User blog:Mscoree/Blockade

Blockade Part One: Middle Written by Mscoree (Jonathan Gentile) Fanfiction for Night of the Living Alternate History (Map Game)



Prologue

Smoke filled our lungs like sound echos, and around lie a thousand fires stoked to their height as their flames penetrated the night sky above. No wonder its f***en loud in here. The chopper drawn onward through the pitch black abyss below as the flame of our homes grew smaller still behind us. Our heat radiated as a tangible escape from the metal around us, like an oven preparing for a feast. Slowly we fell until the darkness around us rotated like the stars so long ago lost from our grasp. And as we entered the eclipse that is the entrance of Hell, grew stronger, its influence strangling our souls, we disappeared like a rocket’s glare, slowly burning out and dying. We were a lake of icy, inescapable water freezing over from a hundred winter storms, barricading me within its reaches below. The sun was a distant memory. No energy reached me. There was no thaw. “We’re getting close now, ready up and spot for s***,” spoke Puppeteer, but I couldn’t see s*** if it hit me across the face. My eyes tried to adjust to the stimulation that was the world now. My world. It was as it is, now and forever, until I leave this place for the city above us. The very city I swore to protect. Look vigilant, I thought. But I was squirming and barely in my seat, my boots digging into the grate below. The darkness only then pierced by a single glowing red light among the group around me. They stared back at me, their faces nothing more than a mountain in the early morning twilight. No one breathed. The air picked up as I heard its appendages swiftly breezing against our ironclad hull, etching warnings unseen by human eyes. Darkness. Creeping across my face lay its pointed clasp. Spinning its dials maliciously, like clockwork until we bathed in its shadow. My eyes began to dart across the red glow that sheltered us, staring once at each man across from me. Our vision encumbered by dust. Lower still we plummeted, yet slowly we hovered, until across the darkness I seemed to make out monoliths of old. As just as our vision had been bound before us, a great light liberated us, approaching us below. I saw it now as clear as day, like a beacon of lasting survival. Its yellowish glow grew until I saw almost clearly in its twilight and musk air. The sounds of a thousand gravels greeted us. The helicopter hovered and rotated slightly meeting the light beside us. Before my limbs lay a force of raw electricity meeting the mortal earth, jumping and pulsing like wildfire dances, illuminating a world devoid of all fortune and alterations, meeting mechanical entities that rose as a fist of industrial power and control. This champion rose off the rocky landscape below, holding its captive; a great force of the natural world to squirm and struggle. And thus lightning was conquered in this place. All of nature stood back as the great tower demanded. And we had arrived on the mainland.

We docked onto the helicopter pad slower than time existed, as the cloud of dust smeared against our body was thrown carelessly into the air by the force of a giant landing on its feet. Men, behemoths of creatures, all roundly weathered to perform their tasks hastily made way for our arrival. They stood as testaments to a foreign realm where measurements in space grew in disproportion, standing on the border of different customs, as this great symbol of the stars hidden above crashed into their facility. A place so heavily guarded. I looked around, my eyes dashing beyond my form, as my body lay frozen within my seat. Bright lights peered within the ship like all air was as thick as water, breezing across my face. Someone spoke, thought I, but I was distant. “Let’s move. Grab and go.” shouted a firm voice over the chaos.

