FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Ryu", I said, "a question if I may."

"Of course", he replied.

"What is so damn bad about this city?"

Ryu sighed, "even before the outbreak, as I have stated before, Calos was a very dangerous city. Thugs running wild, drug dealers on every corner and theft was something everyone had experienced. Even with my crack troops backed up by heavy armor policing the streets 24/7, crime was still extremely high. Now, with the undead calling the shots, I've had to pull out, leaving only scattered pockets of volunteers behind to police a few buildings housing survivors."

I crossed my arms, "so, where exactly in town are we going?"

"Outer downtown", Ryu said, "your tank commander knows the way and will fill you in on the way. Your destination is one of the city's few survivor colony's, located in the Calos City Catholic church, once there, find a nun named Angelica. The old woman is more stubborn than a mountain, so she will no doubt ask work of you in exchange for help, but she will most certainly provide it if you fulfill her requests."

"Objectives once were there?", Alcatraz asked.

"Primary objective is to locate the city's main water pumping station", Ryu said, "the water to the resort could only be shut off from there. I am hoping it's as simple as the power has gone out and the generators need to be fueled and restarted, however, don't discount the possibility of a catastrophic, irreparable failure of the systems."

"And if that happens?", I asked.

Ryu sighed, "I don't know. Dismissed."

I exhaled loudly as my friends and I left Ryu's room.

"Man sounds like he might quit if those pumps are fucked", Alcatraz said.

"Wouldn't you?", Mike asked, "no pumps means no water, which means we all die in three days anyway."

"Or six for me and all the other K-Class here", I sighed, "still though, not a prospect I wanna face."

"In that case we should leave right now", Allen said, "Steven should be down at the garage."

So without much further discussion, we made for the garage, where we found Steven working on the tank, attaching some extra lights and what looked like a bulldozer scoop to the front, he seemed as though we showed up right when he didn't want us around.

"You guys are here to ask me to take you to town ain't ya?", he asked pulling up his welding mask.

"Yep", I said, "but I'm sensing a "I'm busy so come back later", coming up somewhere?"

"Gimme a half hour to get some of these parts installed", Steven said, "Some of them I can go without."

I sighed. We gave Steven an hour to get the parts installed and when we returned down to the garage, the tank was sitting outside next to a gas truck that I hadn't seen before. Steven was sitting on the edge of the turret talking with the driver. When we approached the tank, Steven took notice of us and said something to the driver of the truck, which pulled into the garage. He then hopped off the tank and came to greet us.

"Guys ready to go?", he asked, "it's a long trip into town and diesel is scarce."

"Who was that you were talking to?", I asked.

"Buddy of mine", Steven said, "gave me what he had left in the truck, we got a full tank once again."

"Well then let's get going, Ryu said you knew the way?", James asked.

"I do", Steven said climbing back into the tank, while the rest of us climbed on top of it, everyone but Sarah.

"You coming?", I asked.

"I'm more useful here", she said, "I know you said we all work as a team now, but I've gotta keep working on the cure, every second I'm not working on it is a second closer we are to Agent 41 mutating again and starting me over from square one."

"Good point", I said, "do you have a radio that works?"

"I can get one from Ryu", Sarah said, "I'll keep in touch."

I nodded and rapped on the tank's turret, "let's get rolling."

The tank lurched as the transmission entered first gear. Steven rolled the tank to the front checkpoint, where we got the clearance to head on out. Steven initially started on the same path that we'd taken to the bridge where his guys were holding out, but instead of finding a clear path, we found a caved in tunnel and a few extra people manning the checkpoint.

"This can't be good", I said to myself ducking inside the tank, "Steven, you seeing this?"

"Yep", he said slowing the tank down and popping out from the hatch underneath the turret, "hey, why the hell is this tunnel sealed?"

"A horde of zombies chased our guys off the checkpoint in the city and through the tunnel", a younger looking guy said, :"gonna have to take the service tunnel around commander."

"Ah fuck I hate that tunnel", Steven growled, "fine, can you open it from here?"

"No sir", the kid said, "radio me once you get there and again when your inside, Ryu's ordered us to keep it locked at all times."

"Rodger", Steven said giving a lose salute and backing up the tank.

"What's wrong with the maintenance tunnel?", Mike asked.

"Umm", Steven sighed, using the radio to speak to us over the tank, "it's an average tunnel, maybe not as well lit. I went through there once a bout 5 months back and well...I just don't like it, that's all. We're on a tank so I think we'll be okay."

"Dark plus the zombie apocalypse equals Volatiles", I said checking the chamber on my FAL.

