Story
White Isle was a small settlement in the north central Albyon. I like it there, small woodland community right on the edge of “civilization”. More accurately it is on the edge of human civilization since the only thing for the next couple hundred miles that came close to what humans called civilization are a few elven settlements and even fewer shifter settlements. There are a fair number of wild gnolls and such creatures living in the wilderness area between White Isles and the North Shield bridge.
Due to this the settlement, and many others like it, hire private security firms to protect them from the creatures of the wilds and any enemy troops that may decide to try and invade. That’s why I am here, I am Andrew “Marrok” Hess, I am a member of the Gorgon’s Head Security Agency. My main responsibility is for patrolling the forests around White Isles.
I am also one of the town’s carpenters. White Isles is such a small town that most of the security forces also have secondary jobs around town. It helps the security teams get some extra money and helps the town grow.
As I said I run the forest patrols, this is because of natural abilities and because of Dante. Dante is a special type of dire bear, techoramcy created him so that when I wanted him to he would become nothing more then a stuffed bear and that if I needed him to be he would be a dire bear. While on patrol he was in his dire bear form. Eight feet at the shoulder and fierce as any dire bear in nature, the techromanciers who made him made him to be almost exactly like living dire bears.
While Dante and I were on patrol when we both smelled something rotten, I have both eliven and orcish blood running through my veins along with the mostly human blood. Add on to that that I am a shifter, a were-spawn, needless to say my senses are much more acute then the normal human’s, so I was able to pick it off the wind just after Dante found it. We followed the sent off over a ridge and saw a group of grey and backed skinned bodies.
Even for my extraordinary eye sight I had problems seeing them clearly. I took out my eyepiece and zeroed in on them. That was when I noticed it, they were all dead. Most of them looked like they had been dead for awhile, some were even missing body parts. This could mean only one thing, zombies.
The only problem is that zombies had not been seen for the last ten years, and even then never on this continent.
“Dante, lets get out of here quick. We need to tell the commander right now. I think they are heading to White Isles.” I told Dante as I hopped up on his back and went back to town.
“Commander we have a problem, there are zombies on the move toward the town.” I said as calmly as I could. He was either to shocked by the news or I mumbled cause I had to repeat myself a few times.
“MARROK!?!? What do you mean ZOMBIES?” the commander asked with a crazed look in his eyes. He was frantic, he knew what it meant if there were zombies on the loose.
“Dante and I saw a group of undead. The group had Blood Orcs and Death Trolls in it, plus half of them are missing limbs. I also saw a few elves and dwarves in the group. You and I both know the likelihood of Blood Orcs working with anyone but Blood Orcs, much less with elves of any type.” I explained, I knew the commander would realize that I was either going completely nuts or telling the truth. I also knew he would work on the assumption that I was telling the truth until he proved I was not.
“Marrok, thank you.” He picked up the phone and called the air division of Gorgon’s Head. “Get me a fly over over the area just,” he held up his hand to indicate how many miles and I nodded in agreement “five miles north of town… Thank you.”
The commander hung up the phone and looked at me. “The boys are sending out the best chopper we have to look at the area. In the mean time, go and get some food. I will call you first if they find anything.”
“Ok commander, I’ll have my cell on me.” I said to the commander as I left the office.
I met my roommate Alexander Solaris to get food. Solaris is a techromancer who specializes in fire. He is an independent contractor working for White Iles and also my roommate. He is a good guy and was dressed in his normal baggy pants, black t-shirt and black trench coat.
“So how has your day been Marrok? Anything interesting with your patrol today?” Solaris asked as he sat down.
“I don’t know, I think I saw something but I’m not sure. The commander is checking it out. You’ll know if anything happens. How about you?” I could not tell him anything at this point for fear of someone over hearing something and causing a panic.
“No, same old same old, been working on some new stuff though. It should be neat if it works.” Solaris started to ramble about what he was working on it but I was not interested at the time and just kept thinking about the zombies. Now it is true that I am immune because of my werecreature blood but that does not mean I can not bleed to death or be eaten alive.
All of a sudden my cell phone rang, I looked at the number and knew it was from the commander.
“Yes commander,” I said.
“You were right, we are going to evac the entire town and leave all security units. Get Solaris and Tobias and get to the barracks.”
“Solaris we have to go. There are zombies coming!” I said as I got up and bolted for the door.
