by Sean Davies
Lynette already knew that no ordinary explosion had afflicted the town, and that it definitely hadn’t been an accident. She was looking at the handiwork of the corruption Demon Corriztis.
Kaine fell in line without saying a word, and his aged face stiffened into a mask of concentration and fury, while Jonathan pulled out his ancient communication stone and tried to get through to Alice. When the Lord Imperator didn’t answer, the Trinity representative switched to his phone and called the Beachhead One Justiciar outpost instead.
Jonathan leant out of the Trinity jeep’s window. “A cleansing team is on the way!” he yelled.
Both Kavarne and Lynette gave him a thumbs-up and readied themselves for the worst.
The relief teams soon radioed in, confirming that they’d rendezvoused with the retreating civilians and were guiding them out of the area. According to the population of Abilton, not a single Alternative in town had escaped the chemical bomb’s strange effects, but the humans and Supernaturals (and even pets) had been completely impervious to the black sludge. Nevertheless, they had soon become overpowered by whatever the Alts had been mutated into.
“Make sure they’re all tested as soon as possible,” Kavarne radioed back gruffly, knowing the civilians could have been infected with something less obvious and far more insidious.
They pulled up on the edge of town and traipsed through someone’s back garden to see the full extent of the damage up close. The place was eerily quiet, and they knew danger was all around them, waiting to pounce when they least expected it. With their magic sensors on the fritz, they were forced to scan for danger the old-fashioned way, but the only movement their eyes detected was from the thick pools of tar, which seemed to be slowly creeping about as though they had a mind of their own.
“I thought it was Gloom water,” Lynette said quietly, as she watched some of the viscous fluid attempting to slither up a tree.
“It certainly smells better,” the gruff old Werewolf, Kaine, said as he sniffed at the air like an animal.
The group silently agreed. Although the town looked like someone had gone on a rampage with black paint, it smelt surprisingly sweet in the warm dusty breeze though they had been expecting it to reek of death and decay.
Jonathan gestured for the three Trinity guards, who were readily armed with a submachine gun and longsword in each hand, to watch the rear while he guarded Kaine’s unprotected flank. The Mage pulled out a water pistol that he’d filled with bleach (a habit he’d picked up in the War for Reality) and sprayed some on a nearby globule that was gradually dripping down someone’s windowsill.
“Hmm, it’s not reacting at all…” Jonathan mused. “Anything Gloom-based would’ve been dissolved in a flash.” He quickly pulled out an empty vial from among the potions in his grey duster and collected a sample to analyse when he returned to the Catacombs.
Behind them, the remaining Hellions dismounted their vehicles and fanned out, exercising the same extreme caution as their leaders and taking each step into the sludge-doused town with critical care.
Lynette, Kavarne, Kaine, and Jonathan emerged from an alleyway between two houses and were faced with a disgusting, yet calm ghost town. Larger clumps of liquid slithered along the ground, and occasionally some would latch onto plants, walls, and cars as though it were trying to absorb them, only to retract back in defeat.
They moved up the tiny excuse of a high-street towards the white wooden chapel and town hall at the centre of Abilton, and the slimy tar increased in frequency. The group stepped around the gloopy mounds gently, but whatever force drove it seemed completely oblivious to their presence.
“Hey! Hey!” a voice cried in a shrill whisper from above. “Thank the Goddesses you’re here!”
The group stopped in their tracks and raised their guns to an open window above a clothes store, but lowered them slightly when they saw a man holding his hands up defensively.
“It’s okay, I’m just a human!” he explained.
“Are there any more of you lot about?” Lynette asked.
The man nodded. “Uh huh, they holed-up in the hall and chapel when we got cut-off. That’s where I was heading ‘til I got trapped.”
“Can you get out now?” Kaine asked. “Or do you need us to bust you out?”
“I can get out—they were all around the exit and the shop—oh, I’m so glad you arrived!” the man said, full of relief.
“Get down here then, quickly,” Kavarne said, looking around for danger.
