More MHI fanfiction shenanigans (Updated 9/23)
Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 4:46 pm
So, yeah, I decided to take a stab at writing some fanfiction too.
At this point I don't really have any spoilers to warn about, as it has to do with an already-established team consisting of nobody from the book, and it doesn't reference any of the book's events yet. Critiques welcome. So, uh, here goes!
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A large, battered white van rumbled down the dark highway. Its worn windshield wipers struggled against the deluge of rainwater and pine needles that assailed it without pause. The faint glow of electronics could be seen through the blur, hinting at passengers. The one in the front pointed outward for the driver.
"Take this exit up ahead," she said, glancing from the GPS to the driver. Filling in as navigator, Janine Kuramoto, 32, of Bellevue was the team leader. With nearly a decade and a half of experience killing things that most people didn't know or denied existed, she was a natural for the job. The elbow pad on her arm bounced against the window as she pointed. Known to supply the odd witticism now and again, she was all business tonight. An FN F2000 rested in her lap, above an FNP-45 holstered at her thigh.
"Right," the driver replied, slowing down and pulling off to the side. Joaquin "J" Ortiz, 25, of Tacoma was bulky before he put his armor on, and he seemed not so much to sit in the driver's seat as dominate half of the cab. Softspoken despite his size, Ortiz came from a large family and tried to help his younger siblings get into college, in between jobs. Although the team did not have a specific assigned driver, the job usually fell to him. It might've been because of his experience driving different kinds of trucks all over the country, or it could just be that he naturally gravitated towards the driver's seat before anyone else. Tonight, he cajoled the beaten-up rental down the road, as their usual source of transportation had met a tragic, violent end the week before.
Behind them, in seats mounted against the side of the van, facing the center, were six more armored figures. Just behind the driver, cradling a UMP45, was Tricia Washburn, 28, of Enumclaw. Relatively new to the team, she still favored stock gear, as picking up a dead policeman's Glock was her first introduction to weaponry, and she was still getting over a lifelong distaste for guns. Nevertheless, she was a highly effective and capable member of the team, despite the fact that she was trying desperately not to nodd off. Her fingers drummed against a mostly-empty can of Monster.
Across from her, trying to make some kind of interesting conversation, was Steve Amundsen, 27, of Bellingham. Tonight his tattooes were concealed under sleeves, but his goatee and nose ring were still visible. A wiry geek who laughed easily and ran marathons, Amundsen was easily the most energetic of the lot. A former McDonalds manager, he had the unique experience of finding a creature in the restaurant's supply closet. He had killed it with the fry vat. A dogeared copy of Conan the Libertarian sat in his hands, which were also resting on an M3A1.
To his left was another large, heavily armed individual. Caleb DeSanto, 29, of Bremerton, was more clean-cut in appearance, but no less geeky. At the moment, he was busy playing some sort of cheery-sounding game on a Nintendo DS. In the unoccupied seat to his left, his AR-10 sat buckled in. Cheerfully cynical, he was sometimes at odds with Ortiz. Ortiz believed that God was looking out for him. DeSanto believed that God was out to get him. Both had ample evidence to back their cases. Still, they got along well enough. The team's designated marksman and technical specialist, DeSanto kept to himself, unless he had some wry comment to make, or to bring up something random that he thought was interesting. His original monster encounter involved vampires, and he was rather tight-lipped about it.
Across from him was Eustace James Grunwald, 35, of Seattle. Named after a beloved, but eccentric and now deceased uncle, he went by Jimmy. At least, he tried to, until Tricia started calling him Eu. The nickname stuck with the team, and he'd only recently learned to get over it. A former occult bookseller with a shop in the U-District, he was the black sheep of the family before joining MHI. Now, he was sometimes viewed with suspicion by the team, as his monster encounter could be considered slightly "self-inflicted." At the moment, he was thumbing through a catalog, looking for the next accessory for his M4A1.
The last, and newest member of the team, sat to Grunwald's right. Carl Miner, 21, was inexperienced, but highly motivated. At the moment, he was playing with a set of night vision goggles, making sure they worked, and checking how the rest of the team looked in green. A fan of HK weapons before joining MHI, he was perfectly happy to have a UMP45, and carried a USP45 as his sidearm. This would be his third mission with the team, which had been impressed with the amount of promise the rookie had shown. An optimist from Bothell, he'd been working a summer job to pay for college at a marina when he was jumped by an unidentified creature that came from the water. A small boat anchor proved to be a useful enough weapon, and he was quickly snapped up by MHI following the swift cover-up.
