Grabbing a rifle off the rack, pulling at it until it snapped loose from its metal housing, Jacinto kicked at the dead men below him, clearing a space. He sat down there, near the gun, holding himself up with his elbows, and then crawling backwards until he was near the concrete opening. Yelling eminated from outside, out in the wastes behind him, and as he finally put his back to concrete, he heard the banging of metal, the scratching of blades on glass, and then a shattering, barking, of a dog, and screaming of a man damaged. They had opened the bunker door and were looting his truck. The commotion outside went on. Good, Jacinto thought. Yes, take the truck in. The men outside yelled about a dog and a man, Truman and Daisy, and of weapons. Squeals of joy followed their orders. Jacinto had enough ammunition there to start world war four. As the bunker-men outside turned their attention onto how to get the cache inside, Jacinto turned his to the bulk door before him. It was quiet. No more banging, no firing of weapons or screams of hate. They were planning something.

On the other side of the bulkhead, the bunker-people, men and women, all clutching tightly their pistols, hammers, shotguns and assault rifles, watched the bulkhead door. They knew their man inside, the ill-repute Jacinto, knew he had come back to raise hell, or con them again, or kill their beloved resident ghoul who they trusted all too well, or some sort of trouble. They knew trouble always followed Jacinto. Some, the young, quick-witted, still in old-wear millitary outfit and kit, kept their rifles and pistols trained at the door, at the latches ready to shoot them out, or at, premptively, Jacinto. Their eyes sharp, all brows lowered, in a marksman's stance, poised for combat. They sweat profusely, awaiting victory or death. Radios on their belts chirped with bouts of static, irregular pvssyr. The middle aged and old men, some women too, stood or sat, some smoking cigarettes, some not, some spitting and conversing to each other, some stoic and waiting with quiet intent, but all rifles and pistols either at their feet or slung lazily about their person on straps, or in holsters. Almost everyone, though, of the fifty-odd people in that gunnery room, all staring at that bunker door, were quiet, and if spoken people, spoken softly. One muscular man, an odd out, stood in the corner of the room, away from the crowd, pale skin (just like the rest of them) and long, grey beard. His greying hair was slicked back with grease, and he fiddled with his beard with two fingers. The other hand lay still, tensing to grab a sledgehammer that stood upside-down, but standing, at his toes. Another odd out, a young kid, about seventeen, sat on a chair behind the crowd, overlooking it from behind a terminal. He wept silently, but shrill, and clutched his knee, blood running down his leg. A small pistol lay on the desk in front of him, near the terminal's keyboard. A ricochet had kneecapped him.

These people were all dressed in pre-war garb. Most of them were wasteland virgins.

In the rear of the room, past everyone, active terminals requisitioned for the two guns' targeting systems hummed with blue light and coolant fans. Terminals on them fed to wiring, and the wiring snaked into the concrete walls, following an unseen path. To the right of the terminal hub, was a large steel door, several pneumatic hinges on it, and with a stained-glass porthole in the center. The porthole design was of Icarus, the ancient who flew too close to the sun. Above the insignia lay in industrial stamp text: MAGAZINE ACCESS - FIREARMS PROHIBITED. The door led out of the room. The place, when observed on a whole run, looked like mission control at NASA. The men and women in the control room stood as they were, stoic and tense. The few light fixtures inside filled the area with dim yellow light.

The icarus door hissed. Pistons on it moved up and down rapidly, and compressed air escaped it, distorting the din of the room. Six latches on either side flipped open, and with a mechanical whirr, the door slid upwards into it's receptacle. All the people in the control room turned around to meet this event, some of them beginning to hold a salute, all of them lowering their weapons and becoming more relaxed. A few stayed turned towards the door, they knew already who was entering the room. Beyond the open door was dark, brooding, foreboding. It was quiet except for, just before the figures appeared, heavy mechanical plodding on the floor plates of the hall before them. The source of the noise emerged first. On the right, a man. With a pale expression, dark-skinned and heavy set, his legs whirred and clicked as he surveyed the group in front of him. His fat swayed with each movement, and his thick chest hair was wet with sweat. He was dirty. Smeared with grease and dirt that clung to him, the man had seen better days. His legs though, always drew attention. They were three-toed, with hoses and wires running all about their frame. They terminated just before his hips, with plating running all up the front ends. The knee joints were caked with grease to keep them moving freely, thick, dark stuff. His shins and feet were the same, the toes ending in talons so sharp they elevated him, cutting into the floor. He had no privates. Where his reproductive suite would be, just stood more metal plating. Where his ass would have been, a wire with a ceramic terminal jutted out, sending one long coil of red copper running up his back, his neck, wrapping around his head partially, and into an empty eye socket. Little exposed peices of plating splintered out around his cheekbones, his chin. His one good eye moved around the area. Everyone in the room stood quiet. Clipped by magnets to one of his legs was a big revolver of undeterminable make, the barrel the size of a closed fist.

The man was a cyborg.


-----

Well, that was a long wait, but i'm back. I have full intentions to see the damn thing through.

Quickly to the left of the doorway, stepped another man out of the darkness, stopping in line with the cyborg, looking at him briefly, and then turning his own attention to the crowd. This man was light skinned, almost pale white, completely washed out. His hair was bleached, slightly green albeit, combed into a pompadour, and he was staring into the crowd with the same blank expression on his face as the other man, with one eye missing as well, but in place of this one, instead of wires and coil and connectors, lay a single, small lens, retracting and spinning every second, making small, soft mechanical clicking with each second that passed. On his temples were vents that blew with the small humming of fans. He was shirtless as well, wearing tight, black leather pants, just as dirty as the other man. A leather strap wormed around his chest in a diagonal shape, coming to an end in two small chains that connected to a tube lashed across his back, held tightly to his form. The tube was sealed and was all steel, with no windows or switches to speak of, no obvious way of opening it either. The man stood, face set, body tight, clenching his fists and stretching his neck back and forth. He too had exposed steel on his face, with one key difference; his mouth was covered with a steel vent. He did not normally speak. Instead, out of the vent, came the sounds of a barely audible, gurgling geiger counter. This man too, was also a cyborg.

They parted shape, letting a path form inbetween each of their imposing figures. Out of the threshold stepped a third person. It was a woman. She was thin, but shapely, and carried with her the scent of the wasteland. Stale, pungent, sun-bleached. She looked up, her eyes turning from her cyborg companions to the crowd. She was black, dark skinned, with a shaved head and two beautiful, brown eyes. Her lashes batted, her plump lips kissed the air, a long, thin, lit cigarette hanging precariously balanced inbetween them. She looked at these people from behind a large brimmed hat half on her head, the hat tattered, burned at the edges, it seemed to surrvive much more than its owner had. The rest of her outfit was coarse, leather straps and braids, and her shirt being skin from some sort of animal, the sleeves on it ragged and long, almost like a robe, going down to her hands, with a vest shape making up the rest of it. Her pants were metal plated in the front, the knee joints made flexible, made out of the same material as the top. her boots were black, plated too, and laced up too tightly. The weak material on them cringed when she moved. In one hand she held a radio, and in the other a small, compact laser pistol, the tube on it reduced in size, the barrel shrunk to a small oval, and the handle padded up just enough to allow a hand to grasp it. She moved her tongue and closed her lips, spitting the cigarette out of her mouth, walking while her two cyborgs stood still, angrily into the crowd, waving her pistol around, shoving people out of the way. Some rose up in protest, and she batted them away from her, shoving them, but they did nothing. They all submitted to her, moving out of the way in small groups where they could. The man with the sledgehammer kept his eyes glued to the cyborgs at the door, the kneecapped kid looked at them with horror in his eyes. They did not move. They stayed perfectly, completely still.

The woman finally made it to the door. She ran into it, tripping, slamming the laser pistol up against it, and kicking the latches to open it, trying to lift it, frantically, and with tears in her eyes, she backed away and aimed the pistol at the door, the trigger already at half pull.

At once, the cyborg man, the pompadour one, was in protest. He stomped foward, which made everyone turn in surprise, and he began to speak. It was a deep throaty voice, mechanical in its tone, unemotional, unforgiving. It lacked human quality. With each syllable, the geiger counter that carried his breath drowned out a little more.