Lynette’s heart froze as a terrifying thought invaded her mind. Her gaze wandered down to the clothes shop and settled on the four mannequins standing by the store’s sludge-splattered floor-to-ceiling window. Nothing seemed amiss until she studied their plastic faces, which were slightly lopsided, and she saw something black bubbling underneath their chins and dribbling onto their trendy apparel.
The Werewolf Swiftpaw didn’t even wait long enough to utter a curse word before drawing her revolvers and blasting the Alts in the stomach as they smashed through the store window. The large bullets tore massive holes in their chests and halted their ambush in its tracks.
“So much for ‘ask first, shoot later’,” Kavarne chuckled.
“Well, they’re not dead…” Lynette defended, breathing rapidly.
The Alternatives twitched on the shop’s hardwood floor, and pools of black liquid bubbled out of their wounds, as well as their eyes and mouths. To everyone’s great discomfort, the chemical-soaked puppets started to gargle in the sound of a raspy giggles.
Kaine suddenly fired his rifle three times, felling an Alternative as it clambered over the roof and attempted to enter the human’s apartment.
The mutated being thumped into the ground and looked up at them. Its once spherical eyes had become pointed triangles, and its mouth was twisted into a perpetual savage grin with razor sharp white fangs that could give a Feral Vampire a run for its money. Sludge continually seeped out of its laughing mouth and from behind the Alt’s eyes, and Kaine put two rounds in its damp fabric head at point-blank range to put the creature out of its misery.
“There’s no cure for this that won’t kill the Alts too,” Kaine said sadly.
Kavarne blasted the head off another puppet with his sawn-off shotgun when it smashed through the window of a neighbouring store, and slashed another Alternative in half with his battle-axe as it attempted to leap onto him from the roof above.
“The old man’s right, Lynette,” Kavarne growled.
Lynette nodded, and the sounds of gunshots echoing around Abilton, along with the boom of a powerful fireball spell, told her that her Hellions had already reached the same conclusion.
“I’m gonna go help that guy,” Kaine said, loading rounds into the side of his lever-action rifle as he plodded down an alleyway beside the store.
“Come on,” Jonathan said to the Trinity guards as he jogged after the grey-haired Werewolf.
Lynette and Kavarne were soon backed up by more members of their gang, and they continued towards the centre of town, vigilant for more survivors and mutated Alternatives.
Kaine reached the apartment’s ground floor entrance in the nick of time to save the survivor from three menacing puppets that had pounced onto his door the second it was opened. One of the Alternatives was killed by Kaine’s quick shooting, but the other two leapt from wall-to-wall until they had disappeared over the buildings’ flat roofs, and the Werewolf and Trinity guardians only managed to hit the brickwork.
The man screamed and tried to run back inside, but Kaine grabbed him by the collar and tossed him towards the armoured guards. “Get him out of here, quickly now!”
“Yes, master,” the guards echoed, and saluted as they rushed the panicking man off to safety.
One of the mutated Alternatives leapt down towards Johnathan, but Kaine pulled the Mage out of the way of its newly-formed black talons.
Jonathan drew his water pistol and squirted the creature with a stream of bleach that dissolved half
of its menacingly cheerful face. However, the Alternative’s head was soon reformed by black ooze that solidified into a horrific mask. In the blink of an eye, the creature had stabbed the Mage in the stomach, and Jonathan sent it flying out of the cramped corridor in pieces with a twin blast of force magic.
“You good, kid?” Kaine asked, aiming his rifle upwards, waiting for the third assailant.
The Mage shakily lifted his ruined shirt to see five puncture wounds pumping out steady streams of blood, and groaned an acknowledgement as he reached inside his duster for a healing potion. He found the vial he was after and pulled out the rubber stopper with his teeth, before downing the lime green liquid inside. Jonathan’s skin melded back together again, and his wooziness gradually subsided as the magical potion restored his lost blood too.
“I think that gunk is starting to mutate them further,” Jonathan said as he sifted through his alchemical inventory.