For the rest of the day we helped evacute the entire town and set up barricades to try and cow the zombies down the main road to the barracks when they got to town. We had everyone out of town by dusk and around midnight the first zombies come into town.
After the zombies started to come into town we turned on the music and tried to attract them to the barracks. When they got close enough our snipers started taking pot shots at the zombies. For the next four hours I heard nothing but the pop pop pop of the rifle.
After that the snipers took a break and let the heavy weapons guys take care of them, that means I got to play. The guys and I laid down some cover fire and took down a fair number of the zombies. The next few days went like this, sniper team took a turn then heavy weapons guys.
During this time of sniper/heavy weapons on off a helicopter come in with a special back up team. The team included a zombie expert and a few weapons experts. The team set up and started to go to work.
After the snipers and heavy weapons stopped switching off the leader of the back up team called a meeting.
“Everyone listen up, over the last few days I have examined the area and set up a plan.” The teams leader said, his name was Stefan Marshalle. “After we thin out the zombies a little more we are going to send groups out to try and find any remaining zombies that maybe still around. I am going to divide the town up, I will make smaller teams to go out to cover these areas. You will be divided into three or four member teams. Your assignments will be given to each later.”
Everyone went back to our daily assignments and waited until Marshalle gave out our clearing assignments. I was given forestry detail, no big surprise there, and I was assigned to work with the sniper from the back up team, no one else. Marshalle told me to take Dante since he was our third and fourth person, being as he was as big and helpful as two people.
The sniper was a half elven woman with dirty blonde hair and fair skin. Apparently she was a woodlands expert along with a great sniper. I decided I should go find her and talk to about what we needed to do.
I found her coming down from the roof after a shift on sniper duty. She was in black combat boots, camouflage fatigues, and a black t-shirt, her hair was tied back in a tight bun, she looked every bit the sniper I heard she was.
“Miss Youkey, you and I are going to be sent out to the forests around town to look for any stragglers in the forests. We have enough time before we go to get some rest and come up with a plan. So let’s get some food and make a plan.” I said to her.
“Ok, so what do you suggest, and please call me Lexie.” She responded as we walked down to the mess hall.
After we ate and made a plan we both went to our rooms and slept for a few hours and then we headed for the secret tunnel out of the barracks. The tunnel lead out from the barracks to the forests outside of town. It was built as an escape route from the town incase of something like this. We took it all the way to its end and then began to spread out into the forest.
When we got out of the tunnel I took Dante out of my pocket and called his name. He started to grow until he was full size. Lexie and I climbed up on his back and prepared to go out for our search.
“So this is why we are a two person team. He quite though?” Lexie asked me before she climbed up.
“Dire bears are just as stealthy as there smaller cousin’s. He adds speed and strength, plus unless he is running at full speed he is as quite as a mouse.
We started by heading north and then circled around the city. It was a very simple run around the city. We stayed within sight of the city the entire time and only found a few pockets of resistance while we searched for any zombies. By the time we made it back to the tunnel though it had been a long day.
We were coming over a small hill when I smelled something rotten. All three of us turned to look in the direction of the smell. It was coming form over a small hill with brush covering it. I hopped off and motioned for the other two to be quite.
I crawled slow up the hill and under the brush while Lexie jumped down from Dante. When I got to the top of the hill I looked over the top and notice three gnolls gathered around something. They looked normal and so I relaxed a little. It is just like gnolls to eat rotten meat.
It figures that while I am out looking for zombies I find the gnolls that have been bothering everyone, I thought to myself. I motioned to Lexie and Dante to come closer.
I pulled out my gun and started down the hill.
“Ok you guys,” I said as I cam down the hill. They started to turn as I spoke. “You need to leave here or…” that’s when I noticed that they were not eating a rotten piece of meat like I had thought, they were the rotten meat eating the fresh meat.
The three gnolls rushed me, I put six shots into the three of them before they got to me. I pulled my side sword and backed away in an attempt to get a better position. Unfortunately they were very freshly turned, they had not even started to go into reigormortis, and they jumped me.
If I were watching the scene instead of being in it I would have been amazed. Gnolls normally can not jump forty feet distances, but all three did and landed on me. The sudden combined weight of the three of them knocked me down to the ground. I was able to stab one of them through the head with my sword as it came down on me but that still left two more.
The three of us struggled for a little while before one of their heads blew up. I threw it off of me and noticed Lexie reloading her rifle, man she is a good shot.
