End of Days - Intermission

The Battle Within

The flames flicker hauntingly. There is no light in them. The air is filled with the stench of death, a thick, choking, strangling fog that no earthly fire no matter how fierce can ever hope to burn. The blackness of empitness, the dread of loneliness and abandonment. The howl of depression, the sobbing of pain.

This is the inner hell. The darkest depths of the human soul, the ultimate manifestation of evil and wickedness. Yet it is also the final destination of the bulk of humanity, the inevitable road to perdition and destruction.

Crows flap their monstrously huge and tattered wings, every flap bringing death to some starving dying soul. Their eyes show no mercy, but fill with a sort of demented glee.

There is no ground to treat upon for hell fires burn everything and everywhere. On the jagged piercing rocks that protrude sharply into nothingness with a ferocity unheard of, thousands of millions of bugs and beetles and creepy crawlies run amok, devouring everything in their path, ripping, tearing, shredding the souls screaming in pain. Small, child-like things with grey-ash scaky skin with prickly teeth laughed with sadistic joy, and ripped arms and legs from pitiful beings. Their screams of satisfaction merged with the screams of pain, filling the pit of hell. Blood splattered everywhere, drenching the demons and filling them with euphoria.

Yet there is no relief of death, no stillness of peace for them. Alas, they are already dead.

This is the Second Death. Eternal banishment from the presence of God. Far from an ounce of sanity, eons away from a spit of logic. Time had no meaning here, only pain, suffering and immense fear.

And this is where our hero wakes up.

Grifter stirs as the flames scorch his black jacket, burning it slowly but surely.

"Wha.. where... oh crap!!" Half closed eyes quickly spring open as Grifter pushes himself up from the ground where he had fallen. Or wait, wasn't it supposed to be a makeshift bed in the basement of the church? Where he was resting from his last encounter with the lizard things which wreaked chaos?

Those giant lizards suddenly seemed like tame mice compared to what he saw around him.

Grifter instinctively jumped backward and reached for his guns behind his back but he couldn't help thinking even as his hands moved so fast it blurred, can my weapons really be effective in this place against those things??

A quick glance revealed his adversaries. And even in his worst nightmare had he not imagined such demonic, hellish creatures, not in such size, not in such numbers. And he could see that he was only one thing to them: prey.

There's no way I can fight this many by myself! His brain screamed hysterically, every instinct in his flesh wanted to flee a thousand miles from this place.

Yet, his arm was still, his aim was steady, and his eyes were cold and calm.

"Your will be done."

BLAM!

The first shot from Grifter's gun was deafeningly loud. Louder than the screams of the tortured souls, louder than the anguished roars of the demons, louder than the crackle of tumbling rocks of fire in the distance. And it was headed straight between the eyes of the first monstrousity. Before the hellish bent humanoid thingy had time to think, the bullet had pierced its forehead and burrowed itself through its head, creating a hole the size of a big fist at the back while it exited and penetrated into the mid-section of a 2 headed ghoul, which howled in pain and surprise.

The two monsters barely had time to react before they were down on the ground, and burnt quickly into dust and ashes.

The others (at least those with eyes, or some with one eye, or some with many eyes) looked at their fallen comrades with a sort of amazement and curiousity. Like they have never seen it before.

But with not a single shred of pity or sadness. A tinge of contempt.

Well, that turned out pretty well, Grifter thought. Now to shoot down about a thousand or more, while finding a way out of this hellish place.

*******

Bourne Kiatz was in the same situation, not too far away. But in a place where time stood still and matter had no sanity, one could never know where one was for too long. But he was not in an open area like Grifter. Instead, he was down in a dark corridor of what seemed like...

"A.. hospital??" Bourne Kiatz wondered. Yes, no doubt it was. For less than a couple of feet away, stood about a dozen nurses. With severely mutilated faces, weilding scapels and knives, lunging toward him one step at a time.

"!#$%$*" exclaimed Bourne and stumbled backward and bumped his head into something. Or someone.

The creature howled in anguish and swiped a claw at Bourne, who thankfully had quick reflexes and tumbled into a corner. He nearly vomited when he saw what he had bumped into.

A human (or what used to be a human) figure whose feet were bound with barbed wire to his neck, criss-crossing all over his body and even across his eyes, piercing right in. His face was covered in blood and he let out another bone-shattering shriek as it reached for Bourne.

ka-BLAM!!!

The remains of the creature splattered across the floor as Bourne pumped an empty shell out of his shot gun. "Take that, you muther-"

BLAM! BLAM!! BLAMM!!!

Shortly, the mutilated nurses lay twitching in a pile of bloody torsos and limbs as Bourne stepped over them, crunching fingers and bones on the way. Due to his close combat, his short and face was covered with blood and made him looked almost as fearsome as the creatures he had slain. But one thought worried him, where was he and how could he get the heck out of here - and where was Mikki??

*******

Meanwhile, Samuel Wolfwood was running away. Running was not something he was used to. His enemies usually ran at the first sight of him, but down here it was different. There were simply too many.

"SCCRRREEEEECCCCCCCHH!!" A bat-like thing lunged at him from the air, only that it had two long tentacle-like things which stretched out from its belly, with a wickedly curved claw at the end of them!

Wolfwood dropped and rolled, while putting a bullet into the bat-like thing.

He had been running for only 5 minutes, but his heart was pumping at a crazily fast pace, from anxiety, fear and adrenaline. Finally, he thought, my sins have caught up with me and I'm where I thought I'd end up.

"But i'm not going down without a fight!!"

Rattatattattattatattatat!! His cross machine gun ripped off heads and tore off flailing arms of monsters which stood in his path, as more began to close in behind him, occasionally a claw or fang almost reaching the end of his torn and tattered blazer.

He continued running blindly, shooting everything down in his path, but he knew his bullets were limited, as well as his strength and endurance. Already, the first feeling of breathlessness began to creep into his lungs, and his back was drenched with perspiration, or was it blood. He couldn't tell and couldn't care less. Right now, he only wanted to find out if there was a way out.

*******