Wasteland - Chapter 1
He stares through the green-tinted lenses at the target walking down below. The + symbol embedded in the glass indicates that, should he press the trigger, the humanoid form would drop dead, shot through the heart. Yet he waits, breathing slow and even. Crouching on the roof of a crumbling building, he waits for the opportune moment.
He knows the gun he holds in his hands won’t be able to kill the thing walking seemingly innocently on the street. Ordinary weapons don’t work on creatures like that. Yet, a well-aimed bullet is often enough to slow down an enemy, making it easier for the killing.
Not that he needs to make things easier. But it is better for the show. He can’t exactly reveal everything at the same time, right?
He feels the eyes of the other members of the Night Brigade bore into his back. They were waiting for him to shoot the thing so they could all attack at the same time.
He sighs. Fine. They don’t have all night after all.
His attention focuses back on the target. It hasn’t moved, making it all the way more suspicious even to untrained eyes. He holds his breath then gently squeezes the trigger.
Almost silently, the shot is flying towards the target. It hits it dead on, in the middle of the chest where the heart should be. It doesn’t have a heart to stop beating, but it still wounds the thing. Through the lenses, he sees the blood spurting from the wound.
Those lenses are a special kind, very expensive and not easy to come by. They had been manufactured a few years ago, like most of the weapons created to fight off those things, and their creators had taken example from the old weapons humans used to use to fight each other. The old lenses were infrared, which meant they captured the image of the heat diffused by a body. Those creatures didn’t have any body heat, so the lenses had to be modified. The creatures took human form to walk around more easily, but they were humans only in body. Inside, there was nothing but some kind of liquid, probably their equivalent for blood. It wasn’t warm nor cold. It didn’t seem to have any temperature. But, after researches had been conducted, it was proved that this vital liquid emitted some kind of unharmeful radiation. So, the new lenses had been made to pick up those radiations that had simply been called Unn for Unnamed.
He watches as the other men rapidly climb down the rickety metal staircase, eager for blood. They all act so tough, but they have to gang up against one creature to have a chance to win. He doesn’t move from his perch, simply looks down at the scene. It’s not that he doesn’t like to fight. Oh, no, he loves to fight, but he chooses his battles. He sees no point in trying to land a blow on a creature with ten other men around him trying to do the same thing.
So he lowers the weapon to the ground, as it is useless now, and sits down. He kicks his feet lazily, wondering if there might be another creature around in his sector of patrol. It wouldn’t be that unlikely. Creatures usually roam around in bunch of twos or threes.
The fight finally ends in the street. The creature, after being stabbed many times with special weapons, lay on the ground, unmoving. Its body is slowly turning to smoke. The men of the Brigade hurriedly search its human clothes for any sign of the creature wearing an armour. The special material of those armours is the only material able to harm a creature, so as soon as one is killed, all the metal that has been on it must be removed before its body disappear so it can be used to forge new weapons.
He gets up and dusts off the seat of his pants. One of the men below looks up to signal him down. He wears a black cap to hide his blond hair, as members of the Night Brigades must dress as dark as possible to hide better in the darkness. He himself dyes his own dark blond hair black, for hats and caps look ugly on him.
He is about to reach the stairs when he feels something behind him. It is subtle, and if his instincts hadn’t been honed, he wouldn’t have felt. He spins on his heels. The gun in his hand blocks an attack from a spear. It is a creature like the one that had been killed standing before him. It looks quite human, with a normal face and four limbs. This one didn’t bother disguising itself with normal human clothes. It is wearing its protective blue-ish armour with white robes. Its white puffy wings glow in the darkness. It is a creature of light, wrongly called an Angel, even if it has nothing to do with the supposed holy beings that were rumoured in an old religion to live in the sky.
It attacks with its spear again, awfully fast. It targets the heart. Those creatures know all the weak points of a human body. They always go for them first.
