Bounty hunters of the apocalypse

Dusk and Gray had been with Molly since she left the helicopter, though when she climbed up a building, she went where they couldn't follow her. There wasn't actually much of a commotion up there, as the twenty or so people that seemed gathered together for town defense were mostly spread out amongst separate rooftops. They all had extra ammo prepared at their given locations, and were waiting, watching the approaching horde. The main noise from them was officer Clark, yelling out distances over the guard frequency a couple buildings over from the one Molly had climbed.

Somewhere behind Molly, she'd see Lisa swooping down to another part of town, over where the helicopter was preparing to take off. In front of her on the edge of this building, Shevon and Gary hadn't noticed Molly come up yet.

Out for the three in the jeep, tension rose as the horde came closer... Until Red went charging forward, a seemingly suicidal move responded to by the eager shrieking of lots of giant spiders. But they would be denied for now, when Red swerved the jeep off to the left.

And most of the horde changed course to follow.

The spiders on their 2 o-clock by 5 o-clock were no concern, but the ones a bit farther ahead, at 1 o-clock, were moving forward to cut them off; Red would have to keep turning the jeep a bit left more and more to make sure he actually avoided the horde, unless he wanted to go plowing through them. A projectile of some sort, an arrow or crossbow bolt by the looks of it, came from their right and landed way too short of its mark to actually hit them.

But they weren't out of the woods just yet. Behind them, a group of hellhounds was swooping around and charging through the underbrush towards their back end, only really discernible by the plants they rustled as they moved. Over at the wall, Clark and another man with a scoped rifle both opened fire, but their shots were not hitting true. "On your tail hunters! We can't see them and they're gaining on you!" Clark yelled over the radio, switching over to their channel to warn them.

Of course, Recon could see them just fine with thermal. 70 feet, 50 feet... Holy shit these things were fast. There was three of them, moving well faster than the jeep, but as soon as that first one closed within 40 feet, Recon's shot caught it right in the neck/chest below the head, and the hellhound's forward momentum sent it nearly somersaulting forward through the brush as it dissolved into dust. By the time he was even ready to shoot again though, the other two had closed more. And firing at the second one, it anticipated; just as he pulled the trigger it suddenly zigged to one side, making the shot miss it by mere inches to its side.

This did delay it from arriving at the jeep just yet, but it wouldn't take it long; as the third that kept going straight forward could attest to, already leaping through the air. The dark purple beast turned its head sideways, rotating the five, glowing red eyes as its jaws opened up, aiming for Max's head/neck. In the adrenaline of the moment, Max could see there was one row of teeth that looked reminiscent of knives and needles, followed by a second, similar row, then a third row... It had a lot of teeth.

edited 20th Feb '14 7:36:28 PM by FirockFinion

Red had chosen to go left instead of smashing into the spiders.

"Recon - the tommy gun!" Red called out, referring to the submachine gun that was right next to Recon and how it might help thin the horde a bit. His voice still carried over to Arthur's channel. He decided to turn around and drive much slower towards town, hoping that by getting a bit closer that Shevon and the rest could give some sniper support.

"What are you talking about? I've never used an SMG!"

Recon centered his aim the the two hellhounds, this time concentrating. If tried to move, he would follow them, using his higher-than-normal reflexes to make sure he didn't miss.

Seeing the hellhound on Max, he turned his gun on it and fired at it, hoping he'd be able to shoot it in time.

edited 19th Feb '14 11:33:13 PM by gameknight102xx

"I'll use the Tommy Gun after these things aren't on our ass!" Max quickly said before muttering a "Jesus!" when he saw the hellhound.

Pulling the trigger on his rifle, he kept squeezing it as fast as he could to fire 3-round bursts at the leaping hellhound's head, and at the last moment he simply fell down, onto his ass. He also tucked his head in to move his helmet between him and the beast, pressing the brim against the side of the jeep. If the hellhound was still there, he hoped it would either bite down on the jeep's metal, or bang against his helmet and no do the whole 'bite his head off' thing.

