From the Journal of
Jason Forrester
Unknown Date in
2013
[Ed. Note: While it is believed
that this was written sometime in 2013 based on its place in the journal, the
writing might have come from a later time.
This journal entry was scrawled in the margins of another, using a
different color of ink. It is included
here due to the relevance of the Journal Entry to the section detailed within.]
I still remember the first time I
read A Canticle for Liebowitz. I was in
middle school, and the world Miller had created frightened me more than I could
describe. What he said made sense in a
way, it was only natural there would be a backlash against technology after the
end.
I just wish I was further from the
epicenter of the Great Simplification.
Central Resource
Library
24 September 2013
Eric Eklund watched the Library's
purging in the cleansing flames with a frown.
All of the Children who gathered around him knew it should have been a
happy occasion, but few dared to cheer.
In spite of their destruction of the hated poisoner of the mind,
something was wrong.
"My apologies, Reverend
Eklund, for not completing the task you set before me," Cooper said as he
came forth.
Eklund turned to examine his
Hawk. The man stood out amongst the
group. While others had taken to growing
their hair and beards long, Cooper still shaved his head and face clean. It made him
look like a lizard of some kind, and Eklund had to admit he found it off
setting. So many had forgone the razor,
and yet his Hawk still did so.
Eklund didn't know what to make of
it. With any other member of the
Children, he would assume the man was having doubts, but Cooper - the Brother
Hawk - was one of his most fanatical supporters. The man had even located a pharmacist who he
had tasked with making the dissociative pharmacologicals which made his men
such effective warriors.
If it was anyone else, Eklund would
have killed the chemists himself, but Cooper wanted the man for himself. He was training the man to make his compounds
with natural ingredients, but Cooper said that so long as the chemicals of the
false enlightenment remained, they should use them to destroy the last remnants
thereof. At least with this way they
would be disposed of properly.
Eklund secretly suspected that
Cooper had an addiction to the chemicals and was using this as an excuse to
keep his addiction fed. In fact, Eklund
was certain his Brother Hawk would be one they destroyed were it not for the
fact a number of Earth Liberation Front followers hadn't vouched for him.
"Brother Hawk, you lost four
men in the attack out of six. According
to the other survivor, your men took severe casualties and only killed one of
the defenders. Had they not been armed
with the Demon weapons they carried, you would have won. You saved yourself and one of your
sub-ordinates to fight again."
"If that does not help put
your mind at ease, then find them and kill them. Bring the wrath of the Goddess down upon
their heads once and for all. May Helios
and Gaia guide your foots, and may the spirit of the wolf inspire you."
Overland Park
Regional Medical Center
26 September 2013
Captain Michaels of Charlie Company
was in the security office turned command center when the radio call came
in. A man in a torn jacket and ripped
jeans with a gash over his eye and bruises on his face had just staggered
in. He claimed a group of people had
marched in and forced his people out, and that they had kept the women and
children with them.
The radio reports claimed that
dozens of men were wounded and in need of first aid. Captain Michaels sent the orders, and two
Platoons were ordered to mobilize on the target - the twin Elementary Schools
of Holy Spirit and Oak Park-Carpenter - in order to escort the paramedics and
nurses who made up the hospital's medical staff.
The two platoons loaded up into
HMMVW's in order to escort the ambulances to the target. A bunch of marauders and looters had tried to
ambush the last medical convoy to report to a group under attack, so the
Captain had ordered the escorts increased in order to protect the valuable men
and women under his protection. If
civilization was going to survive, the hospitals were key to that survival.
People who claimed to have been
involved in te fight began to filter in slowly.
They bore bruises and scrapes, many of them had cuts and two had
crossbow bolts in an extremity. With the
surviving patients from before the Blackout, and the ones who had fled to the
hospital in hopes of safety or medical care before this fight, even the
National Guardsman were tasked with joining the medics in caring for patients.
