Among the Fallen: Resurrection

by Ross Shortall

  As she wandered the ghastly iron clad road of death, she noticed some areas were fleshy and they pulsated with a very faint heartbeat. She approached one of the fleshy areas and examined it. It looked as though the metal had flawlessly blended with the rusty looking muscle, smelling foul of rotten meat and oxidized iron. There were small channels filled with blood that slowly ran off into the horizon or branched off into walls. Some of the metal plates were missing and the space was covered in a metal grid covers, vents and fans that slowly turned, dripping with blood and oil. Alex looked down all around her at the platforms that dropped into darkness and machinery, their surfaces carved with symbols and mysterious writings, the very same, if not almost similar to the markings on her suit.

  Alex walked to the edge peered down into one of the grid protected holes inquisitively. Under it there were cogs and machines that slowly grinded and hissed under the road, huge fans and turbines that spewed steam and smelt of burning oil. Greasy looking pipes and tubes entangled the framework and scaffolding, pumping blood around the surfaces and high above into the metal structures almost as if the whole area was feeding itself from the dead.

  She frightfully walked to the edge of the road and stared up at one of the hanging corpses, the wind blowing and whistling through the scaffolding as the plastic sheets rustled and flapped. The corpse was suspended to a pole, naked wrapped in place by barbed wire as flies danced and played merrily on its grey blood encrusted dried skin. She looked away with a gasp and approached another, then another, each telling a deeply personal history of pain and butchered with alarming creativity.

  Some hung by their necks, others by their feet. Some had limbs missing and others were just a morbid looking torso. Hundreds of them all littered along the scaffolding and metal panels as far off as the eye could see.

  She held her face as the cadavers simply stared across the road at each other mercilessly, their empty and tortured gazes staring blindly over the gothic horizon. She continued towards the city clutching her arms in cold and fear as the twisted road finally ran out, yet the poison metal and muscle that polluted the ground clearly spread a lot further than she first thought; leading off far into Blackwater City. She looked in bewilderment and horror at the once proud cityscape that laid in ruin, a vast backdrop of metal scaffolding, hanging corpses, iron panels and buildings that had rusted as if they were centuries old; their surfaces bleeding, cracked and decayed. The city looked far from inviting and as she looked down the vast hill of concrete giants down towards the lake and she realized this was home, in some form or another.

  Alex just stood still as her jaw dropped at the sight, her eyes flicking left to right at the nightmare before her. Buildings burned and cars were piled up at either side of the road like giant walls of scrap metal, the dead hanging from their windows and crushed between vehicles; their scarred paintwork cracking and burnt, the cindering remains glowing with ash as they cooled, paving the way into the apocalyptic city. Car alarms screamed out in the distance and crows soared across the sky, thousands of them scrambling and hovering like vultures, picking at the corpses as they lay dead in the street. Whole skyscrapers spewed smoke into the air and some had even fallen on their side, held up by the unfortunate building next to them, their struggling foundations ready to buckle.

  What actually was going through her mind was a mystery even to her, the sight was so shocking and nightmarish that her mind erased itself almost instantly; she just stood staring into the land of the dead without thought or emotion. She gazed at the ground as her eyes followed the trail of the dead into the city, sprawled over the ground and littered like trash, leading far into Blackwater and strung up on the walls; scattered through the streets as they rotted and festered. As Alex took in the sight before her, the one burning question in her mind was not the question of what happened to these people, but who did this to these people?

  Was it these Fallen that ripped the city apart?

  Had they strung up these people like some weird sick and twisted trophies?

  She took a deep and fearful sigh and shut her eyes for few moments. The smell of decaying flesh and smoke filled her nose and her eyes watered almost freely as she breathed in the foul air. As her eyes slowly opened, she walked the last half a mile into the city as it stood before her burning. The Toll booths were smashed and wrecked, cars were burnt out with blackened bodies sitting at the steering wheels, frozen solid and fused to their seats; charred and putrid with their white teeth petrified in their mouths in agony. The bodies of the dead laid in the road without pattern as the crows and flies fed upon them mercilessly and without shame, picking strands of flesh and guzzling it down as the insects crawled over the pale tight faces of the innocent. She walked through the sea of bodies with her hand tightly held over her mouth, her eyes streaming with nowhere to look without seeing somebody either strung up or slaughtered, stepping in-between them as she slowly made her way to the mouth of the city.