"How bad is it?" Molly spoke, she had a horrible sense of foreboding and it was getting worse by the second.

In the slowed down less than a second of time of the hellhound leaping for Max, the firefighter could only get off one burst, and mostly undershot, with one bullet catching the hellhound in the belly, but mostly just grazing it. Recon swinging his shotgun over and firing, at nearly point blank, caught the hellhound in the right side of its rear leg, blowing away most of the hip. As Max fell backwards onto his ass, the hellhound did hit his helmet instead of him; unfortunately its teeth still dug into it, not enough to get Max's head, but enough to take the helmet right off his head as its momentum flung it over Red and onto the hood.

Time resumed back into a normal pace, as the hellhound swung around to face back into the jeep, its claws actually tearing gashes into the hood to remain in place. It fixed its five red eyes on Red, Max's helmet still held in its jaws; then with a growl, said jaws closed, crunching Max's helmet into scrap metal. It then tried, a bit limply with one leg now useless, to move forward on Red, but that's when he swerved; the maneuver threw the hellhound to one side, trying and only just managing not to be thrown off the hood entirely, but in the meantime it couldn't exactly attack any of them.

The other hellhound had charged in in the meantime, moving around to the side of the jeep and trying to get under the barb wire to the rear right hand wheel. But when Red swerved and slowed down, the hellhound overshot, ending up to the jeep's right. It quickly corrected and came back around for another try, this time going for the front right hand wheel.

Back at the building, Shevon quickly turned her head around as Molly announced her presence. "I'll admit, this is probably one of the worst attacks we've ever faced. What are you doing up here? Shouldn't you be down there helping them?" Shevon asked, then blinked as she realized what Molly was wearing and asked, "is that Lisa's outfit?"

Before Molly could answer, Gary, who was still watching the jeep, cut in. "They're turning back around this way" Gary mentioned, readying his rifle.

Shevon turned back around, let out a quick swear, then grabbed her walkie talkie. "Everybody open up!" Shevon yelled into the guard channel.

And then the defending line came to life in a chorus of gunfire, rather than the mere duet of two snipers it had been before. Back at the jeep, giant spiders behind them started dying as bullets whizzed and zipped over their heads. One goblin who had taken the initiative of riding a giant spider had his head pierced through with a sniper round, and it dissolved into dust as it fell off of its impromptu mount, which followed its rider into death not a moment later.

Recon immediately holstered his Pancor and took out his quad-barrel.

"Max, take care of that mutt on the hood!"

The last time a hellhound dodged his shot, it was by inches. He deduced that the quad-barrel's spread should be able to kill it.

He centered his aim on the hellhound still running after them and opened fire, making the shot as sudden as possible.

edited 20th Feb '14 8:58:41 PM by gameknight102xx

"Nice shot!" Red praised Recon's devastation of the hellhound's leg but when the wolf landed on the hood, he became serious again.

Red let go of the steering wheel for a bit, but still keeping his foot pressed to the accelerator, so he could draw his pistol with two hands and fire three shots at the hellhound on the hood.

"Max - you all right back there?" he asked of the other hunter, not knowing if the hellhound did any damage or not.

edited 20th Feb '14 9:15:14 PM by FantasyLiver

"I'm still breathing, so I think I'm good!" Max said, getting back up, rifle ahead of him, and looking around for the mutt on the hood Recon had mentioned. When he finally found it, he started shooting as many bursts at its center as he could, but given its speed and him having to shoot over the other hunters, it probably wasn't much.

"She gave it to me." Molly screamed at shevon over the sound of gunfire, before asking if there was anything she could do.

The strategy seemed to be working ridiculously well, as a significant portion of the giant spiders were picked off. (Well, counting only the adult giant spiders anyway. The ones that weren't fully grown seemed to have the adults outnumbered 2 to 1 from the start.) The two goblins that had been packed with the one on the spider had also been taken out during the volley, as the spiders they had been basically using as cover were eliminated around them, exposing them to the incoming fire. Most of the horde started to scatter to the sides in their charge, even they realizing that following the jeep straight back towards town seemed to be a death sentence.

