Fanfiction ► In The Face of an Angry Night (Resistance Fanfic)

[Virus]

"Angry Night" is told from the point of view of a Russian surviver, years after the Chimeran invasion. He is recalling moments from his childhood during the invasion.

Chapter 1

We stayed in our basement as the gunshots and growls of creatures that were barely human roared above us. I was only 16 at the time, but I remember it perfectly. You don’t forget near death experiences like this. It was around the time they had built the Red Curtain. I was a Russian living in Moscow, the largest city and capital in Russia. They built the Curtain to initiate a blackout from the rest of the world. It was along the European border. My father had been on the building staff. It’s kind of hard to explain what happened after being isolated. Everything just sort of happened. I know the government had something to do with it. They had said the curtain was to stop an anticipated invasion by Europeans. At the time we didn’t even have any clue of the villages destroyed overnight. We actually had no clue until what happened at Kashin. It’s fairly close to Moscow so when we heard of its destruction being the effect of an earthquake, we had a feeling it wasn’t true. We should have felt it right? We were all begging for it not to have been an earthquake, but looking back, oh how I wish it was.

We were in the basement that night. Father had built it. He started building it before leaving to work on the Curtain. He said if the worst should happen, I should take mother, Lilia, and grandmother into it and lock the door. We went down the second we heard the civil defense sirens go off. Father said he would come back. He said he’d come back and protect us. He never came. We stayed in the basement for weeks. We stayed silent most of the time. Lily cried silently. Mother tried to have her hold her breath. If they heard us…we didn’t even know what would happen. Grandmother stayed motionless most of the time. We constantly had to make sure she was still breathing. It was nerve wrecking being down there. I was especially scared. Father had left me in charge of the family. I was the only man left. Grandfather had died long ago, and father was no where to be seen. It was my responsibility. I’ll always regret the things that happened, things that I should have stopped but couldn’t. It was my responsibility, I should have been there. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, father had also kept a ham radio down there. One of the things he told me was a message I should play over it if we needed help. I told him I wouldn’t forget it. I remember it now, but only because I will never forget it after what happened from forgetting it. At the time in the basement, I forgot it.

The basement was a cold, dark, damp cellar. It had concrete walls, a concrete floor, and no windows. It had a metal door separating the basement from the outside world. On the outside, the door was covered with grass so it was unnoticeable, and thank god for that. It was almost as if father knew this would happen, like he foresaw the whole thing. We had one hot plate and a small light bulb that swung from a single piece of string from the ceiling. We tried to limit the use of it; we didn’t know how long it would last. We never all slept at once, because if no one knew the Chimera were in that basement, well we were all gone. Grandmother never stayed up. She was old and frail, and we knew she couldn’t handle it. Lily stayed up rarely, only when mother and I needed our sleep. It always worried me when she was awake. She must have been scared, terrified. I was dying and I was 7 years older than her. I’m sure mother stayed up with her sometimes. I stayed up the most out of all of us. We had a fair supply of water; it was food we lacked in. I tried to convince mother to let me go out and look for something, but she wouldn’t allow it. So, as you can imagine, those weeks spent down there were torture.

I think we had stayed in there for 6 weeks before we decided we had waited long enough. There was no sign that the creatures were still outside. The world had remained silent for days. I don’t remember the exact reason we decided to leave, but I think it was when grandmother started coughing. She had gotten very sick. We tried to make sure she got most of the food, she needed it the most, since she required medical attention. Now she was dying. We knew we would never survive down there, we would all die. We had to go up and see if there was anything we could do to help her. I decided to go out first. I slowly opened the door and peeked outside. I couldn’t recognize Moscow anymore.

 

[Virus]

Chapter 2
It was during the time I first left the basement when I saw my very first Hybrid. When I had left the basement I noticed that Moscow was immersed under 2 feet of snow. There were large buildings and towers in all directions, I couldn’t make out what material they were made of, but they gleamed with an ominous aura that put the very thought in my mind: I won’t make it back. I should have listened to my first instinct and turned back, it would have prevented many unforeseen events that unfolded as a result.