He throws himself on the side. The spear slides between his torso and arm. The Angel isn’t fazed. It quickly withdraws its weapon to lunge a new attack. It goes for the throat. He ducks quickly and delivers a sweeping kick in the ankles of the creature. It took a step back, perhaps a bit surprised at the speed of the attack. As he gets up, he grabs a knife from the holster tied to his thigh. The Angel’s eyes immediately focus on it. It knows it isn’t simple metal, but that it had been forged from one of the amour of its brethren. It means that it can hurt it. It recoils slightly. He can see the realisation as it hits it. He seizes this opportunity and lunges forwards, knife raised to strike. It misses. The creature steps back at its spear darts forward towards the human. This attack misses again, and for a full minute, the two enemies dance around each other, attacking and blocking. He knows the other members of the Brigade have noticed the fight and that they are running up the stairs to help him. He doesn’t need their help, of course. He calculates that he has at least thirty seconds left to get rid of the creature. It is plenty enough. The creature switches the hold on its spear. It holds it in both its hands, ready for a powerful strike. It comes his way. Instead of evading it like he had been doing since the beginning of the fight, he lunges forwards inside the range of the spear. The metallic tip passes above his right shoulder, tearing the thick clothing and grazing his skin. It doesn’t stop his momentum, though.
A spear is a tricky weapon to manipulate. It has a very long reach and can be powerful when wielded with both hands, but when extended to its full length, it leaves the body of its user unprotected. He uses this defect to his advantage. Once he is inside the creature’s guard, there isn’t much it can do. Using his right hand, he punches the creature on the ribs. It doesn’t have lungs to be emptied, but the jab is strong enough to stun it for a second. He tightens the grip on his knife, ready to stick the blade deep inside the torso of the creature. However, his arm doesn’t have to time to begin its ascent that something slams into him. Hard. Hard enough to send him falling face first on the hard floor. His forehead hits the concrete. Above him, he hears someone shouts. He recognizes the man’s voice easily.
Soon enough, before he has the time to get up, the creature makes a screeching noise, characteristic to its dying call. It falls to the floor. Like a repeat of the scene before, the members of the Brigade hurriedly search the remains of the creature for any piece of metal that could be used again.
He sits on the floor, glaring at the other men, especially the blond one with the black cap.
‘’Are you okay, Jonny?’’ the blond man asks.
Jonny snorts before getting up and dusting his pants. He notices a tear on the knee, a result from his very ungraceful fall. He crosses his arms.
‘’What the fuck, Lukas? What’s your problem?’’
Lukas frowns at the question. He is a tall blond man of Slavic decent from his mother’s side. He has an attractive face and black eyes that have women crawl on the floor for him. He is the leader of the Night Brigade, for his father is the leader of the underground movement monitoring all the Night Brigades all around the world.
‘’You were being attacked,’’ Lukas retorts. ‘’I just saved you.’’
‘’I had the bloody situation under control.’’
With an exasperated sigh, Jonny sheathes his knife back in its holster. He walks closer to the spot where the creature had just disappeared. It left a faint acrid smell in the air and a large burn trace on the concrete. He gets on his knees to touch the spot. It is weirdly warm, considering how the Angels don’t have any body temperature.
Lukas stares at the back of Jonny’s head.
‘’Stop it, both of you,’’ a third man orders.
This is one name’s is Adam. He is also quite tall with messy black hair and cold grey eyes. He is the calm member of the brigade. Nothing can catch him unguarded. He seems to always be poised, ready for action even if his body language appears to be relaxed.
Jonny and he stare at each other. There is nothing but hate between them. Adam is unfazed by the glare that had sent many grown men crying for their mother.
‘’Let’s go back,’’ he adds with a shrug.
The gun he had been holding is put back in its holster inside his black jacket. With an arrogant tilt of the head, he is off back to headquarters.
Lukas frowns but doesn’t say anything, used to his behaviour. He turns back to Jonny, but the man also just left in the blink of an eye. The blond sighs and leaves the scene with the other members of the Brigade who had been standing back, not wanting to be involved in the fight.
Jonny walks briskly, hands in the pockets of his black hoodie. His combat boots crunch on the broken pavement of the street. He looks up. Everything is in ruins on the surface. All the buildings that had once stood tall had crumbled in the last one hundred years. Vegetation is starting to take its rightful place again. He sees a lot of vines crawling up the walls of the buildings. There are small plants on the ground between the cracks in the street.