As for the hellhounds, the one Recon aimed at zigged again when he started aiming at it, just as it had last time. But having fallen for that once before, Recon hadn't pulled the trigger yet. The hellhound kept moving back and forth, before finally deciding to take the risk and plunge for the tire; four rounds worth of 20-gauge buckshot to its center mass disagreed with that decision, and instead of teeth sinking into and flattening the tire, a mass of dust went into the wheel well and got kicked up to the jeep's side. The boom of Recon's gun made communication even harder than normal gunfire did, leaving a light ringing in Red and Max's ears for a moment.

The hellhound on the hood, with one leg disabled and needing to keep the other ones firmly planted to keep from falling off, was in very little position to dodge. Red's shots could have killed it with a couple more hits or better placed ones, but Max's relentless assault with his rifle ultimately put it down, dissolving it into dust, which flew back through the passenger side seat before billowing out over the bed and out the back. Consequently, Max and Recon both had a bunch of dust kicked into their vision, but with thermal vision that didn't make much of a change for Recon. In fact he could see that now a different pack of creatures were trying to catch up to the jeep through the cover of the fields; imps, five of them, taking crazy zig-zagging paths already since they had to maneuver between plants anyway.

The cacophony ebbed a bit as most of the people with fully automatic weaponry had to reload nearly simultaneously. (Except Coline and one other caravan guard who both had LMGs set up, who kept shooting with their larger magazine sizes.) "If you've got a gun or something, you could start shooting! Otherwise shapeshift and either wait for the monsters to get here or go out there and help them!" Shevon yelled back, motioning at the jeep.

Which speaking of, she realized was now coming straight back towards town, with not all of the monsters chasing them anymore. Grabbing her walkie talkie and setting it to the hunters' channel, Shevon started barking to them, "hey, change course! You're bringing the whole horde right to us!" Hopefully the bounty hunters in the jeep could still hear her over all the noise... (They could, if they took the attention to listen over everything else.)

Meanwhile, a hunter of a different variety had arrived, coming in the open East gate to what might have seemed like a ghost town, if not for the sound of lots of guns firing over at the West side of town. The vampire hunter came in from the North East, and would have seen a procession of vehicles loaded with people leaving out the East gate as he was approaching the town through the fields; whether he cared that they had not noticed him off to their side as they left was up to his own disposition.

This was definitely the place, Green Fields, the town calling out for help through a few GPS lines about a vampire. It was the middle of the day, but the dark, cloudy overhead could possibly let vampires come out of hiding; still, it would be unlikely except for desperate or stupid vampires. The obvious point of interest was the large amount of gunfire coming from the West side of town, but something else would catch the man's attention on the way there. A helicopter preparing to take off in an empty lot.

There was three people there: Some lady/girl in her late teens, dressed up like a cowgirl; a boy around sixteen, who seemed to be the pilot of the helicopter; and finally another girl, also around sixteen, who had a dalmation sitting next to her. The older girl was placing a couple of ammo boxes in the back of the helicopter, and seemed to be arguing with the boy. The other girl was standing well off to the side, picking up a toolbox. It was that girl who noticed Shay first, turning her head the other way first before glancing over at him, a look of confusion on her face. The other two hadn't noticed, still talking back and forth.

Then something weird happened. What Shay could have sworn was a red, sleeveless vest the older girl had been wearing was suddenly blue instead. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, or he imagined it being red before?

edited 22nd Feb '14 7:04:26 AM by FirockFinion

Red couldn't hear Shevon but, fortunately, he had already planned on changing course. He decided to head the Jeep towards one of the smaller the groups of monsters that had dispersed. Not having time to properly holster his revolver, he, instead, just kind of tossed in the back with Max. Which speaking of the firefighter...

"Max - now might be a good time to use that Tommy gun on those creeps behind us. Recon, nice shooting but stay sharp!" he told the other bounty hunters.