"Not a wise course of action, miss. The ricochet."

The woman stopped protesting. The sledge man stood bewildered, and the kneecapped took this break in the action to leave the room. Blood trailed away from where he was to where he was going, his sobs echoing down the magazine's corridor. All at once again, the cyborg with the white hair was back in his motionless rest under the door's threshold, barely parting to let the kid though. The cyborg with the mechanical legs had his hand on his revolver now, but otherwise stood like stone.

The woman looked over her shoulder, lowered the pistol and recomposed herself, and in a thick african accent, yelled for Jacinto.

I found this today after seeing a comment you posted that noone really liked it. heh heh. You're story suffers from the same thing mine does. They are both in a forum where very few care to read anything of substance.

I didn't have time to read it in it's entirety and for that I apologize. I do however, agree with the very first poster who followed your first iteration of this in post one. You seem to be an adept writer with a firm grasp on vocabulary and visualization. I do sense some rushing and lack of editing however. I'm not faultless on this either. Writing a short here wasn't something I wanted to sink a great deal of time into as I have more important things I need to accomplish. It was fun however. There are writing sites that host among other things, fan fic and I believe you'd get a lot more of what you're looking for on one of those. If you are interested simply google "writing forums" and a ton will come up.

If you're planning on attempting publication with non copyright bound manuscripts I'd be interested in reading those and aiding your edit if you're interested.

Cheers.

"JACINTO ! OPEN THIS [censored]TING DOOR NOW !"

She holstered the pistol and kicked the door head on, the treads on her boot connecting with some force. Dust on the door fell off, the concrete around it ebbed, but the door did not budge. The woman stopped and looked at the door, surveyed it, put her eyes into the little cracks and notches in it's framework, and satisfied, stepped back, cracking her knuckles. Raising one leg, she kicked the door again. This time, nothing moved on it. It held fast. She kicked again and again, and the cyborgs in the rear of it all grew uneasy. They both stirred a little, as if to make up their minds to move, but after a few moments of what seemed like deliberation, they stood still once again. The woman turned toward the crowd. She wiped her sweaty forehead with her sleeve, and gained attention by staring them all down. The group put their hands on their rifles and odd weapons again, and stood at attention. For a moment, the room was completely silent. The woman scanned the group, and when she saw the man she was looking for, a young, gaunt blonde man, no more than twenty, she walked up to him and pulled him out of formation by one arm, brought him so close to her she could smell the oil on his face. "I need a situation report, Charlie." She said. The man straightened himself out and snapped to attention, looking into the woman's eyes as she backed away, as she too stood at attention. "M'am." He adressed her shakily, but began to gain more confidence as he spoke on. His knees were shaking. It looked as though he would wet his flight suit. "M'am, we'd have to reorganize. We have a breach on our hands. One man. He jammed the guns by setting up an IR jam, some kind of particle-based explosion. We don't know how he did it, but he won't be pulling any more tricks. His truck is in our motor pool. I was on the radio with Hoss when we pulled it in." He seemed proud of himself for a second, smiling. He stood resolved quickly, though. "Then what ?" Said the woman. "You were just going to let him in ?" She tapped her fingers against her pistol impatiently.

"No m'am. We realized he was in the aft gun compartment. Personnel in there have all been comprimised. He then used the aft gun to take out the starboard one, sealed himself inside when we tried to get to him. He locked the bulkhead. We put some fire on it, but nothing. Just ricochets and wasted ammunition."

The woman had fire in her eyes. She clenched her teeth, set her jaw, The man grew uneasy, looked off to the side. He spoke softly. "M'am...it's Jacinto ? I thought you killed him." The man half shut himself up on his last few words.

"I thought so too" She said. Immediately, She clapped her hands together and spread her feet, surveying the crowd. "Alright. Let's get back to work. Hopper ?"

The man with the sledgehammer in the back stirred. "M'am" He said, lazily. He looked at her with glazed eyes, already weary of why he was being adressed. "Get this door open." Said the woman. "Take the rest of the men from maintenence. Use the torches. No explosives, and don't make a mess out of my Ops room." The man propped himself off of the wall, and grabbed his sledgehammer. He walked with it dragging behind him, and when he came to the cyborgs at the door, he stared right into the eyes of the one with the pompadour. It didn't budge. Hopper grew angry, put his hands on his sledge. "M'am, Please." He said. The woman raised her hand over the crowd and at the cyborg, waved it around in the air as if to say hello. The cyborg stepped to the side, and Hopper walked past. His sledge rolling over the mechanical toe of the other machine man. After he was clear and gone, the woman spoke up again.

"Alright. I want everyone back to work. There's no crew to work the aft, so I want it's targeting system cut. Lock it up, make sure he can't use it to fire on any outside targets. Weld starboard shut, and watch yourselves. He's going to try something, I know it. When Hopper says he's about to crack that [censored] open, I want a full assault team stacked at the door. Until then, buisness as usual. One guy by the door at all times, give him an assault kit, just in case he does something stupid and tries to open the door. Alright ?"

As everyone plodded away to their respective terminals, and as the two cyborgs walked back into the darkness of the magazine hall, back toward from the place they came, a man sitting at his terminal for some moments now shot up and beckoned for the woman. He waved his hands in the air, and several people gathered around him. The woman sighed and walked toward him slowly, taking her time to observe everyone else at their stations. She spoke when in front of the small gathering.

"Yes, operative. What is it ?" She said so dismissively, as if speaking to a peon.

"M'am" He said, with wide eyes. "Jacintos' truck. The motor pool men have something in the back of it they think you should see."

"Cut to it, op. What the [censored] is worth my time ?" She took off her hat and rubbed her head.



"M'am, It's a ghoul. Alive...might be a slave he was transporting."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@poobah: I'll let you know if I come up with anything. I used to have a whole bunch of non fanfic and fanfic stuff on my old comp...but i can't get to its HD anymore. Among of which was a 30 page short story about a group of anarchist bank robbers, and a (currently, it was supposed to be a full novel) 72 page thing on the Seven Hour War of the Half-Life 2 canonical universe. I have promised a group of people i'm very close with down in Texas (an editor i can't disclose, and a person who owns a fairly complex print shop) that i'd send them any potentially lucrative stuff already, but i'll keep an eye out for you too.

I don't have nearly enough time to finish the first page of this thread but from what i read this is going to be a really good fan-fic
i'll try to keep up with what you write =]
keep it up

Honestly, the second I saw that Redsrock had posted here, I kinda lost the will to review. Because really, what can I say that he can't? So I'll just settle for a great story and please continue.

"What ?"

"Yes M'am. A ghoul."

The woman stood in the access hall in front of a large bulkhead. The hallway was dim, lit by improvisation. Several lightbulbs were attatched to the ceiling of the corridor with metal brackets, riveted right into the steel structure. Wires looped their way inbetween each bulb, hot and ground hooked up to each fuse. This length of wire, shoddy in its engineering, trailed off to some unseen generator somewhere in the depths of the compound. She had come several levels since the Ops room, down flights of stairs and occasionally, a checkpoint. The inside, the archetecture of the base bunker itself, was steel hall after steel hall, observation windows showing nothing but dirt. Now-useless gun ports littered these windows, soil trickling down through them. The place was once a stationary artillery battery, before the bombs fell, and the force of just how much the earth shook raised the soil up several meters near each epicenter. Every now and then, one of the bulbs browned out, and then, as it seemed it would blackout, flickered back on again, stubbornly. The woman smoked another cigarette, puffing at it, giving it much lip and intentionally blowing the smoke all around. She sniffled and looked down at her feet, Speaking hushed. The bulkhead in front of them said, in the same mil-spec stamping, MOTOR POOL.

