Crimsonfall [A Terraria Fanfiction]

Chapter 6

I exhaled, dropped the gun and fell to my knees. How could I ever kill anything or anyone? I kept reminding myself that these things are monsters, but it didn't help because these "monsters" came from human beings; us. Jacob set the boat in autopilot and ran over to me. He hugged me and told me everything would be okay. "What's happening, Jacob?" I ask, but neither he nor I knew. The boat continued to the shoreline where it automatically docked and anchored. Jacob and I walked down the steps, I readied my shotgun. Jacob had an iron sword that he found in an armory just off of the bridge. We opened the door and walked out onto the deck.

"Hold it right there!" An officer yelled. They had the dock surrounded. The government had sent military troops to the dock to aid the local police and they had tanks blocking off the dock from the street. A group of armed guards came onto the boat. I lowered my gun. "Put up your hands!" the lead officer yelled, and I complied. Jacob dropped the sword and also raised his hands. "Please, officers, we mean you no harm. We just came from Manera Island. There are monsters there that-" He was cut off by the lead officer. "We know about Manera Island. Come with us." He demanded, as he put us in cuffs. They lead us off the dock and put us in an armored truck. I looked over to see my mom standing beside her car, looking surprised and scared. She started to run over but the police stopped her. We were pushed inside the truck and our cuffs were secured to the benches they sat us down on. The commander came into the back with us just before the door was shut. he sat down on the bench opposite us. Shortly after, the driver started the truck and started driving.

"Please you have to believe us, we had nothing to do with what happened on Manera Island!" Jacob insisted. "I believe you. We just have to take precautions to make sure you aren't infected." This surprised both Jacob and I. "Infected with what?" I asked. "We do not know exactly what it is, but we are calling it the Crimsonfall Virus. It infects a person by contact alone and transforms them into something... else." I could tell he knew nothing about the creatures. "Face monsters..." Jacob said. "What?" The commander asked. "Face monsters, that's what the human-like creatures are called. The spiders are called blood crawlers." I turned to Jacob. "Jacob, no." I said. "How do you know this?" The commander asked. "It's on a video game we like to play, called Terraria." I confessed. He started laughing. "I'm serious!" I said. "Listen little girl, you could have been hallucinating in the heat of the moment trying to get off that island. You must have been, because there's no way creatures from a video game actually exist!" He continued to laugh until the truck came to a stop. "Maybe telling him wasn't such a great idea." Jacob said. We both looked down. "Well it's time to go inside." The commander said as he released our cuffs from the binds to the benches. We stood up and they walked us off of the truck and through a courtyard that looked like a prison courtyard. It had 20 foot tall fencing around the whole thing with razor wire at the top. The building had two inches thick doors with steel rods inside them to lock the door. This place was a fortress, almost nothing could get in.

We were lead in through the door and into a stairwell. We walked down for 34 floor until we were lead through a door and hallway into an interrogation room. Along they way we noticed that the hallway had multiple points of laser tripwire systems that deactivated once someone with clearance got close enough. They sat us down on two chairs and then the guards left, leaving us with the commander once again. "Now I just have a few more questions about what happened, I'm sorry about the tight security. We take our lives very seriously here." Jacob and I nodded in agreement. "Please describe exactly what had happened. How about you start, what's your name?" He asked me. "My name is Amber. I was sitting in class, learning about something that I don't even remember now. I glanced out of the window and saw a red storm coming but when I pointed it out to the teacher, he seemed uninterested and dismissed it. Shortly after, blood started pouring from the clouds and then a face monster broke the door down. The teacher had a shotgun ready and he shot it but a blood crawler came into the room and killed him." I lied about shooting him because I knew that would make things worse. "I grabbed the shotgun and we left the building, ran down to the boat and escaped. The rest you know." He was writing all of this down as I was talking. "And what about you, young man. Where were you in all of this?" He asked Jacob. "I was with Amber the entire time, she's telling you the truth." He flipped the page. "At any moment, were either of you touched by the raw blood?" He asked. Both of us said "No" at the same time. "Well in that case it's time to remove your handcuffs. Please stand." We both stood up and he walked over to us and took our handcuffs off. Jacob and I both grabbed our wrists in pain, rubbing the pain out of them. "Now then. Lets talk about-" He was cut off by the alarm being sounded. "What the hell?!!" A soldier busted through the door into the interrogation room. "Sir, they're in, I don't know how but they got in!" The solder grabbed his stomach, bent over and puked up blood. He then fell to the floor, blood seeping out of his mouth. The commander pulled his pistol out.

"Damn! this base is compromised! Quickly, follow me." He lead us to an emergency elevator. "This elevator only goes one way and it is only to be used in emergency situations." He started punching in a code when the lights and lasers went out. "They cut the power!" He started punching in the  code faster. "If the power is out then the elevator wont work!" I stated. "It will, it has its own power source." He said as the doors opened. "Lets go!" we all piled into the small elevator as we saw a face monster coming around the corner. The commander frantically pushed the door button and the door shut. We heard a loud pound and the door was dented inward. We heard another one and the door was dented further. The elevator started moving up and the pounding stopped. We all breathed out as we were holding our breath the entire time. The elevator doors opened up to a small room with no visible exit. "Where do we go from here?" I asked. "This base was designed in such a way that we would have a fall-back plan for every conceivable threat. This is the exit strategy we would have used if terrorists invaded the base." He typed a few commands on a computer console and the wall opposite the elevator opened up to reveal the courtyard, trenched in blood. I saw blood crawlers and face monsters everywhere, then another creature flew by that I had only just now started seeing. "What in bloody hell was that?" The commander asked. "That was a Crimera." I answered. We all exited and started running through the crimson. We saw that the gate into the courtyard had been torn open and we ran straight through it. Somehow, we were running faster than the creatures, who were hot in pursuit. As we were running, we noticed that there were no people anywhere to be seen, and the buildings of the city were all covered in a solid crimson-like substance. "We need to head to the bridge and get out of this city." We all were in agreement. We ran across the empty streets and finally approached the bridge.

We started up the sloped incline of the bridge and we heard a loud, deep roar coming from behind us. None of us stopped to see what had caused it, instead we ran faster up the slope and across the bridge. We noticed that some cars had been destroyed or abandoned on the bridge. We climbed up them and continued running as fast as we could. Finally we made it across to an empty guard shack where we found more guns and ammo. We looked back across the bridge to see hundreds of face monsters, just standing there, about halfway back across. They looked at us for a second and then turned back and slowly walked to the city. "I have a farm a couple of miles north of here. We should head there for respite." The commander said as he started walking. I took Jacob's hand as we started walking with the commander.