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Odyssey of the End Times Kyle Crawford

The monolithic thunderhead of a raging storm advances from beyond the darkening horizon, in the wake of a tumultuous vanguard of churning waves and buffeting wind. Acting in concert to slake a terrible hunger shared; the towering nimbus quickly overtakes yet another glittering metropolis caught unawares upon the bay, as the frothing, feral waters below eagerly recede, feigning retreat, building momentum to deliver the killing blow.
Dazzled, deafened and devoured by the grim chaos of an unknown terror unleashed within � it�s sister city of the sea already lost to an insatiable inferno � ink black shadows stretch into being like claws from the bristling towers, greedily reaching out for what scurries at their feet, as the doomed city on the bay stands paralyzed like helpless prey.
* * *
This isn�t a riot. That much is certain to Corporal Aiden Wagner as he leans in to open fire upon the converging crowd once more. Many are still in sleepwear; pajamas, nightgowns, oversized shirts and sweatpants, all barefoot. Some are completely naked. Few are in street clothes. Yet all are marked by the red fever and running mucus of the Uber Flu, covered in blood, bile and vomit, with feral gazes and frothing mouths.
Their faces and eyes are frightening, their relentless charging demoralizing, but Wagner sticks to his post, guarding the rear of the fleeing protesters among a series of leapfrogging firing lines. Littering the street are the remnants of a fierce melee; broken and discarded signs, water bottles, various articles of clothing and other property either surrendered or lost to escape, the occasional blood trail. Beyond and among all that is horrific carnage, as well as the perpetrators of the horror.
Leveling his sights upon the crazed mob, aiming at their center mass, Wagner swiftly picks his targets as he sends every burst into the abdomen of a crazed citizen. Just like before, of the fifteen he drops most get back up again. Worse, only three are reduced to crawling by severed spines. Worst of all, both his fellow squad mates and the police officers flanking him seem to be experiencing similar results.
�Nothing!� someone shouts. �We did nothing to them!�
Falling back behind the next two firing lines with the others, reloading, Wagner voices his concern, �At this rate we�ll be serving another course, free of charge!�
Backpedaling beside him, Sergeant Fines, the woman running his squad, briefly seems content to overlook Wagner�s remark and heckle the panicking beat cop nearby. �At least I hit my targets!�
Ignoring the sharp curse given in reply, Fines turns back toward Wagner, saying, �Well, corporal, either keep blaming our excellent training, or suggest a better option.�
As the firing lines before them rapidly melt to the rear in turn, Wagner recalls the troubling words of another woman he knows, a fellow veteran very dear to him. Suiting those words to the current purpose, he says, �Center mass may be super effective, sir. But I strongly suggest we start making them kiss a bullet.�
�And that�s how we win, corporal,� replies Fines, nodding her approval. She then addresses the rest of the line, �Semi-auto only this time, people! Lean in and make them kiss a bullet!�
The next few minutes are lost to violence.

Exceptional writing. Very vivid ... you paint a picture with your words. It was as if I was there.


Steve

Perry your son has a wonderful imagination and can clearly articulate that tumultuous vision of a city on the brink and some zombie apocalypse....as it is happening ...in a vividly descriptive way

That closing line is as stellar a closer as I have read and I love to read.

How old is he? My wife is a paediatrician, well retired now, but her specialty was developmental so a lot of what she dealt with was early diagnosis of children on the spectrum

My son is now 43. He writes from a world in his head that he an obsess on for months at a time. He started at around age 16 writing character sketches for a story he had in mind. It led to obsessing on character sketches. Over a thousand of them before he stopped. I am trying to focus him on installments of this story to post here for all to enjoy. He is living independently near one of his brothers and a cousin in Madison Wisconsin. He works for a catering company as janitor and setting up and bussing tables. Over 15 years with them now. They watch over him and allow for his emotional instability and spacing out episodes. They have become his extended family. I will post more of his writings as they become available.

