The Dead City

Part 9: CHICAGO

11:54 A.M. November 19, 2013 – 02:32:41 since UOA

Lieutenant Rackham Shaw sits in his living room with his German shepherd Maddux lying at his feet. His eyes are glued to the TV screen as a reporter ducks and dives to avoid the flying debris all around him. The camera cuts out, and the screen shows an aerial view of a massive black hole ringed with bluish-white fire that is smack-dab in the middle of downtown Chicago.

His cell phone rings, and he answers, waving Maddux out of the room.

“This is Shaw.”

“Shaw, it’s Ferron. You’ve seen the stuff on the TV?”

“Of course I’ve seen it, Kyle, it’s over the whole fucking network.”

“Well, we got orders. All available units are to report to Centennial Park for…”

“Wait a second, Kyle…holy SHIT!”

On the TV, the Willis Tower succumbs to the black hole, crumbling into itself and disintegrating.

“Did you see that? The fuckin’ Willis Tower!”

“Oh my fucking God…”

“Alright, alright,” Shaw says, exasperated. “Centennial Park?”

“Under the Bean.”

“Got it. Okay, gather the rest of the team and meet me there!”

“Yes, sir!”

He hangs up and turns the TV off, sparing a glance out his apartment window. The black hole hangs like an ominous, blue-ringed storm cloud over the city. Shaw whistles for Maddux and they go downstairs to Shaw’s F-150. Maddux climbs into the passenger seat as Shaw starts the engine. They pull out of the apartment parking lot and drive toward Chicago…and toward certain doom.

12:20 P.M.

Shaw’s drive to Centennial Park is unimpeded, as the outbound roads are clogged with fleeing drivers while the inbound lanes were clear. Maddux pants happily all the way. Nothing ever scares him.

The same can’t be said about Shaw. This thing over Chicago is definitely scaring him. What the fuck is it? How the fuck did it get here? He turns on the radio to check for updates.

“…whether or not this is related to the biohazardous outbreak last Tuesday, Marsha, but it appears…hold on…we’re getting reports that the citizens of downtown Chicago are rioting…wait, no…Tom? Is this right?”

The radio announcer’s voice is shaking and uncertain.

“…my God…this just in, the citizens of Chicago are killing each other. Something is happening, folks, and we really can’t explain what…”

Then static, sudden and quick. Before Shaw can even register what is happening, something invisible slams into his truck and stops it dead in its tracks.

Maddux begins to whine. Shaw curses and tries the engine. Nothing. It’s fried. Then he looks around and sees that he is not the only one affected. Dozens of drivers have exited their dead cars, some running away, others standing still in shock.

“Fuckin’ son of a shit!” Shaw curses. “C’mon, Maddie! We gotta go!”

They exit the car, and as Shaw tries to call Ferron, he realizes that his cell phone has been fried.

No. Impossible.

“EMP?”

Oh, shit.

1:10 P.M.

Out of breath and clutching himself, Shaw finally makes it to the command post set up around the giant chrome bean in Centennial Park. Kyle Ferron, a fellow lieutenant, is waiting for him.

“Shaw! Pulse got you too?”

“Huh?!”

“All our electronics are down. Well, not all of ‘em. We still got NODs and comms, but that’s about it. But that EMP is the least of our worries right now!”

“What are you saying, Kyle?!”

“Look for your fuckin’ self!”

Ferron points down the street where gunshots and explosions can be heard. Shaw sees several uniformed men, each blazing the insignia of the SRS (Special Response Squadron,) his unit. But they were firing at…

“Civilians? Why the fuck are they firing at…”

“I’ll show you why the fuck they are! Take this!”

Ferron tosses him a Colt Python, an irregular piece of weaponry for the Army but not so irregular in the SRS. Ferron is already decked out in full combat fatigues, completely black, and he places a gasmask and Kevlar helmet over his face so that only his brown eyes are visible. Clutching his G36C, Ferron motions the completely unarmored Shaw and Maddux down the street. Regretting his decision already, Shaw follows.

Ferron hands him earplugs so that he won’t go deaf from the gunfire, and as Shaw puts them in, they stop behind an overturned taxi. Ferron then hands him a pair of binoculars. He takes them and looks through them.

It becomes clear why the men are shooting at unarmed civilians.

Every citizen has blood coming down his and her chest. Their eyes are gone, plucked out by the looks of it, and their mouths froth with blood. Their hands have morphed into claws, terrible-looking talon-fingers that drip with blood and body matter. As Shaw looks closer, he realizes the blood on their chests is not blood at all. The citizens have gaping holes in their chests from which black tentacles, lined with canine teeth, whip and whirl around like one of those tube-men advertising balloons.

They are monsters. And they are attacking.

“What the fuck?!”

“Biters,” Ferron replies, his voice muffled by his rubber S-10. “’Least that’s what we’ve been calling them. We don’t know what the hell is going on, but those things took out all of Velazquez’s men!”

“WHAT?!”

“Now you know why we’re shooting them!”

“What the fuck are they?!”

“How the fuck should I know?!”

Just like that, Ferron pulls Shaw away from the barricade and back up to the command post, entering a tent and pulling off his gasmask.

“Okay, Lieutenant, we need to get you suited up.”

“But what was…what…”

“Oh, mother of a fuck, why’d you bring Maddie?!”

