This was one of many ‘bluebook’s I wrote during John Myers’ incredibly entertaining Unknown Armies campaign. It is readable as a sort of ‘rough cut’ short story, as it references events and characters familiar to the campaign itself, but not included in this piece of writing; but hey, that’s why gamers have imaginations. It was also written when I didn’t know very much about Unknown Armies (I’m still not exactly a rules/mythos lawyer; but our GM kept us intentionally excluded from the written mythos of the game, so that we would not have any out of character knowledge what so ever. I give a grudging nod to his decision to do so. Simply keep this in mind.

I wrote this about two years ago, and while some of the descriptions I somewhat impress my contemporary self with, some parts of the story I find short, dry, unnecessary, etc. I hope some of you will be able to read it with a slightly less jaded appreciation. At any rate, whether you like it or every sentence thoroughly disgusts you, feedback would be great. Feel free to e-mail me, or simply reply to the post. I’d very much appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope you enjoy.

Blackness… no, nothingness. An ethereal void spanning out across infinity, devoid of all things. A place without sight, taste, sound, nor touch. Limbo. Eternity. This was the end . . . . or was it?

…

…

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Am I…. dead?

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…

*thoomp*

…

*thoomp*

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*thoomp*

A heartbeat pulsed silently in the darkness, the dull throbbing slowly becoming more and more distant. Their was a rich stench, like burnt flesh and chemical explosives. Gren opened his eyes slowly.
He was lying on his back in a hallway, the walls heavily charred by explosives. His eyes flicked about momentarily, and noticed Mike, or what was left of him… a crumpled, malformed figure lying on the floor against one of the walls, besides the smouldering wreckage of a wheel chair; burnt flesh.
Gren was suddenly aware of the pain he was in, and refused the urge to arch his back and scream. He coughed once, aware of the prominent taste of blood in his mouth. He could almost feel the blood filling into a deflated lung, where a piece of searing shrapnel had pierced his flak jacket. His left leg throbbed excruciatingly; broken, almost certainly. He whimpered softly to himself, gritting his teeth sharply.
I should be dead…
Was… was that where Farber was?
Get up, Gren…
He planted his hands to the floor, and forced himself upward. His body screamed at him; it was like doing push-ups, with a stake in your chest. He rose into a sitting position, his breathing sharp and stuttered, and slumped against the wall, next to the charred remains of Mike, the poor bastard. He touched his ear in search of his microbead. Nothing. “Damien… Leroy… Levy… someone…” He managed a hoarse whisper, a tiny bit of blood trickling down his chin. He was alone.
He reached inside his trenchcoat, fumbling through his medi-kit, and slapping himself with a mild painkiller into the thigh of the bloody leg. He took a deep breath, and held it in one lung for a moment.
He glanced around for a moment to orient himself, and spotted his Ruger 10mm handgun lying in a pool of his own blood. He reached over and wrapped the slender, shaking digits of his right hand around the grip of the weapon, and let out a staggered sigh.
He gazed longingly at the sleek, black surface of the handgun for a long moment. He blinked softly, and lifted it up slowly to examine it. Then, he shook his head, “What the hell am I thinking,” he thought to himself “it’s this or the nothingness…”
“I’m sorry, Mike… I’m sorry I couldn’t save you…” He trembled softly, biting down on his lower lip. Long moments ticked by, and he glanced at the charred remains of his former comrade crumpled up on the floor. He was suddenly aware of a deep rage and hatred boiling up from his insides.
“No!” He spat, gritting his teeth as blood trickled through them. “Not here, not like this…” And he forced himself up upon his good leg, spikes of trembling pain shooting up and down his spine.
A breeze came from somewhere; fresh air, beckoning. He faintly heard what he thought might be the distant crackle of automatic weapons fire. He looked up, to the open door at the end of the hall, stained with blood and riddled with several rounds. He felt on his belt for the other magazines for his handgun. Nowhere to be found.
He cursed softly to himself and began a slow, wavering limp towards the door at the end of the hallway, using the wall to stabalize himself. The broken, bloody leg dragged uselessly along the tile floor. The inside of his black leather trenchcoat stuck to the warm, crimson liquid soaked into the material of the left pantleg.
