Clampdown

The second night of the lockdown is when things went to hell in a handbasket.

We could watch through the cameras the owner of the hostel had set up - we could see all of the Grayskins outside. And, stranger, most of them were bleeding from the nose as well. I learned from some of the other guests that this was a sign of being "scarlet marked" and that a Fear called the Red Cap was probably controlling them. It didn't matter - the Choir was still there, we were still trapped.

And then we learned that one of the guests was still outside. Kenny told me her name was Sandy. I hadn't seen her before we got there, but I could see her now on the monitor. She was a sitting duck. She had the smarts enough to figure out something was wrong, but now she was trapped between the Grayskins. Hiding could only help somewhat.

And then Kenny did something stupid. He went outside. He was trying to save her. Someone he didn't even know and he was trying to save her.

So I said fuck it and went out after him. And behind me were some other people who had also apparently decided to it was better to go out swinging than slowly suffocate inside.

The first thing I noticed went I ran outside was the horse. I don't know how I missed it when I first arrived, but now I could see it. It was huge and black and very good at stomping Grayskins, I'm happy to say.

I couldn't find Kenny anywhere, but I did see a few Grayskins and that's when I brought out the molotov cocktails. I know I shouldn't have taken any pleasure in their deaths, but I did. I watched those fuckers burn and I enjoyed it.

And then I saw her. A young woman, twentyish, coy smile on her face, with a red scarf around her neck. She walked beside the flaming Grayskins without a care in the world and I knew. This was the Red Cap the others had talked about.

She approached me and I wanted to throw another molotov cocktail at her, but my arms were suddenly heavy and I dropped them. I could feel my heart beating even as the white noise became silent in my ears. Even as I heard her voice. "You can become one of mine," she whispered from so far away. "You can become scarlet."

And then someone tackled her. It was a fucking beautiful tackle, too. Another woman, older, graying brown hair, had jumped the Red Cap woman and they were fighting. I could see scratches cutting deep into her flesh and then blood seeping out...and then the blood didn't seep, it jumped and I could see it being drained from the Red Cap woman and pouring itself into the other one.

I think it was then that I passed out. I don't exactly know why, I just did. I woke up a few hours later back in the hostel with this lady hovering over me. "Good," she said, "you're okay." Then she left.

And that brings us to now. I've been resting - I don't know what that Red Cap woman did to me, but it seemed like all the energy just went out of me. Kenny is gone though and Lyron left after she made sure I was alive. So I'm back to being alone.

I should probably get going soon. I don't want to stay here long enough for the Choir to come back.

But someday, I think I will have to face the music.

Life During Wartime

We were here at the hostel less than a week before Lyron told us we had to leave. "It's too dangerous," she said.

"I thought we were safe here?" I asked.

"Not anymore," she said. "I've been reading the blog they maintain and the protection I thought they had is no longer in place. So any runners here still have whatever Fears are after them -- including us. So we need to go."

We got our bags and went to leave. We were at the front door when we heard it. It was a very low-pitched noise, right on the edge of hearing, and then I stepped outside and starting vomiting my guts up.

Kenny pulled me back inside. Lyron, apparently, had stepped outside too and suffered the same effects, so he went to pull her back.

The man behind the front desk saw what had happened to us and came over to help. He passed me a towel and as I wiped down my face, asked me what had happened. My throat was sore and I could barely speak, but I was able to utter one word: "Choir."

The man's eyes went wide, then he walked back to his desk and called someone. I heard him say the word "lockdown" and then he hung up and got out a ring of keys. He went around the room, shutting the windows and lowered steel shutters down to cover them, and then locking the front doors.

And I knew why he was doing it. They didn't have the protection they used to have, so they had to make due. They had to protect themselves. The Choir was outside and it wanted to get in, so the hostel was now in lockdown.

And we were stuck within.

We're here.

The Wake-Up Bomb

Well, I finally have a fucking chance to write something. And that something will be:

I told you so. I fucking told you so.

Okay. We're staying at a motel right now, but we have to move on pretty quickly. I can feel it when they get near -- the air thrums. It feels like I'm in an airplane and we're going up up up and my ears are popping like crazy.

I think perhaps Proxiehunter was right. I think they just started pumping out infrasound, making us feel as bad as we possibly could. Because it started on Monday. I was feeling well, just on that verge of puking, when I saw that Kenny was rubbing his stomach, too. We were both nauseous, so either we had both eaten something that was disagreeing with us, or something was affecting both of us.

I went to find Lyron, to see if she had any nausea as well, when we heard it. The shrieking.

Have you ever heard a feedback loop? Here, take a listen to this. That's what it sounded like...only amplified by a hundred.

The windows cracked. I saw a hand covered in gray fungus push against them and they just shattered. Kenny had jumped up when the noise started and was covering his ears. I had put on my noise-cancelling headphones, but I still had one hell of a headache and it was getting worse.

Someone was coming in through the windows. Well, something. I guess when you are covered in living fungus, you may not count as human anymore. They didn't exactly look completely human either. When I took a look at their face, I saw that their jaw was hanging open at an unnatural angle, longer than I had seen a jaw hang before, like it had broken away from their face and was just hanging by their flesh and fungi. The entire inside of their mouth was lined with the fungus and that's where the noise was coming from.

I grabbed Kenny -- who was still holding his ears to keep the sound out -- and lead him to the back door. Our stuff was already packed and waiting for us there. We were paranoid enough -- and savvy enough -- to realize we would need to get our stuff quickly, so we prepacked everything and made sure we were ready to go before the attack.

I scrounged in my pack for my extra pair of headphones, then passed it to Kenny. He gave me a thumbs up. Together, we opened the back door.

There were four more of those Grayskins out there. They stood like statues, then open their mouths wide and let out their screams. Even with the headphones on, the noise echoed in my skull.

We were stuck. We couldn't go forward or backward. One touch and the Grayskins could infect us or melt our brains or whatever the hell the Choir wanted with us. My vision got blurry and when I wiped away at my eyes, I realized that they were bleeding. I looked at Kenny and saw that his were bleeding, too.

We were crying bloody tears and going to die.

And then Lyron -- sweet Lyron, whom I couldn't believe actually worked for monsters before -- then Lyron appeared at the edge of the yard and opened fire. She held a big fucking handgun and managed to clip two of the Grayskins, one in the shoulder and one in the chest. The others turned to her and let loose their scream, but she was wearing those ear muffs they have at the shooting range (which is where she probably was at before the attack, now that I think about it), so she staggered but didn't go down.

She yelled something at us, but we couldn't hear it. She was waving at us to move. I couldn't hear the thing behind us still screaming, but it was nothing compared to the onslaught happening to Lyron now.

So we grabbed out packs and ran. We ran past Lyron as she picked straight into the mouth of one the Grayskins to shut it up. Its gray matter splattered onto the grass. After that, she lowered her gun and tossed us her keys. Kenny caught them.

It took a few seconds for me to start up the car -- it's been a while since I've driven, my license is probably crazy expired -- and when I did, I reversed out of the driveway as fast as I could. The backdoor opened and I saw Lyron get in behind us. She said something and I didn't have to hear to know what it was: "Drive."

So I did. I drove until the sun rose and then I drove more.

Their still following us. I don't know why. Perhaps their after me. Perhaps if I go off alone, they'll follow me and leave Kenny and Lyron alone.

Lyron says she knows a safe place where we can stay, though. She says that she's heard rumors of a place, a hostel, that apparently caters to runners. So after tonight, that's where we'll be heading.

Let's hope it helps.