"Those things that attacked you and Chy?", Mike asked.

"Yeah, they apparently like the dark", I said.

'Which makes a sealed tunnel the perfect place", Alcatraz said.

"Well let's just hope that they haven't moved in yet", Steven said, "tunnel's been sealed for a while, so I think we'll be okay."

At the entrance of the tunnel, Steven radioed the guard back at the other checkpoint, and the giant iron gate that guarded the entrance shrugged and opened with a grinding sound. The tunnel wasn't actually the abyss I expected it to be. The tunnel had seen so little use that there weren't even any cobwebs, it was bare as a desert.

"Well that's a nice surprise", Steven said as he drove the tank through the musty concrete tube, "I was expecting a fight to the death with some mutant zombies."

"How far is town from here?", I asked as we exited the tunnel, which came out on an amazing coastal road. There was white, abraded and eroded limestone on the right side of the tank with white sand beaches and crystal clean water down on the shores to our left. The road, though was old, had seen very little traffic and by my guess was still as structurally sound as the day it was laid.

I shook my head and sighed, "if only I could have driven this road in a Mercury Turbo Eliminator instead of a tank."

Chy leaned against me, "yeah. No shit...Sky, do you think we'll ever see Bespin again?" She'd spoken to me telepathically, not wanting the others to hear the doubt that was evident in her mind I guess. Honestly, I wasn't sure how to answer her. At this point, with no contact with her ship, which by the way may or may not still even be in the system and now with no water, which we may not even get back if someone had screwed up the pipes, the situation wasn't looking too good.

"Do you want the truth?", I asked.

She nodded.

"The situation looks rather grim", I said, forcing the words out, "at this point, I don't really know."

"That's what I was afraid of", Chy said.

She and I stayed quiet for the rest of the ride into town. Upon arrival, I could see why Calos was so fucking dangerous. The entire city was a slum, at least from what I could see. Concrete buildings, the few that there were, were falling apart at the seams due to the salt from the ocean. Anyone who lives near the sea will tell what a killer salty air can be and it treats concrete especially shitty. Why? Well Salt is hygroscopic, meaning that salt attracts and retains water. When salts are applied to concrete, they attract up to 10% more water into the pore structure of the concrete. This process leaves less room for expansion in the pore structure which, in turn, creates more pressure inside the concrete when it freezes, causing the surface to chip, flake, and pop, typically called "spalling". And while the rock that made up the buildings was heavily spalled, the main suspect seemed like long exposure. Salt accelerates carbonation, a process that slowly reduces the pH levels in concrete through contact with air and contributes to the corrosion of reinforcing steel. Most salts are neutral to mildly acidic (pH of 4.5 -7), and absorption of the salts by the concrete will accelerate the pH reduction of the concrete.....if it isn't obvious, I know a bit about stone.

The wooden and metal building's, while not looking their sharpest, looked much more structurally sound than their stone and steel counter parts. The roads were in questionable shape, but were holding up to the weight of the tank without cracking. Abandoned cars and trucks lined the road, abandoned by their former owners and treated with no care by the tank as it shoved them out of their way, tripping alarms on some of them. The city also seemed like an industrial playground. Through the cracks in the mass of shacks, I could see towering smokestacks, some looked dead, others were still spewing black smoke into the air and the water in the ditch that snaked underneath a bridge we went over was full of what looked like crude oil mixed with water and several other chemicals. I also couldn't help but notice all the gang markings on basically every building in town, graffiti combined with images painted in what looked like dried blood. I could still hear scattered gunfire and what sounded like frag grenades in the distance. Smells of burnt Molotov cocktails were also in the air. The gang war in this town must have been ridiculous. I could also see a few survivors on a second story floor about 10 yards from us at a T intersection in the road, watching the tank extremely closely.

"12o'clock at the end of the T Intersection, 10 yards away", I said, "count 4 survivors watching the tank."

"Look like members of a gang", Steven said, "Denny, can you cross that tat on the guys neck with the data base?"

"Okay hold on", the gunner said. I could hear keys on a keyboard from inside the tank as we turned the corner, "looks like the mark of the 54 Enforcers, one of the cities ruling gangs and one of the few that could take our crack troops in a one on one fight."

"Think they'll attack us?", I asked.

"Nah", Steven said, "I don't think they could be that stupid."

Steven had barley finished his sentence when a pickup truck came screaming down the street, a man on an M2 MaDecue in the back with the barrel of that nasty HMG point right at us.