"Well Ryan, is the [censored] thing sentient ? Does it talk ?" She said. Ryan was another one of the bunker dwellers, dressed in the same pre-war garb that they all fancied. He wore a blue jumpsuit with a cloth belt, and boots, his whole outfit caked with mud, and not by water, but oil. Faded and flaking off, stylized white text on the back of his suit exclaimed RobCo. He was dark, almost matching her complexion, but his skin was ragged. He had scars all over his hands, and the wind goggles around his neck moved when he spoke. His face had one elongated scar running down his cheek, and the dry skin around it split off in different directions. She tried not to look directly at him. "Yes, M'am. It can speak. We don't know how far it's gone, though. Keeps rambling on about how he's not a ghoul. He's given my guys a mouthful so far...and he seems [censored] smart, you know ? I don't think he's a slave OR a ghoul." He looked right at her eyes. She continued to look down. She inched over to the access panel on the side of the door, and punched in a code, moving her fingers quickly. At once, a panel near her, on the wall next to her, previously unseen, flipped up, exposing a red button. She leaned off of the wall, and pushed it with two fingers. "Well, Ryan. If you could determine that yourself. . ."

She looked right in his eyes. He looked down at the floor. The door began to hiss and whine, and deafening metal-on-metal screeching filled the din of the corridor. Latches on the sides of the door turned up, bobbing in their tooled parts. The door gave one final bang, and rose up slowly.

"Then I wouldn't have had to come all the way down here and speak to you." When the door opened just above her head, she ducked under the little space that was left, and walked out into the noise of the motor pool. Ryan walked out after her, but only followed a small way. He leaned up against a railing overlooking the pool.

The woman stepped onto a platform feet in front of her, minding the railing as she clambered her way up the few steps. The observation platform, where she stood now, ran by way of steel girders and welded-together platforms, several meters above the actual motor pool. Multi-tiered girders held the whole place up, and at the ceiling of the large shaft that the woman was about to descend into, a giant hatch stood ready. The shaft itself looked like a giant square, and the woman could see men on cherry pickers scrubbing walls, adding paint, or replacing panels here and there. The sparks from fresh welds and the curses of men scorned, the sweat of the workers, cascaded down the shaft to the floor below. The woman sighed and pressed the DOWN button on the pneumatic elevator she stood on. Another set of steel rails snapped into place, the elevator rocked lazily around, almost coming off the track, and the began to descend. On her way down, she passed within feet of a few men working on the same line she was travelling across, waving hello. The ones that could dropped what they were doing and gave an immediate salute. She flew by another group looking at a blueprint, pointing at the wall adjacent to the elevator. She looked, but could not determine what they were talking about. She passed another group, these men agruing, escalating into shouting. One of them, a short, skinny redhead, sipped blacker than black coffee and half-saluted the woman as she passed by. She gave no quarter. As she neared the floor, she saw several ramshackle vehicles, some up on pnuematic car lifts, some not, and one in idle, blasting a garbled radio, all its doors open. The men surrounding it spoke to each other and tapped their feet in time with the rythm, or what they could salvage from it. The radio echoed throughout the shaft. Nearly all of the cars were modified to have some type of armament, from fifty caliber machine guns to assault rifles on swivels, mounted on side mirrors. All the junkers also had armor plating and some had tank treads, others blades to help them through the wastes. The large access door to the outside, lying some sixty feet below Ops, below the guns, was just closing, blocking out the last bit of natural light. Most of the men on the ground floor were working on these vehichles, and the few that weren't were carefully chatting or eyeing blueprints. The sound in the shaft, all of it, was deafening. Air ratchets, screwguns, rivets firing, clanging metal, yelling, cursing, hammering. It all echoed and reverberated throughout the whole shaft, deafening anything below a shout. Out of all this, stood something out of place. A wasteland converted tow-truck, complete with chains affixed to its rigging, lay with flat tires to the side of the door. A ripped down canopy was flattened down next to it, a cloth and jagged metal piping skeleton. The elevator reached the ground, finally, and the woman was off before the grating on it was completely let down. She walked past it, almost loosing her footing, and dodged past the men at work. They all stared at her for a second as she passed the three, four rows of vehichles, but did not hold their gaze for long. She stepped over wooden and plastic pallets of machine parts, pushed a few men who were unpacking them out of the way, and made a beeline for the truck. She stopped when she saw the bed of it was empty. She looked around her in a circle, trying to find where he could have gone. Then, over the noise of the dock, she heard the distinct electronic whine of a bullhorn, followed by amplified shouting.

"M'am !" Said the female voice, echoing like everything else. "He's in my office !"

A skinny, short woman, with green eyes and shoulder-length rose hair, stood waving, bullhorn in her right hand. She wore a grey jumpsuit and belt, and strapped to her was a toolbelt, with everything from wrenches to different increments of plasma cutters. It weighed her down some, and the tools shook when she plodded along back to a wooden door out of place on the far side of the shaft. She entered, and closed it behind her. Two armed men stepped in front of the door, and leaned up against the wall. They were talking to each other, and it seemed, hiding their words.






------------------------------------------------

Whew ! That's quite a bit of text. I think that ends the perpetual chapter I. Thanks all for your support and kind words. When it's done, I figure it'll be about novel length. . .I'll have more probably tomorrow.

She left the greater noise of the main workshop to approach the door. The men turned away gradually with the distance she neared them, until they were standing at complete attention, rifles on their shoulders. They exchanged sly looks as she addressed them.

"Let me through, gentlemen. And please, make yourself more useful than just standing around...join Hopper in maintenance or something. I'm sure he could use your help." She looked at them both sternly. "Yes M'am." They said it at almost the same time, and departed in seperate directions.

She took a deep breath, and grabbed the doorknob, giving it a short twist. She knocked as she opened it, and was inside the office. The first thing she was greeted with was the scent. Putrid, foul aroma, like rotting flesh. It had a pungent quality to it, disgusting but rich. She closed the door behind her, eyes tearing, shuffling her feet on the carpet inside. As she began to clear her eyes, shutting the door and losing all the noise of the motor pool, now greeted by the soft humming of an air conditioner, she observed the overall look of the room. Something lied differently than when she last remembered it, but she could not place exactly what. It was your traditional indoor office quarters, composed of a sturdy pine desk, ornamented with nondescript designs, with a large chair behind it, and two smaller ones facing the desk on the opposite side. The chairs were all metal, fabricated after the bombs dropped, surely. They all had rust and peices missing. on the desk stood many little trinkets, and an old desktop terminal, whose lit green screen exposed the white sheetrock walls to a color change of sorts. On a large bookshelf against the side wall, there were, it seemed, everything but books. Old parts, small motors, screws, tubing, even a few lightbulbs, and on the bottom shelf, a bin full of spare bullets of all different sizes, and next to it, the six non-rotating barrels of a traditional minigun, sans the gun housing and ammo backpack.



------------------------

Sorry for the short entry today. I'll have more tomorrow. Busy with college stuff.

The woman looked to her left after noting that nothing was out of place, and she saw what it was then, the fact that Isis was out of her chair. Whenever the woman had spoken to her in the past, she had been sitting down behind that desk, she prided herself on being the supervisor of this place; of the massive shop that was outside. She had earned her respect for all the men that worked for her, and vice versa. Through her hard work in making the motor pool run smoothly again when the bunker was first discovered, she had earned the right to sit behind a desk and give orders, and she loved this. Isis only got up to make big decisions, decisions that had proven themselves in the past to end with the possible deaths of good men. Isis, the rose-haired woman in the jumpsuit, stood leaning up against the wall next to the door, cross armed and holding her bullhorn. As the woman's eyes adjusted to the lackluster light inside the office, she saw another person, wrapped in dirty and frayed wool blankets, but not mistaken for anything but the outline of a man. He coughed and sniffled, wet and throaty. He whimpered a bit, and turned his head a little to see the woman standing in the room. His face was wrapped too, in some sort of scarf, and his breathing was a little erratic, his vocal chords audibly growling. She only saw his eyes, and they were full of tears. The bit of skin exposed around them looked very badly burned, just a little under the third degree, all of it. It peeled and oozed a sheen, a disgusting luster. Isis, not looking at him but her eyes trailing off into a thousand yard stare, focused on some point beyond sight, spoke, but not confident in her words. She was a little shaken.

Yes, this thing is still going. No it's not going to stop. I am going to write it until the end. For anyone who still reads this, sorry for the absence.
-----------------------------------

Isis was hushed. She spoke low enough so that the man could not hear them over his sobbing.

