The Hordes Of The Ripping

The Unnamed

Chapter 3

The Unnamed

4 hours after the initial contact in the S-16 control room, panic swept the entire worlds population, everyone fleeing from the cities, many were fleeing from a threat that they hadn’t seen but had heard enough and seen enough blurry images on the news to fear it and know that it was something deadly and serious. 

There was reports that it could be a group of terrorist attacks or even bio chemical warfare. It was all possible. Terrorist attacks were on the rise and warfare was plausible in an economy that was struggling, countries in states of high tension and pressure with collapsing governments and poverty on the rise, but then the world figuratively went black. Phones stopped working, televisions stopped transmitting but before the televisions stopped transmitting people seen the news reports. What looked like black vortexes began popping up all over the world in New York, Glasgow, Chennai, Brisbane, with alarming speed. This in itself was enough to cause worldwide panic and fear but it was the reports after that had people running from their lives and homes to anywhere that hadn’t been mentioned as having a vortex. 

Grainy video footage taken from camera phones of what could only be described as mutated wildlife creatures. Hordes of them pouring out from the vortexes some on 2 legs some on 4, some on multiple and some with none at all. Crawling, slithering and running all over the streets and roads, killing and massacring people on the street as they went about their daily routines.

The action of being on the move was better than sitting doing nothing and sitting still, so everyone began to flee. More deaths occurred due to the erratic evacuation of the towns and cities of the world. People were running from A to B, then people were running from B to C and people were running from C to A, no one knowing where to go and were was safe. Motorways became scrap yards for cars, pile ups occurred frequently and others were just abandoned as families jumped ship and ran when their cars could travel no further. An aerial view of the motorways leaving Glasgow would show what appeared to be a bumper to bumper traffic jam with columns of smoke rising periodically from car crashes and some cars being on their roof.

In amongst all the rubble and carnage lay many bodies, casualties of the panic and fear that caused them to run. The smell of burnt rubber, petrol and smoke hung in the air like a hefty balloon and created the pungent aroma that eventually roused Harley from her unconsciousness. She peeled herself from the cracked window she lay on winching as she felt every bone and muscle creak in protest of the movement she was making. She wanted out of the bus, needed off of this bus, this bus she now affiliated with pain and unpredictability. She untangled herself from her seat belt and felt like she had to crawl and drag herself around the seats, seat belts and the busted out plastic windows until she reached an opening that released her from the bus.

She leaned her back against the bus and breathed deeply as she tried to assess her situation. She had been involved in a serious pile up, a gash in her head that had to be seen to soon, no phone on her and from the looks of it… Then it dawned on her. She had been knocked out and yet there was still no emergency services here yet, no police officers making the area safe, no ambulance for the injured and the dead. 

She scrambled over to the next lane as she registered that the wind shield was covered with bodies stacked up looking like mismatched mannequins, limbs seemingly everywhere. There was no traffic and no people, no hustle and bustle in fact it looked like the beginning of the end of the world before everything began to deteriorate and turn to rust and dust. Confusion clouded Harley’s mind, was she still knocked out she hoped she was but it was to real to be a dream, something had happened and it had scared the life out of the city, literally. She entered the bus again even though every fibre in her body told her to stay out of the bus. She clawed her way in again and located were she had been lying, still a little pool of her blood on the window and she surmised it would be there for a long time yet. She rooted about in her bag pushing notepads and pencil cases out of the way in search of her phone. There is was lying at the bottom as usual, but the bar on the top left hand corner of the screen said “No Service”, just her luck. 

As she sat hunched over her bag not knowing what to do next she heard movement outside, it was someone running, no… more like sprinting it was the first person she had seen. She raised her fist to pound on the window of the bus to stop them let them know she was here and to be honest she was slightly desperate and ecstatic to talk to someone and know that she was not alone in what looked like this post apocalyptic Glasgow. Her fist stopped in mid air because in the space of a second she seen the woman look over her shoulder with what could only be described as a look of sheer terror and panic and then the sound hit her ears. It was like a thrumming noise every second or two and then she seen the shadow dancing over the road clearly circling and following the woman. Harley did not want to look up but she was compelled to and there it was. 

A beast of a creature, as large as the cars below it. Its wings were like bats but a sickly blue and purple colour, much like the colour Harley thought a dead body would turn to after some time. The black veins were visible against the small amount of sun coming through the clouds and its body was almost transparent but with a slight grey tinge to it. The slight grey colour did not hide the pulsating entities in the body of the beast whether these were organs Harley did not know and at this moment in time did not care. 

What was this thing? 

Where did it come from? 

Just as she was staring in awe and disgust the beast swooped at an alarming speed towards the ground and grabbed the woman kicking and screaming into the air. It took her higher and higher yet her screams seemed to get louder and more animal like. The beast turned her towards its face and leaned in as if to kiss her lightly on the lips, the woman was completely silent by this time and her jaw hung slack. From her jaw a small orb of pink light appeared and floated into what she could only assume was the beasts mouth then she hung limp. In an unexpected outburst of rage the beast tore the woman in half. Harley let out a chocked gasp as she seen the poor unnamed woman’s’ body parts slither out before she was unceremoniously tossed to the ground and as she seen this she let her body sink down and her bum hit the floor because she felt like her energy and strength had evaporated from her.

As soon as her bum hit the floor she seen the beast jerk its head, registering a noise and a movement. Suddenly her body locked up and seized as she stopped breathing not only as a mode of defence to not be found but also out of shock and fear that the unnatural and savage beast had heard her and would now hunt her out and do to her what it did to the unnamed women. The beast descended to the ground as graceful as an angel but landed on feet that could only have been imagined and sculpted by minions in hell, flat round bulges that reminded Harley of suckers and they began to move towards her, she could almost hear the suction as it took each step, bringing it closer to her.