Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 113: Interlude Clusterfuck

The situation could hardly have been any worse if someone had deliberately engineered it to be as bad as possible.

It had been a tense couple of hours after the Event had appeared and the first bits of information had become available. Living fields out for blood, vine monsters with scythe blades for hands that could ignore armor piercing bullets, nasty Jack O’Lanterns that spat fire … real nightmare fodder right there. But nothing bad had happened, not then.

Just the five members of a rural town’s police force sitting in their meeting room/kitchen, twiddling their thumbs, with Polieziobermeister Lehman cracking stupid jokes that no one laughed at, not even a pity chuckle for their boss.

Then, the phone had started ringing off the hook. At first, it had been panicked voices on the other end, then it had been just screams.

Lehman had prepared for any potential monsters by telling everyone to have the heaviest ordinance in the station available to grab at a moment’s notice, and this had proved prescient.

They’d charged out of the station, with the single machine pistol they’d been allowed to have in his hands, everyone else wielding their service weapons, which were mere pistols.

And that was when they’d seen the first monster. It looked like a Goblin at first glance, but when a half-dozen bullets had torn through the thing, it had turned out to be some kind of scarecrow beast made from random plant materials.

Now, if the situation had stayed at just one monster, things would have been perfectly fine. Hell, even ten wouldn’t have been a problem. But there were far more than ten, so many more.

“Everyone, come this way!” Lehman roared [Loud Voice] amplifying the shout to window-rattling levels of noise, then snapped off orders at a more reasonable volume “Move those cars into a barrier, make sure you have a good shot before firing, conserve your ammunition.”

One good thing about the [System] was that smashing windows, unlocking the handbrake and pushing the vehicles into position could not only be done in under thirty seconds, but it only took a single person.

Suddenly, Lehman’s radio crackled to life “Reinforcements incoming, GSG-13 officer will be there in five minutes, jets from the Luftwaffe will be overhead in two minutes. If you have any areas clear of civilians, call it out. Furthermore, I need your exact GPS coordinates.”

That had been something included in the pre-Event briefings, so Lehman had packed a basic GPS device that would give him his exact coordinates as precisely as was possible and quickly passed that along.

Even in the brief time required to do that, almost a dozen shots rang out, and people screamed as the bullets whizzed past them, each taking down a monster.

The flow of people swiftly tapered off another couple minute later, leaving maybe two thousand people running into the night behind the barricade. Said barricade had grown more and more, with cars thrown onto the top to create something the monsters would have to climb.

A motorcycle roared in the distance, coming to a screeching halt next to Lehman a moment later. It was a police issue motorcycle and the man who leaped off like some kind of action hero was dressed in full tactical gear.

“Where do you need me?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“Can you look for civilians out there?” Lehman asked.

“Sure, hold the line here.” The man grunted and cleared the barricade in a single leap. A batton appeared from empty air and whipped around to smack a ‘goblin’ in the head, the beast promptly exploding.

Two more monsters came apart as he struck them, while another four were dropped by bullets fired through the barricade.

The sound of monsters getting torn apart echoed in the distance for another minute, then the ‘reinforcements’ came sprinting back at speeds that would have been record breaking a few months ago, spraying a literal horde of beasts with bullets from his machine pistol.

Monster after monster dropped as the officers manning the barricade joined in, and by the time the monsters were in melee range, there were only three left, enough to handle.

That was when they got their first injury, a set of nasty claws marks that shredded through Lehman’s uniform as if it were made of tissue paper.

“There aren’t any people out there that I could find, this needs to be less barricade, more fortress. If we stay here, the monsters will go after as everyone else runs off.” The tactical officer suggested in a tone that made it sound like an order. Lehman almost certainly had seniority here, but the other man likely had more experience with this crap, so that was what they did.

Cars were shifted, until they stood amidst a trio of cars, with motorcycles and bicycles wedged into empty spaces to ensure there was no easy way to get at them. Also, they had a lot of stuff to throw available.

“Jet is going to be in range in 30 seconds. Is there any place that’s clear of civilians?” the radio demanded and Lehman felt his heart skip a beat “The streets are, I don’t know about anything else.”

Concrete dust and body parts erupted from the street as the fighter jet flashed past in a strafing run, giving them some much needed breathing room.

From there, things were fine for another couple of minutes, but then the first person ran out of ammo, just as the swarms grew ever heavier.

[Mana Bullet] could compensate for that for a while, but only while people’s mana lasted, and enough [Reinforce’s] and [Force Shot’s] had been used that no one had a full mana pool.

More monsters screamed and died, with individuals occasionally leaping onto the cars but getting shot off a split second later. By now, everyone was using [Mana Bullet], not a single real projectile had been fired in almost a minute, and for the first time, a monster managed to get on the barricade and survived for more than a second. It still died, but it was a sign of things to come.

They began to swarm the barricade, green, chlorophyll-like blood making the surface of the barricade slick.

These things could be beaten in melee, but only one on one and every second a gun wasn’t being pointed at the monsters outside was another monster that got that much closer to breaking in itself.