"I'm gonna try to thin out the horde!" he hollered back. "Keep driving!"

Pulling out his Pancor again, he began to take aim and shoot directly at the mass of orange that took up most of the horizon for him, shooting again and again, using the pread of his gun to full effect.

Molly nodded, "Understood." She turned, hoping that her compound bow and arrow were still in the jeep. She made her way over to the fence, before vaulting over it, shifting and sprinting towards the jeep,

edited 22nd Feb '14 8:48:38 PM by TroyandHawk

"Got it," Max said to Red, not feeling like being very verbose given the pounding, ringing sound in his ear, and a bit miffed about losing his hat.

He picked up the Thompson, and fired it off behind the jeep, sweeping at the horde. He was more interested in hitting as many as he could - slowing them down would make it easier for the others to finish them off - than focusing and taking down one or two.

Recon looked at Anarchy and very nearly fell out of the jeep, starting like he'd seen a ghost.

"M-Molly?" If any of the imps had caught up by then, this would be a prime time to attack Recon, his guard was all the way down.

edited 22nd Feb '14 6:29:08 PM by gameknight102xx

Molly did not hear Recon as she continued to sprint towards the car, becoming painfully aware of the demons chasing the jeep.

edited 22nd Feb '14 8:51:08 PM by TroyandHawk

Thankfully, Max thought to stop the revolver from sliding along the jeep bed with his foot, ((OOC:Something Nman confirmed in skype chat.)) keeping it from falling out of the back of the jeep. As Red drove towards the monsters spreading out to one side, they would find that the monsters were a bit more spread out than he might've realized, as all the giant spiders that were not fully grown were quite hard for him to see under the brush and spread out pretty far over the battlefield. The jeep started rocking a bit more than usual as it started running over numerous young spiders, and the handling got a bit slippery as dead spider blood and bits got all over the wheels. It was kind of like driving in snow that hadn't been shoveled yet.

Recon and Maxs' combined fire took out eight giant spiders, three for Max then five for Recon as two of those were finishing off ones that Max hadn't fully taken down. Behind them, Anarchy was closing the distance to the jeep, but unless they slowed down, it would take her a while longer to fully catch up with them. Behind her, Dusk and Gray had vaulted over one of the lower barricade walls and were following her, keeping the same pace as her but a bit behind since she had a head start.

And of course, the monsters weren't just idle in the meantime. Ahead of the jeep, numerous adult giant spiders turned their way and charged head on towards them, preparing to leap on or try to climb the jeep; hopefully the barb wire would help if it came to that. Many of them were shrieking, but one particularly high pitched, furious screech pierced through in particular, as the black widow with very long, thin legs that Anarchy had seen in the sewer tunnels reared up in anger then crouched and sprinted towards the jeep head on, its longer legs carrying it faster than most of the spiders around it, even as it stayed mostly below the brush line.

Somewhere in the group of spiders ahead of them, there was also brief glimpses of another goblin group, using the spiders to remain hidden as best they could. The imps were also catching up with the jeep now. One swooped up right over the rim of the jeep bed up to Max, planting itself on the underside of his thompson; the little bastard then reached for the magazine eject, trying to get the magazine to fall out. If Red looked in the side view mirror, he'd see another one had landed on and crawled up the outer side of the door, carefully maneuvering through the barb wire to the door handle. It pulled on it a couple times, to no avail since the driver's side door was welded on. Everyone was probably a bit too busy to notice the one that had curved around the right side to land on the center of Recon's back; well, Recon might feel it, but only barely, since imps barely weighed anything and it was holding onto his coat rather than him directly. There it started trailing its finger along his coat, leaving a glowing red trail to draw a small ritual circle; this Recon wouldn't feel, since it wasn't pressing hard enough to make any difference to him.