Janine twisted in her seat to face the rest of the team.
"Heads up, everyone. We've almost reached the objective. To review, in case any of you fell asleep on the ride here: There's a small town off Highway 101 which has apparently been the scene of a zombie outbreak. Up until an hour ago, there'd been some 911 traffic coming from the town, but it abruptly ended, and the feds have put a comms blackout on the town. At this point, all we know is that the town's population is about two hundred fifty, and we could be facing that many zombies at this point."
"Sounds fun," Ortiz remarked dryly.
"Yeah," Janine continued, "anyway, we're going to stop just outside the town and enter on foot. That should leave it close enough to resupply if we have to, but far away enough that it shouldn't be hemmed in, especially if there are survivors to evacuate. Ortiz, you're going to stay with the van in case we need to move it, so keep listening to the radio. You know the drill. The rest of us will start a house-to-house sweep. If the outbreak isn't that bad, we'll keep it to knocking on doors. Worst-case, we're gonna start house-to-house clearing. In that case, just think of how much money we'll have to get trashed this weekend."
"Hooah," replied Amundsen. DeSanto nodded. Washburn rolled her eyes.
"Any questions? No? Good."
The van slowed to a stop, mostly as planned, with a sarcastic mutter of "I love these brakes" from Ortiz. The team dismounted and fanned out down the road. It looked like things were leaning towards the worst case scenario. One house was on fire, and a car was overturned. They had only advanced a few paces before a middle-aged man in stretched and torn clothing came running up to them, just on the sane side of hysterics.
"You have to get out of here!" he shouted. "If you want to get out alive, run for your life!"
"Hold it!" DeSanto yelled, as he was the closest to the approaching survivor. "Don't move." The older man, possibly mistaking his intentions, froze and held his hands up high.
"It's all right, we're here to help," said Kuramoto, stepping in closer. "Tell us what happened here."
"There is no help! The whole town! Those things... they got everyone! We have to get out of here!"
"I love starting missions on a melodramatic note," DeSanto remarked to Amundsen as their team leader tried to calm the man down enough to get some useful information out of him. This turned out to be an exercise in futility, so after a once-over for bites, they put him in the van with Ortiz and moved on. The first house they came to had signs of forced entry, but no occupants. After finding one block to be completely deserted, they began moving in farther. Ortiz moved the van a bit farther up the road behind them.
The next building they entered was more damaged than the ones on the previous block. It was also a lot more occupied. After they entered the door and found the living room to be clear, a zombie shambled out of the kitchen to the left. Amundsen took it down with a short burst from his grease gun. The noise attracted zombies from other rooms, stumbling in from three different doors. The team let them come first, taking them down as the zombies had to file through the doors, making them easy targets for headshots.
"Well, it's nice to see that this job should pay for itself, at least," said Grunwald in between bursts of gunfire. As the mob began to thin out, the team pressed on, clearing the rest of the house. Once they were satisfied that the battered dwelling was free of the living dead, they were about to move on when DeSanto looked out a cracked and bloodstained window.
"I think they heard us," he said, pointing at a certifiable horde of walking corpses slowly advancing up the street. "What do you think, boss?"
"Looks like," Kuramoto agreed. "We'll block the doorways and thin them out from here." She put a finger up to her radio earpiece. "Ortiz, you see them? Good. Hang back a bit more."
The team set about stacking furniture by the doors and breaking out windows to set up firing positions. Tricia and Carl took up positions on either side of the front door, as it had windows on either side, and began firing into the horde. Janine, Amundsen and Grunwald took up positions where a big shop window had once been, and DeSanto fired from a small window in the kitchen.
A small town would supply a relatively small horde, but even a small horde outnumbered them roughly 35 times over, so they paced themselves by using controlled, accurate bursts of fire, or in DeSanto's case, accurate single shots. Over the next fifteen minutes, though, the horde's numbers had clearly been reduced. It was looking like the mission would be a turkey shoot, until the front door and furniture in front of it explosively shattered inward.
