Planetfurry BBS

[DarkWolf]

This is just a little something that I've been working the past few months. It's kinda in the style of Laurell K. Hamilton and Jim Butcher. I'd like to try and get this published once its finished. Lemme know what ya think please.

Content Warning: May contain profanity and descriptions of violence and gore! Reader Discretion is advised.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was on my way home from Richmond. I had just gotten done with a job there. They’d had a bit of a problem, a zombie problem to be more precise.
Some how, they’d managed to keep the situation contained in a stadium. How the city and state police had managed to do this; I don’t know. City and State law enforcement aren’t exactly the right ones to call when something preternatural occurs. I’d gotten the call while I was in my hotel room getting ready to check out and make my trip back home. The room was just like any other hotel room; ugly-ass wallpaper, too damn small, a small TV in front of the bed, a small bathroom, and the typical bed. I had just closed my suitcase and was just about to start loading my weapons into their respective cases, when the phone rang. I walked over to the small night table on the right side of the very uncomfortable bed, I wasn’t completely sure if my back would ever be the same, and picked up the receiver. The male voice on the other end sounded nervous, tired and slightly out of breath.
“Mr. Ian Asher?” He sounded unsure, like he’d dialed the wrong number.
“You got him. Who’s speaking?” I was a little peeved. I didn’t want to end my vacation a day early, plus I had a 7-9 hour drive, depending on traffic, ahead of me, and I didn’t want to make it tired.
“Mr. Asher, this is Chief Mathis with the Richmond PD.”
“So, what do you need?” I wasn’t in the mood for bullshit and I wanted him to know it.
“We are having a bit of an issue at the stadium, one that requires your expertise.”
“What kind of situation?”
“The zombie kind.”
Perfect. I don’t usually deal with zombies. Something about the thought of them having once been human and viciously torn apart in screaming, brutal agony gets to me, but if the pay was right, I’d kill a few walking dead.
“Chief, I don’t normally deal with zombies. That isn’t my area of expertise.”
There was a short pause on the other end as if he were talking to someone else.
“Yes, but you came very highly recommended by our zombie expert on-site.” He was starting to get nervous, like he was doubting that I would help. Good, that means that when/if I accept, I can ask whatever price I want. But, what zombie expert could they have there? I only knew of one that was even remotely close to us, and he happened to be from Richmond, and I hoped to hell that it wasn’t him.
“How much are you offering?” I wanted to know the offer before accepting.
“How ever much you ask.”
“I’ll be down there in a few minutes.” With that, I hung up the phone, finished packing up my guns, and made my way to the hotel lobby. I guess my vacation was being ended a day early.
The scene outside the stadium was one of controlled chaos. There were blue and red lights flashing from the tops of at least 20 patrol cars. The cops were standing around talking to each other. For some reason, they seemed to be more relaxed than they should be in a situation like this.
You see with zombies, you need to kill them quick, fast, and in a hurry, because if you don’t…ever seen one of those movies where zombies take over the entire city? That can become a real possibility.
There were wood saw-horse barriers painted blue with the white letters “Do Not Cross” separating the stadium from the rest of the city.
As I drove up just about every single cop and civilian that was there turned to look at me. I’m not quite sure whether it was the rumble of my steel gray, ’92 Hummer H1’s diesel engine, or if it was the fact that I had Rammstein, a German Industrial Metal band, blasting from my speakers, but either way I’d made an entrance.
I parked right behind a blue police van, turned off the engine, stepped out of the car, and stood there for a few minutes adjusting the straps on my black Kevlar vest until it fit snug and perfect before I even thought of making my way forward. The vest completed my ensemble of blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and black steel-toed boots.
As I was about to step over the barriers and make my way to a group of uniforms gathered 10 feet beyond them, I was stopped by a cop holding out his hand.
“Hold it.” He commanded. “No civilians beyond this point.”
I sighed. “I’m Ian Asher, a licensed Hunter. I was called in to assist.”
He held out his hand with a disbelieving look on his face. “Can I see some I.D.?”
I reached into my back right pocket and drew out my black leather wallet and gave him my ID and my Hunter’s license. He took them from me and walked over to the group of uniforms. As I watched him, I noticed that mingled into the group were about ten people dressed in street clothes. They were either undercover cops or other Hunters called in to assist.