He placed a hand against the door frame, breathing heavily as the tainted air flowed in and out of one lung. His chest heaved in and out with explosive agony.
He inched through the doorway, sweeping the new area with the handgun. Empty. A reception office, with two other doors; one across the room-open, the other on the flanking wall across the room to the left, with a translucent glass window labeled in black sticker letters “STORAGE AREA”. A semi-circular desk and several sitting chairs populated the room, but naught else.
He stumbled unsteadily toward the door across from him, one hand gliding along the wall for balance. When suddenly, the door to his left swung open, and he found himself gazing across the reception office at the beady eyes of a chemical gasmask. A figure roughly 6’0 stood in the doorway, dressed in black fatigues, a kevlar vest, and a rather top-of-the-line military gasmask, gripping a submachine gun in his right hand. The figure made the mistake of looking back briefly to scream, “Hey! He’s in here!”
Gren raised the handgun, just as the cultist spun around to bring his submachine to bear, and squeezed the trigger twice. BLAM! BLAM! The two teflon coated 10mm rounds punched through the figure’s armoured vest like a hotknife through butter, and he fell back with a strangled cry through the doorway.
Gren momentarily forgot about the pain in his left leg as he stumbled towards the door infront of him, barreling through and slamming it shut just in time, as a flashbang grenade rolled into the reception office behind him, and exploded. The floor beneath his feet trembled slightly.
He scrambled down this new hallway, lined with doors and office windows. He tried the knob on the first one, pushing it open and practically falling inside the small office, just as the hall door through which he had come flew off it’s hinges, and the sharp CRACKRACKRACK! of automatic gunfire filled the air. The window open to the hallway exploded in a shower of glass fragments, and submachine gun fire riddled the doorframe.
Now sprawled out on the floor of the office, Gren bit down on his tongue slightly and half-leaned out the door into the hallway, leveling the handgun and snapping off a crackshot at one of the two visible figures; one half covered behind the door frame, and the other backed up against the opposite wall of the hallway; both looked similar to the ones he’d seen before. BLAM! The shot struck the cultist in the thigh, and he let out a yelp as he hit the floor. The other cultist returned fire with his SMG, several bursts tearing into the wall and doorframe inches from Gren’s face, but then hunkered back behind his cover, possibly to reload.
Gren took advantage of the pause, half-stumbling half-crawling out into the hallway, and scrambling frantically backwards down the hall, the weapon still leveled on the doorway. No one came through.
Two canisters came clattering through the doorway, bouncing off one of the walls, and landing on the floor of the hallway. A soft hiiiiisssssssssss began to eminate from them, and a billowing white gas began to fill the narrow hallway.
“Oh, shit…” Gren muttered to himself, the pain in his leg and chest now returning promptly. The rapidly expanding fog had now blocked out all visibility, but Gren fired twice more to keep whoever may come through next at bay. His ears were ringing from the booming of the 10mm.
He was answered with the report of a 9mm submachine gun, from somewhere behind the fog. The shots were wild, but the gas was dangerously close now; about two meters away.
Gren’s back hit the frame of another door, and he clambered quickly up onto his good leg, and twisted the handle, throwing open the door. A shotgun thundered from somewhere within the fog, blasting a sizable chunk of plaster out of the opposite wall. He thought for a moment he could see two masked silhouettes emerging from the gas, but slid through and slammed the door shut rather than find out.
He could taste and feel fresh air now. Turning around, he found he was standing in a rather large storage area, and before him, was the wonderous sight of the huge chunk of wall that his team had blown away in order to get into the warehouse.
His good lung gratefully taking in the luke warm urban air, he stumbled frantically out through the gaping hole in the concrete wall of the storage area. Various weapons and ammunition lined the interior of the shed, but most if not all had been charred and mangled by the previous exposion. He could hear the chatter of assault rifle fire as he made his way out into the street.