"Help me with this guy, Dee. He's nuts, I think so, but I see something there that's salvageable. I want to find out why Jacinto had him, why he looks like that."

Denora looked at Isis, studied her face before putting a hand on her shoulder. Isis returned the gesture, putting a greasy hand on hers, patting it as if to say "I know". Denora returned her gaze to the man, and departed from Isis. Walking up to him slowly, but not stealthily, making sure to make enough noise so that he was not startled. Denora slid the last few steps, and put an arm around the man as she knelt down to his eye level, her lips close to his, her eyes glazed with moisture, wrapping her fingers gently around his shoulder. She was close enough for a kiss, but maintained curiosity, the gestures were not romantic. Slowly, as if cooing to a child about a misdeed, she spoke.

"What is your name, wastelander ?" She said. The man's eyes looked up at hers, and at once she was startled. Inside his eyes was a slight catatonia, he seemed to look right through her. They were unfocused. As her vision examined them more, she saw that he had cataracts. Just slightly, but still, a touch of milky film. Underneath this, were intense brown eyes, and around them, the peeling, burnt skin. She smelled him now too, something like cooking meat and rubber. She winced a little, an uncontrollable stimulus. His eyelids peeled too, and they bled a little. His blinking disturbed the healing skin. After a few moments, he simply continued to sob. His face remained wrapped in cloth, his muffled cries like distant whispers. Denora grew a little smile, and spoke again. "Sir, please. The man that kept you tied up like that is being held captive by some of my best workers at this time. He used to live here, did you know that ? We kicked him out. We kicked him out after he killed my lover."

The man quieted a little. Denora's smile grew bigger. Isis watched the pair with dissaproval. She tapped her feet and stared. Denora waved the hand not occupied behind her in a gesture, a backwards hello. Isis, her eyes locked onto the hint, sighed loudly and turned to go, the door opening with a creak, with the noise of the motor pool penetrating the din for a short second. Isis walked through the threshold and back into her territory, yelling instructions interspersed with obscenities at the men working the floor. The door closed with a slam. The man shook a little, and Denora tightened her grip, telling him very gently to shush. The man at once obeyed. His gaze held onto hers again, she asked him very politely, "May I sit ?" to which he shook his head, stubbornly, "yes."

Denora walked over to the big chair on the opposite side of the desk. Keeping her gaze held fast onto the man, and vice versa, she sat, one hand on one armrest, her ass in the chair, and then another hand, and adjusting herself, she made all her movements very deliberate. She wanted to show him that there was nothing that could hurt him here. No trickery or malcontents. Denora kept her hands very still on the armrests of the chair, and spoke again, just loud enough so that the man could hear her.

"Jacinto is what is known around here as a slaver. He trades people. He traded them to us. You have to understand, it was just to get on our feet at the time. My lover, he made us change our minds about this, because he was a former slave. Jacinto deceived us. He told us lies about what it was like. He killed my man, so I expelled him. Now, he tries to give you to us, to open buisness again ? We won't have that anymore. It is good money, but not worth the trouble. Please, shake your head if you understand what I am saying."

Through her statement, Denora was very deliberate. She tried her best to hide her african accent, but to little avail. The man looked at her quizzically for a moment, then shook his head up and down. At once, a lump arose from below the mass of cloth and blankets that covered his body. It wormed its way through the layers, parting the fabric, and becoming more defined with time. It was slow, methodical, delicate. Then, from out of a crack in a patchwork quilt, rose a hand. It was normal, not burnt or streaked with puss. The fingernails on it were relatively clean, and the skin was a sunburned peach. The hand moved up to the cloth wrapped around his face, and two fingers reached out for the edge of it, above the man's nose. There was silence for a second, and Denora's chair creaked as she moved forward on it in anticipation. Her arms tensed, and her eyes became sharp. The two fingers lifted the cloth, but not off, just let it hover away from his mouth, still covering it. The man then spoke, a shrill, gravely sentence, parted syllables with cracks and dry popping. With each word, the man's eyes welled up. It hurt him a great deal to speak.

"My dame and kids are dead" He said, drawing breath inward with a grinding noise. "We roosted in a bungalow at the time, trying to stay away from the ghoul horde. They are going fast in this dire-" He had to stop. His eyes shut very tightly, and his hand shuddered. He coughed, dry and hacking, and when he opened his eyes, the tears came streaming out of them as he continued to speak. He had a long, drawn out way of wording things, a sort of boston accent. "In this area. Jacinto ? Him ? He tried to turn me in, figured it'd be...duck soup." At this, the cloth returned over his mouth and he began to cough again. His hand returned shakily underneath the cloth garb.

Denora relaxed the more she heard. She waited for him to stop coughing, and for him to gain his composure before she addressed him again. "Well" She said, "I am so sorry. These things happen often in the wastes. Do not worry my freind, we are prepared for anything here. Jacinto wreaking havok is a minor setback. He got one over on us, distracted us long enough to gain a foothold, but there are plenty of men on him now. I assure you, it's not duck soup. He will die."

Denora got up slowly. The man's eyes followed her. She straightened out her clothes, and crossed her arms. "Sir" she said, "Can you tell me your name ?"

The man slowly drew his hand again, and repeated the gesture, this time pulling the cloth down. Peeling, red skin was exposed, a mangled nose and severed lips. His cheeks blistered out, puss oozing. Fuzz from the blanket coated the open sores. One long split down his chin was filled with a yellow substance, and blood trickled down from his gums. The enamel on his teeth was unusually translucent. With a crooked smile, he said "My name is Truman. Your men fixed up my arm...thank you. Can I please get some water ?"

Already he was demanding things. Denora responded. "Alright, Truman. Listen to me though, because I will only tell you this once, alright ? No freeloading. When you can work, you will work."

With that, Denora got up and began to exit, walking past Truman and heading towards the door. She gave the knob a turn, and stopped right before the door opened. "Why were you unresponsive to my people, Truman ?" She asked.

Truman turned his head. "Because only you seemed nice enough to get me some water, miss." He gave a little smile, but flinched. The scabs over his lips cracked.




Denora slammed the door behind her.

-----------------------------

And I think that ends chapter one. Ta daaaa ! I'll post the beginning of two tomorrow. There is a lot left, the characters will deal with life in the bunker, and after, visit some familiar locations on a quest for revenge and profit, where they will be hunted by some unsavory individuals with poison spewing crossbows and alterior motives.

R&R, anyone. Looking for feedback, positive or negative.

Daisy, the rotweiler, became restless. The noise had startled her senses, and she was now up, pacing in circles and barking at the large, rust-caked door which lead into the motor pool. The bunkers many feet above her lay smoking husks of themselves, the guns destroyed and the fire and embers settling down some. She had run away while the men from inside the pool were taking her master's truck, hiding behind an outcropping of rock to the side of the scene and whimpering. After barking relentlessly for a minute, and when dusk approached, she grew tired again, scared. A chill spread across the wasteland before and behind her as the sun fell, and the dead, petrified trees grew a slight layer of frost. The meagre scrub dotting the rocky landscape swayed in the weak wind, and mist came down from the mountains in the distance. The sky was a sickly yellow, and dust from upturned sediment miles in the distance streaked acrossed the yellow in jagged shapes. Little scraps of activity here and there, a radroach pricking its antennae into an overturned mattress, a feral dog limping after an injured mole rat. Daisy's legs began to shiver, and she plodded away from the door, looking back a few times to make sure nobody had opened it. She walked for a few minutes, putting her nose into the air, smelling for any sort of warmth, a place to hide, or Jacinto. She could not smell these things. There was no warmth or shelter, no people for miles to the East and West. The wind could not tell her where to go as it had before she found Jacinto. She had followed him for so long, almost since being a pup, that she had forgotten her internal cartography; the wastes were barren and empty as they would have been to a human, no secret dog sense would help her. Her brow lowered and her trodding became less perky, and her eyes scanned ahead of her for any sort of threat. Her nose was going haywire, she smelled nothing but air. Radiation clogged her ampulae.

