Episode 1.8: "Out Come the Big Guns"

“Jeff, here’s what’s going to happen,” I said calmly, replacing my shirt, “I’m going to take your gun with me while I try to figure out what’s going on. Do you understand?” Jeff clenched his teeth and nodded as he sucked the cold night air into his blood-coated mouth.

“Good. I’m going to leave you here, now. I hope you find someone to help you propagate our species, but I would suggest going about it the old fashioned way and ask her out to dinner before giving her the “genetic responsibility” speech. Bye, Jeff. Thanks for the gun.” I proceeded to walk away from Milton Bennion Hall, the mutants that had shacked up there, and poor, lonely, one-armed Jeff.

To his credit, Jeff was right about the campus police, because no one answered when I picked up the phone. I hung up and paused for a moment to consider my options. The logical thing to do would be to contact any friends or loved ones, but in all honesty I didn’t have much of either. My useless alcoholic dad back in Oregon never answered his phone when I called on a regular day, and I doubt an international crisis would change that. My mom left me to fend for myself when I was ten, so I doubt she cared what I was doing right at this moment. After weighing my options, I decided to head up to Fort Douglas. It was fairly close, and if there was a safe place to be right now, it’d be with the military…right?

As I made my way to the fort, I could see chaos overtaking the city below me. Clusters of red, white, and blue sirens dotted the streets, and there were at least three fires that had begun consuming some of the larger buildings downtown. Occasionally I could see small, frightened groups of people wandering around campus, screaming incoherently into their phones. They’re probably trying to reach their loved ones, desperately hoping that their circle of friends and family had remained unbroken during this sudden tribulation. Right up until the moment Professor Channing’s head blew up, I had dealt with a consistent sting in my stomach that came from my lack of close friends, and my inability to do anything about it. However, now that the chips were down, I found a small bit of comfort in the fact that I was on my own. It’s pathetic and sad to have no friends, but in the worst-case scenario that was unfolding before me tonight, I appreciated the fact that all I had to look out for was myself.

As I got closer to Fort Douglas, I could hear the microwave popcorn sound of machine gun fire, and I developed a sick feeling in my stomach that told me that I might not be able to find any help here. A traffic jam of unattended vehicles blocked the street for miles in both directions making it difficult to make it to the fort directly.

I began zigzagging through the cars, but the closer I got to the fort, the more my gut was telling me to turn around and find some other place to hide. The grounds outside the fort were also littered with headless bodies; soldiers, students, doctors, men, women, children… these things saw us all as potential hosts, regardless of race or religion. The entrance to the fort was locked, but I could see through the thin black bars of the outer fence. It looked like they had created a barricade of chest-high brown sandbags on the north side. I aimlessly wondered what the barricade was for, since the gates were locked. Around two minutes later, I understood. Metallic shrieks echoed throughout the cold air, and bursts of machine gun fire blasted out a reply. A popper (that’s what I decided to call them) flung itself over the sandbags and into a soldier’s surprised face. Two, three more followed, heralding a literal flood of writhing, biting, and clawing hostiles (that’s what the military would call them. Probably.).

The poppers rushed the fort, gnawing on anything that got in their way. For a moment, the sheer amount of weirdness that my brain was processing caused me to freeze. As I was thinking frantically about what my next step should be, I was knocked off my feet by a thunderclap of force…the result of Fort Douglas’s armory violently exploding. The impact sent me over the hood of a vacant Toyota Prius, which was now between the fort and myself. I slid my back up against its wheel and quickly checked myself for injuries. My shoulder got scraped pretty badly when I hit the ashphalt, causing small pinholes of blood to well up within the angry red cuts that crisscrossed my shoulder. I pressed my shirt against the wound and peeked slightly over the hood of the car. In the wake of the deafening explosion stood…no…hovered a giant mechanism that was definitely not manufactured in the U.S. of A.



It was about the size of a bulldozer. A huge glowing dome dominated the top of the vehicle; flickering and flashing like an overcharged light bulb. The dome was connected to what looked like a torso composed of steel and thick cords. Two arm-like appendages jutted out from the vehicle's upper portion, terminating in chrome satellite dishes which pulsated with a greenish white glow. It was held together with tightly wound fibers of glimmering wire, and thick cables coiled around the mechanism like shiny black pythons. Jagged bolts of greenish white electricity supported the base of the machine, occasionally clinging to the trees and overturned vehicles within its vicinity. It pointed one of its arms to the next building, and a blinding beam of acid green energy reduced it to a smoldering pile of brick and dust after another deafening explosion.

NEXT: "WHO IS MAX BODYCOUNT?"