Like most people of his generation, and even the two generations that came before his, he doesn’t have a clue of what the world had looked like before the Creatures started their war against each other. There are books with pictures that depict how the planet looked before. But it looked so unrealistic that a lot of people think that those pictures are faked, issued by the government to implant hope in the citizens of getting this world back. Contrary to those simple-minded fools, though, Jonny knows that what had been lost cannot be regained. The world had changed. Even if the countries remained the same, too busy fighting off the invaders to fight amongst themselves, nothing would ever be exactly like it was. People had grown used to live under the earth, where it was safer. They had grown accustomed to be ruled and protected by army and Night Brigades. Could they ever go back to the peaceful ways of before? Were times even that peaceful one hundred years ago? Jonny didn’t know. He didn’t care anyway. All he cares about is the present, because the present is what matters.
Lukas is one of those idealistic dreamers. Under the rough appearance, he is a big softie who wishes for the world to revert to what it used to be. It is one of his motivation and why he has joined the Night Brigade. He thinks that if they somehow managed to get rid of all the Creatures, the countries will magically transform back to how they had been one hundred years ago. Jonny never bothered telling him that there were an endless supply of the Creatures, that no matter how many are defeated, there will still be the same number to beat the next day.
Jonny hears footsteps behind him, and he recognizes them to be Lukas’. The blond jogs to catch up with him. The wind has swept back the blond hair now that he has removed his cap and his face is still flushed from the fight.
‘’You’re wounded,’’ Lukas says. ‘’Are you alright? Do you want me to carry you?’’
From under his long black fringe, Jonny looks up, brown eyes bright with anger. It annoys him a little bit how small he is compared to the other man. The top of his head barely reaches Lukas’ chin. It also aggravates him how Lukas thinks he needs his protection only because of his small stature, while in truth; Jonny is much stronger than him.
‘’Back off. It’s only scratches.’’
‘’You know, it’s kind of a miracle that you’re still alive after facing a Creature like that on your own.’’
Jonny simply shrugs as an answer. Lukas frowns, but he is not offended. He is used to be given the cold shoulder. Jonny is not the friendly type. He doesn’t like to have to socialize with other people. He’d rather work on his own, but it is not allowed, for it is way too dangerous. Everybody has to leave the security buildings in a group of at least five.
Creatures usually don’t attack humans. They battle amongst each other, but they usually create a lot of damages around them when those fights happen. It is dangerous for a human to be caught in the middle of one of those epic fights. Humans attack Creatures to get rid of them. Some of the things, though, do attack the humans, but it is rare. They mostly attack when attacked. So for humans to have to go out in groups, it sounds ridiculous. Humans are mostly safe on the ground level.
The Night Brigade finally reaches a stone building. It has once been a bank, they had been told. It used to be a squat building, not tall but with thick walls, which probably explain how it has survived so many years. Places like this one can be found all around each cities of the world. They lead to the passageways underground which in turn lead to the ever-growing cities that have been constructed.
The city underground is called Glasgow. It has been rebuild exactly the same way it used to be when it was above ground. But nobody can be sure of that. Not much pictures are available from the time humans ruled the world. Most people don’t really care about the layout of the city, and if it matches or not the layout of the above-ground Glasgow. They are happy to have safe place to call home.
The entries to the cities under the ground are rarely secret or even hidden. The Creatures don’t seek to attack humans, so they don’t look for a way to access their hideouts. Usually, the entries are in large buildings that have survived the first clashes between the Creatures.
In this particular case, the entry is inside a bank. Its glass doors have been shattered long ago, so the Night Brigade simply walks in the large lobby. The floor is covered in dust, shards of glass and even some new-growing vegetation. The marble tiles and anything that could be moved have mostly disappeared with time, leaving only the bare walls.
They cross the grand lobby. On the other side is a large granite counter. They circle it to arrive in front of a large metal vault door. It used to be the safe of the bank. Now, it leads to the underground city.
The massive steel door rotates easily on its hinges, leaving a passage for the young men to walk in. Once they’re inside the vault, the door is shut again. The room is completely dark. Something rattles, and Lukas finally turns on his flashlight. The beam searches the darkness for a few moments. It is a security measure. The place must be secure before the second door is opened. There has never been anything, but it is compulsory for Lukas to look around. He is so very afraid that one of the Creatures might find its way inside their fortress to destroy everything they have worked so hard to build.
Once he is sure that the path is clear, he kneels on the floor. He gives his flashlight to Adam while he rotates the large metal wheel that slowly slides open a large door in the middle of the ground. Warm air is pushed upwards into their faces as steam hisses from the mechanism. A booming noise indicates that the door is fully opened.
They then proceed down the metallic ladder; Lukas first with his flashlight to light the way.