The Battle For Blogland Chapter 7: The City

I actually finished it. Surprise, surprise.
Death next chapter. Probably. Either next chapter or the one after.
Also, question! Does anyone actually listen to the themes posted here, or just skip to the chapter?

Theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PRfDJQY_Y8
Buried Alive by Avenged Sevenfold
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7

THE CITY

Ivy, Gabriel and Johanna led us through the city with a hurried pace. No one said anything. Or perhaps they had, but it was impossible to tell due to the volume the storm was roaring at. We were led through ruins of things that resembled streets with ruins of things that resembled buildings crushed around us with ruins of things that resembled things that may have once been human bones. Any buildings that were actually still standing anywhere were decayed, covered in filth and looked on the verge of crumbling to join their brothers and sisters. All this really did was reinforce the assumption that we had basically grasped when we first saw the city; that nothing could possibly be living here.

Lightning struck, thunder roared, and all the while the rain that felt like needles against our flesh cascaded down on us with ferocity and brutality. With the three in the lead, we hurried on through the haze of rain and waste of city. Ivy, Gabriel and Johanna looked from one side of the crumbled street to the other and after a few minutes, I saw Johanna whisper something to Ivy and point at a stump of a building. I saw ‘whisper’, but really, she had probably yelled and only just heard by Ivy. That’s how loud the rain was, the thunder was. Ivy looked over to the building and we changed direction, heading right. Evidently, they knew the city well. We ran through the ruined city for maybe two more minutes before Ivy stopped in mid step, holding up a hand to signal we do the same. She glanced left and we saw Gab check right.

That’s when the howling started.

All at once we had to clamp our hands over our ears as tightly as possible in an almost laughable attempt to block out the horridly new sound that accompanied the rain and the thunder. Splitting, howling wind, insanely loud. And with the sound, also came what it had to be. We were almost blown off our feet with the force of it, and the rain was thrown in every direction imaginable, no longer moving as one, but separate drops, that were by this point more like pins, flying everywhere, no pattern clear. The fact that we had almost been swept away by wind may have meant something if the sound that could now be described as shrieking was not so loud. It was soon threatening to burst our eardrums. And this was all in a mere handful of moments.

After all this registered, the three up ahead moved, throwing themselves back into a desperate sprint against the wind that looked too futile to be entirely a cliché. Each at our own different moments of realisation, the rest of us joined them, trying desperately to charge forwards, assisted by the wind pushing at our backs, opposed by the wind blowing us from the front. And all the while, the force battered us from every other direction as well.

I still don’t know how we managed it, but by some miracle we managed to move quickly after a few seconds of struggle. It may have been added assistance by panic and fear of what would happen next if we didn’t run. I don’t know. But either way, we managed to move, almost killing ourselves in the process. Finally, after an incredibly painful ten seconds, we pulled to the right again, having travelled only three metres, and Ivy staggered down an open staircase that led into nothing but darkness, quickly followed by Johanna, Gabriel, and then all of us.

Out of breath, windswept and exhausted, we collapsed into the dark space that the end of the stairs provided and all light was cut off entirely as whoever was last to enter pulled the trapdoor that was the entrance shut.

For a few minutes, there were only the sounds of every person in the small room attempting to get their breath back. And then, when that passed, someone asked the question in a raspy voice devoid of energy.

“What was that?”

The voice was unrecognisable at that point, but Gabriel’s reply was distinguishable.

“Wind,” he muttered.

Someone flicked a switch, and dim light flooded the room, illuminating what little of the space there was.

The room we had cascaded into was pretty much a dank cellar. The floor and walls were steel, somehow not rusting, and there were a few lights above us accompanied with multiple streams of red, blue and green wiring that fed into the next wall. There was a small sack stuffed in one corner and two buckets of what was probably water in another. Outside, the wind had reached a new high and the howling could be heard clearly, even in the cellar which seemed to actually dampen most sound from above.

Time lost meaning after a while, and we sat there for who knows how long. No one spoke, no one moved. We all just sat there, staring at the steel ground, listening to the howls from above. I don’t know how long it was before Sparky asked the first question, but I think it was a relief to finally have something to do.