After a while proceeding downwind, she came to a small, rocky ridge a half mile from the bunker. Here she sat, and could see the foothills of the mountains to the South, stopping to lick her chops. She yawned, an instictive action to get more oxygen into her brain, and snorted to clear her snout. It was getting colder, and the sun was almost gone. Dusk was on its last legs, running away from the cold night. Somewhere else in the wastes, it was going to be morning. The rocky ridge below Daisy trailed off into soil interspersed with small rocks and gravel, coming down at a steep angle. Dried, smooth stones lay at the bottom, and cracking soil below them. On the other side of this ground was another ridge, this one warped and gnarled from errosion. shale hung off its edges. From where Daisy stood, it was ten, maybe fifteen feet to the bottom. Looking down, her dog eyes told her the depth, and she gained more purchase on the ledge behind her. She smelled one thing now; death. It rose up like a thick fog from the bottom of this dried lakebed, and Daisy was terrified of it. She whined. Many small bones of random lengths littered the corners, culminating in size and arrangement around a five foot wide hole in the side of the other lake wall, opposite Daisy's. Roots from long gone trees dangled around it, and it svcked the air into it, created dust clouds around its entrance. Daisy locked her brown eyes onto this implosion in the dirt, she could feel the energy coming out of it. Something bad was in there. Her head cocked to the side, and she brought her paws forward. She straightened her tail as much as she could. Then, out of the hole, came a soft, echoing noise, a small screeching, and the clicking of rocks on something gaining locomotion. It sounded like marbles rolling across a kitchen floor, the screeching like high pitched, low volume screams. Whatever it was that was moving toward the entrance of this burrow was big, and dragged dirt from the walls of the chamber with it as it rose. Daisy saw a slimy, hollow sheen protrude itself, and six small, black eyes refracted the light that entered them, above a set of perpetually moving mandibles, small hairy appendages skimming over razor sharp jaws that snapped and drooled. It was breathing through holes in its side, the respiration stirring up more dust around the chamber. Daisy sniffed the air, and the death smell was apparent now; this thing stunk of it rank. Daisy growled at the thing, and it did not aknowledge her. Its skin was a pale, pale blue, and white spots dotted its belly and carapace, and lobster like claws, though thinner and sharper, protruded, lowered so that the beast could move more easily. It moved the rest of its bulk out of the burrow now, exposing the rest of its body, and six long, crooked legs. Its legs skittered and bent further as it walked, and raised and lowered over small rocks and bones. Behind its body was a large tail, segmented and slimy, and on the tip of that was a large stinger, a thick, pulsating venom sack, streaked with pumping veins and beating with a hurried rythm; the tip finalizing in a razor barb.

The giant scorpion hovered its claws above the ground and snapped them, turning around this way and that, keeping its tail unfurled and parallel to the ground. It was drooling clumps of spittle, looking for food. The sheer dry lakebed extended off into the East and West as far as the eye could see, and made an excellent trap for catching prey. The scorpion was a hunter of opportunity, rarely did it venture out to find food. The bones it stepped over were still wet with meat. At once after surveying its surroundings, its beady eyes turned their compound attention to Daisy, the dog having made the tiniest of noises in amazement, and the scorpion reared up on its two back legs as high as it could, and hissed. Its stinger began to lubricate itself with venom. Daisy smelled the death on it more strongly than ever now, and smelled the venom. It made her vision wane, and it was so sickly sweet, it made her salivate. Daisy knew to stay away, knew what to do when she saw something like this. Get Jacinto. Notify him of the danger so he can shoot it, so he can make it go away and get them out of there. Daisy turned around, her legs moving weakly, and before she could take off back toward the bunker, the thin, layered rock that her hind legs were now perched onto crumbled quickly from the stress of tense muscles. The rock cascaded down the incline, and Daisy yelped as her hind legs went down with it. Dust flew up from the bottom of the lakebed, and the scorpion turned a little more towards her and hissed loudly, its legs clicking against the rock as it advanced. Daisy caught herself awkwardly, her hind legs almost dangling freely, her nails bleeding from scraping up against the razorlike rock. Her front paws slipped a little, and her neck stuck out as she tried to pull herself up. Then, the thin layer of stone supporting the top half of her body gave way, and dust exploded outward, streaking the air out over the bottom of the lakebed with an orange haze. Daisy's legs flailed and her tongue hung out and she repeatedly yelped and tumbled, end over end, cutting herself on the jagged mineral deposits and slamming her paws into outcroppings. She hit a large crescent shaped stone towards the bottom of the incline, and her final yelp echoed out over the lakebed as she careened through the air, propelled by momentum, finally coming to rest as she slammed up against the bottom, skipping along it and ripping slivers of skin off as she skidded along the ground. More dirt flew in the air, trailing behind Daisy, filling the lakebed with dry atmosphere, choking the visibility. Rocks trickled down moreso, and there was now a good sized hole where Daisy had been standing. She lay still on the bottom now, breathing heavy, her eyes darting back and forth, blood pouring out of her wounds, her belly heaving with the bloat of air. She was whining in between breaths loudly, her cries echoing through the wastes. The scorpion gave retort with a hiss and turned around, unphased by the dust and rocks. A few had bounced off of its carapace, but with no damage. It sighted in on Daisy and began to curl its tail upwards and dangle it, bringing it just over its head, its underbelly slightly raised. Its back legs extended, and it gained a height advantage to strike, opening its pincers and mandibles. The scorpion moved slowly toward Daisy, weaving around bigger rocks and stepping carefully. It almost slithered like a snake, and barely made noise, stifling its own cries of hunger. Almost on top of Daisy, it stopped moving, bringing the stinger back a little bit and curling it as far as it would go. Daisy took a large breath inward and adrenaline surged through her nervous system.


It shot foward like a piston, claws snapping shut and the large, dripping stinger coming down like lightning. Daisy rolled quickly to the scorpion's side, her barely functioning legs doubling over as she moved, and she ended up on her stomach, dizzy and confused. As the stinger touched ground, it shattered like a lightbulb, white, oozing blood and green, spraying venom decompressing from inside its carapace, all over the lakebed. As the scorpion screamed, a shrill, deafening noise, its blood and other fluids hosed out onto the ground, getting it all over the scorpion itself and Daisy. Daisy shook it off as the scorpion continued its protest, slamming its underbelly into the ground in pain, damaging itself more. Daisy barked and lunged outward with her jaws, snapping at air two times and latching onto one of the beasts' legs and third. Locking her neck and giving a ripping twist, the leg flew off and rolled into the dirt, as the scorpion flailed around and brought one large front claw across the bulk of Daisy with a sick thudding sound, sending her reeling, skidding to her left and rolling over toward the rocks again. Daisy began to stir again, but the scorpion, filled with rage, closed fast on its remaining legs, still spewing blood from its injuries, but quite alive. It ran foward, rearing up before Daisy and bringing its two claws right down on top of the dog, sparing no power. Daisy jumped in pain and crumpled to the ground, spitting and growling. The dog felt her bones giving way to force, and her ribs cracked and splintered, puncturing her insides. The scorpion opened its claws and stepped back a bit, the razor tips ready to stab at Daisy. The scorpion charged foward, but Daisy was able to move, swinging her neck around, narrowly avoiding getting her head lopped off, and she deposited all of her teeth neatly between both claws, getting up while she wrapped her mouth perfectly around the scorpion's eyes and mandibles. It was blinded now, and began stabbing at Daisy's belly with its pincers, one blow just barely penetrating, the others oversighting and ending up smashing into the rocks. Daisy bit down hard, applying all the pressure she could muster, and she felt the scorpion's eyes pop on her tongue, felt its hard mandibles on her teeth, disassembled and bleeding. Daisy ripped the scorpions' senses away from it, the giant bug screeching one final time before its jaws were ripped right out of its own head. Daisy gave one final tug and saw the gap where the bug's face had been, saw it spray blood and guts in a trail in front of it as the bulk of the scorpion stepped backwards awkwardly, coming to a harsh stop, suddenly its protests of death ceasing to exist. The scorpion was still, blood flooding the dry, cracking ground. Daisy opened her mouth slowly and puked out the bug's blood and innards, hacking and shaking her head. Afterwards, she stumbled around and fell onto a soft patch of dirt a little bit up the incline she was closest to. Unable to continue, the dog lay still, but breathing, and closed her eyes. Her ribs pained her in the extreme, and she was drooling blood, licking her chops to keep it from accumulating. Her fur was matted with blood from both combatants. She was soaked. Worse still, it was night, now, and the cold was coming again.




