Chapter 1 This day was one just like the rest of his days. He woke up, cleansed himself, and left for work. When he arrived at work, he sat at his computer and did his industrial reports all day long. Once it was time to go home, he got up and left in his car. When he got home he watched T.V. and then went to bed. Most of Kolly's days were like this. Kolly had few friends. All he really had to grasp onto was his work. Kolly had brown hair, brown eyes, was tall and lean, and mainly kept to himself. He had high cheekbones, and a not so prominent chin. He wasn’t very muscular, but you could tell he worked out. He had gained most of his stamina while he was in jail for previous crimes. All his family was dead, or at least dead to him. The last few years had been the most boring in all Kolly's life. He never got to do anything because he was still on probation. He wasn’t allowed to go anywhere except to his house and his work. He still had 2 more years of his probation left. Kolly lived in a small house on the outskirts of town. It was one story, little grey house. He had everything that Kolly had ever owned was somewhere inside the house. It was spacious with a single room set up for his TV and other entertainment devices. He also had a little shed in the back that held a lot of spare electrical parts. The parts had been there since Kolly had moved in and he was too lazy to throw them away. Apparently the last person who lived there was a major electronics wiz. Kolly lived an average person’s life and wasn’t considered out of the ordinary by anyone in contact with him. He lived quietly and nobody had ever complained. Nothing could ever part him from his daily schedule that he knew so well. Chapter 2 Kolly woke up the next morning and went through all his ordinary procedures, cleaning, eating, and driving then to work. Once he got to work he felt strange. He didn’t know why, it was just that he had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He sat down and did some research on building plans until it was lunchtime. He got up for lunch then went to the cafeteria. He got his meal and sat down. The two guys across from him were just chatting about random things when suddenly the guy on the left just stopped in mid sentence, looked down, then keeled over. A crowd surrounded the man pretty quick, so quick that Kolly never got to see what was wrong. Some shrieked and others ran away while still others started to vomit. One man called on his cell phone. "Hello, 911? Yes. We have a man here who is in pretty bad condition; actually, I think he’s dead. Yes. 8234 Continental Blvd. Ok. Floor 25. Hurry!" Kolly still had no idea what was going on. He decided to join what was left of the crowd and look at what had happened to the dead guy. When he looked over another person’s shoulder he felt queasy. The man on the floor had a hole through his stomach. It looked as though a cannon ball had driven right through him from behind. His intestines were lying on the floor under the table, where Kolly's feet had just been. Kolly didn’t want to vomit so he started to walk away. As he was walking away from the scene, he saw a trail of blood. At first he just thought that it was some blood that had gotten of one of his co-workers, but it had a distinct pattern. Three little red blots around a foot apart from three more red blots. He followed the trail to a vending machine. He just stood there as if expecting something to happen. Without warning the machine lurched to the right and Kolly heard something skitter away. He looked around but couldn’t see anything. It looked as if everything was running like normal. Somebody screamed. Blood was flying everywhere. The whole building was in panic. All Kolly could do was run. Nobody had any idea what was happening. People just fell around them, dead. As Kolly was running, he realized that he was running on top of people who were still alive. They had wounds in the legs or torso and were immobilized. "There not going to survive anyway," Kolly thought as he ran on. As he ran he saw people trying to help some of the wounded. Their attempts were futile as they themselves were either turned into casualties, or killed. People all around him were falling as he ran down steps, through hallways, and down more stairs. He was one of the few that made it down to the bottom of the building, but then he suspected he nor anybody else would make it out of the building. Right in the doorway was a dark red, dripping figure. Kolly stared with amazement. He could only see parts of the figure, the parts covered in the oozing red blood. Kolly suddenly realized that the creatures were invisible! The creature was around two feet tall, had a roundish body, and had five legs extending from the top of the body. They were smooth all over. Three of the five legs looked like a hairless spiders. The other two, they were giant razors. This is what had made all those people collapse in their last efforts to survive the bloodshed. There was complete silence as all the people begun to realize that they were not going to make it outside ever again. Some fell to their knees and prayed, some cursed the creature in the doorway, while other frantically looked around for another exit. One man had enough courage to step forward, but he was struck down instantly by another one of the creatures that seemed to have come from nowhere. This made people even more uneasy. Apparently there was more then just that one in the doorway. In one long second three blood-covered creatures rushed forward along with an unknown amount of invisible ones. Blood splashed all over the floor. The crowd of people rushed towards the door as people around them fell like flies. Kolly was in the middle of the crowd when it started to rush for the doorway. A person to the left of him fell over without half of his face. Somebody in front of him had his leg slashed. Kolly grabbed the person and helped the guy walk in front of him. The person thanked Kolly for his effort, only to