We walked a dark road, left unchecked by the system. It was a celestial anomaly that cracked each molecule with a force of nature, so unmistakingly loud that the darkness knew our feet were of no natural acquaintance, but that we were in fact alien, simply travelers on this lonely road, reaching onward into the fog of night that had fallen so early in day’s domain. Each stone in the path wielded from concentrated weathering, crafting something so unnatural that it was of man. We are man, and our children the same, yet now we remain to be irradiated. We walk this lonely road alongside voices that never echo. With friends who never are there to extend their arms wide to receive us and touch us. Their spirits dart this land alongside us aliens, into a wasteland they conceived or dared to watch in its beginnings. Now these spirits can never leave for they know their fate. These mechanical behemoths that surround us are trapped here forever knowing that by exiting Hell, they enter. Their sad fate once marketed as a dream of us all. These grey shadows, heavier from smoke are affected, and do ordain this deed to be solely their own burden to bear, so help them, or accept a similar parallel dimension, in which you too stand idly by, as time passes, staring once more into this void that is their tortured soul, and you become much like the beast itself. The key to the tamable abyss lies beneath the protection of our brethren, and so us soldiers are kindly thrown over the edge to their last remaining keep, so that they can sit on the hill and alert the world above, leaving us to carry out the maintenance on a world unlike our own. Like ice dripping onto a head below I felt them. I felt the moans, the cries, the people who died before this night first began. A time when we sat around the last heavenly fire and wrote this twisted fate for us all. Now I still hear them as they slowly get closer. Shadows in the distance dancing before us. Their hands clawing at the thick air around them, swimming through the barriers that are inherently nature. Those beasts are coming for me.

24 January 1970 - 16:40 Hours

US Military Camp Carlyle,

United States Occupied Midwest Territory

“The Cliff”

I had tried to get some sleep last night, but every chance I had to close my eyes I saw them. I saw the jungle, the terrors within. Each day awaking to see that I was still alive...still royally f***ed. I think about my family, somewhere still waiting for me. Watching as I left for the Vietnam. Unknowing of my selection as an ‘experienced fighter’. Uncaring even, as I was then assigned for the ‘double tour.’ Thousands of ‘em from ‘Nam were picked for a second round. Thousands flooded the airfields as planes shipped us back to the States, unknowing of what remained. My second consecutive tour was not what I expected. Landed in the military outpost at Chattanooga, and thrown right into the middle of the biggest operation of the whole f***en apocalypse. Some Vietnam-era brass throwing Vietnam-era fighters into a place not like Vietnam at all. There was no jungle around us, only home. The only similarity was the shadows. The siren began to blare over the loudspeaker. Across the yard through the dust cloud, past the vehicles steering through the camp, past the soldiers who ran into position I saw him. Sergeant. McCoy was a smart fellow. Got shaken up back in the day, but he means well. He jogged across the dirt road to our barracks, holding his instructions close. Over the sound of the soldiers around me, he called out to us, “We gotta go in.” He held his helmet as several jeeps raced past us. Johnson to my right, hunched over under the tarp looked over at me. I shifted my position on the milk crate I rested on. “It’s almost dark,” mumbled someone inside to the others around him. “Why the hell we going out in da’ f***en dark?” “D*** assault squad needs their asses saved. Scouts spotted several hundred zombies south of Scott Air Force Base. They’re ordering a second wave to replenish the defenders there and continue the push into the city.” said McCoy firmly over the noise. Just like that our luck plummeted. Here I was earlier thinking we were the luckiest f***ers in the whole bunch for managing to not get picked today. Now they’re sending in us in at night? F*** that. They knew as good as we did that the zombie b******s would be on full prowl. “Suit up. Go!” Called McCoy, as with that I was shoved off my seat and into the barracks. Heat blasted my face as I staggered into the s***hole alongside everyone else.