-----------------
Finally, some good ol' violence. I think the format's going to be jumping between Daisy and the Humans from now on. It gives fresh perspective to the deal. Expect more tomorrow, but for now my creative fluid is on E.

Sorry for the double post, but i'm noticing a few wording mistakes in the last few entries. I'll go back and edit them if I have the time tomorrow. Well, that's what I get for writing at 2:33 AM when i'm half asleep.

EDIT: Woah, I just noticed like twenty more views. People, if you like it, post. Positive feedback, as well as negative, is always welcome. I will like always continue it regardless, just for the love of my characters, but if i'm doing anything wrong, i'd like to know.

Huh. Well, I found a few mistakes here and there, mostly an extra space or lack of proper punctuation. Nothing all that bad, and stuff I'm sure you'll probably correct regardless. You definitely have a good length and story going here. I'm actually not used to seeing such big blocks of text though. Perhaps you should try spacing things out a bit more? Makes it easier to read for people and less intimidating.

In september, I'm enrolling in a few creative writing classes (my college offers them out the ass) to get my punctuation and spelling on the mark. As for spacing, from now on, i'll keep it a little more, well, spacey.
In the mean time, the latest version of word has an outstanding punctuation and spelling correction tool. If i plug my story in there before i post it, it will help me.

Edit: w00t third thread page

Jacinto's left eye twitched with stress. It was awfully quiet beyond that bulkhead. Outside, behind him, night was falling. He had checked several times in the last few hours over the concrete lip of the gunport to see if anyone had tried to get the jump on him. Nobody had. They dithered at the door, and once he saw a few of them in the opposite gunport creeping about. In the low light, he could have picked them off easily. They went in and out without firing upon him, however. They were most likely retreiving their dead. Mostly, Jacinto had stayed in the exact same position as he had fallen into rest at initially; sitting down up against the concrete wall, staring at the entrance bulkhead into his gun port, keeping the assault rifle pointed at the expected head level of anybody who was stupid enough to try and enter. His mouser lie next to him, empty.

It was getting cold. Jacinto was tired. He began to shiver a little, and the sweat that had pooled on him began to frost over. A few times, he wiped it off of him, and then went right back to the ready position. This was a bad situation he had gotten himself into. He did not expect so many in the control room, or not, at least, so many with weapons. No doubt there was a whole troop just waiting for his blood. The fear of how dangerous Jacinto really was, how sickly he loved to kill, this kept the virtual wolves at bay. Soon enough, though, they would, like any cornered animal, turn and bite him in the heel. He tried to retain a sinking feeling in him, it made him sweat more. He would die here, he was certain of it. All it would take is one well placed shot; and it didn't even have to be that well placed. An artery or a capillary could do him in. They'd sooner let him bleed out than waste more ammo. Their goal was not capture, no, not after what he did to their personnel. And the cyborgs ? He remembered them too, from his last stay in this place. The big one, the one with the gun, and the pale one, the bastard with that weapon. He always wondered what he kept in that steel canister he had strapped to him, what sort of torture device or horrible weapon was hidden inside. He never cared to ask, and never saw it used. There were so many things they could do to him when they got him all to themselves, oh god.

I am going to die here, Jacinto thought. He repeated it again and again in his thoughts.

Jacinto tried to lower himself down a few times, but the rocks were always too jagged, and if he jumped the whole way, he could end up breaking a few bones, possibly dying. Many things had occured to him, yes, as he was left alone with his own mind, which he hated being subjected to. The one shocking revelation, at least, to him, was that jumping would be infinitely better than letting them do their dirty work to him. He bounced this idea around, before realizing that he would enjoy taking a few of their lives with his rather than committing suicide. He had a full magazine, and plenty more next to him, and he was a surgeon with a rifle. They'd all go down in headshots, or at least, if they were running in, center mass. He went over in his mind again and again all the possible strategies, but then they all ended with one final thought, a mental picture of just how many of them he saw coming in, and the look on all their faces. Yelling, spittle flying out, their eyes on fire. All those men and women wanting him, to see him torn apart. Not since he killed their ghoul freind had he seen them so angry. Then, though, they did not mean to kill him.

He also thought about going to sleep. About just, drifting off with the barrel in his mouth and his finger on the trigger, so that when he finally fell into dreams he would relax and pull it, and end this standoff. How that would shock them if they just saw that he blew his brains out. How much would that piss off Denora ?

Daisy was also on his mind. The only thing he trusted was that dog, because it never stabbed him in the back. He didn't hear her barking anymore. Where was she ? Had she run away ? He could not stand losing her. As sick as he was, as much as he loved to butcher and maim and kill and bleed and sell people, that dog was it for him. She was like his daughter.

For the most part, he learned to brush all these thoughts off, though, just as he had done with all retrospecting. For him to be a slaver for as long as he had been, and think back on all the lives he took and people he sold away, strangling children in cribs and murdering their parents, selling their oldest into slavery, and do even worse ? How could a person look back on that and actually justify it ? Of course, it was only temporary as most addictions were starting out. Only for the caps, he told himself at the beginning, only for the wealth so I can establish myself, then I'll retire and live in peace. He let his perchants for tracking people down and manipulating them, and his expertise in weapons, become his profession. This was a mistake. After a while he grew to like the pain he inflicted on others, all the [censored] and murdering. After he was wealthy, it didn't become to be about more caps. It came to be about, What would hurt more, if I removed a finger or an eye ? If I killed him outright or killed his daughter ? Which of them would be worth more to the people at Paradise ? At the bunker facility ? Which place would work the miserable dirtbags harder ?

After a while, it became about just how hard he could get while mowing them down. He became sick without falling ill. And only he understood it. There were people from Paradise Falls whom he screwed over because of this addiction. People who were trying to track him down. This is why he came back to the bunker, to sell to the only client he had left...or at least the only people he didn't display his addiction to, until he just had to kill Rat, that ghoul bastard. The only kill he ever enjoyed that was for a good purpose. The man, if you could call him that, was going to rat the whole [censored] place out to the Horde. Now, though, according to Truman, they were advancing toward here anyway.

All these thoughts bounced around Jacinto's brain. He was getting a headache.



There was knocking on the bulkhead.

-----------------

I am slowly establishing Jacinto's personality. It seems that he's going to play out as a sort of reluctant psychopath ? I don't know. The reasons I have for uniting these characters under the same situation will be clear soon. I have a damn long way to go before I'm finished. Once this thread has reached its post limit, i'll open another one marked Part II. I'll then archive the old thread in MS word, edit it, and have a simple HTML page made up and .com'ed for intrest, where the whole Part I will be. The link will be posted in my signature, or given upon request, however it best adheres to forum rules. Consider everything posted here, a rough draft. Well, not so rough, but sort of, unofficialized.

Bumping this. I'm posting more today after work. Just getting it back up there

:)

There was knocking on the bulkhead. It was sharp, and loud. It sounded like metal on metal. Jacinto lowered his weapon a few inches for a second, and the banging stopped. He relaxed a little. What were they doing? Were they really trying to communicate with him? This didn't make sense. He rose a little, clambering onto his knees, peeking his head out over the concrete at the adjacent bunker. Inside the paraqet, all was still. They didn't have a man there, and if they did, he was very well hidden. Jacinto ruled this out quickly, given what little men they had to fight with based on the last time he visited this place. He knew they weren't letting anyone new in anytime soon, not since his debacle. The chain of command in this place was born and bred here, they were technologically savvy hermits.

Jacinto shuffled over to the bulkhead, getting up as he went. He was on his feet after a few seconds, and his knees popped and ached. He had been sitting in his defense posture for a long time since last he stirred. The knocking sounded again, and this time, finding its way in sound waves through the few cracks in the frame of the door, a voice followed it. It was mostly muffled still, and Jacinto could just barely hear its inflection. Though, unmistakably, it was female. Jacinto grew curious, and keeping an eye on the adjacent bunker, listened.

