Tom was the first to go. You would have enjoyed watching his skin being ripped off by your pets wouldn't you? And that poor girl... once David saw her dead he couldn't take it. He shot himself in the head. Then those THINGS ripped him to shreds. Sean and I ran. Sean didn't make it. Those were the only people I knew. Those were the only people I trusted. And now they are gone. All of this is because of you! You sick FREAK! Im going to fucking kill you!" A large noise erupted into the air and echoed down the river. Rick stopped in his tracks and collapsed to the ground. The man stood with a gun in his hand, one bullet missing from the clip. It was the same gun that Rick had given him earlier to use for protection.
The sun set in the sky and the man dropped the gun to the ground. He screamed into the dark blue air and beat his fist against a tree. "God Dammit Rick. God dammit." He began to cry. The tears rolled down his dirty cheeks and fell into the puddle of blood against his feet. He walked beside the river not knowing where he was headed. The sun disappeared behind the horizon, and darkness filled the sky.
He walked along the riverbank. The river was going very fast. The ripples in the water bubbled and turned and followed the man into the night. The trees around him stood motionless. There were millions of stars visible in the sky yet the moon was nowhere to be found. The man paid no attention to these surroundings. He just stared at his feet while walking to nowhere. He felt nothing. No emotions. No grief, fear, hope, happiness, just nothingness. He stared into his reflection in the river and kicked it with his scraped feet. A loud screech interrupted his thoughts. He spun around and looked towards the direction of the violent noise. Another screech sounded, this time much louder and coming from another direction. He looked and saw nothing. It was too dark to tell. He stared into the trees behind him. A large figure emerged from the woods.
It snarled and gasped. Its feet pierced the ground and twisted and churned. Its body vibrated, its stomach opened and closed, and it moaned a loud roar into the night air. The man's heart beated and his blood flowed. He started to shake. Then their eyes met. The shadow stared at the man and leaped its arms forward. The man ran. He ran as fast as he could and didn't look back. The sound of a thousand nightmares followed him. It dug into the ground and launched through the night air, piercing its throbbing claws into the man's back. The man gasped for air as blood dripped down his face. He fell sideways and they went into the raging river.
The river bubbled and rolled their bodies violently past shadows running on the bank. Black dots and bubbles engulfed his thoughts. His lungs filled with water and his hip bone shattered against a rock. He twisted and turned under the water. The black shadow that hunted him in the night disappeared in the water behind him. He passed out.
"Rick, are you sure we should just leave him there?" Tom said. "Yeah it's alright. I gave him some sleep medicine earlier. He needs to heal. He won't wake up before we get back." The sun was high in the air. Tom puffed on a cigarette. Ricks watch read "2:43PM" They didn't have much time. "Sean! Did you find anything yet?" Rick called out. "Yeah! I think I found it!" Sean replied. David put the little girl on his shoulders, cocked his rifle, and got in front of the group. "He is always carrying that little girl," Tom said to Rick. "Does he even know her?" Tom threw his cigarette on the ground and stomped on it. "I'm not sure. He says he doesn't remember anything just like the rest of us, but he has some weird connection to her. Must have been his daughter or something. Makes you wonder where the wife is. Course, we all wonder a lot of things now don't we?" A metal plate stood in the middle of the grass, wide open. "Tom, let me borrow your light," Sean said. Tom flicked the switch on his flashlight and handed it to him. Sean pointed it into the darkness. "Alright let's go down there."
They climbed into the chamber and saw tubes hanging from the ceiling next to some sort of control panel. Nothing else appeared to be inside the room. "Tom, you know electronics don't yah? Check that weird device out," Rick said. Tom walked over to the metal box and examined its buttons and levers. "Maybe I can open it with my screwdriver." Tom kneeled down and unscrewed the small metal compartment and fiddled with some wiring inside. "If I can just get an electric current going... there we go!" The box sparked and flickered. The buttons started to glow green and blue. Tom examined the buttons carefully and took a puff at another cigarette. "Yeah, I don't know what any of these buttons do guys. I don't know if I should even mess with this," he said. "We didn't come out here for nothing Tom, just press one," Rick said. Tom agreed and put his hand over a small green button. The control panel shut off. A section of a metal wall next to the control panel screeched open, revealing a long hallway dimly lighted by small yellow lights. "Good job Tom," Rick said. Tom stared down the hall and shivered. The group continued into the unknown.
David gripped his rifle tightly and the little girl hung on his back. Sean slowly followed behind David. Rick shivered in the cold halls. Usually the metal halls that they were use to were not this cold. Heat would be created from the turning gears and the rumbling of pipes. In this particular hall, however, there were no spinning gears or vibrating pipes. There was only the chill of the metal walls. The group began to grow nervous. It started to grow colder. Even David began to shiver. When they reached the end of the hallway, they found a large elevator. Tom pulled a lever and the metal grated door swung open. The group climbed on and it started downwards.
The elevator went down through the ground. The group got a large view of an enormous room, so enormous that the edges of the room could not be seen. They were very high in the air. Dark blue lights on the ceiling very slightly illuminated their surroundings. They could see thousands of cylinders standing in rows and columns stretching for miles ahead. They went down into the abyss of glass and metal. The cylinders they passed were usually broken and crushed. Those that still sealed whatever they contained were frozen on the inside so thickly that nothing could be seen inside of them. It was cold. Tom shivered with his cigarette hanging from his lips. He shivered so much that it dropped from his mouth and he watched as it fell through the metal grating of the elevator and sunk into the darkness below. "Damn," he cursed. The little girl on David's back was very cold. She tapped David on his shoulder and he gave her his jacket. The group waited for the elevator to reach its unknown destination.
After 10 minutes of nothing, the elevator came to a stop on the concrete surface below. The blue lights that once lighted their view were so high up that no light illuminated their surroundings. Sean turned on his flashlight and they began walking through the maze of glass and ice. They saw hundreds of wires hanging from the top of open containers. Hundreds of metal walkways could be seen above them, connected by an intricate series of metal stairs. More containers were on these walkways, possibly hundreds of thousands. As they continued, the room started to smell an awful stench.