Kaine passed the Mage his rifle and the spare ammo he’d taken off the Hellions. “Looks that way. Let’s scope out the town centre and then get the fuck out of here. Your wife’s boys and gals can burn this lost cause of a town to the ground.”
Jonathan nodded as Kaine’s growing form was engulfed in white and grey fur, and the Mage calmly swigged a small bottle of metallic potion, ignoring the movement he saw out of the corner of his eye.
By the time the ooze-encrusted, carapace-armoured Alt mutant had finally finished crawling silently down the brickwork on all fours, Kaine had also finished his transformation into his hulking Werewolf Brutebeast form, and Jonathan Knight’s skin had turned into metal.
The iron-skinned Mage turned suddenly and caught the Alternative mid-attack, grabbing the creature’s new black pincers in his steely grip. Jonathan used his potion-assisted strength to launch the Alt over his head and towards his Werewolf master. Kaine roared and lashed out with his beastly claws, shredding the armoured Alt into ribbons in a shower of soaked fabric, padding, and thick chitinous plates.
Lynette and the others made their way up the road, pausing when they saw Kaine in his savage Brutebeast form leaping along the high street’s flat rooftops, carrying an iron-clad Jonathan on his furry shoulder. Any mutant Alts hiding above were either blasted with force magic, shredded with Kaine’s blade-like Brutebeast claws, or smashed in the face by one of Jonathan’s metal fists.
“How many Alts do you think lived here?” Kavarne asked his other-half.
Lynette shrugged. “Can’t have been many.” Her eyes caught a flash of silver in the middle of the road, just opposite the town hall and chapel, amidst the gargantuan slug-like blobs of black mutagen. “That must be ‘the bomb’,” she said, pointing it out to Kavarne.
They came to the end of the street and were joined by Kaine and Jonathan first, and then by other Hellions that had converged on the area shortly after. The Trinity Mage’s potion wore off and his skin faded back to its normal state, but Kaine remained in his lumbering bestial Werewolf form, sniffing the air wildly and growling at Kavarne.
“It does smell like a trap,” Kavarne replied to his fellow Brutebeast.
Lynette eyed the gunk-drenched wooden chapel and the single-storey town hall suspiciously, wondering where the survivors were hiding, and hoped that they hadn’t arrived too late. She could see the scattered corpses of those who hadn’t made it to safety in time.
“We must have got most of ‘em by now,” Lynette said optimistically. “If there were loads of Alts living here then the place would’ve been all Gloomified before it was drenched in gunge.”
“She’s right,” Jonathan agreed. “This town would have had between ten to twenty Alternative residents, tops. Any more and we’d have seen some Gloom flora popping out from Corriztis’ mess.”
She splashed through the shallowest pools of liquid in the road and inspected the silver device. It was an open metal briefcase that had six broken glass cylinders protruding from its centre, along with a flashing digital timer and a lot of circuitry and wiring. Resting in-between the broken glass tubes was a clean white envelope that Lynette assumed must have been placed there after the chemical bomb had gone off. She carefully plucked it away and saw that it was addressed to Lord Imperator Alice Eve, and that it was ‘for her eyes only’.
Lynette tore open the envelope and hastily read the letter.
Dearest Alice,
I hope you are well.
I’m sorry that our last encounter was so brief, I wasn’t anticipating your tenacity. Just more evidence of my need for you!
I trust that you’re not too disappointed with the results of my prototype.
I’ve written the coordinates of my next three test sites on the overleaf—
Theodore and I would love it if you could attend.
Your future saviour,
C.
“What does it say?” Kavarne asked.
“It’s some letter to Ali about three more of these attacks,” Lynette explained. “He’s even written the coordinates on the back,” she droned.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Jonathan asked, moving closer to take a look at the letter for himself.
“The whole back page is covered in them,” Lynette sighed, handing Corriztis’ note over. “There are coordinates to dozens of different places.”
Kaine released a deep snarl from his savage maw as the chapel’s white wooden door opened slightly.
A dishevelled-looking woman with short blonde hair peeked out of the gap with a pistol held out in front of her. “Are they all gone?” she asked in a loud whisper.