At this point I don't really have any spoilers to warn about, as it has to do with an already-established team consisting of nobody from the book, and it doesn't reference any of the book's events yet. Critiques welcome. So, uh, here goes!
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A large, battered white van rumbled down the dark highway. Its worn windshield wipers struggled against the deluge of rainwater and pine needles that assailed it without pause. The faint glow of electronics could be seen through the blur, hinting at passengers. The one in the front pointed outward for the driver.
"Take this exit up ahead," she said, glancing from the GPS to the driver. Filling in as navigator, Janine Kuramoto, 32, of Bellevue was the team leader. With nearly a decade and a half of experience killing things that most people didn't know or denied existed, she was a natural for the job. The elbow pad on her arm bounced against the window as she pointed. Known to supply the odd witticism now and again, she was all business tonight. An FN F2000 rested in her lap, above an FNP-45 holstered at her thigh.
"Right," the driver replied, slowing down and pulling off to the side. Joaquin "J" Ortiz, 25, of Tacoma was bulky before he put his armor on, and he seemed not so much to sit in the driver's seat as dominate half of the cab. Softspoken despite his size, Ortiz came from a large family and tried to help his younger siblings get into college, in between jobs. Although the team did not have a specific assigned driver, the job usually fell to him. It might've been because of his experience driving different kinds of trucks all over the country, or it could just be that he naturally gravitated towards the driver's seat before anyone else. Tonight, he cajoled the beaten-up rental down the road, as their usual source of transportation had met a tragic, violent end the week before.
Behind them, in seats mounted against the side of the van, facing the center, were six more armored figures. Just behind the driver, cradling a UMP45, was Tricia Washburn, 28, of Enumclaw. Relatively new to the team, she still favored stock gear, as picking up a dead policeman's Glock was her first introduction to weaponry, and she was still getting over a lifelong distaste for guns. Nevertheless, she was a highly effective and capable member of the team, despite the fact that she was trying desperately not to nodd off. Her fingers drummed against a mostly-empty can of Monster.
Across from her, trying to make some kind of interesting conversation, was Steve Amundsen, 27, of Bellingham. Tonight his tattooes were concealed under sleeves, but his goatee and nose ring were still visible. A wiry geek who laughed easily and ran marathons, Amundsen was easily the most energetic of the lot. A former McDonalds manager, he had the unique experience of finding a creature in the restaurant's supply closet. He had killed it with the fry vat. A dogeared copy of Conan the Libertarian sat in his hands, which were also resting on an M3A1.
To his left was another large, heavily armed individual. Caleb DeSanto, 29, of Bremerton, was more clean-cut in appearance, but no less geeky. At the moment, he was busy playing some sort of cheery-sounding game on a Nintendo DS. In the unoccupied seat to his left, his AR-10 sat buckled in. Cheerfully cynical, he was sometimes at odds with Ortiz. Ortiz believed that God was looking out for him. DeSanto believed that God was out to get him. Both had ample evidence to back their cases. Still, they got along well enough. The team's designated marksman and technical specialist, DeSanto kept to himself, unless he had some wry comment to make, or to bring up something random that he thought was interesting. His original monster encounter involved vampires, and he was rather tight-lipped about it.
Across from him was Eustace James Grunwald, 35, of Seattle. Named after a beloved, but eccentric and now deceased uncle, he went by Jimmy. At least, he tried to, until Tricia started calling him Eu. The nickname stuck with the team, and he'd only recently learned to get over it. A former occult bookseller with a shop in the U-District, he was the black sheep of the family before joining MHI. Now, he was sometimes viewed with suspicion by the team, as his monster encounter could be considered slightly "self-inflicted." At the moment, he was thumbing through a catalog, looking for the next accessory for his M4A1.
The last, and newest member of the team, sat to Grunwald's right. Carl Miner, 21, was inexperienced, but highly motivated. At the moment, he was playing with a set of night vision goggles, making sure they worked, and checking how the rest of the team looked in green. A fan of HK weapons before joining MHI, he was perfectly happy to have a UMP45, and carried a USP45 as his sidearm. This would be his third mission with the team, which had been impressed with the amount of promise the rookie had shown. An optimist from Bothell, he'd been working a summer job to pay for college at a marina when he was jumped by an unidentified creature that came from the water. A small boat anchor proved to be a useful enough weapon, and he was quickly snapped up by MHI following the swift cover-up.