Down the street, a group of cultists, at least six, were firing at something around the corner and down the street. Gren prayed they wouldn’t take notice of him. He glanced about, and across the street, lo and behold, there was the red Dodge Viper which the team’s security specialist, Micheal Demarr, whom was hit by a grenade in the beginning of the firefight and blown to pieces, had parked outside the warehouse before the explosive charges were detonated.
Gren scrambled for the vehicle, hunched over to one side and using his non-weapon hand to balance himself. He heard the whistle of a rocket somewhere, followed by a distant explosion which caused the street to tremor slightly.
He glanced briefly back, and to his horror, Gren saw at least three more cultists leveling weapons through the gaping hole in the side of the warehouse. There was a brief moment of silent eye contact with the reflective lense of their bug-like gasmasks, and his glistening, aching blue eyes … and then the firing started.
“Not now… not when I’m this close!” Gren snarled, squeezing the trigger of his weapon repeatedly. The booming of his handgun was lost in the cacophonous thunder of the hail of gunfire directed upon him, and he watched as the last expended shell ejected from the weapon, the action slid back, and the chamber clicked dry.
Time seemed to slow down to a crawl, and Gren was lost and dazzled in the light show of the exploding muzzle flashes of the cultists’ weapons. The explosions of light glinted and reflected in the beady, reflective eyes of their masks. A shower of empty shells bounced and danced across the pavement in slow motion.
Gren could feel the heat of the incoming rounds. Feel them ripping through the leather of his trenchcoat, blasting chunks out of the street around him. It was a feeling like moving through cold molasses. There was no escape. No cover anywhere.
And then everything was silent, and dark. Gren wondered if he still had eyes, and dared to open them. The cultists were standing just outside the gaping hole, gripping their smoking weapons, as the last empty shells clattered against the ground.
Gren blinked, and waited …. waited for his muscles to turn to jellow, for the last ounce of blood to leave his body, or the sudden awareness of his body having been riddled with bullets to kick in. Nothing happened. He was still crouched upon one knee, balancing himself with one hand, on the pavement.
The cultists looked briefly at one another, then back at Gren. And suddenly, frantically dropped the empty clips from their weapons and began fumbling to reload.
Gren! You idiot! Move!
He suddenly blinked, realizing the impossibility of what had happened. He tried to fire, but found his weapon empty. He dropped it to the pavement, frantically reaching through his pockets for something else; his fingers fumbled across his medi-kit, his zipper knife, the one grenade that Leroy had given him. Grenade? Grenade! “I have had the worst…fucking…day…” And without pause, he ripped the explosive out of the pocket of his shredded trenchcoat, plucking the pin from the detonator and lobbing it toward the reloading cultists, screaming through gritted teeth, “EAT THIS!”
KA-BOOOM! The fuse was short, real short. Gren didn’t bother to think that under any other circumstance, that grenade would’ve probably killed him. The explosive detonated into a shower of flames and searing shrapnel, it’s fiery shockwave rippling out from the center of the cultists, who’d just become aware of their ill fate. A lone gasmask, peppered with shrapnel, it’s lenses shattered and gaping like a hollowed out skull, bounced across the pavement out of the maelstrom and landed next to Gren in the street. His ears rang something fierce.
Shaking his head, he clambered up to the vehicle, and limply tosses himself into the driver seat of the Viper. Gritting his teeth, eyes hot with panicked tears, he felt the ignition for the keys. Lo and behold, he was saved. He turned the keys, and the vehicle roared to life, just as another hail of gunfire erupted from the intersection down the street. The cultists whom had been firing around the corner before, now turned their attention to him as the Viper peeled off of the curb. Rounds peppered the rear of the car, taking out both headlights, the front and rear windshields, and one of the tires.
Gren hit the gas, and the vehicle roared off down the street, as another round took out one of the Viper’s side mirrors. The vehicle barreled through an intersection, as the firing eventually stopped, and swerved around a corner of the empty warehouse district.
Police sirens screamed in the distance, but Gren somehow didn’t care. He blinked the hot tears from his eyes, and focused his attention on the street. He slowed to a “casual” speed, and headed towards the edge of the warehouse district, toward the industrial sector of the city. Only one coherent word raced through his mind. Safehouse… Safehouse… Safehouse…