"Or you could be completely fucking wrong!", I said as we jumped off the tank and used it to cover ourselves from the hail of thumb sized lead chunks. I charged my FAL, "looks like we're on foot from here! Steven, you move up and take care of anything large, the rest of us will clean up foot mobiles. How far to the church!?"

"About two clicks!", Steven said.

"Long way to be walking!", Chy said.

'We'll make it", James said turning the drum in his AA-12.

Steven nailed the technical with a shot from the newly installed 50mm Pathfinder, put the tank in low gear and started up the street, crushing the technical with the driver still inside when he refused to allow us to pass. Even the apocalypse hadn't stopped these people from killing each other, and everyone who wasn't a member of their gang for that matter. The fight to close the distance to the church was some of the heaviest combat I'd ever seen in my life. These people fought like they were an organized military and I could tell right now, we were gonna be seeing a lot of them. We managed to break engagement and find a new path around about a quarter of a click east of the church and when we got there, we were greeted by a large, well built wooden building with a huge bell tower that was going at full steam ahead. I could see a bunch of zombies from my position on the tank. All of them pounding on that door was making a hell of a racket.

"Why the fuck are they blaring that church bell like it's the second coming of Christ?", Alcatraz asked, "all they're doing is attracting warrant-less attention."

"Let's get up there and find out", I said, "Steven, are you staying with the tank?"

"Yeah", he said, "be warned as well, Diesel fuel, we ain't got a whole bunch of it. This thing sucks down gas, so for now, I'm gonna use it to block off this little parking lot right here and shut it off. I haven't slept in a few days so I plan to catch up, which means for now we're limited to indirect fire."

"You can do that?", I asked.

Steven nodded, "yeah, we have specialized equipment and a short barrel onborad to allow us to do so. You should beable to use your DNA chip to mark area's for us if Tyler's programming installed right."

"It did", Tyler said, "of course it did, because I did it."

"Enough chit chat", I said, "let's get moving."

At the top of the stairs, I counted about 12 walkers, plus one big ass mother fucker in a straight jacket who was trying to single handedly bring down a huge, iron reinforced oak door that stood between him and the church. He was making a whole bunch of disturbing growling noises and his eyes held anger like nothing I'd ever seen.

"That dude looks angry", Alcatraz said as he pulled his 20mm off his back, "hold up I got this."

With a single shot, Alcatraz tore the monster of a zombie in two. Even though his weapon was suppressed, it still hurt my ears from being so close, I was sure there wasn't a zombie in the city that hadn't heard it go off. Alcatraz worked the massive action of his sniper rifle while the rest of us cleaned up the stragglers. Once the last zombie had fallen, a kid about Alcatraz's age came out of the church, slowly and with a customized KBS Longbow in his hands.

"Holy shit", he said lowing it, "you tore through those undead like a tornado. Fuck, where the hell are my manners, I'm Will. Mother Angelica said people would be coming, please come with me, we need your help."

I nodded and followed him inside. The church seemed to be in use as both, a place of worship, which I could use right about now, as well as a disaster relief center There were displaced survivors wherever they could fit, some people on and under pews, in the rafters of the building in makeshift hammocks, up where the choir would be and in the back, crammed in with the supplies the church had on hand for things like this. It was overwhelming to see these people suffering like this, shit I thought we had it bad.

"I thought we had it rough", I sighed.

"Could be worse", will said, "we got power, as long as we got that we're good. Mother Angelica is in the back."

I nodded and went into the only back hallway there was, where I found a nun with a bible in one hand, rosary beads in the other, on her knees praying in front of what I guessed to be the priests office.

"Mother Angelica?", I asked quietly.

The nun closed her bible and stood up, turning around.

"Welcome my child", she said, "the Lord has told me you would arrive. I am very thankful you have for I am swimming in problems."

"What kind of problems?", I asked.

"Father Morgan has locked himself in the rectory", Angelica said, "infected by this plague, he succumbed and reanimated hours ago, now his soul, like many others, is restless and longs for the face of our Lord. Father Morgan must be helped out of this life and into the next, cleanly and humanely and the church bells must be silenced, lest we attract more restless souls to our refuge."

I nodded and pulled out my Automag, screwing the surpressor to the end of it. Mother Angelica handed me the spare key to the rectory and I unlocked the door. Standing just inside the door was a normal sized man in priests robes, he turned around, shuffling silently towards me with that thousand yard stare. With the first shot from the Automag in a long while, I ended the Priests suffering, catching the body before it could hit the floor and gently setting it down, closing the man's eyes as I did. The button for the church bells were on the wall by the man's PC. I turned them off and a quiet set in over the church. I could hear people sigh in relief. One problem solved, about a billion to go.