Risen World

Chapter 35: The Big Bosses Arrive

The scene on the TV was the same as last time, at least for the most part. A chair behind a desk with old school furniture and book shelves in the background. The major difference was what could be seen from the window. Unlike before where it was a nice scenic view, now there was a purple haze slowly drifting in the direction of the building they were broadcasting from. There were some zombies moving ahead of the haze as if to scout the path the haze was moving in. All of these changes put everyone in the chat room on high alert. Several people were shocked at how fast the haze was moving while many others were begging for help to get out of their own horrible situations.

It took a few minutes before a sound of footsteps could be heard coming from the screen. Soon the woman they were all familiar with entered the frame of the camera and quickly walked over to take a seat at the desk. Her appearance was more haggard than usual. Her hair was messy, there were signs of purple blood on her clothes and dirt and scratches could be seen all over here skin. Even now she was trying to calm her harsh breathing down before starting her speech. The entire scene was disheartening for all who were watching. The chat room became filled with words of concern or questions of what was going on. It was in that moment that she began to speak.

"I wish I could have come up here under better circumstances, but as you can see things have gotten far worse." Sarah said as she kept her eyes on the camera in front of her. She tried to keep a calm expression, but the sounds of fighting nearby could be heard in the background. It was coming from outside the room, but the occasional human screams were very unsettling. "In the past couple of hours there has been a great change in the rate at which the purple miasma has been spreading. What would have taken two weeks for the miasma to spread it can now cover in a few days' time. Not only that there are large amounts of zombies moving ahead of the spreading miasma and they attack anything within site. You can look out the window behind me to see that taking effect."

While she took a step out of the way of the camera for a moment, someone picked it up and walked over to the window so that the viewers could get a better look at what was happening outside. What they saw was not pleasant. They could see several traps set on the open field in front of the building. The tall grass was able to hide some of the smaller traps, but the giant dug up holes and the quickly put together spiked barricades were impossible to conceal. There were several men and a few women standing behind the barricade with either spears or bows at the ready to defend themselves.

On the other side there was what looked like a giant hoard filled with thousands of zombies moving ahead of the purple mist. Some were charging full steam ahead as they had seen the people in front of them, there instincts taking full control. Others continued to shamble unknowingly right outside the haze that was slowly closing in on the area. When the zombies started charging into the first traps, it was like a signal for all of the people to start their attacks. There was a rain of arrows gliding through the air towards the targets. What surprised most people in the room was that along with the arrows were several weird attacks that seemed unexplainable. Lighting flew through the air at one point, a giant bolder seemed to be ripped from the ground at another. All sorts of magical looking attacks started to move towards the hoard along with the arrows.

It was at this moment that the cameraman moved back to his original position and focused back on Sarah. "As you can see our original position has been compromised. Soon we will have to leave, but we're trying to hold up long enough for us to gather the necessary supplies beforehand." She said as the camera man quickly turned to look out another window to the side that showed several people carrying bags full of food or other useful supplies at a rushed pace.

"The miasma is pushing a wave of zombies from the people killed in cities out into the rest of the world. This isn't just the city here, but will also happen all around the world though that's not what I'm most worried about. As many of you should have heard there was another case of the loud ringing sound that occurred before this massive event started. That noise was not random or pointless, it was in fact the signal for the awakening of the beings at the center of the sources." Sarah stopped as the picture on the screen changed for a moment to a recording that was taken from atop a sky scrapper in what everyone assumed was a major city.

The recording started off clouded by the purple haze for the most part, even with whoever was taking it being several stories high above the haze. The person zoomed in and out as he looked around the cityscape. You could see several buildings sticking out of the mist below and occasionally you could see people on top of the buildings waving towards each other. From the fact that the only sound coming from the video was the heavy winds from the high heights it was obvious that the people on the buildings were being as quiet as possible. The reason became clear when the camera passed by the top of a building with several zombies walking around listlessly on the roof. There were signs of blood and broken windows all over the building showing that it had at one point been filled with normal people.

It was in that moment that a loud roaring sound shook the buildings so hard that several of the glass windows cracked or shattered at the bellow. It was a deep reverberating noise that traveled far seeing as the source was a ways away from where the video was being recorded. The camera turned in the direction and zoomed in as much as it could without completely ruining the quality of the video. The spot that it was zooming in on was a building that was only a few floors above the haze with several people on the top that were panicking and waving for help.