“We’re not sure,” Kavarne replied honestly, “but we’ll be able to keep you safe. How many of you are in there?”
“Eleven,” the woman replied. “I’ll go and tell ‘em that the Highway One Hellions have answered their prayers,” she added, planting a brave smile on her strong face.
Kaine pointed his claw towards the town hall and bounded off on all fours, continually sniffing the air with his wolf nose.
“Argh… wait for me,” Jonathan moaned as he sprinted after the Werewolf Brutebeast.
“Some of you lot sweep the hall with them,” Kavarne ordered to the gang members.
“Everyone else, cover the chapel,” Lynette continued. “Last thing we want is any nasty surprises.”
Suddenly, Lynette was dragged to the floor by a crusty black hand that had reached out from one of the giant ooze globules. Kavarne slammed his axe down and it thudded into the road a few seconds later, severing the mutant arm at the elbow, while a pair of Mages blasted the lump of slime with a series of small fiery missiles. However, the arm’s owner, an Alt completely encased in slate-like chitin, sprang forth and slammed into Lynette before she could get back on her feet and before the fire magic could destroy it. It sprayed a jet of black slime out of its fanged mouth all over Lynette’s face.
Lynette spat and spluttered, trying in vain to keep the sugary-sweet tar from entering her mouth and nose. She growled ferociously and rapidly transformed into a massive wolf with shaggy brown fur, obliterating her clothing in the process. Comfortable in her Swiftpaw form, Lynette clamped down on the creature’s head with her powerful jaws and crunched it to pieces.
As the wolf version of Lynette shook the black slime from her fur, Kavarne yanked his battle-axe free from the road and was immediately jumped from behind. Even without transforming, the musclebound man had no trouble flipping the creature off his back, and he blasted it in the chest with a sawn-off shotgun; the shot clattered harmlessly off the gargling mutant’s hide, however. Kavarne promptly discarded his firearm and sliced the creature in half with three strong strikes from his axe.
The town hall across the road detonated from either end, sending showers of debris across Abilton, and deafening those nearby. Kaine’s massive white and grey Brutebeast form smashed out from one side of the hall, hurling a pair of over-sized Alt golems into the neighbouring community centre, while at the opposite end invisible shockwaves demolished even more sections of the building
as Jonathan Knight stepped up his game.
Kavarne looked down and flinched when he saw that the mutated Alternative’s body was gelling itself back together. He swept his axe into the mutant’s neck and kicked away the quickly regenerating head, but to his dismay the ooze-encrusted body was still actively repairing itself regardless.
Lynette pounced on a blade-armed Alt as it scurried towards two of her Mages, who were busy immolating a group of mutants advancing up the street. The Werewolf Swiftpaw ripped its entire back asunder with her vicious claws and fangs, before darting off in a flash to dispatch three partially mutated Alternatives who were helping to fix each other’s missing limbs.
The fighting only continued to intensify in the centre of Abilton, and the transformed Alternatives quickly recovered from whatever damage the Hellion’s could inflict. The mutants continuously threw themselves back into the fight after each defeat, sporting added appendages, thicker chitinous armour, and more savage melee weapons fused to their dark forms. The tar-like ooze littered all across the town aided their transformations and recovery speeds, ane the Highway One Hellions were unable to remove enough of it to make a difference.
Kavarne was about to transform into his Brutebeast form when he remembered the survivors in the chapel. He rushed across the road, splashing gunk all over his riding leathers, to get the civilians moving in the right direction while he could do more than growl and howl.
As he approached the wooden door to the chapel, he heard a shrill scream from the other side, and Kavarne swung them open so fast they splintered right off their hinges. The Werewolf covered his mouth and swallowed his urge to vomit as a thick tide of reeking Gloom water spilled out of the building.
The interior of the chapel had been desecrated, and all of the symbols, statues, pictures, and religious texts belonging to the Church of the Twin Goddesses had been methodically sabotaged. Even the wooden pews had been broken into pieces.