The cop that had taken my ID tapped one of the officers on the shoulder and showed him my ID. After he took my ID and examined it, the entire group turned around and started to walk over to me. The officer in the center must have been Chief Mathis because he motioned for me to join them. When I stepped over the barriers, I immediately recognized their zombie expert walking lock-step with Mathis. He was wearing black jeans, black work boots, and a blood red dress shirt underneath a black Kevlar vest, and his hauntingly blue eyes were locked on me. Damn it, I hate when I’m right.
The one person I didn’t want to see right now was the one that was in charge of the whole shebang. Anthony Feoli, an Italian descended ex-SWAT that was never as serious as he needed to be. He was also gay, and has had an infatuation with me since we first met, and no matter how many times I refuse him and tell him, sometimes pretty forcefully, that I’m straight, he seems to try harder. I don’t know what it is about me that attracts so many gay men. I mean, I’m not feminine looking, but I have been told by several women, and men, that I am very attractive, I stand at 6’2” and weigh about 195 lbs., all of which is muscle. Maybe it was the fact that I was raised by my mother and three older sisters, giving me a more feminine air, hell I don’t frak* know. I swallowed my displeasure at his presence and acknowledged them all with a slight nod of my head.
Chief Mathis was the first to greet me by extending his hand, which I shook.
“Glad you decided to help us, Mr. Asher.” He seemed distressed, but then again, I would be too if I had a stadium full of zombies threatening to overrun my city.
“What’s the situation?”
It was Anthony’s turn to take over. “Well, babe,” Goddamn it I hate when he calls me that, “the original zombie struck about an hour before a basketball game was supposed to start, so not too many people were hurt, but enough were to merit this quarantine.”
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked.
“Well, we’ve called in eight other Hunters to rectify this situation. We’ll go in two teams of five. Those five,” he motioned to a cluster of three men and two women, all of whom I didn’t recognize, were talking with there backs to us, and would occasionally cast slightly distrusting looks at us; good, we felt the same way about each other, “but I think you now the rest of our team.”
I looked at the other three members of our group and a sly half-smile creeped across my face.
A beautiful Latin-American woman standing about 5’9” and wearing pretty much what I was with short black hair and beautiful brown eyes walked over to me, and gave me a hug.
“It’s good to see you, Ian.” She said as she gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“Same here.”
Lita Mendez, age 24 from Miami, Fl. She specialized in “deporting” demons. I’d met her when I’d been called down to Miami for a job that involved a demon that liked to trap people in big buildings and then set those buildings on fire. It had killed about 150 people before we had finally caught up to it and killed it. She’d saved my ass, and to make a long story short, we’d dated for a while, decided that a long distance relationship wouldn’t work, and decided to remain friends. I was glad she was here. She could definitely counterbalance Ant’s carefree attitude.
I heard a voice from behind me, and just by the deep, husky tone, I knew who it was. “Hey man. It’s good to see you again.”
Jonathan Strong, age 29 from Charlotte, NC. One of the toughest, and most intimidating, individuals I had ever met. He stood 6’5” and weighed in at 275 lbs of African-American muscle. He was a vampire slayer and was one of the best I knew. I had known him since I was 20 and in all of the time I had known him, he had never been injured on a job. Definitely someone you wanted to have on your side when the superernatural nasties came a-knockin’.
Then, I felt a punch on my shoulder. I didn’t even have to hear a voice or see a face to see who was behind me; a young man about half a foot short than me, but more muscular, with brown eyes and long brown hair that was mid-back length on the top and shaved clean on the sides. He was my best friend, my blood brother.
Jake Shirley, age 24 from Toccoa, Ga. I had known Jake since he was in 6th grade and I was in 7th. We were like brothers and always had each others back when things got rough. He’s the one that saved my ass the night I got turned into a werewolf. Did I forget to mention that?
We were leaving a concert in Atlanta when, out of nowhere, I felt a huge weight knock me to the ground and pin me there. I looked up to find myself pinned beneath a very large, slender, yet muscular, humanoid wolf, whose fur was mottled tan and gray.
I’d thrown a punch in the hopes that it would knock him off of me, but he caught my arm in his mouth. I screamed as I felt his teeth sink into my flesh and the bone in my arm snap. The next thing I know, there was a series of nine gunshots. He jumped off of me. I turned and saw him running off into the city, and Jake was standing near me holding a smoking Desert Eagle .45 magnum.
And, now he was standing in front of me once again, ready to watch my back in another situation.
Ten of us went in, but only Jon, Ant, Jake, Lita, and I came out.
Let me paint the scene for you.