And that damn fighter jet was still buzzing past overhead, the munitions for its cannons long since spent. But Lehman could clearly see the bombs strapped to its underside and he was grimly aware that once they were dead, those things would obliterate the remains of their last stand to wipe out the monsters that had killed them.

Suddenly, the first bomb did fall, slamming into the densest concentration monsters, a place where the pilot could be sure no one could have possibly still been alive.

It wouldn’t be long, now. The last time monsters got in, there were three of them and it had taken ten seconds to kill them, during which two more and leaped inside. Gritting his teeth, Lehman smashed the butt of his gun into the nearest beast’s head, over and over again until there was nothing left but mush. He’d be sure to take down as many of these things with him as he could.

… then the man fell out of the sky, great glowing beams of greyish light sweeping down to bisect the monsters inside.

The moment he hit the ground, a bloodred [Aura] flashed out, crimson constructs squashing the few monsters still near the fortress into paste. Then, he leaped again and waved his blade, a fan of six jet-black beams burst from the tip of his blade, tearing all the way down the street, obliterating whatever had been left after the jet’s firing runs.

Those attacks were powerful and doing one hell of a number on the monsters, but it had to be running his mana pool into the ground. Once that ran out, he’d be as vulnerable as they were.

“Where did these things come from?” the man called out, voice cracking out like a gunshot.

“No idea.” Lehman called out.

The red [Aura] winked out for a moment and was replaced with a terrible feeling of overwhelming scrutiny, then it snapped back up.

Then the man ran off, heading deeper into the remains of the town, his short sword suddenly shifting into a massive, two-handed instrument of death that hacked apart anything that got into range. The number of monster that reached them was far smaller now, but a few still closed in on the fortress.

Lehman sighed. That man might be able to get to the source of this mess, but whether they’d survive this was still up in the air.

And then the monsters burst into flames as a dragon swooped past. It wasn’t very big, maybe the size of a pony, but the ray of light that burst from its maw made the wooden goblins go up like matchsticks getting hit by an arc welder.

A second man fell from what Lehman now realized was a portal four meters in the air and landed next to him, bending his knees to absorb the shock. He was Hispanic, maybe twenty-five at the most, wearing what looked like a hunter’s outfit crossed with SEK-officer’s tactical uniform.

“Don’t worry, he’ll handle it while I keep the monsters off you guys. Also, proper reinforcements to sweep the city will be here in ten minutes.”

For five minutes, nothing much happened. The occasional monster showed its face, got lit on fire or shot, and that was that.

Then swordsman returned, a thunderous expression on his face. The sword was nowhere to be seen, instead, he was cradling a black, malevolent looking book in his right hand while dragging along a twisted, gooey mass of vines with his left hand, leaving behind a trail of … things Lehman didn’t even want to think about.

“What were these things called, Raul?” he asked.

“Stalks of Death, with a tag that said ‘minion’.” The Hispanic man said “And that mess is to wrecked to be identified.”

“Still, I’m pretty sure this is the Tier 6 ‘Field of Death’, but none of these things were that strong individually.” The swordsman grimaced “The circle back in that basement was definitely Tier 6, but overall, the designation should be Pseudo Tier 6, as these things are definitely that strong, collectively.”

He paused, looking around “I’m guessing you don’t just have bare earth lining the sidewalks in this town?”

Lehman blinked in surprise, then likewise looked around. Now that the man had mentioned it, all of the plant life in the area seemed to have disappeared.

“Nope.”

“Sounds like that thing sucked up all of that biomass to form these minions.” The swordsman followed that statement up with a couple of muttered curses.

“And what’s up with that book?” Lehman asked.

“The loot drop, a spellbook for [Des Gevatter’s Umarmung].”

“What does ‘Gefatter’ mean?” the other newcomer asked.

“Very old-fashioned way to say ‘Godfather’, almost exclusively used as an epithet for the embodiment of death. Roughly translated, it means [Death’s Embrace]. Unless someone disagrees, I’ll be learning it. Now, there are no monsters left here, I’ll take some pictures and head back to continue research and be ready for the next incident.”

“Dr. Thoma, what did the summoning area look like?” the GSG-13 officer asked. Clearly, he knew the swordsman.

“A bloody ruin. I saw a few pamphlets about how ‘the [System] belongs to everyone’ and crap like that.” Thoma replied.

“Crap. More Children of the [System]?”

“I hope not. But that’s for someone with a skillset I don’t have to determine.”

“I suppose. Good luck with the rest of today, you’ll need it.”

“Thanks.” Thoma sighed, pulling a camera out of thin air and snaping a few pictures.

“Are you really going to post those?” Lehman asked “These are people’s lives, their deaths you’d be publishing.”

“That depends on everyone else involved in this. But if the powers that be do decide the publish at least some of these pictures, then they’ll serve to remind people how dangerous this Event is. ‘A picture is worth a thousand word’ and it might be what gets through the thick skulls of idiots like the one who caused this mess.”

And with that, Thoma leaped up and into the portal, vanishing inside. The other man followed, then the dragon flew through, and then they were gone.

Lehman slumped, his gun clattering to the ground as it fell from nerveless fingers. He stared around the ruin that had been his home for going on fifteen years a mere … had it really been less than an hour ago?