Leila of the Requiem [Book One]

The Beasts

  I left dirty, wet footprints on the floor as I stepped into the gun store. The door had already been unlocked, no doubt due to someone else with a similar idea. There were racks of hunting gear by the door, and I grabbed some clothes before going further into the store.

  Stopping when I saw a group of people around the front counter, they all eyed me, and I felt extremely uncomfortable because of the state of my clothing. No one said anything, and I went to the back of the store to change.

  Lacking a bra already, I didn't have to peel that off with the rest of my soaked clothes. Dropping my tank top and pants into a drenched pile, I shed my wet underwear as well. The wet and cold were not a good combination and there was no telling what was going to happen next. I didn't want to get sick while trying to fight for survival.

  Pulling on the thick pants, I then zipped up the jacket and began my search for shoes. I found some boots and ripped off the tags before sliding them on over my stolen socks.

  Ignoring the presence of the other people, I loaded up the pockets on the jacket and pants with ammo and guns. Grabbing a couple of knives as a last-ditch effort, I loaded up a rifle.

  "Where are you going?" One of the men spoke up as I was heading for the door to go back outside despite every inch of my being screaming for me to stay and hide inside.

  "Whatever's out there will find a way in. And when they do, I'm not going to be trapped from all sides in here." I replied while reaching for the door handle. Suddenly jolting when I heard a gun go off, I turned on my heel and flipped the safety off on the rifle as I heard a little girl screaming.

  "Turn back! It's a trap!" A woman shouted.

  "Go! Go! Go!" A man yelled, and I saw the creature from the cemetery standing there over the carcass of another beast that looked like an upscaled version of the thing that had ripped its way out of my mother's chest.

  Two men aimed shotguns at the bipedal being, and these sort of gun-looking things on his shoulders blasted their heads clean off as everyone else ran. However, I raised the rifle in my hand as I saw another one of those serpent-like things crawling down the wall behind the masked, humanoid creature. The blasters on his shoulders took aim at me, but I didn't hesitate to fire as the thing on the wall opened its jaws to attack the other creature.

  The bullet went straight through his mouth and skull, splintering the wall from the impact while the creature thumped to the floor as its hiss died out.

  There was a momentary pause as the big guy glanced behind him at the thing I had killed before his focus was back on me. One of those serpentine beasts tackled someone, and he shot it, making its acidic blood spray across the blond man's face as he screamed. Another one then dropped from the ceiling onto the inhuman male, and I only saw sparks fly before he threw the creature off him with a strange matter of ease.

  It crashed into a glass shelf display, and I shot it in the head as it was getting back up. My heart felt as if it was hardly contained within my chest, and I looked back up at the more humanoid one. The beast had bitten off one of his shoulder guns, and his last good one shot the last serpentine beast out of the front window.

  I was now very thankful for those childhood hunting trips, to be honest.

  When the, I assumed alien, man began to pour a strange blue liquid on the carcasses, they started to dissolve, and it was a truly interesting thing to see. He then began to walk away, and I followed on impulse.

  I mean, what was safer than being with a killing machine that was armed to the teeth? If he had teeth, I mean. There was no telling what was under that mask. He knew I was following him too, but he didn't even hesitate and just kept walking. I was no fighter, but I could shoot straight, so maybe that was why he didn't care.

  He ripped the broken blaster from his shoulder and threw it on the ground before yanking off the other one and pulling off a piece of it to turn it into a handgun. It made a strange, mechanical beeping as it powered up, and he test-fired at an overturned car to make sure it was working right.

  The silence didn't bother me since there was no reason for us to talk, and I wouldn't understand him either way, but the deathly quiet of the streets was disturbing as I was aware of those creatures out here. Where had the screaming people gone?

  However, were there more of him out here, too? Or was he to hunt these things alone?

  Carrying the rifle at the ready, I looked around while having difficulty seeing in the dark and rain. Even so, I could see enough to know where he was headed. By now, I had managed to piece together how those serpentine things reproduced, and it made sense that they'd gather at a place with many usable bodies for their young to incubate.

  The alien man kicked through the glass doors upon our arrival at the hospital and walked over it like it was nothing. He made that chittering noise again as we carefully made our way through the halls. The smell that came after he opened the door to the maternity ward was horrific.

  But the scene inside was even worse. Pregnant women lay dead in their hospital beds with their stomachs like gaping holes as blood was splattered everywhere. The big guy stepped around a bed with his gun raised as he scanned the room.

  Suddenly, something struck him and sent him flying straight through a wall. The thing that had hit him was bigger than the serpentine aliens and had mandibles, but it wasn't alone either as regular-looking ones walked up. They both paid me no mind while advancing on the alien man instead, and I raised my rifle.

  The big one left and let the smaller ones handle the alien man, and I fired at the nearest one. Their attention split, some turning to lunge at me as I fired again while the others continued to advance on the humanoid alien. It sounded as if they were hissing and screaming, and the last one nearly got me as its claws raked the gun. My breath picked up a bit from the instinctual fear, and I looked through the hole in the wall to see the alien man pouring that blue stuff again.

  Stepping through to where he was, not even a second after and he was pulling out these bladed weapons as two more of the serpentine aliens came running on the sides of the walls. He threw the bladed weapons, and they sliced through the beasts like a hot knife through butter. One embedded itself into the wall while the other continued flying down the hallway.

  "....Those are so cool." I mumbled, but then a girl came running out at the end of the hallway. My shoulders tensed as she flew back and was impaled on the wall like a rag doll. The big guy seemed to pause momentarily but then twisted around as another one of those beasts leapt out at him.

  He turned on his heel and threw it to the ground before I emptied two shells into its head as it was trying to get back up. My head jerked to look back as I heard screaming, and the repetitive popping from the young man's gun as he ran down the hallway was nearly deafening. The alien man pulled me behind him as the bullets ricocheted off his armor.

  I couldn't pay them much more mind as a serpentine alien came bounding down one of the hallways straight at me. I fired but missed as it swatted the rifle out of my hold, and before it could grab me, the alien man caught its wrist. They went hand to hand as bullets were still striking his armor, and the two struggling to overpower the other ended up crashing through closed elevator doors.

  Despite the brief shock of them busting through the closed doors, a scream was ripped from my throat as the serpent's tail snagged on my jacket and pulled me down with them into the darkness below.