I had been walking in the direction that I thought would lead to the Hospital, it was hard to tell with the extreme change of scenery. The hospital was most likely abandoned, and long abandoned. It was quiet. I only heard the wind whistle through the deserted city and my feet crunching in the snow. Suddenly I heard a sound. It was hard to distinguish what exactly it was, but I knew I wasn’t alone. I turned around quickly to catch a glimpse of a Hybrid as it ran into an alleyway. I nearly screamed. If I had, I surely would have been done. At the time I didn’t know what they were capable of, but I would find out soon enough.

I reasoned that there would be more along my way, so I had to move carefully, quickly, and cover my tracks. It was snowing, so my footprints would be filled soon anyway, but I was so terrified I couldn’t wait for that. I ducked down next to an overturned car. At least I thought it was a car. It, too, was covered in snow. I made my way around it hearing nothing but the crushing of the snow. Crush, crush, crush, ccllaannkk. The sound nearly made me jump. I had stepped on something, and it wasn’t snow. I looked down at my feet and wiped some snow off of the gun I had stepped on. Though it wasn’t a real gun, at least not real from our world. It had a large barrel with a static discharge jumping inside it. The electricity was red. I had never seen anything quite like it. It was a Chimeran weapon, of course, but I didn’t know that. I felt it could come in handy so I brought it with me.

I had been trudging for maybe 7 minutes before the hospital, or what was left of it, was within view. But as I started to walk towards it, a pungent odor filled my nostrils. I had never smelled anything quite like this before, and to be frank I’m glad I hadn’t. But in the weeks to come, I would smell it more and more. It was the smell of rotting carcass and decaying bodies. The smell of dried blood and shriveled up organs. It was a smell I will never forget, and always regret, as some of those dead bodies I encountered over the next few weeks were my fault. Two, to be exact.

Most of the hospital had been burned down. The red cross on the sign was now black from soot and ash. What was once one of the tallest building in Moscow now lay in a rubble heap. I just needed the right medicine to help grandmother. She used to take pills once a day. I tried to remember the name of them. In the distance there was a sound like heavy machinery. I heard it moving closer so I jumped into a pile of debris and hid. I had never seen anything quite as large as this before. This goliath towered overhead, probably taller than the hospital that once stood. I hadn’t learned its name until I left Russia: Goliath. It was worthy of such a name. It suddenly stopped as it passed the hospital. It slowly turned so it was facing west, facing me. The beast lowered itself very easily as two rocket-like objects shot out the top of this piece of scrap metal. I couldn’t see the rockets up close, but I saw that they were holding something. Little did I know that these “rockets” would land in two highly populated European cities: Paris, France, and Berlin, Germany. Little did I also know that these weren’t rockets, and that these two cities would face a fate like Moscow itself.

Long after the beast had moved along and I was sure it was safe to come out, I came out. I had had enough excitement for one day. I terribly missed mother, and I knew if I stayed outside the basement much longer I would die. I grabbed the first package of pills I could find and made my way back to the basement. Mother wasn’t exactly happy I brought back a gun.

Two weeks later grandmother died. We never found out if it was from her taking the wrong type of pills or if the pills had nothing to do with it. But weeks after her death, I woke to the same pungent smell I smelled at the hospital. Rotting carcass. My own grandmother’s. Lilia cried every time she awoke and saw grandmother lying there, lifeless. We knew we would end up like her if we stayed there much longer. It was time to leave the basement for good. A part of me believed that we would all be ok, that we would survive as we escaped our doomed city, but a larger part, the part that haunted me daily, believed that we wouldn’t end up happy. We would end up dead, or worse. And wouldn’t you know, that’s exactly what happened.

 

[The Dream]

Wow thats pretty good but why is it in the fan fic section rather than the creative writing?

 

[sand_drew]

It's a Resistance fan fic...

And it is good

 

[Virus]

yeah...its based on a videogame....and thank you

 

[Virus]

Chapter 3
In retrospect we probably could have gone on a few more days in that basement. And though it would pain me so, we could live off our late grandmother. Cannibalism, something that I would never resort to no matter what the circumstances are. But it was probably the best thing we could have done. The whole rest of the journey had a lot of stupid mistakes. Probably the stupidest was when we saw that the new shiny structure was the safest place to go to.

