backed up for almost a mile in either direction as emergency crews are working to remove a deadly multi-car crash that has brought traffic in both directions to a stand still. A strange red fog is emptying from the Des Plains River and has crawled its way over the road and into the town. The large stacks of the Midwest Generation electrical coal burning plant have been completely swallowed by the fog."

Another female voice breaks in:

"Jackie, this is Regine Schlesinger, is there any idea what caused this?"

"No Regine, businesses along the affected area where the mist is spreading from have denied any connection or knowledge as to the cause. Attempts by our NewsRadio crew to get to the scene have been denied by local authorities. At this point we're limited to what we can see from the Chopper, which is largely shadows and the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles."

There is a brief pause.

"Wait a minute! It looks like people are getting out of their vehicles and abandoning them, running in all directions in a panic. I can just make out the screams of the fleeing pedestrians that are heading in our direction. There seem to be large shadowy shapes, possibly some kind of large emergency vehicles, advancing on the area the people are fleeing from."

Loud crashes are faintly heard in the background from the traffic reporter as an uncomfortable radio silence hangs in the air. After only a few seconds, soft sounds of screaming and panic can be heard in the background above the noise of the helicopter before the station anchor fills in the void with a question:

"Jackie, what more can you tell us?"

"Oh my God! The people! They're getting tossed around like nothing, the cars are being pushed and thrown out of the way by.................................skrrreeeeeeek!"

Static fills the radio as the transmission from the helicopter ends abruptly. Reggie looks out his windshield at the road which is now filled with people screaming and yelling as the run past Reggie's car. He can see several large shapes behind the people that must be at least 13 feet tall or more, but the red mist obscures any further details. The shapes appear to be throwing cars out of their way and looking for people foolish enough not to have run.

Shock has glued Reggie inside his car. As the large shadows thud closer and closer towards him, he is able to see them more clearly. Despite everything his mind is telling him that what he's seeing isn't possible, he knows that he is looking at some kind of giants. He can't fully make out their appearance or what they might be wearing, but he can see that they are holding huge clubs. Behind the foremost creatures he can see countless other shadows in the mist that are similar.

As the need to flee finally breaks through his inertia, Reggie watches the butchery of the giants as people are being pulled from their cars and either torn to pieces or sent flying lifelessly from the end of the creature's giant clubs. Two of the creatures begin to lumber towards Reggie's car. Other cares are being lifted, turned, or thrown into the air by the fog draped monsters as they wade through the cars looking for ways to inflict more carnage.

Just as he reaches to open his door and try to escape on foot, a vehicle several places in front of him is ripped open and the giant grabs the scared and helpless passengers from their seats, hurling them in the direction of Reggie and his car. Both bodies slam through the car windshield and crash into his front seat hitting Reggie and knocking him unconscious.