Odyssey of the End Times: Continued
By Kyle L. Crawford


With every volley, several citizens fall as one, only to be trampled and tripped over by the rest. With every volley, the firing line backpedals, their weapons and eyes locked forward. With every volley, the bloodthirsty mod gets closer, howling, babbling, gnashing teeth. The only thing slowing them down is their own eagerness, as they trip over each other to get to their next victims. It�s only a matter of time before what is now a steady trickle of lunatics becomes the whole horde. The fear radiating from the line is palpable. The air is taut with tension. And yet, they lean in.
One after another, Wagner lets instinct pick his targets. A woman in a pinstripe pantsuit is the first one he focuses on. She would have been very beautiful, if not for those crazed, feral eyes. Noting her bare feet, he imagines the poor woman willing herself through another long work day, all the way back home, and then to nearest furniture that she could lie down upon. Taking her shoes off must have been the last thing she did before finally passing out from the mounting fever. Pitying her, he sends his first shot her way. Connecting with her face just below the nose, it drops her like a sack of stones.
As her body crumples, Wagner picks the next target, a scruffy man in a bathrobe. Dropping him without stopping, he then focuses on the next target, a younger man in a hoodie. Figuring him for a college student before becoming a threat, Wagner drops him, too. As he lines up the fourth target, a tawny haired young woman in an oversized shirt, a flash of motion in his left peripheral pulls his attention.
Charging out from a narrow alley, several screaming figures emerge. Without thought, as if in a single motion, Wagner sidesteps, switches the grip of his shooting hand, and delivers a brutal blow with the butt of his rifle. Connecting at the back of the head, it sends a man in hospital scrubs stumbling into the path of the other two, forcing them back toward the encroaching crowd. He doesn�t get up again.
Wagner quickly gauges his new targets from the alley. One is a naked woman in her fifties. She must be an avid runner, judging by her muscle tone, along with the way she instantly doubled back to charge at him again. The other is a young man barely into adulthood. Lean and well-toned, wearing only a stylish pair of pajama pants, had it been any other circumstance, Wagner would be admiring his amazing body. Instead, he must destroy it. His shaved head blotched by fever, bearing fresh wounds from madly clawing fingers, what was once gorgeous is now a monster.
Sidestepping the naked runner, Wagner aims and kills the beautiful man. He then reacts to the sound of the middle-aged runner bouncing off the store front door behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he slams the rifle butt down hard into her face, putting his weight into the blow. Crushing her nose and sending shattered teeth in all directions, he casts her back against the door, the impact fracturing the glass. Turning toward the rapidly converging crowd, to not lose sight of them, he then continues turning, stopping the moment he can see and aim at the naked runner. He then paints the door with her brain matter.
Turning back toward the horde of crazed civilians, Wagner starts. The girl in the oversized shirt is now upon him, reaching with a disturbing look in her eyes. He swears it is raw hunger. Instinctively, he shoves her away, knocking her down into a crouch. He then aims down at her pretty face and fires. Her eyes rolling back, she falls with a plop. A man in sweatpants and a woman in leggings quickly run up on him next, only to join all the others that fell before. And that is the moment he hears the call to withdraw.