When the radio messages of an
attack on the Hospital came in, warning of an attack by the Children of the New
Dawn, it was already too late.
Overland Park
Regional Medical Center
26 October 2013
Unbeknownst to the Captain, all of
the men who had entered the hospital were secretly Children of the New
Dawn. Too make matters worse, three of
them were Berserkers who had foregone the paint in favor of stealth and the
ability to slaughter as many as possible.
So long as the Hospital remained, the False Day under which the world
had lived would continue and the True Dawn would never come. Survival of the Fittest, that was the true
nature of the world, the shape of the world to come.
As the HMMVW's and Ambulances which
had rushed to the twin school buildings where the attack had occurred neared
their location, a number of molotov cocktails rained down upon them. The HMMVW's opened fire with the .50 caliber
Machine Guns, an action which had an uncertain at best effect.
More molotov cocktails continued to
rain down as boxes of nails and screws were tossed in the path of the
ambulances and HMMVW's. When their blind
rush led them down a blind alley, a group of Marauders jumped down upon them
from the trees and the balconies of apartment buildings. The berserkers dropped molotov cocktails down
any open space, and ripped apart anyone who dared to leave with an axe or mace.
This news never reached Captain
Michaels. While normally within range for a radio message, the building blocked
line of sight and required the radio operator to bounce the signal off the
ionosphere. Due to the lack of accurate
meteorological data, he misjudged the position of the ionosphere and the signal
missed the hospital entirely.
Had it reached him, Captain
Michaels would have immediately implemented security procedures. Because he did not, the entire hospital was
caught unawares when the Berserkers burst out of the pharmacy and assaulted the
ER.
One of the berserkers was shot down
by an alert National Guardsman, only to be avenged by another of the berserkers
with a pick-axe to the face. With the
magnetic locks not functioning, the berserkers burst through the doors and
began to slaughter everyone who resisted.
Behind them, the rest of the Children advanced with clubs and spears and
dispatched those wounded or ignored by the berserkers.
One of the Guardsmen ducked into
the room he was closest to and barred the door with two nurses and eight
patients inside. He got on the radio and
alerted his Platoon Leader, but it was already too late for them to react. With half of the guardsmen out of the
hospital and pinned down several blocks away, there would be no reinforcements
and there could be no holding the entire hospital.
The Guardsmen fought a rear guard
action, plugging any berserker who showed themselves as they were forced back
to the farthest wing. It took haf a
magazine to put the berserkers down, as gut shots had no effect. Only a shot to the heart or nervous system
would take them down for good - or a shot which would bleed them dry. There was only one problem, they did not
enough bullets to kill them all.
Moving to their bayonets, they
fought hand to hand. The Guardsmen were
at a severe disadvantage. The Berserkers
were high on PCP, and thus didn't feel the pain from the relatively small
knives. The Guardsmen, in contrast, felt
all the pain of the axes and clubs which were brought down upon them with
maximum force.
Captain Michaels was personally
organizing the final defensive line when the Berserkers burst around the corner
howling their drug-enhanced rage to the skies.
The last squad of his men were with him as they opened fire. The remaining troops were headquarters
troops, trained as typists and comms personnel.
They quickly fell to spray and pray tactics and were slain to a man.
In a last desperate move, Captain
Michaels grabbed the Tomahawk he had carried with him through Iraq and leapt at
the man who appeared to be the leader of the bersekers. He and the man with the bald head traded
blows for several minutes before the bald berserker buried his own axe in
Captain Michael's throat.
As the world grew dark and cold,
Michaels could hear the distant roar of triumph and the screams of those in
pain.
---
Cooper looked down at the Captain
whom he had slain in personal combat.
The captain had been a worthy opponent, but he was a man who had died
preserving the false light of an evil world.
Turning to the Children who had
followed him in, he ordered them to block the doors leading up and down and to
begin setting fires. Let the evil beings
roast in their artificial cave of evil chemicals and false cures.
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