I later learned they were called “Conversion Centers” and it’s a **bleep** good thing we weren’t caught in it. Though we almost did, I thank the heavens Lilia’s still small and can hide behind small objects. God knows what would have happened if those things saw her. But I’m getting ahead of myself. We had trudged in the snow for maybe 5 minutes before she was quaking with fear. She started to cry. She tried her best to hold her tongue and make as little noise as possible. I looked at mother. She had lost weight. Her face was all skin and bones now. And dirt, we were all dirty. But two lines of water that ran down from my mother’s eyes down to her chin cleaned up a good portion of that dirt. It kind of hurt me to see my mother crying. I knew that I had to do my best to keep them both safe and bring them somewhere far away. Maybe London, or even New York. I had always wanted to go to America. Father promised he’d take me some day. That promise was beginning to look more and more like it wouldn’t be kept.

Mother was carrying the ham radio from the cellar and I was carrying the gun. Lilia was holding my free hand and using her other hand to wipe the tears from her eyes. We approached a large building and stopped at a corner. I told mother and Lilia to wait behind and I’d go make sure the coast was clear. I turned the corner and looked both to the right and to the left. To the right I saw a small group of Chimera. To my left I saw a Stalker camp. Ahead was the Conversion Center. I nearly cried seeing this, realizing that that was the only place left for us to go. I motioned for mother to follow with Lilia. I stopped them and explained that there was danger to our right, and danger to our left. Then I showed them the Conversion Center and explained that we would have to travel straight through it. Lilia burst into tears and ran back around the building. She dug her face in the snow to hide the sound of her wailing. I heard some snow crunching behind me. I turned and saw a Chimera walking our way. As far as I knew, it had no idea of our presence. Mother saw it too. She told Lilia she had to be quiet and keep her eyes closed. The Chimera didn’t look like it was turning. It was coming straight for us. The crunching got louder and louder until I was sure he was around the corner of the building. I spun around and shot the gun at it. A bolt of red electricity shot out of my gun and struck it as it fell into the snow.

This one was unarmed, but man was it ugly. It looked almost human. I think it had been moving something. That’s a menial job if you ask me, and rightly so. We covered it up quickly and I took Lilia on my back. I ran around the building and sprinted to another building across the road, careful not to attract the attention of the two nearby Chimeran groups. I was terrified. Mother was running behind me. The Conversion Center was maybe two hundred paces ahead, and we crossed every inch of that with no trouble. Getting in was a piece of cake too. It was getting out that was going to be tough. If what I held in my hands was a Chimeran gun, then they have technology on their sides that none of us had even known existed. If we were caught, we were as good as dead.

We walked with little resistance through the Conversion Center, which only made me suspicious of where they were and what they were doing. It was then that we passed the Conversion Hall, and I’ll never forget the day I realized that father was never going to take me to New York and the horrific foreshadowing of what was to come. In the hall we saw tubes to the left of us, tubes to the right, tubes below, tubes above. We saw glass cages with little bugs in them. We saw cocoons down the hall, and we saw large mechanical arms hatching and grabbing these newly formed Chimera and attaching something to their backs. We walked down the hall and Lilia was trailing behind. She was mesmerized by the tubes. It seemed like they all had a human in them, except for about two, but I expected those to be filled soon. And it was no shock to me when they were filled. Suddenly Lilia burst into tears and ran forward ahead of us to the cocoons and punched them with every ounce of breath she had in her. Her cries echoed slightly and when we heard the footsteps echo back, we were sure we were all dead.

Lilia held her breath and ducked down behind a cocoon. The creature growled as it searched high and low for her. He began to slowly pass the cocoon she was hiding behind. Mother dashed out to save her but I held her back. Lilia held her breath as she began to shimmy to the other side of the cocoon. We were all holding our breaths at this point. As the Chimera began walking away, Lilia got up and ran into mother’s arms. She was still crying as mother held her, rocking back and forth while promising it’s going to be alright. But no, it wasn’t going to be alright. And I finally understood that when I saw what made Lilia burst like that. Back down the hall was another tube. Inside was a man. He was shirtless. He had scars on his back and chest and a big gash up his leg. The face, though slightly scratched and scarred, was familiar. “It’s going to be alright, I promise.” And looking upon that face I realized never to believe in promises. Promises aren’t real. Promises have no value. Promises are lies. And you should hate every promise you hear.

Even the ones your father tells you.

 

[Organization_42]

WOW. This story is really good and definitely needs more love. The style and tone sound like the set-up to a Resistance game (without Sgt. Hale, that is) and I like how it's being told from another country and another person's perspective. The chapters are short, but well-written and and they held my attention. Keep up the good work!