"?and you will not die today" it said. "Now open this damn door!"

It was a thick African accent. It was Denora.


Jacinto smiled. It was working, somehow. Instead of blowing the door, or detaching it through brute force, they were trying to reason with him. He turned his head toward the door, and yelled to the other side.
"Nora!" He exclaimed with a haughty tone, his own accent coming through equally. "Christ, what took you so long! Hey! [censored] you!" Jacinto knocked on the door rapidly and deliberately then, mocking her. He heard her frustration soon, as she cursed in some sort of dialect familiar only to him. He was overjoyed just to hear another soul, this was true, but he was even happier to know that they wouldn't try to kill him outright. This could buy him some time. He felt a strange camaraderie there; he was the only one who could make her so angry she would curse in her native language, whatever it was. He heard a loud slam from the door, and stepped back a little. Instinctively, his grip on the assault rifle tightened. Tiny pieces of concrete dust showered down from the door in small amounts. She had hit the door hard. Jacinto spat to the side and listened again, keeping his eyes trained on the other bunker. She began again, this time a little calmer and more reserved. Her English was well and back again, albeit her voice a little bit shaky with anger.

"Jacinto, please. You are not in a position, any sort of position to work towards your release. This is not an exchange we are doing here. I have your truck, I have the man. I have your weapons, your ammo, all the things that make you deadly, please; you are useless against all these people. Surrender and we'll beat you and throw you out, again. Fight and we'll kill you, I promise."

Jacinto listened with concentration. He was trying to make out any little sound in the background. He worked his hearing past Nora, past the din of the ventilation system behind her, and as she spoke on, he heard something somewhere in the room that tipped him off. He heard nothing. He heard silence. There seemed to be nobody around, only Nora. There were no shuffling of feet on the concrete floor, no clicking of machinery, no cocking of weapons or slight murmuring of hushed speech, only Nora and the infinite maze of hallways and bulkheads behind her. This made Jacinto uneasy. Whoever else was in the room with her was being especially quiet, if there was anyone else. Then, through his meditation on the sounds before him, he noticed Nora's voice, still chiding him into some sort of surrender, move slightly to the side, and then a

Tap

Metal on metal, what had rapped the door before

And a little

KerCHACKclick

Jacinto his stomach dropped a sickening feeling

and his mind raced and he knew what it was right against the door and his brain told his feet to move and move they did and he dropped so quickly it pained him hearing his stiff joints strain and streaming with sweat he hit the floor and

SLAM

Suddenly a hole was above him in the door, and he heard the whizzing of a bullet streak right past the alcove, going somewhere out into the wastes, careening downwards and hitting dirt. The new hole in the door above him oozed with molten metal and spit out sparks of slag, the steel and iron hardening after they cooled from the blast. The hole was as big around as a man's fist, and white, foul smelling smoke poured from it, being swept off into the light breeze. They had tried to shoot him, Nora using his voice as a pinpoint, or someone else for that matter, someone with a big gun. Sound from the new viewpoint in the door rushed in. He heard whatever it was cocked again, and he heard the crowd he had suspected was behind the door begun to stir. They were talking little inquiries, oh, did you get him, and is he dead, things like that. All at once they strode toward the door, and Jacinto, his ears ringing, his arms shaking, sat up slowly, quietly, as someone on the other side poked their hand in, clearing out the little bit of metal fragments still inside the hole. Jacinto tightened his arms, and let his hands wring the forward grip of the assault rifle in anger. He pulled his feet up slowly, and used his legs to rise up into a low crouch. He moved the rifle down, down, until the barrel touched the floor, and he rested the stock on his cheek. He was ready to pounce. He rolled his shoulders, and got serious. There was a stone expression on his face, and his eyes darted a little. He set his jaw and ground his teeth, all he had to wait for was confirmation they were close enough.

"Open it up and see" said Nora, her voice now so clear. "I want some closure. Everyone, close to the door, please." And in almost a whisper, "Andre, what do you see? Look."

Jacinto could almost feel the poor bastard come to the door, his eye right in the hole. "Uh, miss." said the voice, "nothing."

The last thing he saw was Jacinto darting upwards, his barrel not against the door, but close to it, he only pausing for a second to get a good sight picture, the stock firmly, painfully tight to his shoulder and side of the weapon to his cheek, and as he let fly the initial burst, his facial expression did not change. It was too quick for Andre. One bullet entered his frontal lobe right through his eye, the next his jaw as he fell backwards and the next taking off his nose in a splatter of cartilage and snot and blood.

And even before Andre hit the ground, Jacinto took on a second long sprint and shoved the barrel of the gun into the hole so hard, his shoulder became shocked with pain. Jacinto took almost no measure of time to switch the weapon from burst to fully automatic, and he held down the trigger, his form shaking with the gas recoil from each spent round, shell casings littering the floor around him.

Jacinto allowed himself a little smile as bullets danced for him.



-------------

I outlined some ideas last night...and this story, it's going to be long. I have some interesting ideas about how the content featured in two of the DLC's will tie into the story. By the way, what's the page limit for a thread? Curious. Does it go by page, or postcount when a thread is locked because of space?

On the other side of the door, chaos was breaking out amongst the ranks of the bunker dwellers who had managed to move quickly. The shots continued to ring out, and the barrel of the rifle firing upon them spewed forth hot ash and smoke, plumes of combusted gas escaping, licking the air for milliseconds at a time as white hot flashing and red hot lead entered the room, choking the atmosphere with cordite and sprays of bloody mist, a few of the more slowly moving dwellers falling before the onslaught of automatic fire. Bullets ripped through their flesh at odd angles, splintering bone and cartilage, puncturing lungs and other organs. They crumpled to the floor as soon as they were hit, the impact force of the large rounds doing the most damage internally. Five, maybe six men had fallen, and one boy not older than seventeen lay bleeding out from a wound to an artery in his neck. He was gasping for air and staring at the ceiling, crying with bloodshot eyes.

The cyborg that had fired the shot at Jacinto grew confused. He fell back towards the other end of the room, and stood stoic. His command completed, without a command from Denora, he did not have a purpose in this. Denora herself was too confused to shout something out to him, and she reeled backwards, sitting a little bit away from the fray.

The report from the weapon was loud and it echoed throughout the chamber, and hallways next to it down further in the facility. After a few moments, the gun was empty, and the last shot rang out with a loud clanging sound on its heels. A magazine was heard dropping to the floor, and the gun moved as Jacinto fiddled with the action. A few of the people nearest the door not hit were deafened, and frantically tried to clear their ears while pulling out their weapons.

The large, shirtless grease-stained man with the sledgehammer stood upright with his hammer in his hands, holding it as if bracing for impact. He grew angry, and began to grind his teeth, twisting his hands over the handle of the hammer. He yelled, his cry booming around the room, as more people stirred and loaded their weapons. The men dropped still lay, they were without question, dead. The man with the hammer stepped over the bleeding boy as he charged toward the door, seeing the rifle poking through it lowered a little, moving with some sort of operation. He raised the hammer, and stepping to the side, brought it swinging to the broad side like a baseball bat, and it connected with horrible force. Little bits and pieces of the door chipped off and scattered, tiny gears and screws littering the floor. A strut bar anchoring the door to the concrete snapped like a twig, and the door moved downwards a little. The man stepped back a little, his hands stinging with vibration. He saw his next target, the other bar, and raised his hammer up, over his head, almost touching the ceiling. Then, the rifle leveled out again, and the tip of the barrel exploded with a flash, sounding the report again. The man wheezed, half screaming, dropping his hammer onto the floor and falling straight down, crossing his legs awkwardly mid fall and snapping his own ankles under his weight. Bullets had cut him down hard, ripping through his midsection and chest.