Janine twisted in her seat to face the rest of the team.
"Heads up, everyone. We've almost reached the objective. To review, in case any of you fell asleep on the ride here: There's a small town off Highway 101 which has apparently been the scene of a zombie outbreak. Up until an hour ago, there'd been some 911 traffic coming from the town, but it abruptly ended, and the feds have put a comms blackout on the town. At this point, all we know is that the town's population is about two hundred fifty, and we could be facing that many zombies at this point."
"Sounds fun," Ortiz remarked dryly.
"Yeah," Janine continued, "anyway, we're going to stop just outside the town and enter on foot. That should leave it close enough to resupply if we have to, but far away enough that it shouldn't be hemmed in, especially if there are survivors to evacuate. Ortiz, you're going to stay with the van in case we need to move it, so keep listening to the radio. You know the drill. The rest of us will start a house-to-house sweep. If the outbreak isn't that bad, we'll keep it to knocking on doors. Worst-case, we're gonna start house-to-house clearing. In that case, just think of how much money we'll have to get trashed this weekend."
"Hooah," replied Amundsen. DeSanto nodded. Washburn rolled her eyes.
"Any questions? No? Good."
The van slowed to a stop, mostly as planned, with a sarcastic mutter of "I love these brakes" from Ortiz. The team dismounted and fanned out down the road. It looked like things were leaning towards the worst case scenario. One house was on fire, and a car was overturned. They had only advanced a few paces before a middle-aged man in stretched and torn clothing came running up to them, just on the sane side of hysterics.
"You have to get out of here!" he shouted. "If you want to get out alive, run for your life!"
"Hold it!" DeSanto yelled, as he was the closest to the approaching survivor. "Don't move." The older man, possibly mistaking his intentions, froze and held his hands up high.
"It's all right, we're here to help," said Kuramoto, stepping in closer. "Tell us what happened here."
"There is no help! The whole town! Those things... they got everyone! We have to get out of here!"
"I love starting missions on a melodramatic note," DeSanto remarked to Amundsen as their team leader tried to calm the man down enough to get some useful information out of him. This turned out to be an exercise in futility, so after a once-over for bites, they put him in the van with Ortiz and moved on. The first house they came to had signs of forced entry, but no occupants. After finding one block to be completely deserted, they began moving in farther. Ortiz moved the van a bit farther up the road behind them.
The next building they entered was more damaged than the ones on the previous block. It was also a lot more occupied. After they entered the door and found the living room to be clear, a zombie shambled out of the kitchen to the left. Amundsen took it down with a short burst from his grease gun. The noise attracted zombies from other rooms, stumbling in from three different doors. The team let them come first, taking them down as the zombies had to file through the doors, making them easy targets for headshots.
"Well, it's nice to see that this job should pay for itself, at least," said Grunwald in between bursts of gunfire. As the mob began to thin out, the team pressed on, clearing the rest of the house. Once they were satisfied that the battered dwelling was free of the living dead, they were about to move on when DeSanto looked out a cracked and bloodstained window.
"I think they heard us," he said, pointing at a certifiable horde of walking corpses slowly advancing up the street. "What do you think, boss?"
"Looks like," Kuramoto agreed. "We'll block the doorways and thin them out from here." She put a finger up to her radio earpiece. "Ortiz, you see them? Good. Hang back a bit more."
The team set about stacking furniture by the doors and breaking out windows to set up firing positions. Tricia and Carl took up positions on either side of the front door, as it had windows on either side, and began firing into the horde. Janine, Amundsen and Grunwald took up positions where a big shop window had once been, and DeSanto fired from a small window in the kitchen.
A small town would supply a relatively small horde, but even a small horde outnumbered them roughly 35 times over, so they paced themselves by using controlled, accurate bursts of fire, or in DeSanto's case, accurate single shots. Over the next fifteen minutes, though, the horde's numbers had clearly been reduced. It was looking like the mission would be a turkey shoot, until the front door and furniture in front of it explosively shattered inward.
)