“I thought…the Willis Tower, there might have been survivors…”

“The tower’s gone, Rack. No one’s left.”

“Do you have a vest for him?”

“Yeah, should be one. I’ll get your gear. Stay here.”

Ferron goes off in search of equipment, and Shaw holds his head in his hands. Maddux looks up at him confusedly.

“What the hell was all that?” the lieutenant asks himself. “Oh my God…oh my fucking God…”

It is the beginning, Rackham.

“What?!” Shaw whips around and scans the area. Ferron is not back. The only sounds he can hear are the sounds of gunfire and explosions, as well as a low humming noise and Maddie’s panting.

“Who’s there? Identify yourself!” He holds the Python out, but the command post is deserted except for medical and radio personnel, who are in the next building over. Not a good sign. That meant that all available men had been deployed, which meant that they were losing.

He had heard a voice. But who…?

Ferron is back and is carrying a gear-set identical to his own, as well as a custom Kevlar vest for Maddux. Wasting no time, Shaw gets dressed and geared, fitting the S-10 over his head, smelling rubber and feeling it enclose around his skull. He fits the bulletproof vest onto Maddux, then proceeds to take a spare G36 from Ferron. Fully locked and loaded, the two men and the dog walk out to join their comrades at the front line.

1:50 P.M.

“Echo Team, right side! Right side!”

“Holy shit! UO is growing and shadowing our location, over!”

Shaw crouches next to Ferron and three other gasmasked boys from Echo Team at the barricade, dropping zombie after zombie. He can’t think of what else to call them. They aren’t human, and they can’t be alive. So they must be zombies.

They have moved up significantly and were now using an overturned bus as a wall against the horde of monsters that choked the Magnificent Mile.

“Runner! Drop him!”

“Got it!”

Machine gun fire.

“Ferron, are you going to explain to me what the fuck is going on?!”

Maddux barks madly. Ferron looks at Shaw. His eyes are wide behind the mask.

“I don’t know, man! I don’t fuckin’ know! First the goddamn hole in the sky, now fucking zombies! Jesus Christ, what next?!”

“Sir!” calls a soldier to Ferron’s right. “Helix advises! B-52s inbound!”

“Shit! They’ll drop ‘em right on top of us!”

Maddux is still barking. Shaw leans in.

“Tell them we can’t go yet! We’ve got no response from Charlie Team! And we have injured civilians!”

The soldier begins to relay the message, when suddenly a low boom echoes across the city, and the soldiers are nearly knocked off their feet.

“What the fuck? Ferron, you got eyes on the UO?”

“No, what?! Another EMP?!”

“Doesn’t look like it! Comms are still working!”

“LOOK AT THE UO!”

The fire-ringed black hole in the sky seems to pulsate, then contract. Teal light forms in the middle of the hole, and three objects burst from the light, on a collision course with Echo Team.

“What the fuck?!”

“What are those things?”

“They look like dogs or something!”

“Jesus!”

The black hole is going nuts. Trails of multicolored light blow up like fireworks around it. Maddux whines and barks. The three objects slam into the street before them and are swarmed by the zombies.

“GET THEM OFF! GET THEM OFF!” Shaw screams, letting loose a bulletstorm, not letting up until every creature is dead. Pulling off his gasmask, not really sure of what he is doing, Shaw breaks the barricade and runs toward the fallen objects.

There are three objects, living and breathing. One is gray. One is yellow. One is turquoise.

“OH MY GOD!”

Shaw looks up. Something is sticking out of the black hole, a huge thing, bigger than Mt. Everest. It resembles a black uprooted tree with tentacles longer and thicker than the Great Wall of China. It roars unnaturally, a beast of the sky, and Shaw sees something in its tentacle.

The B-52.

The comms go dead. He can’t hear anything except Maddux’s barks and the roar of the monster in the sky. Like a gaping maw, the hole widens and quivers. The tentacle holding the plane spins around and lets go, hurling the bomber off course.

Straight into the John Hancock Observatory.

The B-52, laden with explosives, slams into the building and blows up, taking with it the entire observatory in a cataclysmic deluge of flame, dust, and melting steel. Shaw can’t hear anything else. The tower collapses, and a wall of dust and debris speeds down Michigan Avenue, swallowing everything in its path. Instinctively, Shaw puts his gasmask on and grabs Maddux, but then he catches sight of one of the creatures, the yellow one. Its eyes are wide and teary. It looks scared beyond all recognition. Making a decision, Shaw, with his German shepherd still under his arm, tackles the creatures and covers them as the dust cloud swallows him whole.

The world ends.

00:00 A.M.

No, no, Lieutenant Shaw.

The world has not ended. Yours, perhaps. I cannot say with certainty how very badly your world will be affected by my colleague’s outbursts. Let me affirm that I have no desire for your planet, nor do any of my clients, or His…oh, what does he call them? Sheep? It matters not.

Let me affirm that these phenomena are not exclusive to your world, Lieutenant. Your kind has had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Quite literally.

I wish to concede that I take no action on behalf of Earth’s destruction. The blame is His and His alone.

But you must be wondering why you are still alive, Rackham Shaw. You wonder who or what I am.

Answers will come with time, and time has not ended.

I am Entrail.

This is merely the beginning.

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