20 Kilometers west of Carlyle

F***en napalm. Everywhere. Torching the ends of Highland Silver Lake. And that’s where we were heading next. The chopper swerved right, to the north of the airbase. We continued in silence as the chopper gunner sprayed shots into the earth down below. The darkness engulfed us as the sun slowly retreated. On either side of us I could see the silhouette of neighboring helicopters scanning the ground below. The darkness was penetrated by an explosion below us. Smoke and flame touched us from the wreckage, testing us before allowing us into the lair of the city. An explosion. Another. The sky was ignited by a rocket breezing past us. The helicopter slammed left, knocking my head against the wall. “What the f*** was that?” shouted someone on board. The pilot’s console went alive as the comm set erupted with chatter. The co-pilot looked over his shoulder at McCoy who was half sitting, hanging onto a handle. McCoy grabbed the headset and began spewing out complaints to the ground forces. “Listen the f*** up and silence those f***en guns, ya dumb f***s. We’re trying to f***en fly ‘round here, not get shot by a limp d*** motha’ f***a’ on the ground. Watch your f***en fire!” shouted McCoy. He sat back down and threw the headset over the seat. Co-pilot motioned forward and Pilot pulled to the side. Suddenly I felt my stomach leap as we came to an abrupt stop. We glided forward as the helicopter began to fall rapidly toward the earth, cruising and spiraling downward. Finally I hit the bottom of my stomach as the helicopter touched ground. “Move! Move!” Shouted McCoy as my legs stumbled on the metal floor. The helicopter hovered over the earth like two magnets levitating over one another. The chopper knocked me out with the force of a thousand elephants, knocking me on to my feet. My legs buckled bracing myself, and I ran forward with the men around me. We moved like water pouring against a desk, spraying us into position, heaving us against barricades and the cold, cracked ground. I pulled against a small crate and heaved my arms over the side, pointing my gun around. The helicopter touched off and flew off into the night sky. As it left our location become darker from within, until we waited in near darkness. And we bathed in near silence. “Puppeteer inbound,” crackled the radio. A distant hum rose up from the horizon, until a helicopter convoy raced over head. “Mark some targets!” shouted McCoy. I shuffled where I sat trying to look over the rubble. My bag weighed me down as I looked around. Two soldiers behind me chucked a flare each into the darkness. Bright red light illuminated the sky as they sailed across the sky to the ground below. Then I heard them. Their distant moans increased. Their presence surrounded us. I looked over the rubble I was laying on. Holy s*** there they are. F***! The helicopters above us exploded with bullets, shooting hundreds of rounds into the ground ahead of us. I braced my head against my shoulder as dirt sprayed across my chest. A rock hit my lip and I flinched, spitting onto my face, through sweat and dust. The guy next to me knocked into my arm as he swung his gun over the barricade. He paused, breathing heavily. He pulled the trigger. “Open fire!” Several around me pulled their gun toward the darkness, shooting and lighting our faces like lightning dancing across the sky. I felt like a weight pulled on my chest. I pushed my head up over the debris and shot twice into the air. I thought I saw them in the distance, stumbling toward us, endlessly stumbling with no other hope or fate. But what different was I? F*** them! I pulled myself up and fired my clip into the darkness. “Grenade going out!” I ducked back down as the small object flew into the abyss. I tried to hold my breath and brace myself but I was panting heavily. Detonation. Shock. Shrapnel was shot into the air above us. Think. Quick. Exhale. Suddenly I’m rapidly breathing again and practically sick. I gripped the debris and swung my gun around again, rejoining my fellow soldiers. I think they stopped. I couldn't tell. S***, I never really got a good look at one in the first place. “Everyone stay alert,” mumbled Johnson. I looked over and realized he must be to my right. Coming to my senses I looked around at the soldiers around me. Yeah, hey shadow, howdy f***en doo. My eyes began to develop and I could see McCoy standing in the center of the drop zone. What the f*** was the matter with me, it wasn't even that dark. I looked down and saw my left hand was shaking a bit. Relax, man, I thought. I f***en need a smoke. “Watch for zombies from the north,” said McCoy to the small crowd of soldiers before him. Some hotshot took a few more shots into the distance. Now what?

We defended the hill past several waves of zombies. After waiting there for another twenty minutes, a voice awoke us the battle over the radio. “Transports coming your way, Task Four, suit up and prepare for escort.” Each one of us looked up and then back at McCoy who paused before grabbing his rifle. “You heard ‘em. Look alive.”

And with that we were thrown further into the darkness. Puppeteer led us from overhead, and we were gone.

End of Part One

To be Continued

Editorial Note: This fan fiction takes place during the American siege of the city of St. Louis. I plan to add some stories regarding this timeline. Any input or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Through this timeline I also am trying to explore many difficult themes, including the mental/emotional trauma that is commonly experienced by real-life soldiers. As a common courtesy, please show respect for those who have served, in the comment section and in real life. A simple acknowledgement can go a long way.

Thanks, Mscoree (talk) 20:39, April 8, 2013 (UTC)