“How did we get here so quickly?” she asked openly to any of the three who had led us to the city. “I thought you said it takes days before we even reach the desert.”

“It does,” Johanna nodded, her voice slightly hoarse from lack of use. “The way we came to start with. But that route wasn’t a straight path. We kind of wandered around for a while, and then we got lost.”

“We didn’t get lost,” Ivy interrupted. “I don’t get lost, remember? I’m me.”

“So we got here early by chance?” Lynxia asked.

“Pretty much,” answered Gabriel. “Although, I wasn’t leading.”

“That’s because I knew where to go,” Ivy spoke up again. “Because I don’t get lost. Because I’m me.”

“What’s that up there?” Nixion asked. “What happened?”

“It’s wind,” repeated Gab, unhelpfully.

“But what happened?”

Johanna explained in full detail. Ever since the three arrived in the city, they have basically had to find really good protection and shelter every day for three hours or more. At approximately five in the afternoon, which they judged by the position of the sun, the winds would start. Slow at first, but they would very quickly escalate into what we had experienced above ground before tumbling into the cellar. After the winds had picked up, the hurricanes/tornadoes would start. Dozens of them, ripping apart what’s left of the city. They mostly just scatter the ruins of it, though.

When Star asked about why they referred to them as such, Johanna answered that they actually spin both ways. It’s like two of them in exactly the same place, moving in the same path, but spinning different directions. Anything that isn’t thrown away by the things are usually sucked up by them and are torn apart by the clashing speed of the two directions.

Then Gab took over and said that while they weren’t taking cover from the hurricane/tornado things, they were exploring the city. They had been searching primarily for food and water but decided pretty quickly that there was really nothing living there.

It soon became obvious that every place they visited that was still standing had wires running through the place, and it didn’t look like it was for electricity. Even the ruins of the buildings held remains of wires.

Then Ivy grinned at told us that every building still standing was rigged with explosives.

The next few hours were spent in divided conversations and sleep. Since we had nothing to do until the winds died down, most of us used this chance to talk to closer friends about things that they felt like. In fact, it could almost have been like it was back in Central. …If it weren’t for the obvious differences of being locked in a small, dark room with missing friends and the sounds of howling winds and destruction above us.

Others used this time to finally catch up on some much needed sleep. Nixion’s large supply of energy seemed to have burnt out entirely now, and he was leant against a corner, away from everyone and clutching his machete tight as he rested. Sparky sat against a wall, mostly apart from people with her eyes closed, impossible to tell if she was awake or asleep. I was against a wall as well, not bothering to sleep but not bothering to talk either. It seemed I had talked very little in the past few days, but felt no desire to change that. And I felt that sleep would not do me much good, for some reason. The tiredness I felt was not one that could simply be cured by time and rest.

It took four hours for the winds to die down. By that time Nixion had reawaken and Sparky had opened her eyes and the two of them simply decided to stare numbly at the ground. Flame had moved next to Sparky, but conversation between them was non-existent. Ivy had been amusing herself by flicking small stones she had found on the ground at people. Lavender, Star and Lynxia had all been talking quietly for the past few hours and Johanna and Gabriel sat around near them, only occasionally joining in in the conversation.

No one said anything once the winds from above were no longer audible. We all stared up at the trapdoor and staircase, waiting for someone else to make the first step towards the exit. After five more minutes, Ivy eventually did, and we all followed her up the staircase. When the trapdoor was opened, it was obvious that the winds were still there, but the majority of it had died down. There was enough wind left to blow our hair to a certain direction, but it wasn’t much. So we each climbed out of the room and looked around the broken city. And the sight that us struck anger and fear back into us.  

To be fair, not much had really changed. There were a few more destroyed buildings, but only a few. The road seemed to be further cracked than before, but otherwise everything looked the same. Well, everything was in different places now, but the damage rate of the city didn’t seemed to have changed much at all.

But that wasn’t what had made us worry.

The thing that had made us worry was the insane number of Hollow Men that surrounded the entire outskirts of the city.

And they were closing in once again.