Shock
K.R. Griffiths
Copyright © K.R. Griffiths 2013
All rights reserved
This one’s for everyone that read Panic
Thank you .
One
Bodies everywhere. Pieces of bodies, to be more precise. The oozing, glistening lives of what looked like dozens of people reduced to smears and stains on the trees; obscene puddles on the ground.
John Francis took in the scene, trying to remain as impassive as possible, at least externally. Inside, his guts churned. He’d seen bloodshed before, of course. Hell, he wouldn’t be anywhere near his current job – or this godforsaken place – if he hadn’t. He’d seen bodies in the desert, punctured by bullets, exposed; the sand creeping over the wounds as though trying to preserve the modesty of the dead.
At its most extreme the violence he had witnessed took the form of a roadside device, drawing human flesh and fragmented steel together like some terrible magnet. That had been bad enough. Nothing could quite describe the feeling of seeing a severed human leg sitting on the ground in front of you, hearing the dumbstruck screams of its former owner, so John never tried. When people asked about those days spent in that Hell of baking sun and baked sand, which wasn’t very often, John let his eyes bore holes into them until they went away.
None of that was like this. That was violence with an agenda, no matter how plain wrong anyone thought it might be. This was violence on a massive, almost cartoonish scale. Explosives had been used, that much was obvious. Guns too. Small calibre, high rate-of-fire. Edged weapons? Almost certainly. Teeth? Fingers? The bloodbath was inexplicable and slippery; skipping away from the rational mind’s grasping attempts at comprehension.
John looked at the carpet of entrails and gore that covered the forest floor, felt his stomach lurch. He had been briefed on what to expect, they all had, but nothing could have prepared him for this . What they had seen from the chopper en route had been unsettling enough: great swathes of the countryside they passed over seemed to be burning, the towns and cities pockmarked by craters and eruptions. It looked like something directly from Hollywood; a huge budget blown on special effects.
The end of the world is manmade. Batteries included. John shook the thought away.
When the chopper had landed outside the tiny town, John had thought h e had it all under control. But up close… Christ. The violence was an expanding universe, spreading out in all directions. From the look of it, the infected, reduced to mindless animals, had begun to tear at anything that moved with whatever they had to hand, and then someone had waded into the midst of it all armed to the teeth like fucking Rambo on crack.
Well, not just someone. Someone in particular.
He cast a glance around the group. The faces of the team were grim, stoic. John wondered if he was the only one feeling like the hinges in his mind were rusting over.
“Fucking chaos .”
The Cap’s voice, low and even, cutting through the still air. The first words he’d spoken since they left the chopper at the clearing.
“You get anything from this , Hound?”
They all had codenames, to be used at all times. It had seemed like overkill, given the situation, but still, orders were orders. Just animal names, which they picked themselves. Hound was the best tracker they had, hence the name. He was wiry, intense. Scary eyes. John trusted him instinctively.
Hound shook his head.
“Looking for a trail in this is like looking for an appendix in a forest full of fucking dismembered organs Mouse. I’d guess maybe we’re close, as for which direction…” He shrugged.
‘ Mouse’. The Captain’s idea of humour. John kind of liked it despite himself. Had expected him to go for Lion,
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