Primary Objective

The Wave

The first mile was uneventful. Then I reached the edge of the downtown area. Here, the street was covered with cars. The remainder of a military blockade sat in front of me. During the beginning of the outbreak, the military tried to contain the problem; however, the shear amount of the Blackened overwhelmed them and they joined the ranks. Now, nothing remained. Everything from scrap metal to weapons was looted. All that was left was the rotting steel chassis of tanks and humvees. One thing I found creepy was the fact that nothing moved. These were city streets. They were filled with people before the event. They should have been filled with Blackened afterword. That couldn't have been further from the truth. Not even animals roamed the boulevards. It was so quite, you could hear the wind blowing through the buildings.

I began walking down the blocks. The hospital was on 5th street. I was currently on 15th. Ten blocks was going to be a long way. It was 8th street when everything went to hell. I was walking past a hotel building when I noticed movement. My years of training kicked in and I went behind a rusted out car and pulled out my SMGs, listening. All I heard was the creaking of metal and the wind through the buildings. I was stupid to assume I'd overreacted. I stood up and began to walk. Then I heard the shriek. I looked over to see one of the Blackened running out of the hotel. It closed the distance between us, which was about 30 meters to begin with, in a matter of seconds. I didn't have time to pull out my axe. The thing knocked me over and instantly went for my throat, clawing and thrashing. I had no choice; it was a reaction. I pushed my gun to its head and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed in the silence as the thing's brains splattered all over the tarmac. Throwing off its body, I stood up and listened. At first, I only heard the silence that I had heard to begin with. Then, throughout the colapsing, mossy buildings and the abandoned city streets, a single inhuman scream errupted. The sounds of thousands of Blackened converging on me in unison. I began to run as fast as I could. All I had to do was get to the hospital and baracade myself inside. Hopefully I could keep the Blackened at bay long enough to get the woman and kid out.

I was at the front door when I looked up the street and saw the wave of Blackened charging toward me. There had to be at least 50,000, falling over each other like a wave on the beach. I threw open the door and ran inside, turning around only to slam the door shut and push a file cabinet in front of it. Then I saw that the inside was only slightly better. The hospital lobby had at least 15 Blackened shambling around. The noise of the cabinet and door alerted them all to my presence. Grant you, I can take one out silently, or taken them all out if they didn't know I was there. Now that they were ready to charge at me, I knew I had to use my guns. The pro is that they will all die with no issue. The con is that the thousands outside will also know I'm in here . With that, I pulled out my SMGs and fired. Heads exploded and bodies dropped, one after another. After they were all dead, I made a break for the stairs. I knew that they would be on my tail soon enough. After all, a file cabinet wouldn't hold back thousands of the Blackened. On the third floor, I was ready to go door to door. Then I saw a pile of old beds, so I assumed that was the correct room. That was probably for the best. If I had to go door to door, I certainly would have been the appetizer for thousands of monsters.

I tossed the bed out of the way and burst through the door, right in the way of a shotgun barrel. The woman behind it eventually lowered the gun. "You are one lucky guy, you know that?" she said. "Your brains almost painted the walls."

"Thanks for the welcome. Nice to meet you too," I replied. "I heard your transmission and came to rescue you... At least, that was my original plan. Needless to say, I messed up."

"Yah, I can see that. Great work. I appreciate the rescue. I'm pretty sure I could have done better by myself. Thanks for killing us all."

"It's alright. I can fix this." I looked around for an escape.