Roy stumbled through the streets covered by faint yellow fog. The sun had slowly begun to move overhead and his throat was parched.
Everywhere he looked, everywhere he turned, there was either a barricade or a gunman standing guard, grotesque in their form as if they had been morphed to no longer be humans.
What had happened here and how this seemingly normal town had become such a war torn battlefield filled with monsters was beyond him.
But he had the distinct feeling that whatever this was, it was implicitly connected to the old gods, or at least to the City of the Old Gods, Ma'habre, within which he had wandered around in a daze.
Perhaps these monsters had been humans once. But remembering the police officer he had killed, how he had to split its head open over and over and over again for it to finally die... it send a chill down his spine.
No... these people... they can't have been humans. There's no way. Roy thought with a grim expression, hiding behind some crates as another gunman passed him by.
Turning another street, Roy suddenly found himself facing a large restaurant. The glass windows all had various chairs and tables stacked against them from the inside, making it impossible to see what was happening in there, but strangely enough, the door was wide open.
The restaurant was large, a whole 3 storeys tall and suddenly, Roy realized how hungry he was feeling.
"There should be some food in there right?" He said in between the thumping that kept pulsing through his chest. Slowly, he scanned rhe surroundings and moved towards the restaurant.
His footsteps were strangely loud in the empty street.
And then he heard it once again.
Hehehehehehe.
The manic laughter - it seemed closer still.
Whatever it was, Roy hoped he didn't run into it any time soon.
"...Fuck this."
He crossed the street in a hurried jog and slipped through the restaurant's open doorway.
Immediately, the city vanished behind him, and for a moment, before his eyes adjusted to the darkness in a split second, Roy had felt like he stood in nothingness.
The silence inside was heavier, inherently different from the outside.
The dining area stretched out before him.
Rows of overturned tables formed makeshift barricades throughout the restaurant. Chairs had been stacked against windows from the inside as though someone had desperately attempted to keep something out.
The lighting was dim.
Only a few dusty rays of sunlight filtered through cracks between furniture and boarded glass.
And then there was the smell.
It was a ruinous mixture of what felt like grease, spoiled meat and rotten vegetables and what felt like vomit. Above all, it mixed with the particular iron like smell of blood.
Roy looked at the ground. Dozens of handprints covered in blood lined the tiled floor, their fingers drawing large lines on the ground as if the victim had been forcibly dragged across the dining room. The marks mingled with hundreds of broken shards of porcelain plates scattered all over and disappeared behind the service counter.
For a moment, Roy stared back at the entrance.
A faint yellow haze drifted lazily beyond it and Roy had the intense desire to leave.
Gurgle~~~
His stomach growled.
Roy heaved a deep sigh and looked back into the restaurant.
"Hunger wins..."
Carefully stepping over the dried blood, Roy moved deeper into the restaurant.
The sound of his footsteps echoed in the hall, making him uncomfortable. The entire building felt like a slaughterhouse. He even saw a severed hand resting against one of the walls, the blood flowing from it already hardened against the floor.
His enhanced senses only made everything worse.
He could hear water dripping somewhere upstairs, the faint buzzing of flies hidden beneath furniture, the creaking of old wood expanding and contracting inside the walls.
And the smell. By Alll-Mer by the smell.
Roy stepped around another overturned table and approached the service counter. A cash register sat open behind it with banknotes scattered across the floor. One of the chairs had been knocked over while dark stains painted the wall behind it. Blood. A lot of blood.
His eyes slowly followed the trail.
The bloody handprints disappeared behind a pair of swinging kitchen doors.
Roy stared at them for several seconds.
"Yeah no." He turned around and went the other way, remembering to pocket some spare change in case he needs it. "I'm not heading into the creepy room."
Going in through the back door which was at the opposite side, Roy suddenly found himself in the kitchen.
The kitchen looked as though it had been hit by a hurricane. Pots and pans littered the floor while entire shelves had been torn from the walls. Several refrigerators stood wide open. What may once have been vegetables had transformed into black sludge while chunks of meat sat inside metal trays in various stages of decomposition.
A swarm of flies burst into the air the moment he stepped inside.
"Oh god..."
Roy covered his nose. His enhanced senses were making this significantly worse. He could hear thousands of tiny wings beating against one another. Could hear maggots writhing somewhere inside one of the refrigerators. Could even hear droplets of foul liquid slowly dripping from spoiled meat onto the floor.
For several moments he simply stood there trying not to throw up.
Then his stomach growled again.
Food.
Roy carefully began searching through the kitchen. Most of what he found was useless. Entire cupboards contained nothing but rotten ingredients while many of the storage shelves had already been looted. Whoever had survived here clearly hadn't left much behind.
Then, after nearly ten minutes of searching, he spotted something shoved beneath a collapsed metal rack. A crate.
Roy crouched down and dragged it free.
His eyes widened.
Canned food.
Actual canned food.
For the first time all day, Roy smiled.
"Thank fuck."
A few minutes later he was sitting atop a metal countertop with an opened can in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. The food wasn't particularly good. It tasted vaguely like beans and salt. Yet to Roy it may as well have been a five-star meal.
The first can disappeared quickly, then the second and the third soon followed.
Only after finishing all three did the hollowness inside his stomach begin to disappear.
Roy leaned backwards against the wall and released a long breath. He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the small moment of peace the kitchen offered.
His eyes wandered lazily across the kitchen.
Then stopped.
Mounted beside an emergency exit hung a fire axe.
Roy blinked.
Then immediately stood up.
Finally, a proper weapon.
The weapon came free with a satisfying metallic click. He gave it an experimental swing and felt its weight pull against his shoulders.
Far better than a stolen baton.
Roy rested the axe across his shoulder and continued searching.
The kitchen didn't yield much else.
Some more cans and a couple of bottles of water.
But there was one thing he found that did put a smile on his face.
A jacket.
Roy immediately stripped off what remained of his coat.
The thing barely qualified as clothing anymore. Large sections had been torn away by barbed wire while dried blood had stiffened the rest into something that felt more like cardboard than leather. Several holes exposed patches of newly healed skin beneath.
The jacket wasn't particularly fashionable.
It looked like an old chef's coat that someone had modified for winter use. Thick black fabric lined the inside while the exterior was stained in a dozen places by grease and age.
"Anything's better than this..." Roy said dryly, putting on the jacket. Having done that, he observed himself in the half shattered mirror beside the sink at the end of the kitchen and spoke.
"Fashion's dead... and I've killed it." The joke fell dead inside rhe empty kitchen.
After gathering the remaining canned food and water into a small backpack he had found inside one of the storage cabinets, he finally stepped back into the service hallway.
The building seemed quieter now.
His eyes wandered to the outside and suddenly, he didn't feel like going anywhere now. This building was... safe right?
Right?
Roy suddenly found himself looking at the staircase that led to the upper floors and he found himself weighing his options.
The building was... well, he had no idea if it was safe or not. The kitchen certainly was... maybe.
But the outside definitely wasn't.
However, even if he were to block himself in there, what were the chances that help would arrive? Even if it did arrive, how long would it take? Looking at the state of the kitchen, Roy had absolutely no faith that the food may even last him a day.
Roy stared at the staircase for several long seconds.
The wooden steps disappeared upward into darkness. The second floor was completely silent from where he stood. No movement. No voices. No footsteps.
He looked back to the entrance. The faint yellow fog still hung low against rhe brick road and he could walk out right now if he wanted to.
Suddenly, he looked down and heaved another heavy sigh.
"Damnit." He muttered under his breath, and began to climb.
...
...
A/N: Leave a comment. Keeps me motivated.