Bab 108: In the Heart of Death

While trekking, feeling a void in my stomach grow larger and larger from the constant amount of bodies still littered, a bright blow emanated, coming from another hallway to our left.

"Finally, hope we don't get buried again." Lennox sarcastically commented.

Our path was now set towards the hall with light. Walking quick towards the hallway.

Now walking through it, the light glowed downwards towards a stairwell, but even with a newfound joy of getting out the death ridden subway, the gas only awaited us outside. Our joy now short lived, we went up the stairs, heading back above ground to continue our task.

"Fuck, that subway gave me the creeps." Mary commented.

"Alright, now that we survived and got out, Marcel you know where we are on the map?"

"Yeah," Marcel tapped away on his tablet, "Were south of the inner area."

"Great, all we need to do now is to just find more survivors, there's most likely more in the inner area anyway." Sebastian directed us to the task.

The area was more destroyed than any other part we visited, cars no longer moving with their colors being consumed by the green tint of the gas.

"Hey, you think we can find whatever caused the gas here?" Mary asked.

"What do you think even caused this much?" Stephen replied.

"Who knows, probably artillery shells loaded with em." Lennox joined in.

"Well there's no artillery gun so how would they get here?" Stephen replied sarcastically, we started laughing, a little joy in a misery ridden situation.

Nearing a car, my eye caught the inside of it, gas was already inside the car, partially obscuring whatever was inside, but the car was empty. Perhaps people could've tried using their cars to get away, but were too late.

"STOP MOVING!" Sebastian suddenly shouted. Proceeding to move forward away from the group, up ahead were shadowy figures, standing around behind the thick smoke. They stepped forward as Sebastian walked nearer to them.

A group of survivors in long sleeved clothing approached us.

"We were trying to find a way out for the rest of our group, gas though made us lose our way." One of them spoke up, muffled by the mask but still audible.

"Don't worry, we have a map, if you can, can you locate where the rest of you are located? Were here to rescue as much as possible." Sebastian responded. Marcel handed his tablet to Sebastian, showing it to the survivor, the others stood by, their faces weren't injured or affected, still staying unharmed.

The two finished talking, Sebastian handed the tablet back.

"Alright, it seems were not so far from the place." Sebastian led the now bigger team forward.

The buildings above looked barren, reeking of not only the gas but dread and death. All of them looked decrepit, bits and pieces falling down around us like a small rain. The survivors followed behind us, Alina briefly checked on each of them, not examining their limbs yet like the others.

How long has this place been hit by the gas? I wondered while continuing to walk, staring around, with our main task on a track i merely looked around the road. Buildings around, corpses in different places on different positions, none stood a chance except a few prepared ones.

Chaos joined in with the look of this place, everything looked disorderly with cars on different parts of the road or crashed into different places, anything on the street from posts to mailboxes were consumed by the green tint, more and more bodies as i kept walking forward.

"It seems were here." Sebastian said, unsure.

We stopped at a tall building, what looked to be a building meant for business.

The survivors led us inside the entrance, another glass door, it's hinges were corroding, making it harder to try and move it forward.

"They hid down at the basement, used to be a storage area for data and papers but we hid there with the others." The survivor began talking while we traversed the inside.

"Gralasian rifles division." A large symbol hanging on a wall behind a desk stood.

We passed through a large thick door, entering inside, the area wasn't as engulfed as the other side. We were in a hallway with only one way, forward. Unlike the outside, there was light here while we walked through, they still have power here? Perhaps a secondary power source.

"Did you see what caused all of this?" Sebastian asked, curious to try getting answers.

"Well." The survivor stopped for a second, "We didn't know what was going on at first. I was just working on another floor above when i heard loud screaming from below, from the window i just saw a green cloud forming on the ground, slowly rising upwards. We started to flee but realized the entrance was blocked by it. So we just ran towards the basement, we had no other choice. Others joined with us, running down to the basement to hide, some though didn't arrive in time. We held up inside the basement for who knows how long, the door blocked much gas from entering inside while we had a backup power source, fortunately it booted up to provide some light for us and allowed using a few things. Time though seemed to be running out and we needed to escape, some found a box of gas masks. So, me along with my colleagues volunteered to try and head out to find help, we got lost though and, we found your team." He stopped talking, ending the story.

He opened another door, this time leading down a stairwell while light continued illuminating the area, periodically flickering while we descended down with them.

Down, the survivor opened another door. Leading to a darkened room illuminated by now constantly flickering dim lights. Servers, some glowed while most were dead and dark. Walking past each stack of servers it felt like a loop of passing by the same ones, how many do they have?

After walking through them, another door was opened, seeing a bright light once again, we all stepped through.