Countd0wn

Chapter 21: Tag and Bag

Sparrow finally stopped to catch her breath on the side of a freeway overpass. She had been running for almost a day now. She had been desperately trying to catch up with the convoy of black humvees that she had lost when Gerrard had messed with her mind. The image of Marissa flashed through her head again and she shivered.

But the other weird thing that she had still had to get used to was the voice in her head. The thing that had come out of nowhere shortly after Gerrard had let her go. It had been reverberating through her mind ever since she had woken up, and now it was leading her...somewhere.

It just occurred to Sparrow what she exactly was doing. She was running across a monster-infested country trying to find two people she had just met who might as well be dead for all she knew, and she was navigating with a voice in her head.

She sat down against the concrete barrier of the road, and sighed, wrapping her arms around her legs. She knew that she couldn't think of things that way. Wren and Ivy were somewhere out there, she knew it. And even though Gerrard had plagued her with voices in her head ever since this whole world started, this voice was different. Like one that she knew could help her.

Sparrow had read about people who could talk to others with their minds, people with the power of ESP, or telepathy, as it was more commonly known as. Whether this person was good or bad, they were seemingly deciding to help her. But one thing kept Sparrow very wary of her invisible guide. Whenever she tried to communicate back to them, they would remain silent. No response, just directions.

But the voice had told her to go on for long enough. She didn't care how fast she could run, she was still human, a human who desperately needed to rest her legs. As Sparrow leaned her head back against the hard concrete, she thought about Wren and Ivy. Wren seemed like a nice enough boy, one who she could have been friends with if the world was normal.

His sister Ivy seemed nice enough, and she was sweet and innocent as any 8-year old should be. But the look in her eyes betrayed that innocence. Sparrow knew that she had seen things that no one her age should. And that broke her heart. But there was something else beneath the surface as well. Something darker...something that she wasn't telling them...

A loud metal clang echoed off in the distance, and Sparrow quickly shot upright, ripped out of her thoughts. She looked over the barrier that surrounded the overpass, and located the source of the noise. The rusted and abandoned wrecks of cars on the bottom road were being pushed aside by more black humvees, some with a large battering ram on the front, like a cowcatcher on a train.

Sparrow's heart dropped and rose at the same time. She had managed to finally regroup with the soldiers, but also the fact that they were here could mean that they might find her. She'd never had to outrun bullets before, but she wasn't willing to learn whether or not she could.

She kept herself hidden behind the concrete and looked down, to see the humvees slowly moving forwards down the road, clearing a path for themselves. Then, they all stopped in the middle of the road, and the doors opened to reveal more men with black armour and guns.

They looked around, and she heard one of them call out to the others, the slightly filtered and modified voice projecting through the facemask. "Spread out. Set up a 20-meter radius around the perimeter." The other men nodded and pulled out small silver cylinders with spikes at the bottom from the truck.

The soldiers spread out around the road, then began to stick the cylinders in the ground. They pressed a button on each of them, and a red light began to flash on the top, signalling that they were armed. Sparrow was trying to figure out what they were when the man spoke again. "Alright. Combat stance, starburst pattern. Remember, conserve ammo, headshots only."

The soldiers all began to stand in a circle, with their backs to each other, pointing their guns outwards towards the forest and fields that surrounded the freeway. Then, one of the soldiers raised a gun with a large barrel up to the sky and pulled the trigger. A large red light shot up into the sky, like a firework, shooting past Sparrow and making her duck. It arced upwards, then exploded with a loud pop and a bright red light.

Sparrow looked up, still smelling the smoke in the air, wondering what that was meant to accomplish, when she heard the familiar howling of the creatures starting to erupt in the distance. She instinctively cowered behind the barrier again, and peeked out of the top. 

She could see the trees in the forest rustling, then she saw several of the creatures rushing out of it, growling and roaring as they headed towards the group of soldiers. Instead of firing back, the soldiers stood their ground and stared down the monsters. What the hell are they doing?! Sparrow thought to herself, then she found out shortly after.

As one of the things got close, it leaped towards the circle of men, and in doing so, went near one of the metal cylinders in the ground. As it did, the flashing light on the top beeped, and two of the cylinders surrounding the creature began to produce a large burst of electricity, arcing out and striking the beast, causing it to twitch and cry out in midair, and land completely unmoving.

Sparrow's eyes widened, and she saw that the other metal cylinders were doing the same thing to the other creatures that were leaping and running towards the soldiers, effectively stunning anything that got close. It was a veritable forcefield that protected them.

But, Sparrow also noticed that some of the creatures were tougher than the field's power, and managed to keep moving towards the soldiers, albeit a bit slower. When this happened, one of the soldiers facing the creature would shout out "Breach!" and would use his rifle to shoot the thing in the head, killing it instantly.

This continued on for several minutes, with dozens of creatures running and getting stunned or killed. Then, finally, there were no more monsters to be seen, and the freeway was quiet once again. After a few moments of silence, the leader of the soldiers called out to the rest. "Clear!"

All of the soldiers put their weapons down, and split up. Some of them went to the metal cylinders and began to deactivate them, while others actually picked up the unmoving bodies of the creatures and stick them in the back of the humvee, injecting them with some kind of serum as they did.

Sparrow had been watching all of this with slack-jawed awe, when the voice in her head spoke up again. Follow them. It said. Sparrow was surprised to hear that the voice was changing it's plan, and she was happy that she was finally getting somewhere, but she wasn't sure that this was exactly the best way of doing.

She used her speed to run down the overpass road and down to the freeway where the humvees were, making herself practically unseen. She saw that the trunk to the humvee where they were holding the metal cylinders was open, and she managed to run across quickly without noticing, and managed to cover herself quickly in a tarp before the soldier came back.

As she hid, she heard one of them speak. "Alright, we got more than enough. Take the 3 healthiest ones and stick them in the back. Burn the rest. ETA to base is about 2 hours." Sparrow sighed silently as the soldier closed the trunk. It was going to be a long ride.