  She knelt down and prized open the fingers of a young woman, gagging and looking into the air as she took a mobile phone from her hand. She stood immediately as her stomach heaved and repulsed, wiping her face as she looked at the phones screen clearly confused. It appeared to be working, but the screen readout was jumbled and full of weird looking symbols that flashed and changed, the signal dead and the phone unusable. She looked over the bodies and picked up another, then another, all scrambled and unusable. Suddenly, she looked around at the street lamps and traffic lights, peculiarly they were mostly off; yet a few of the buildings were still lit; so there was definitely still power running through the city. As she stepped over bodies and around burnt out vehicles, the crows soared across the sky in their thousands and stray dogs merely stood staring at her from the shadows. Military personnel and their vehicles lay rotten and slain, their weapons cold and without purpose. Glass fragments littered the streets, red with blood and corpses lay clutching their valuables and loved ones at the roadside. The Toll booth’s overhead signs flashed warnings of waiting times and inevitable queuing, flashing away with nobody alive to take neither notice nor even care. As glass and bullet casings crunched under her feet and blood oozed between her toes, Alex just held her mouth in undeniable sympathy and heartbreak as the people of all ages rotted under the night sky. She turned and looked into the mouth of the forest from which she arrived and then back towards the city in front of her with fear and anticipation of what yet to come. Looking down at the corpse at her feet she just stared into its painful blood splashed face, trying to find some sort of peace within herself, some way of numbing what she was seeing. No matter how hard she tried, how hard she battled her emotions, every face she looked at was deeply personal and affected her on every level with the worst yet to come. As hard as she struggled, she just couldn’t work out what had happened here. Where had the strange scaffolding and structures come from?

  It was literally everywhere. As Alex finally entered the city she shivered and hugged her arms, waiting for the next horror to befall her eyes.

  Chapter Eleven: Numb Streets

  “And now the LORD Almighty says: Because you have not listened to me, I will gather together all the armies of the north under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom I have appointed as my deputy. I will bring them all against this land and its people and against the other nations near you. I will completely destroy you and make you an object of horror and contempt and a ruin forever. I will take away your happy singing and laughter. The joyful voices of bridegrooms and brides will no longer be heard. Your businesses will fail, and all your homes will stand silent and dark. This entire land will become a desolate wasteland”. Jeremiah 25:8

  Alex entered the city and gasped in shock at the sheer sight, once proud and celebrated, now chilling and desolate; silent and corrupt. The buildings were covered by iron scaffolding and tatty clear plastic blood stained storm covers, people hung from the sides of buildings and the dark red and bleeding metal skin covered every road, building and statue for miles ar
ound, heaving under the red sky as it glimmered with blood. Crows leapt into the sky and dogs wined within the shadows as she passed, the glowing red clouds high above circling with swarms of vermin. All the lights were gone except for a few random street lights that buzzed with electricity as they faltered, flies dancing around them inexorably and casting tiny shadows through the ruined streets. Wet sodden newspapers and rubbish littered the roads, windows were broken and burnt, shops sat looted and cars were trashed beyond repair. The horizon was surrounded with black trees for miles around the city, far off in the distance on the red heavens the lake was a mere dark shadow at the bottom of the city. Strange bridges of pipes, cables, cages, chains and iron went from rooftop to rooftop, decorated with the dead they cast sickening shadows into the streets below. Doorways and alley entrances were barred up or meshed in metal, chains hung from flyovers and cables high above, their ends hooked and bloody as they swung gently in the wind. The bodies of the dead lay in the street without respect, dignity nor peace, their faces scarred with expressions of grief and pain.

  Alex drifted in amazement at this new city, recognizing streets, shops and even peoples cars, but none of them looked how she remembered, the city was putrefied and poisoned and the walls bled and wept like a living entity. Veins and arteries crawled like vines up the walls of the buildings and along the ground as thick as cable. The city was dying and crying, rotting and decaying; yet displaying a tougher more ghastly persona that had no place except for in rule-less nightmares.

  Alex approached a makeshift wooden wall that hid the eyes from a construction yard behind, plastered with thousands of posters of the missing and presumed dead. Men, women and children displayed with photocopies of happy faces but presented sad and lost words as candles and bouquets of flowers laid dead underneath; their petals and leaves dragged away by the wind, floating in puddles of water and blood. She walked along the lengthy heart-breaking wall for ages as if it never ended, the wind blowing through her hair and the fur of blood stained stuffed toys as they sat remembering lost children and their absent parents. Her eyes were suddenly drawn to a page of text, splashed in dried blood making some words unreadable.

  Page on the wall of the Lost – Smiths Street Avenue

  Revelations 16:8-11, 17-18

  **** ***** ****** angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory. And the fifth angel poured out **** ******* upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds. And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the ***** river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up. And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, ** ** done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.

  Alex shivered frostily. She was never really a religious person to say the very least, but she soon was looking to change an opinion or two on life itself as she was presented with such a vile and apocalyptic sight. Despite having her own money, cars and easy life style; she never really embraced her life because of the emotional starvation from her father. But as she looked into the faces of the lost and dead, her life seemed like a memory of wasted opportunity and happiness, a soul she took for granted. She looked up at the Clock Tower and frowned as the giant hands slowly made their way around the face.

  00:39AM.