It was in that moment that a giant tentacle like protrusion flew out of the haze below and slammed into the top of the building. The loud impact was so strong that the man filming nearly fell on to his butt from the shaking it caused. When the camera man got back on steady feet and turned back to the site, the building was starting to lean down into the thick clouds of haze as the tentacle was followed by two more that seemed to be pulling the building towards the source. Several people were falling off the building and screaming as they disappeared into the haze below. Some people tried to run to the other side of the building and jump off to avoid whatever was pulling it down, but several smaller tentacles reached out of the haze from below and grabbed these poor souls out of the air.

In that moment everything seemed to go quiet for a split second as an enormous mass popped out of the haze below. It was a giant mouth that looked similar to that of a squid. The inside was filled with several rows of teeth that seemed to be covered in dark purple saliva that hissed whenever stray rocks from the crumbling building fell on to it. The enormous mouth bit off the top of the building that it had pulled down towards it leaving the rest to collapse to ground below. Not soon after it had let go of the collapsing structure a loud crashing sound could be heard before a cloud of dust exploded out from the haze and rose into the air.

It was sickening to think of how many people had just gotten eaten. The people that were visible were the ones on the roof, but there could have been even more on the floors below that had been above the haze. The massive mouth made several loud crunching noises as it ground up both people and ruble alike. It didn't seem to care about feeding itself and only seemed to be in it for the fun sense it aloud several of the people that had fallen earlier disappear into the haze below most likely to die from the fall.

When the monster opened its mouth again this time it seemed to let out a deep humming sound as if it were laughing before lifting up some of its captors above its wide open mouth. Soon it was tossing them in one at a time like candies, each one screaming as they fell into the monsters stomach. When it came to the last one of its captors the creature lifted up a struggling woman who seemed to have the ability to turn her body completely into stone. She was tearing away at the tentacle that had grabbed her and putting up as much of a fight as possible.

At first it seemed like she was making progress on breaking free, but when the camera zoomed in a bit more you could see that all of her efforts were being made pointless by how fast the tentacles would regrow itself. Each chunk she pulled off would grow back within a couple of seconds making it all seem hopeless to everyone watching. The monster below once again seemed to let out an amused humming sound as it merely held the crazed woman above its waiting mouth. For a while it just held her there while it seemed to make its tentacle bounce up in down as if playing with its food. Then in a flash the tentacle moved so fast that nobody could track it. There was a crashing sound before the tentacle came back into place with the woman knocked out and was suspended in the air limply. Her stone skin had reverted back to normal and you could see blood dripping from her head and a mangled arm that seemed to be broken.

Then things grew quiet once again as the tentacle released the woman and she fell into the waiting mouth below. With one last chomp the mouth closed and slowly faded back into the haze below. All the tentacles that were once visible quickly followed suit and faded away as well. The camera seemed to be frozen in place for a minute or so as you could hear the person holding it sobbing to his self. It was in that moment that he turned the camera so that his face was there for everyone to see.

He was a complete mess with dirty hair and scratch marks everywhere showing he had probably been stuck up on the roof of the building for days after surviving in the city. His eyes were red from crying and he still struggled to keep the sobs from alerting the giant monstrosity to his location. He started to mouth "Please help us" into the camera, clearly too afraid to speak out loud. Then the video came to a close and everyone could once again see Sarah sitting in her chair waiting patiently.

"These monsters are what have been woken up by that ringing sound. They are the source of this miasma and from what we can tell impossible for us to kill in our current conditions. It would probably take a nuke to put one of them down and seeing as every major city probably has something similar I doubt it would matter if we could even use them at this point." Sarah closed her eyes for a moment before continuing. "There are things I cannot say, because if I did then I don't know what exactly would happen to me. I have shown you all I can and hope that you all can put the pieces together for what is going on. Now it's time for me to get going and this will probably be the last broadcast we can do like this under the circumstances. We will try to keep the chatroom up for as long as possible, but I don't think we have too much time before we either all die or put this to an end."

Sarah stood up before walking closer to the camera to say one last thing. "I hope someone out there can finish this, otherwise many more people will continue to die. Things will only get worse from here on so I wish you all good luck." It was in that moment that the broadcast shut off. The room was quiet as Joshua took in everything he had seen. He took a deep breath before looking towards the people around him. It was time for an explanation.