He was dead in seconds, blood oozing from the holes, his exit wounds as large around as fists. Denora watched all this horrified, and crawled over to the man, calling his name. "Hopper!" she screamed. She yelled obscenities with tears in her eyes as she clawed her hands across the floor closer to him. More automatic fire streaked across her back. She saw Hopper for a moment before she was dragged away, erupted into sobs as she saw his face, mouth agape and leaking blood, and his eyes half closed and glazed with moisture. People around her yelled to get her to safety, that she was our leader, and more sentiment erupted from the crowd agreeing. Denora screamed back at her subjects as she cried, cussing them out and telling them to open fire, to just please, shoot the bastard.

The men around her almost dropped her and complied, joining the fray while Denora slinked away a little more towards the back of the room. She yelled at a few of her people near the other bunker door to go inside and flank him, but they responded with puzzled looks. She yelled again and again, embarrassed that they were not listening. The people had fanned out away from the door now, watching the weapon fire into the hallway leading out of the room. Over the gunshots she heard one of the men telling her that the door flanking him was sealed once they had retrieved the bodies. She heard every other word, but got the message. Nodding, she backed up further, still sobbing, yelling with a shaky accent for everyone to shoot the door. She knew of the reflective paneling on it, of the danger of ricochet, but that was a chance she was going to take.


The surviving members of the group racked up their weapons on one another for steady aim, and others simply pointing in the doors direction, their weapons hanging in the air, bracing themselves for recoil. Revolvers, Assault Rifles, Shotguns, and even a few with old Mauser models lined up to get a clear picture of what they were shooting at. In a moment of silence, Jacinto stopped firing, presumably to reload again, the barrel of his rifle going slack up against the door. The entire group opened fire, then.




------------------------
To anyone who still reads this, sorry for the wait. I've been playing a lot of WoW lately, and gearing up for more college.

Everyone in the small room pointing at the door had let their weapons run wild, sending hot lead toward the bulkhead. Steam and spraying oil from somewhere within the door flowed outward and spread around the room, some lucky shots going through the door, coming to a dead stop just beyond it. A good sized group of the bunker-dwellers focused their fire on the weapon that had fired upon them, turning the tables and sending it reeling out of the hole, somewhere back from where it came. This was the cue; a few men smacked their comrades' shoulders and screamed commands into their ears, and the whole line stopped shooting as a single man rose from a kneeling stance, running towards the door at a sprint. His eyes stung as he ran through the cordite, and he bobbed and weaved to avoid another potential barrage.
Behind him, the risk of the assault was clear, as everyone checked themselves for bullet holes. A young woman in the corner held a dirty revolver with one hand, while the other was inside her jacket, steadily leaking blood.

The others did not pay attention to her, and she rushed back towards Denora. She took her in, holding her tightly, cradling her as she sobbed, and now Denora sat, not crying anymore, but wide-eyed, watching the plan unfold through spaces in the formation before her. All the bunker-dwellers' ears rang. Shell casings lay in odd patterns about the place; some restless folks kicked them around. Almost everyone in the room was watching this one man's assault. The cyborg stood ready, but Denora issued no command. She thought he would have the young woman transported to the infirmary in his capable arms, but not until this fight was over.

After he had hit the concrete wall next to the door, he stopped right next to the beginning of the bulkhead. He got low so that his knees were almost taller than he was, and crept up to the bottom of the door, keeping his eyes trained before him, staring at nothing. He was tense, and sweat dripped off of him. His stringy black hair was wet with it, and his undershirt above a half zippered jumpsuit soaked as well. Everyone's eyes then darted towards the door as they heard Jacinto yell from behind it.
"Good play, nice one! That was stellar, ace in the hole!"

He was screaming with his accent full and hearty. He mocked them. Then a beast rose up in him, something the dwellers did not see, and they did not want to imagine what he was doing. He grew from playful to evil, his voice taking on a low growl with what it said, still undeniably filled with that cockney charm, but there was something else there, something that spoke with pure rage. The sarcasm was still there, but it was even a play on itself.
"I'm going to kill every one of you!" He said. "You'll all bleed out nice and slow!"

Denora filled herself with hatred. The man at the door paused, mid movement, right in front of it. His rifle lay on the floor next to him. He kept a hand on it, unsure of how to respond. Jacinto called out again to whomever.

"Hey! You know what this door lacks because of that BEAUTIFUL HOLE? WHY, PRESSURE!"

Damaged gears inside the door clicked and clanged onto themselves. The lock indicators on it turned to white. The bulkhead was free-form, now. It swung a little on its haunch, elevated above its jamb slightly. Nearly one thousand pounds of steel swung suddenly outward at a rate of speed it was never intended to go. The hinges did all the work, Jacinto only had to give it a swift kick. At the end of its swing, the top half of the door almost ripped itself out of the wall, dropping a little as it slammed into the concrete that was now behind it. The man who was crouched in front of it now laid spread out in the path of the dusky light that flooded the room, his arms and legs fractured as he began to spit up teeth.

Ah, yes this is much better than what I was seeing originally. Excellent job. As to your previous question, it's locked by post limit, not page count. You can make them however long you want.

Jacinto bolted out of his hiding spot, taking full advantage of the confusion. He leapt over the crippled man, running past the line of angry bunker dwellers and into the hallway leading out of the room. The mob reacted quickly, running toward the doorway and the hall access, splitting into two groups and taking up firing positions, kneeling and slamming into each other, doubling over and leaning, reaching over arms and legs to get a good sight picture. Some of them were reloading, tripping on adrenaline and shakily undoing latches and cocking bolts. Their actions clicked and snapped, and a few chambers spun.

They took aim and sighted the outline of Jacinto sprinting down the long hallway, his figure bathed in light every few feet that he moved, and then in darkness in passing under the poorly lit bulbs lining the hall. He was moving so quickly it seemed he might trip, running low to the ground and letting his arms hang in the rushing air created by his momentum. The bunker people staring at him opened fire, and bullets zipped their way down the chamber after him.

A few impacted just inches shy of him, dotting the steel walls with new holes. One shot flew so close Jacinto heard it snap past his ears, and he mustered up that last bit of strength, picking up his speed one final time before disappearing around the corner. The men and woman firing at him stopped and turned toward the operations room, looking for Denora. Meanwhile, the other group poured into the empty gun chamber, and began to pick up their dead and feel over the remaining gun, to see if it was still in working order. Denora rushed toward the group that had fired at Jacinto, pushing her way past them and stopping in a huff before the hallway leading out into the facility.

"Did you hit him? Where is he?"

A small, mousy woman from the group stepped forward. She held her revolver down, pointed firmly at the floor, and spoke up.
"Nora, Ma'am. We couldn't hit him. Most of us were still loading our weapons, and he was too qui-"

Denora's left palm connected with the petite woman's face in a firm slap. She reeled backwards and her eyes began to tear, while she made a fist with her unarmed hand and started to come right back at Denora. She slapped her again, putting her on the ground this time. While the woman lay stunned, Denora kicked her over and planted a foot right on her back. She looked at the Android, still idle in the far corner of the room, waiting for an order. Denora spoke to him, her voice shaken and hurried.

"Where's model two?" she questioned. The android snapped out of his gaze and locked his eyes onto Denora. His voice was the same as the other android, filled with static and careful computation.

"He went to your chambers per his directive. He anticipated an assault. He is feeling free willed today."

Model two was the one with the pompadour and the strange weapon. Denora thought about model one, the automaton with the revolver before her. Model two had always shown free will, responded without order. It was especially bad as of late. Denora gave an order.

"Model one, find Jacinto. Kill him. Put the base on alert. Kill anyone you see talking to him. Kill anyone who gets in your way. He'll try to blend in, get to him before he can."

The android then raised his torso, while his legs followed momentum forward, dragging across the ground, great steel talons planting themselves firmly into the steel and cement. He stepped past the crowd and plodded out of the room, and down the hall. He picked up speed as he went.

The woman below Denora wheezed and coughed. Denora pressed her foot down harder as she stared at the crippled man, watching him be dragged away into a corner, and cared for with tender hands. A few men and woman fussed over him as he whimpered in great pain. People around her worked to get things back in order.

Holy sod this is old.

I don't rightly know if i'll ever finish this. Just bumping it to see if people still want to read this junk.


aaaaand i guess not. I'm probably better off persuing my contracted work anyway.