That little bit of distraction was all it took for the last gnoll to find an opening on me. The gnoll bit down on my back a got through my clothes.
“GGGGAAARRR!!!” that hurt like nothing else. It caused me to shift, if you’ve never seen a shifter shift it is an interesting sight to see, what is more interesting is seeing a shifter have a dire shift. Dire shifts cause the shifter to not only shift their instincts and some small amount of physical features, like strength levels or dexterity, but their bodies. Normally I stand just below six and a half feet, in a dire shift I grow to be over seven feet tall, my clothes get really tight an uncomfortable and my animal instincts strengthen, plus the normal strength boost that shifting gives. This can be very disconcerting to some who sees it for the first time.
But I was not thinking about that at the moment, at the moment I was thinking about the gnoll biting into my back. With this strength boost I was able to throw it off of me. There was crunching sound and I was looking down the barrel of Lexie’s rifle.
“Wo wo wo, don’t shoot! I’m fine, I’m a shifter and therefore immune to the Z-virus. We are not demon possessed, we are not raging monsters, we are not creatures created by evil magic. We are immune to the Z-virus. We do not become raging beasts at the full moon. We are just like you but we have animal like instincts and it is completely genetic. We are not monsters, as much as lots of people might think we are. We shift true but that is only under certain stimuli and it is kinda hard to control. We are just like normal people but we have lower stress thresholds and the instincts.” Lexie started chuckling about half way through my rambling and by the end was almost laughing. When I realized she was laughing at me I stopped talking and she pulled her shirt down so I could the top of a tattoo.
“You’re a shifter too, right. I was rambling wasn’t I?” I asked her nervously.
“Yea, I am a shifter. I’m not part of a pack. Let me see that shoulder. I will fix it up,” she said still laughing. She cut away the rest of the shirt away and bandaged my wound. Both of us knew I would not need the bandage by the next morning but it still cut down on the mess at the time.
After I was fixed up we continued on to the tunnel and went back to the barracks. The entire time she would not stop harassing me about the look on my face when she had the gun pointed at me. It was not as amusing to me.
When we got back to the barracks I got a new shirt and we went to make our report. We reported what happened and were given the order to rest.
These sweeps continued for a few days before the commander and the reenforcements’ leader decided that al of the zombies had been drawn into the city and most of those had been killed. After that we were given new orders to sweep the city in teams.
I was sent out on an afternoon sweep. We had almost finished the sweep when it started to rain. We continued the sweep until my team leader decided the weather was to bad. We were told to go into a nearby building.
We went into the building and cleared the ground floor. When we did not find anything we split into two groups and one went upstairs to make sure no zombies where up there and the rest, including myself, went down stairs. The basement was cleared when one of the of the team found a door leading to a sub basement. The team went to the door and as I was going to the door I heard a creaking.
That was went the floating sensation kicked in, and then the falling sensation and then the landing. The landing was the worst part. I did not land on the floor, I landed on top of a zombie.
That woke the whole group up. Suddenly I was surrounded by zombies.
“Aa guys, some help here please!” I yelled up through the hole as I tried to fight off zombies. My recently drawn sword in one hand and my gun in the other. Some went down before my six shooter ran out of bullets.
I continued to fight off anything that came near me. The problem was that most of the zombies were so badly injured before I got there that they were crawling on the ground attacking my feet. The plus side to this is that I can step on them and kill them, the down side was they were attacking my legs.
Solaris started to throw fire down from above. The zombies his fire hit lit up like old dry firewood. The zombies just kept coming and coming. The rest of the team shot down the hole, zombies fell left and right but yet they still came. I started to shift, and that helped me fight longer but they still were overwhelming me.
Eventually I passed out from blood lose and exhaustion.
When I came to I was on a bed, with IVs and wires attached to me. I looked around and saw that I was in the medical room of the barracks. I had survived.
“Marrok, you are up. Good.” Solaris said to me. “You have been out for only a few hours. The doctors said the only reason you survived is because of you being a shifter. You have to stay in bed for a few days but they say you’ll be fine.”
The next day I was able to go. They were a little bit surprised but they realized it was because of my shifter nature. I was a freak even among my kind.
The day after that I was told I had a new short term assignment at an outpost deep in the woods. I was being assigned to a post near one of Gorgon Head’s training facilities. I was getting three months of intense training and deep wood work. I figured it would be a great few months.
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