The Human Xenocide

Chapter Twenty-Nine - The Bigger Picture

Wow, I feel so bad right now, should have attached this to the end of last chapter, I looked over my story and realized the next section is at least 10-14 pages long (about 30 in word) and cutting the front of that off to add here would be annoying.  Ah well, 1 more way-to-short chapter.  Also this will probably not make the final cut (Zee might) but I'm thinking of taking the 3rd button out entirely - pointless and lack of real plot development. eh.

Zee’s death chart had grown in size.  Several countries now followed after Iran.  First was the USA in a different color than red after that was the UK in red then France, Israel, and most recently China.  USA maintained fairly small numbers ranging from ten to a few hundred and started on the twenty ninth day.  On the thirtieth day UK and France started and both flattened around four to six thousand a day.  On the thirty-second day Israel started with numbers twice that of France or UK.  Then finally on the most recent day, the thirty fourth, numbers started in China around ten thousand a day.

With Russia tripling on the twenty first day Lilly had been pretty busy.  The total death toll worldwide now rested at almost one million.  The recent news was a bit disturbing as well: Russia canceled its assault on America to deal with the infestation within its own country.  The country now deployed over a million troops surrounding Perm to try and eliminate the threat.  With near to three hundred thousand dead in its country in the last month the government was growing desperate. 

The remaining people who belonged to the American government have gone so deep into hiding the country begun crippling in on itself.  The once powerful democratic country has had problems for the past twenty or so years and with Lilly’s assault has found a new issue: a new kind of government attempting to rise up and take control.  The Lucarian ideal now dominated the country and has been a huge underground force since the conclusion of the Third World War and the American disaster with the anti-nuke shield.  No one truly knew the force of this movement until now. 

Some say there may still be hope for the democracy, but most others concluded that as long as an assassin is out to kill anyone in the American government there is no resistance to this new movement and in the end it will succeed.  This underground movement has already led to hundreds of demonstrations across the East coast and has been spreading rapidly west.  Hundreds of officials of the democracy have already been executed on top of stages set up in major cities.  These executions bring new hope to America for a new, better country and an opportunity to once more be on top.

England, hurting with the Queen and the Prime Minister dead refused to give up.  Despite the slaughter going on in London at night the country has already built a perimeter around the capital and a shadow government deep in the farmlands of the country.  France for the most part went on like nothing happened.  Zee concluded that most the country is being kept in the dark and haven’t found out that their leaders have been killed and replaced by brutal monsters.  Israel, hardened by years of assaults on its country already had the leader in hiding and only a few of the country’s secondary politicians got struck down.  Somehow in the mess of the attack two monsters appeared in the country and the entire country has locked down in attempt to avoid more bloodshed than necessary. Most recently China was hit and it looks as if two or three of the ghouls resulted from the attack.  China had majority of its political leaders in a meeting trying to decide their actions in preparation again an attack.  Unfortunately the attacker crashed the meeting and no survivors came out of the building.

Several of the African countries that got hit have vanished from all communications.  The entire countries might be dead.  This bloodshed was only going to get worse.  Thirty four days so far, that is just over a month.  That means there is still five more months until another opening appears for a Wizard.  It’s going to be a long winter for the world.

****

Sin watched from the shadows outside of a brick warehouse.  Emilia had snuck away from the operation building and went into the warehouse during the middle of the night. Sin spotted her leaving about thirty minutes ago while prowling the grounds and has since followed her to a weapons warehouse about a mile from the main building.  In the last six days she’s witnessed the bloody remains of her daughter, husband, best friend, and most recently her real boss.  All her dead loved ones had a note written in blood somewhere near their bodies.  All of the notes reference one thing—the Red Button.  She never used the remote and never planned too but somehow people around her kept dying. The last note alongside her commander’s body was the most terrifying.  It read, ‘Destroy the tool of binding and the body wielding it or else twenty eight more will die tonight.’ 

Twenty-eight, it took a lot of digging and spying for Sin to find that number.  Twenty-eight was the exact number of students in Emilia’s rigorous four year course that gave her access to top secret powerful organizations such as the one controlling Lilly.  Those twenty-eight are all people of power, some in the government, some as spies, but ALL of them important to her country.  Sin knew that If Emilia learned one thing from four hard years of isolation and training it was to NEVER let down your comrades.  ‘Your objective is important, but so are twenty-seven others.  Sacrifice may be the best interest of your comrades.’ 

Sin had her cornered.  He forced her to choose over her own life or the lives of twenty seven more important missions.  He thought that she probably figured Nikon and Sir Kelton still had the devices and if one was destroyed it would be in the best interest of her country.  Sin could grasp victory here; she was going to choose to take her own life.

He balanced on an awkward support beam that held the overhanging roof up and watched through the icy top window of the warehouse as Emilia held a gun to her head. She was in a plain white dress in an empty spot with only the concrete below her and crates several feet away but surrounding her.  She pulled the trigger and with the crack the ancient lamps far above flickered off with the hooking the warehouse.  Everything in the warehouse went dark and Sin looked down, stunned that she didn’t destroy the device.  His acute vision struggled to adjust to the light and he watched the still body in the center of the warehouse.  Well, that was disappointing—not destroying the device would just have it transferred to someone else.

Sin turned from the window jumped down the thirty feet to the snow covered road.  He allowed the smoke to slither off his body as he walked away from the warehouse, unsure if he was allowed to go in and destroy the device personally.  No, probably not—and he wouldn’t dare go against Lilly.  As he got further away from the warehouse a moment of head filled his back before a shattering sound erupted from the warehouse. Wind followed as the darkened warehouse lit up for a single second while the explosion filled the night.  Instantly Sin jumped inside of the warehouse, the flames didn’t last long, the freezing air turning them into smolders in seconds.  He frantically looked around but could only see blown body parts and metal shrapnel drilled into the various boxes.  With that he confirmed that one of the three devices was destroyed.