"Outbreaks. They are fucking terrifying."
- Survivor from a Minor Outbreak (2035)
I froze.
Time seemed to move slower with each passing moment. As if my eyes had suddenly started lagging behind my consciousness. A blink felt like an eternity, and every thought running through my head felt like a burning flame.
"...Shi-!" I couldn't even finish my swear.
The forming void in the middle of the street seemed to be growing larger and larger, losing its shape very similar to a festering wound in reality. With my concussed brain working at half-capacity, I turned around and started running, or rather stumbling, towards Bill's place. I needed to go get him. Roach far away to have time to run, but Bill had a peg leg and the old man could barely move around the block without hurting himself. I had to get him the fuck out of here.
But where? That was not an issue right now. All that my fucked up, and bleeding, brain could think of was running to Bill's bar and getting him the fuck out of this district before we were quarantined due to the dungeon being open in the middle of it. Hunters would take anywhere between fifteen minutes to several hours to come and jump into the gates to clean up, so we didn't have a chance of survival even if we managed to hide from the waves of monsters that would soon be swarming every building to consume every single thing in sight.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I stumbled across the street and started sprinting. My head felt light, and my legs heavy, but I couldn't stop now.
I couldn't afford to breathe properly neither, so I was getting really fucking tired with each few steps I managed. Forcing myself to sprint the remaining blocks until I finally reached the Bar. Luckily Bill had yet to fully close, so I just rammed myself through the semi-open door to find Bill behind the bar, looking at me with a confused expression on his face.
"Sup, brat. You're really fucking early, ain't ya? How abou-" I ran towards him and slapped the glass jug he had on his hands aside, there was no time.
"Shut the fuck up and start running, there's a dungeon like four blocks away! Run the fuck away!"
"Wha-what the fuck are ye talking about, brat? What do you-" He looked over at the broken jug that laid on the ground, but he was interrupted by the ground itself rumbling like a hungry beast. We didn't really have the fucking time to do this.
"There is no fucking time, old man! We have to run!" Before he could protest, I used my remaining strength to get a hold of his thick wrist and started pulling him towards the busted door. My shoulder was hurting like hell again, but the adrenaline of this all seemed to be doing its work.
Once we exited the bar Bill saw the opening gates of doom that laid not too far away, still yet to be fully open, I could catch a glimpse of the things that were waiting on the other side, impatient to destroy everything in sight. He stopped complaining then, the real threat seemingly starting to settle in that stubborn head of his.
"See what I'm talkin' about? We have to fucking run! Evacuation route is....is..." The colour around me started to drain from my eyes, my head felt really fucking heavy and that burning sensation at the back of it was slowly growing slower. I was running out of blood.
"Hey, hey brat! Don't you fucking dare die without paying next month's rent! Come on, the undercity is close, let's hide in there." Before I could even tell him that the evacuation route was to the west side he dragged me with him, at that painfully slow pace of his, into the entrance to the undercity. A lower level only accessible to gangs and murderers, one of which was Bill the Butcher. Really old name around these parts, and by that I meant really fucking old.
He dragged me through the tight alleyways as the ground rumbled in tighter spans of time, clearly growing hungrier with each moment the gates took to open. At the rate we were going they were going to catch us before we even reached the tunnels below, so I forced my body to move, helping Bill to walk faster down the ridiculously long set of stairs.
"Brat, let me do the movin', ye got a massive fuckin' hole in yer head." He said between ragged breaths, he was clearly more tired than I was, and I was the one with a fucking hole in my scalp.
"Shut...the fuck up....And keep...walking...." I could barely feel my body, it felt numb, like little tiny ants were biting me all over. My eyelids felt heavy, and I had to consciously breath in and out or otherwise I would've just collapsed right there and then.
After what felt like ages walking, we finally made it to the tunnels. A shit ton of panicked and injured people were already in there, no surprise, but from our point of view it looked like the entire population of the slums was already halfway into the tight spaces. We were gonna run out of place soon enough, but I needed some bandages and Bill needed to fucking breathe.
We headed towards what seemed like a makeshift infirmary. Talk all the shit you want about the criminals and people down here, but at the very least the street docs were nice enough to patch you up before robbing you blind, so they were about to get filthy rich from this outbreak alone, if they survived and no scorn made its way down the tunnels that is.
"Here, let me see what I can do for you." The man that received me and Bill had one of those fancy and growl-ish voices, real nice on the ears. He helped me to a blanket that was emptied recently, another dude just got shanked a few minutes before the outbreak, didn't make it by the looks of the bloodstains on the ground.
How could I tell it was bloodstains? I couldn't, but hopefully I wasn't laying down in someone else's piss. Anyway, the street doc put on a pair of gloves and started to have a look, took a pair of pincers and removed the shards of glass that were still stuck around the wound. A bottle had been broken on my head, so I was lucky to have survived with a simple concussion and some minor blood loss on my way down here.
"Fuck-" I exclaimed in pain as the street doc took out the last shard, taking some sort of foam dispenser and applying it to the open wound. It felt like I was being burnt alive.
"Language." He retorted. At the very least he had a sense of humour given the situation.
It took a bit to bandage my head, but there was little he could do about the lack of blood in my body, so he just gave me back to Bill and told us to stay awake before another injured person was laid on the blanket and he was busy again. Bill seemed to have paid the bits necessary for the care, thank fucking God he had some on him still.
"Alright, where do we go now?" Bill asked me. For the first time in my short life I saw nothing but fear in his eyes, it was...Frightening.
"I have no idea." I replied, looking around us. The undercity slowly started to fill up from all sorts of entrances, and all we could do was wait for a Hunter to appear and deal with the monsters that were soon to follow.
My head started to hurt again, but this time it felt like a guttural throb. Like things were happening where they shouldn't. My eyes slowly started to regain colour, but it faded again soon enough. Maybe the pain was making me see or feel things...Yeah, surely that must be it.
Me and Bill spent the rest of the night sitting side by side on one of the corners close to the west entrance we used, hoping that the massive waves of people would come with good news soon enough. That some Hunter would show up, despite Athenea being very well known for its lack of any major players.
"It had to be us huh?" Someone said as they walked by.
I couldn't help but agree. It had to be us.
