[4-14] The Town

[Kenpachi Zaraki]

Red lay slumped upon the library’s carpeted steps, run thoroughly ragged. His lungs spasmed in his chest in a lackluster attempt at feeding his body enough precious oxygen to keep up with the amount of effort he had just exerted. While Christa tried her hand at barricading the door, he could do nothing but feebly attempt to catch his breath while his muscles screamed in protest. Several of his wounds had reopened, the crimson smiles leaking sticky drool upon his pelt. The feline barely noticed; by this point he had adjusted to the burning pain, to the uncomfortable feeling of fur knotted with dried blood. The beast simply looked on as his former passenger sealed the doorway as the sounds of their pursuers grew still louder. Several broken bookcases and desk fragments later, the booming sound of fist on oak had grown only intensified, just barely drowning out the sound of fingernails scouring the door. 

“The undead,” Nanaki replied breathlessly, “if I had to guess.” The canine had had more than a few run-ins with such otherworldly monstrosities. As much as he generally cared little for humans, he very much preferred the living variety.

“No surprises on this island,” Christa responded, only half-sarcastic. Her eyes fell upon the streak of blood painted upon the polyester canvas upon which they tread. She shook her head slowly, as though her defiance might cause the smear to disappear. “Let’s get away from the doors. Thankfully the windows are high enough that we shouldn’t have a problem.”

Red nodded, struggling against his stiffening joints to rise and follow behind the woman. Despite his wishes, his limbs could scarcely carry him in a straight line; the sudden explosion of vigor had done him no favors, though he had to count “not being eaten alive by unholy abominations of un-nature” as a plus. Still, convincing himself of this fact did not calm his pulse, nor did it steady his wavering gait. The room seemed to bob and weave before him, as if Christa and the remainder of the furniture were performing a particularly terrible dance for his bleary eyes.

“I wonder what happened here,” the blonde muttered aloud, stepping over an overturned desk. Beside it lay a modern-looking computer, though the cracked screen told them it would be of no use. She reached into her pocket, silencing the chiming of their GPS tablet. They wouldn’t be needing it for the time being.

“Nothing good,” Nanaki replied, unhelpfully. It was hard to not come across as curt when one could barely see straight. “We should probably head for the basement.”

The gunslinger eyed him uncertainly. “That would be a safer place, but I don’t really want to get trapped here. And that trail of blood isn’t making me feel any more comfortable. We should just search for anything that could be useful and hopefully our friends outside will find dinner elsewhere.”

“Right,” Red replied. The sounds of the macabre mob had only grown louder, the heavy wooden door now all but shaking upon its hinges. He wasn’t so sure it would be that easy; not in a timely manner, anyway.

The duo continued their perusal of the premises, noting the definite signs of a struggle, as if the scarlet paint job didn’t do enough to prove that. There was not a single piece of furniture in the building that had not been mangled or upturned in some manner or fashion. Noting the sheer size of the library, this was quite an accomplishment. Row upon row of bookcases were emptied, their contents de-shelved and de-stroyed upon the filthy carpet. As they neared the center of what they imagined was the lobby, a spark of hope lit within the lion’s breast. A lone computer terminal stood upon a battered desk, mostly intact save a lopsided, darkened monitor. Christa reached behind the device, jostling the wires until the screen finally sprang to life.

St. Aligheri Community Library Directory

Basement: Children’s Books
Floor 1: Lobby and Reference
Floor 2: Media Center
Floor 3: Fiction
Floor 4: Nonfiction
Floor 5: Exhibition
Floor 6: Exhibition
Floor 7: Exhibition
Floor 8: Offices


Hours: M-F 0800 – 2000
Closed Christmas

“It won’t get off of this screen,” Christa remarked in an annoyed tone. She slapped the monitor firmly with her good hand before tip-tapping on the keyboard for a few moments. Despite her best efforts, the information on the display remained unchanged. She gave an exasperated sigh, pushing the peripherals away in disgust. “It’s toast.”

“So, where should we go now?” Red inquired. Though his body was finally beginning to return to pre-zombie-sprint levels, he’d leave the thinking to the huntress for the time being. A library was a very human place, after all.

“Well, it’s pretty obvious that this floor is trash,” the gunslinger stated, gesturing to a desk behind her that looked to have been torn in half down the middle. “Let’s take a look in the media center. Maybe the computers there are less fucked. Could tell us where the vault or whatever is.” She fingered the key in her pocket.

As they found their way through the lobby, Red noted a peculiar look on the woman’s face. He could only assume that their experience at the recently-detonated house had left an impression upon her. At the time, the burgundy beast had not quite understood her oblique statements, though he knew enough to understand the place held some significance deeper than the superficial. He hoped that whatever Karl had in store for her could bring her come kind of closure, however unlikely it may be.

“The trail of blood...” Christa began, staring down at the dried scarlet smear. “It leads right to the elevator.” Her eyes followed the stripe straight to the dented metal doors of the lift. She blinked a few times, thinking for a few seconds before gingerly tapping the call button. A moment’s pause and nothing later, she turned to Nanaki. “Stairs it is.”

Their footsteps made not a sound as they ascended, their footfalls muffled by the veritable sea of books that littered the steps. The thick wooden banister that supported the structure was shattered and splintered in many places, giving the shorter of the duo a feeling of vertigo as they climbed. Heaving the door open on the second floor, red and blonde strode into the Media Center, eyes scouring for any hint of a clue.

“Things don’t look too much better here,” the huntress griped, staring apathetically at a mound of mangled machines. “This almost looks to be intentional sabotage.” She turned to focus a confused glance on a row of computers, each perfectly positioned and untouched other than a fist-sized hole in the center of each screen. It was as it someone had gone down the line and deliberately broken each, the last act of perhaps a particularly petty employee. 