realize his true purpose, a shield. The guy Kolly was holding got stabbed in the chest, and again in the stomach. Kolly could feel all the impacts of the creature’s giant legs in the man he was holding. As soon as Kolly got into the open air he dropped the body and ran at full speed to his car, a little economic coupe. One of the creatures realized that somebody had gotten past them and started out towards Kolly. The others realized there was a chase going on and joined in. The creatures ran at a slacking speed because they knew they were much faster than humans. Kolly was scared. He could see the creatures running for him, but noticed they weren’t going as fast as they were in the building. He was shaking, so starting his car took a seconds longer then it should have, but he did get it going before the creatures could reach him. He threw his car in reverse and nailed one of the creatures dead on. Blackish green goo flew everywhere, along with the red blood that had been covering the creature before. The two other creatures stopped dead in their tracks. Something had killed one of them. Out of the entire slaughter only one of them had been injured, but that was because one of them had accidentally hit another one, but this one was completely destroyed, ripped apart and splattered all over pavement. As Kolly raced onto the street, he could see scenes like the one in his office building. Men, women, and children alike, all killed by those gruesome invisible things. A few tried to lunge at his car, but since it was going around sixty miles per hour, they did little more then become road kill and fluids all over the windshield. In the distance Kolly saw a line of the little creatures. They had formed a roadblock. He raced toward the creatures, accelerating all the time. When Kolly was about ten feet away from the roadblock the creature lifted up their two front razors. Kolly's tires were shredded, and black goo flew all over the place. The car skidded out of control, veered to the left, and ran straight into a convenience store. The creatures surrounded the car, waiting to make sure it wasn’t going to come to life again and destroy the rest of them. Once they were pretty sure nothing was going to hurt them, they started to creep toward the car. Now being covered in blood, human or otherwise, most of the creatures were visible. Once Kolly saw a few were in his range he jumped out of his car swinging. He had taken a metal bar off of his mangled interior. The first couple of swings hit only air, but on the next swing he made contact with one of the creatures. The contact sent a shudder of pain throughout his hands. The metal bar smashed right through the little creature’s body and covered Kolly with the black goo. He killed one, but had about another four hundred to go. The force it took to kill just one of those creatures was exhausting. He kept on swinging and killed another twelve with his brutish weapon until he collapsed with fatigue. The creatures were on top of Kolly; he had nowhere to go. Not that it mattered, because he was so exhausted that he wouldn’t have been able to run anyway. Kolly gave up any more thoughts about ever seeing tomorrow. He shut his eyes tight and just accepted that this was his day to die. After a few moments of nothing, Kolly opened his eyes. The creatures were skittering away. With great effort he lifted his head to have a look around. They all were moving west. They were disappearing just as mysteriously as they had appeared. Chapter 3 Sean was playing his video games again. He had blue eyes, blonde hair, and a very pale tone to his skin, due to never venturing outside of his house. Sean was only 17 years old. Built like a swan, he was both delicate and graceful. Sean also had a criminal record. He had been convicted of two federal crimes of hacking into private corporations. He may have been caught twice, but Sean was still one of the best hackers ever. He had made millions off of hacking for other people and “purchasing” things off the internet. His parents may not have known it, but Sean would never have to really work in his life. He spent most of his free time playing Final Fantan XXVI. The game was designed to be a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The game involved two gloves, two ankle bracelets, and a helmet to transmit you to your fantasy world. You are projected into the game and experience what your character experiences. The game was both expensive and addicting. Sean was also your everyday genius. He redesigned his equipment to tap straight into his brainwaves and give his the actual feeling of being in another world. Sean was about to ascend to level 217, which nobody had ever done before, when one of his party members doubled over and logged out. “Strange? Well, his mom probably unplugged him again,” Sean disappointedly said. “It’s going to be hard to replace him before we fight Banaught.” “That’s o.k. I think we can take Banaught without Devon,” said the red mage next to Sean. Then almost in unison John and Gary both logged out. Now Sean was the only one in his party still left logged on. “Strange,” Sean thought to himself. He decided to log onto the message boards to see if anyone else was experiencing this weird log out glitch. The numbers of online people were steadily dropping. He saw thousands of people logging off each passing minute. The number of people online stopped dropping after about ten minutes. Out of the original 68,000 online users, there were only 1000 still left online. Sean posted a new thread asking if anyone knew what was going on. The only answers he kept getting were that it was probably an update patch and that they still did not receive it. People suggested logging off for a while. Sean decided that he had played enough for today anyway, so he logged out and took off his helmet. He decided to go downstairs to get himself some food before he watched some anime, not knowing anything was wrong or how his world would never be the same ever again. |