Rose Blumen ~

(Luka)

Ironically, the safest place in the peninsula since the end occurred, it appears to have been in the lazaretto.

Everywhere inhabited out there, was wrecked. Possibly even Lone Down. We would never know.

My friends weren't sure whether they should blame or thank my obsession...

We were riding back into the older dead zone together, in gloom. Where else was left to go?

Shura was not looking well. And if our adult friends shared their palliative pills, we could all tell this wasn't sufficient.

O - So you want to go back to the laboratory you escaped back then.

A - If only it was that easy... I doubt there's anything left back there. It's been demolished in the early outbreak.

When it all began for them, and my grandfather... I can't bring myself to tell them. To ask them if they knew him.

But Morgan does. It's annoying but I endure. It's not much against what we face lately.

Fortunately or not, my name doesn't remind them of much. A teacher they had as children perhaps. A mad scientist from the underground perhaps? Not that they recall.

A - We've shot Gains, but he was the head scientist, not the whole team. Back... It was messy.

Y - Where is your lead now then?

A - First it was Krikfalgorod's museum, where you were. Then the northern university. Where there were good scientists recruiting each other, and other files left.

We didn't find anything obvious in the museum, but we didn't take the time to go through the whole of the archives. And now that the building and the monster have gone in flames...

The university then?

Shan drove around more monsters wandering around the road and crashed vehicles. The place was awful.

She drove harshly through the quarry and then through the tunnel.

Hold on Shura...

~

We made our way north of town as fast as we could. It started to rain, the weather becoming foul.

Weird things were coming out from every drain hole and sewers along the streets, looking seriously ominous.

The radio building stood next to the broken bridge on the bank of the northern river. It was a mostly cylindrical building, with an array of taller telecommunication towers on top of it.

I first thought they wanted to make one fall across the dangerous river to craft an impromptu bridge, but the way across was simpler.

As we walked through the boulevard getting closer, we kept noticing darker stains spreading fast as the rain fell over them. Was there something bad in the water as well?

Yura coughed in horror as he confirmed it. That rain hitting him was toxic and we didn't realize it, until we were near the building. The windows of this glassed wall were still mostly intact.

We rushed to its doors to take shelter from the apparently acid rain.

Shura really got worse being wet and breathing it. Artom shot through the locked doors, opening us the way in brutally.

Inside, the colours were all blue and dark, it was odd.

It was the middle of the day, but between growing downpour outside, and the dirtiness of the building abandoned for years, the light was dim like night, or underwater looking almost.

Shan shrieked with a weird voice at a glance outside, and shut the door behind us. I was too startled by her odd voice to realize what she had said. My friends understood however and ran around to find heavy furniture that could consolidate the door frame.

They pushed couches and shelves, right before a rhinoceros or some tank tried driving through.

That's how it made me feel, as I jumped from the shock and noises, sending everyone a step backward. The barricade held on, but a curtain of dusts and bits fell in the hallway under the heavy shock, like a sudden cloud of smoke.

Coughing, we stepped back deeper inside the building, hopping that first attempt from whatever the monster was, had also been its last. The building was crumbling dust around like dry rain. We couldn't stay in the hall.

~

We arrived coughing in an interior patio, wide. The fountain basin was a swamp now.

The building was hollow and spiralling like a screw around this inner courtyard. There were stairs and elevators quite still, but also that spiralling slope heading up for maybe the twenty floors of the place.

Above the hollow stood the main communication tower, rigged with some modern cables and tools visibly.

M - What are these things? Something to do with the past experiments here?

She's pointing upward and we notice the weird connections and cables attached here and there to the tower. We even notice some electrical lights up there. Someone is using this antenna, using this place?

It rains inside, but the stairs and the ramp should be fine to climb.

Artom and Shan are ready with their rifles, but not foolhardy to just stand in the open for the monster coming behind. They order me and my friends to start climbing.

A - There's a platform that can be lowered as a maintenance bridge across the river to the other side. Should be near the top. Go and open the way!

As we start running ahead to climb the stairs, they head for the ramp. We all hear the outside door and barricades exploding, broken through. Soon after, another cloud of dust jumps from the walls as gunshots rip the air to welcome the monster in.

We rush ahead in growing panic as they fight downstairs.

~

Shura vomits and collapses in the stairway. He's crying. I try to pull him while the others go ahead.

L - Come on, please! I'm begging you...

S - ... it's okay Luka...

He forgives me between tears...

Not far, Artom and Shan are running their way up, shooting behind them at the odd monster on their heels. They're already near our level.

I tear up. I'm guilty. But Shura prefers to push me.

It's atrocious, but I leave him behind.

I fire at the deformed beast too as Artom reaches my level. He pulls me in the rushed run and frenzy. We run away.

Shan blows another wall with an incendiary grenade aimed at the beast.

That roaring monster still comes through, crawling with huge arms and hands. It's a vision from hell.

But what shocks me the most is in the head of the things coming closer at us.

The face. The frown. The hair. The tattoos...

It's one of Orel's friends who left before... And now, this huge monster is tearing the building apart as it tries to get us. The bullets scorch him to mush gradually, but it still yells and crawls after us. Even the bullets to the head don't slow it down much.

How can we escape this?

The napalm Shan threw at it is burning the awful thing, but it keeps going.

Artom too appears terrified. He prays aloud the others managed to lower the bridge to get out of here.

~