“I’m starting to see a trend,” Red responded, tilting his head toward a workstation cluster that looked to have been set ablaze at some point, the desks thick with char and the monitors’ plastic casings melted.

“There’s got to be something here,” Christa said, clasping her hand tightly around the key within her pocket. Their search, however, turned up nothing more than shattered screens, fried devices, and decimated furniture.

As they returned to the stairwell, the crimson feline noted that the sounds of the pursuing undead seemed to have all but stopped, a silence now hanging over the library. It had seemed Christa’s idea of leaving the cretins to lose interest on their own time had worked. Though they were by no means safe, it was good deal better than feeling the weight of anxiety on their shoulders as bony fists pounded against the inside of his skull. “Quieter now,” Nanaki observed, hoping to make his companion less tense.

The huntress nodded vaguely, taking the steps two-at-a-time. She was determined, perhaps to find the sister she had spoke of, else the person she has conversed with back at the bunker. Either way, she showed no signs of fatigue as they trekked up the stairs, skipping past the next two floors in no time at all. Only upon reaching the fifth floor did they stop, pushing the door open once more. “Exhibits?” she finally spoke, inquiring of no one in particular.

As they stepped onto the fifth floor, Red felt an uncomfortable sensation fall upon him. He stood on faux grass, a material that literally carpeted the entire floor wall-to-wall. All around was a strange assortment of images and dioramas, each depicting some image of a particular group of native people. Not far from where he stood sat an enormous skeleton, assembled and hung from wires to give the impression of a ‘living’ creature. Beside the specimen stood the wax figure of a man, a determine expression shaped into the wax as he held his spear at the ready, facing off against his foe. The bones at the man’s side formed the shape of a familiar-look animal: A lion. 

“Some kind of native peoples’ exhibit, I guess,” Christa said, scratching her head. She wasn’t quite sure what this could possibly mean for the anthropological history of the island.

The burgundy beast stared at the exhibit for a long time, trying to place what it was that was causing such an odd feeling to stir within him. Nanaki stood approximately equidistant from both man and beast, just as he always did, in some way or another. He found it hard to look upon the two, the victim and the victor, with any kind of ambivalence. There was something about seeing a skeleton so closely resembling his own that repulsed him in more ways than he cared to admit. Surely, seeing his ‘insides’ was unsightly, though he also found himself detesting that he was made of the same lowly stuff that had lead to being slaughtered by the human beside it. Still, he felt no satisfaction in looking at the man, either. He was not proud that man had triumphed over beast, not in the exhibit nor truthfully in his own psyche. Though man had trumped beast in this mock-up, it had been the beast who had carried Red this far on the island. How many times had he tasted blood since his arrival? How many lives had he ended? The thought both calmed and terrified him, repulsed and attracted. 

“Nothing useful here either,” the gun-woman announced, strolling away from a large hide-covered hut. She paused.  Killing is still as fucked up as it was millions of years ago.”

Red dutifully followed Christa back to the stairwell, knocking over books as they made their way still higher. The image of the predator and his prey remained fresh in his mind, the uncertain feeling settling into his own bones. It was one thing to be uncertain of companions and quite another to be unsure of oneself. Just then, he could honestly say he’d bet on the gunslinger before himself. Before boarding the plane to the godforsaken island, he’d been quite sure of himself and who he was. It took not even a day in the wild to shake this belief to the core.

“I’m going to assume this exhibit won’t be helpful either,” Christa monologued, leading the way past the door with a large ‘7’ over it. A quick peek through the glass showed what looked to be a large spacecraft, alongside which stood a pair of empty white suits, bulky and adorn with matching visors. “Floor 8 it is.”

As they reached the final floor, the duo took pause. The final floor; if it too were vacant and ransacked, they’d simply wander back out into the night, hoping beyond hope that the ravenous undead had laid back down in their graves to sleep off their hunger. Though the sounds of struggle had ceased, the burgundy beast knew that predators often stalk unnoticed. Were they truly safe? His mind flicked back to the image still fresh in his mind: The beast from his dreams. Would he become it, become like them, were he to fall? Would he destroy Christa just as he had felled Vincent? His mind raced and his heart pounded as Christa pushed the door open. They were immediately met with a hallway, down which they could spy a plethora of what they could only assume were offices. At the far end of the hallway a door stood ajar, a modicum of light causing the archway to stand out among the rest. At the sight of working electronics the duo made a bee-line for the room.

“Son of a bitch,” Christa said, incredulous. She pointed to a plaque on the wall beside the open door.

Karl Jak

They quickly pushed past the door into the executive’s office, leaving the door wide open behind them. The room was exquisitely furnished, as if the decorator (likely the man himself) had spared no expense in the name of luxury and extravagance. The room reeked of cologne and furniture polish, the desk and floor immaculately clean. A crystal decanter of some amber liquid-- top-shelf, of course-- sat beside a neat stack of paperwork weighted down by a tiny stone mock-up of The Thinker. The artist behind this version, however, had put significantly more detail on the...nether region. Behind the desk on the far wall hung a massive portrait of the late Producer, wearing the trademark smarmy smirk. The image looked almost alive, it was done so well.

“Of course the bastard has a picture of himself hanging in his own office,” the blonde said, shaking her head. “A little lopsided, though.” She approached the picture and grasped it by its frame, ever so slightly shifting it upon its anchor. No sooner had she laid hands upon the frame did the fixture come loose from its mooring, the sheer weight knocking the wielder backward onto the mahogany desk. 

Red trotted forward to assist his comrade in removing Karl’s enormous grinning mug from atop her, though he stopped short. “Christa,” he said, eyes widening. “I think you just found where your key belongs.”

2385 words. #lastminute