A World Split In Two

Chapter 2: Alone, I Fight These Animals...

Chapter 2: Alone, I Fight These Animals...

Once outside, Zack realized that everything was a little more peaceful. Sure, there was still that radiation smell and taste that kind of stuck in your mouth. He still heard the occasional ear-piercing call from a mutant blue-jay, as it slowly mutilated a stray cat off in the distance. That all aside though, there were no soldiers marching down the pothole ridden streets, or cars zooming by to whatever was so much more important. The day was amazingly peaceful.... Even for a Saturday morning this was quite odd for, regardless of whether or not kids had to go to school, most adults still had things to do, and the Ralams didn't stop attacking just because the rest of the world (or what remained of it) needed a break.

Despite the rather relaxing day Zack had a mission and had no time to waste. Every second he lingered was another second gone before a passing soldier inevitably came by and forced him back inside.

You see, after the aliens attacked the poor world, throwing it into widespread panic, animals started to mutate--usually not for the better. After this, things took a turn for the worst. Along with Ralam attacks people also had to deal with mutant animals as well as certain created species such as RipJaws....

RipJaws--huge bat beasts that served as an example of what happened when you tried to mix human and bat DNA. They were created by Dr. Jeff Harris back in 2018. Apparently, they were meant to be a better version of humans. Super Soldiers capable of extreme combat efficiency, with the ability to fly, locate the enemy via echolocation, and reproduce and mature at significantly faster rates. Sadly, they didn't turn out as hoped and by that, I mean they devoured anything that moved, and a few things that didn't. For some reason though, the doctor could not bring himself to exterminate them, so he locked them in his lab's basement until they escaped when the Ralams attacked.

For a moment Zack wondered what kind of idiot would allow beasts of mass destruction and violence to live unchecked in a broken biome far beneath the foundations of a super lab. He then pondered on what kind of monster would doom a semi-sentient species to years of life buried in a prison far beneath the very lab that gave them life. Maybe the RipJaws were the wronged ones after all, and not the hundreds of thousands of people that were later mutilated by their kin in the twenty years following the bat beasts' escape.

At this thought Zack quickly made his way to the sorry excuse of a backyard, with its burnt grass, and bare patches. If Zack was around ten times smaller it would have been a terrifying dessert of neglect, despair, and stray dog urine. Thankfully he wasn't and the yard was just rather small and pathetic. He walked between the narrow space between the group home's rough, scratchy wood siding--that was done wrong years ago so some of the panels just entirely skipped rows--and the neighbor's cheap chain link fence, that the younger kids occasionally lost a toy behind (something about a savage mut).

Zack approached the cellar. It was bolted shut with a Lockster 3.2, which would probably be relevant if you knew anything about the lock companies or qualities in Zack's world. Even if he could get Tony this close to the cellar, Zack knew that even he could not pick this lock, solely because nano-rust had long since corroded the keyhole.

Nano-rust, the rust of the future for the technology of the future, legend has it the rust was created by the Ralams. A corrosive version of their technology, that slowly corroded and bred on any metallic surface, item, or head implant. In the early years of the invasion the nano-rust was far more deadly, eating through entire towns, leaving the inhabitants defenseless to the harsh mutating world. Now technology and metals were specially designed to be relatively immune to the rust, but some older items still faced the infection. Like plantar warts on the fingers of an otherwise perfect hand.