  Could the night get any worse than this? Sunrise was at least seven hours away. She thought to herself that maybe she could find somewhere to hide until sunrise, wrap up warm and cry herself to sleep and simply let the horrors just pass her by. But she began to remember the creature’s words from the cemetery; doomsday; judgment and Hell. Outlandish words that were only affixed in realism by her situation, the vile appearance of her own and of the Fallen that stood before her; but Alex continued, selfishly wandering the heart-breaking present rather than an unforeseen and probable future. She felt compelled to do what she was told, as much as it frightened and sickened her; she could feel in her heart that this was something she had to do and the thought of the world going through this fate because of her fear only drove her to endure the madness. She had to stay in the open and hope this suit thing would do its job and protect her as the creature claimed. She began to think that maybe she should forget about her life and just get the job done. As hard as it was letting go, the memories were only serving her upset and pain as she began to accept that there was only one option, and sadly that were to forget she ever existed.

  She entered the city centre and walked down the high street that was littered with paper, trashed police cars and vehicles with rotten corpses behind their steering wheels. Ruined and burnt out cars and buses, fire engines and tanker trucks, mostly used as crude barricades, blocking off certain areas of the street deliberately as if preventing something entering or even getting out.

  She approached one of the barricades as it sat blocking the street. A bus and a few cars, concrete bollards and scrap metal barred her route. As the broken glass crunched under her feet she stared up at the dead soldiers and police officers as they lay slain over the top. Their blood running down the sides of the bus as crows pecked on their foul smelling flesh. She looked down at the ground and amongst the dried blood and glass were hundreds of empty bullet casings littered along the base of the barricade.

  Alex turned to look behind her but all she could see was dead people, nothing more - what were they shooting at? She pulled the door open on the bus and stepped inside. Soldiers and snipers were positioned at the windows, curled up and slain, their blood splashed around the bus; their weapons just useless scrap on the floor. Lights hung from wires, pulled crudely from the ceiling and a soldiers torso sat at the driver’s seat; his head rammed into the steering wheel coldly. She smashed a window and climbed effortlessly out of the other side and thumped to the ground.

  Littered around the streets were yet more bodies of soldiers; body parts; limbs; weapons and helmets scattered indiscriminately. The nightmare contaminated every inch of the city as she wandered aimlessly through the streets. She stepped on a thin metal road sign and it clanged noisily, covered in blood, rubble and glass. She knelt down and wiped it clean revealing Bio-hazard: Quarantine Zone!

  Quarantine Zone? Quarantined from what? She stepped into the centre of street and turned full circle at the devastation. She stood for a few moments holding her head in confusion and disorientation. Her bottom lip quivered as her brain finally began to take in and process her surroundings. The dead were everywhere! Body parts plagued the roads and the smell was putrid and disgusting. She held her mouth uncontrollably as she heaved violently and dropped to the ground, thumping the ground in uncontrollable bursts of emotion until her hands bled, only to suddenly reseal.

  The devastation that surrounded her was barbaric and seemed to cover every square inch of the city, throttling the life and festering in its own torturous and decaying grief. She purely knelt there in the centre of the road just gazing upon the frightful sight without words or thought. Cars sat motionless all around her as she soon come to see the city for what it was; a mildewing graveyard, an open tomb of the poor people that used to live here. On the ground before her was an old newspaper, brown and soaked with water and dirt.

  The Blackwater Herald - Friday, 22nd July 2012

  The Blackwater authorities say 281 people are now thought to have been killed by an outbreak of a human swine flu virus. People have been told to stay at home to contain the infection, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned could become a pandemic. At least some confirmed cases show a new version of the H1N1 swine flu sub-strain - a disease which infects
pigs but only sporadically infects humans. H1N1 is the same strain that causes seasonal flu outbreaks in humans, but the newly detected version contains genetic material from versions which usually affect pigs and birds. There is currently no vaccine for the new strain but severe cases can be treated with antiviral medication. It is unclear how effective currently available flu vaccines would be at offering protection against the new strain, as it is genetically distinct from other flu strains. The respiratory virus is spread mainly through coughs and sneezes. Although all of the deaths so far have been in Blackwater, the flu is spreading in the United States and suspected cases have been detected elsewhere:

  Confirmed infections in the US

  In addition, eight suspected cases are being investigated at a New York City high school where about 200 students fell mildly ill with flu-like symptoms. Ten UK students among a group which travelled to Blackwater have tested positive for flu - ‘likely’, though not definitely, swine flu, said Health Minister Brolan Riley. But a UK hospital conducting tests for swine flu on a British Airways cabin crew member admitted on Saturday said the tests proved negative.

  Blackwater shutdown

  In Blackwater, public buildings have been closed and hundreds of public events suspended. Schools in and around Blackwater have been closed until 6 August, and some 70% of bars and restaurants in the capital have been temporarily closed. People are being strongly urged to avoid shaking hands, and the city Mayor Grayston Beaumont has advised visitors to the city to keep at least six feet (1.8m) from other people. Backwater’s Health Secretary, Joyne Cradeva, said a total of 1,321 people had been admitted to hospital with suspected symptoms since 2nd July and were being tested for the virus. ‘In that same period, 281 deaths were recorded probably linked to the virus but only in 20