Yet, all bear the red fever marks of the Uber Flu. Mucus crusts their eyes and faces, or streams down hot from flared, fiercely puffing nostrils. Damp from sweating, covered in blood, vomit, bile, urine, and excrement; they all reek a foul, cloying odor. Bloodshot eyes flash with feral intent. Frothing mouths howl and babble, teeth gnashing.
This isn�t a riot. That much is now certain to Corporal Wagner as he leans in to open fire once more upon the converging crowd. The inane babbling of the threats before him remain an unsettling din. Aiming down the holographic sights of his carbine, with a level of ease that has become much more of a comfort for him, he squeezes the trigger twice in rapid succession. Rocketing toward him with single-minded determination, his body is splotched with the red fever marks of the Uber Flu. The man�s eyes, bloodshot and crusted with mucus, are crazed and lively, yet somehow empty, as if he had relinquished control of his own body. His upper lip is caked over with even more mucus, a fresh layer oozing hot like a magma flow from fiercely puffing nostrils. His frothing mouth overflowing with a horrid mixture of blood, bile, and saliva; the runner gurgles an eerie phrase, again and again. �Run, baby, run!�
Disquieted by the eerie implications of those words � spoken in tones both desperate and predatory � Wagner shifts his aim as his shots catch the shaven runner center mass. The runner�s voice is abruptly reduced to something akin to a forced cough, as he crumples and tumbles.
Backpedaling with practiced ease, Wagner sends fourteen more men and women tumbling to the ground. On either side of him, two of his squad mates and a pair of police officers are busy adding to the bodies scattered or piled along the length of the street, as far back as the intersection in the wake of the still surging mob. Blood and tissue further decorate the asphalt, sidewalks, parked cars and storefronts in splatters and pools.
Terrible screams can be faintly heard from behind the chattering throng, or from within the shops. Wagner doesn�t let himself think of the people they had left to suffer. They couldn�t be helped and he needs to stay alive.
Spinning around and clearing himself from the rear, Wagner is relieved by more of his squad as he reloads. As the rest of his line falls back with him, one of them doesn�t arrive. The patrolman that was at his far right is now lost beneath a dense knot of their pursuers. His cries quickly falter as they make short work of him. The man�s partner, a stocky woman, cries out at the loss of her friend. She would have shot herself, as others had done, if not for her own tenacity.
As the relief team opens fire on the mob, Wagner offers the grief-stricken cop a knowing glance. He had lost loved ones, too. Three of his friends had been among the thirteen left to die in the intersection only minutes earlier. And just four years ago, the only man he ever loved died in a border skirmish with no strategic purpose. Killed by a child soldier trying to flee a war he should never have been a part of in the first place.
Suddenly, Wagner briefly finds himself glaring down at a dying teenager, a life he gladly ended. At least, that is how he felt at the time. Although he wore an enemy uniform, the teen was barely combat effective that night. Sleep deprived, starving, and afraid; the poor boy died in the frigid rain, shivering, drowning in his own blood. Wagner can still hear the boy�s last words, gurgled more than spoken until he said no more. He said, �Please.�
Wagner�s thoughts snap back to the present as a sharp pain erupts in his left arm. Pure muscle memory produces his sidearm, as he lets the carbine hang. He points his weapon at the forehead of a small woman. Her bloodshot, crusty eyes flash madly as she sinks her teeth in deeper into his flesh. His adrenaline already in overdrive, Wagner fires twice. Instantly, he regrets shooting the mad woman. As the back of her head vacates, her teeth � still buried in his forearm � almost scrape free, digging backwards like a rake in a garden, briefly rattled by the kinetic force of the bullet as it traveled through the skull. As the crazy lady�s body crashes to the sidewalk, Wagner flinches, crying out in pain as her teeth tear the wound open even more. Somehow, he has the wherewithal to turn his arm over, help shake the body loose. Lost in a fleeting spell of shock, he holster�s his sidearm as if no other danger were present anymore.
He stares down at the petite woman�s body. Towering over her by more than a meter, he curses both his brief mental lapse and tall, lanky frame. Barely registering a squad mate firmly pushing him along, he backpedals, knowing she could not have been seen coming at him from wherever she had been hiding.
�Stay alert, corporal,� snaps his squad mate, Corporal Gruber.
�We didn�t see her, Wagner,� says Officer Wiesner, her face full of alarm.
�How could you have, Wiesner?� Wagner replies with a slight shrug before leveling his carbine at the bloodthirsty crowd. �I�m a damn bean stalk.�
At least this time his timing is masterful. As his buddies fall back without a loss, he and his team lean in and step toward the danger again. Joined by Sven, a brave middle-aged man with a weapon and a death wish, they pour on the fire.
Bodies fall and are immediately replaced. Wagner�s finger squeezes the trigger faster than he ever imagined. Sven collapses in a sickening manner in his right peripheral, crushed by a man who happened to throw himself from a rooftop at that moment. He then watches a squad mate � Private Kushner he laments � get swallowed up by the mob, screaming in horrified agony.
Meanwhile, a stray shot from somewhere behind him catches poor Officer Wiesner in the throat, the moment she turns to fall back. She drops clutching at her throat, trying to breath, blood gushing out, a look of pure terror in her eyes. Unable to help her, Wagner continues falling back with what is left of his team; Privates Burton and Schneider. He catches a frightened look from Gruber. Not far up ahead, he witnesses a massacre, and realizes why Wiesner had died.
Holding position upon the landing of a great stone staircase with the rest of his platoon, he awaits the surging tide of a screaming mob closing in fast. He silently hopes they are not the Compromised.
Picking through the bronze statuary of a grim monument still haunting the world � a shocking scene depicting the initial massacre during The Great Horror, scores of frightened civilians emerge.

People are screaming, with most pressing into each other from every direction. Some begin fighting against the crowd, but to no avail, often losing ground in the process. Others desperately plea to be let through, stealing panicked glances toward where they�d come from. A few even claim they are being followed. And everyone wastes little time trying to shout over each other. Inevitably, their collective voices become a cacophony; an unnerving symphony celebrating the terror of a herd in flight.
Fighting madly to hold position with his platoon, Corporal Aiden Wagner is far too busy battling the teeming masses to worry when the crescendo will reach its climax, heralding the arrival of unseen predators; their long, dramatic pursuit promising bloody resolution.
Dispatched with uniformed members of the district�s police, Aiden arrived with his unit at the intersection of what was claimed to be a critical evacuation hub. Only blocks away, in opposite directions, are a high school and a hospital. Ahead is the precinct providing the officers, along with a nearby municipal motor pool, an armory for the People�s National Border Guard � V.G. for short, and one of the oldest transit stations still standing; its construction predating World War I.
And where the roads meet, dominating the historic juncture, at the foot of an imposing courthouse; a national monument stands in silent tribute to the past. It�s numerous, captivating statues depicting the opening salvo of twelve-hundred days of government sanctioned slaughter, narrating a massacre that galvanized the nation to revolution during what would later be called The Great Horror.
Within the sea of statuary reenacting pure butchery, forever firing into the falling crowds, putting families to the bayonet, or haplessly cowering in the face of their doom, Aiden bears witness to what he fears may become a second act.
With a sharp crack, his fears become reality. Unsure who began firing into the pressing crowd first, he realizes it doesn�t matter anymore
* * *