We walked into the stadium, and it was like we’d stepped into a real-life version of a George A. Romero movie. There were mangled human corpses, buckets of blood, and bits of flesh and entrails everywhere.
The first thing I did was check my weapons. The two black, semi-automatic Beretta 9mms with High-Brightness Lasergrips that I had in the black tactical holsters strapped to each thigh were loaded with homemade Hornady high velocity, hollowpoint bullets, both had full clips and one round in the chamber. These were my primary weapons, but I had to make sure that my back up was in order as well.
The 12-gauge Mossberg pump-action shotgun that was strapped to my back was my weapon to go to if things got too hairy. I had modified it to my specific standards. It had a Knoxx Sidewinder conversion kit on it that gave it a handle sticking down from the pump and a 10-shot drum on the right side, allowing the gun to hold 11 shots with one in the chamber, there was the Knoxx COPstock folding stock that, with the pistol grip, gave me extra control, and finally the whole package was completed by the Tac Star light on the end of the gun that allowed me to use it in any level of darkness. This gun was my baby.
I also had an eleven inch tactical knife, silver-plated of course, in a sheath on my left shoulder. I unholstered the Beretta from my right leg, clicked off the safety, and was ready for war.
My team agreed to take the lower levels if the other five would take the upper levels.
They agreed.
As we made our way towards the floor seats of the arena, we saw just what we were up against. There were, by my estimation, 200+ zombies shambling around on the now abandoned basketball court. None of the athletes were among the undead; not quite sure whether that’s a good thing or not. We needed to find the original zombie…and quick.
I opened myself to the zombie king’s unique aura. That was one of the benefits of me becoming a werewolf, I gained the ability to sense the auras of other preternatural, and some supernatural, beings.
As I stood there concentrating I finally felt it, an insatiable hunger, the urge to feast on human flesh. He was in the basement near the generators.
I relayed this information to my teammates; we slowly backed out of the arena, found a stairwell leading down, and began our descent.
The first hostile zombie we encountered was one flight of stairs below us. I had just reached the landing when I saw him. He was standing, or rather kneeling, over the body of a young woman, mid-20s maybe and very attractive, feasting on the contents of her torn open abdomen, a pool of blood underneath them. It slowly turned towards me with its dried, dead eyes. Its mouth and the area around it were soaked with blood and it had a chunk of flesh dangling from its mouth. It rose up and made a mad dash for me.
It didn’t get far before I squeezed the trigger and put a bullet through what was left of its brain. The back of its head exploded, spraying blood and brain matter onto the wall, and it dropped limp and lifeless, like a wet noodle. We bypassed the fallen corpses, putting bullets into the heads of any that hadn’t yet been turned, and continued downward towards the generator room.
We didn’t encounter a lot of zombies on the way down, which left me a little worried about what we were going to find once we entered the generator room, but we’d met enough. After a few minutes of stairwells and the occasional zombie fragging, we found the generator room in the stadium’s sub-basement. I readied myself.
At this point, I was still open to the zombie king’s aura, which meant that I could sense other zombies in close proximity to him as well, and what I felt behind that door didn’t exactly put me at ease. I could feel a mass of energy coming through me like a wave of movement and hunger. Things were definitely about to get hairy, so I holstered the Beretta and grabbed my shotgun, codenamed “Peacemaker”, turned on the Tac Star light, and eased the door open. I was right; things were going to get bad.
There had to be at least 30 zombies in the room. All of whom were turned towards the door that we just happened to be standing in. They were all in different states of…maimed. Some had just a few chunks of flesh missing here and there, some had there throats torn out or limbs missing, but the most gruesome one had the right half of his lower jaw torn off and his tongue was dangling useless and dripping blood like so much ravaged meat. I had to swallow a few times to keep myself from gagging. I hadn’t dealt with zombies in years; I’d forgotten how bad the gore can be.
I looked over my left shoulder at Jake who was right behind me.
“What do think?” I asked not taking my eyes of the horde of the undead in front of us.
“I say take them all out quick and easy.” With that, he pulled the hammer back on his chrome .357 magnum.
If there was anyone that I trusted more than myself, it was Jake.
I aimed at the nearest zombie and squeezed the trigger.
My shotgun roared as the shot exploded from the barrel and vaporized the top half of the zombie’s head. That got their attention. I moved out of the doorway and into “Zombie Central” to give the others some room to fire.
They made a rush for us. We fired as quickly as we could, loading and reloading as we needed. Eventually there was only one of them left; the king.