Behind them, while Anarchy was being completely ignored by the spiders, it was about then she'd discover that the demons were more inclined to acknowledge her presence. Namely because a hellhound suddenly showed up beside her, effortlessly keeping up with her. It turned its head and growled at her; a strange experience, because it was exactly like the difference between Lisa's demon voice and a normal Human when compared to her dire wolves. She could understand it the same way as her wolves, but it sounded simply unnatural as asked, 'hunt, prey?' It looked back ahead and started pulling ahead of her. Another hellhound started to move past her from behind on her other side.

It was friendly and chatty inside the AS332 Super Puma helicopter, conscripted into use by U.N.A.M. years ago and now carrying a squad over the fields of Missouri. At least half the guys in there were American, but U.N.A.M. was pretty uniformly international now, so in addition to the Israeli trooper, the man on the turret rigged into the side opening was German, one of the other troopers Chinese, and the copilot Mexican. The copilot had just finished leading whoever would join in through a jaunty Mexican folk song, which most of the crew sang terribly; it was like listening to amateur karaoke night at a bar with half of the bar tenants pitching in, only here nobody was drunk. They did have a good round of laughs once they were finished though, reveling if only to purely celebrate that they were still alive, even after five years of apocalypse.

Finally though, the pilot tried to regain his composure and tapped into the helicopter's intercom. "Alright guys, heh, okay, calm down already. We should be just a few minutes out now" the pilot informed everyone, getting the laughter to die down.

"Alright, so we're investigating something about another Deceiver, right?" one of the Americans asked, trying to remember their quick briefing; just about all briefings were quick nowadays.

"It's probably nothing. Every month someone overreacts to 'mysterious' and 'strange' things by calling Deceiver" the German responded, making air quotes with his free hand. The Chinese soldier muttered something to himself in Chinese, roughly 'everyone is too jumpy these days.'

"Well some GPS station is freaking the heck out, so let's get over there and check it out. I bet we'll be back to base before nightfall" the pilot said, before adding in, "we've got some nasty looking clouds ahead, so everyone strap in." Over the next few minutes, the helicopter started to pass under some very dark clouds indeed, and was starting to struggle against some harsh winds. All that was missing was rain and lightning to make it a proper storm. A minute later though, the pilot spoke up again, mostly to himself though. "... What the hell? Visibility shouldn't be dropping this low" he muttered, peering outside. Indeed, it was rapidly getting darker, much darker than it should have been in the middle of the day, even with dark clouds overhead.

"Instruments are reading all normal- wait, did you see that?" the copilot asked, reacting to a brief flicker of something outside. "Heads up guys, something weird is going on here!" he yelled back to the soldiers, then got back to helping the pilot fly the helicopter in what was now pretty much total darkness. The gunner got ready on the gun, sweeping it back and forth and trying to look out for anything incoming. In this, the darkness had been underestimated even further, as the gunner didn't see the incoming fiend until it was less than a few feet away, far too late to do anything about it.

With an angry shriek, the fiend planted itself on the side of the helicopter and thrust one arm in, sending a clawed hand right through the gunner's throat, killing him nearly instantly. Surprised yelling of varying tones filled the cabin, as one of the American soldiers brought up his assault rifle and laid into the fiend's center mass, advancing on it as he did. Two thirds of the magazine later, the fiend was dissolving, and the soldier was yelling for someone else to get on the gun while he pushed the German's body away. His yelling couldn't really be made out specifically over all the other yelling, but not that it mattered as he got interrupted halfway through by a second fiend arriving and taking almost the exact same position as the first, sending its claw through his chest before yanking it back, throwing the dead soldier out of the helicopter.

The Chinese soldier raised his own gun, standing at the other side of the cabin. Another fiend's arm burst through the window behind him, grabbing his head and pulling him back so his head was forced out the window. His arms flailing, he still ended up pulling the trigger, but instead of riddling the demon he was aiming for with bullets, the soldier just across from him took the shots to the chest, killing him quickly. A loud bone crunching sounded through the window, and the Chinese soldier's flailing stopped. Up at the cockpit, a succubus didn't so much land on the windshield as she plowed right through it, ending up braced right over a now terrified copilot with a mad, thirsty expression. After tearing off his seat belt, a good portion of his shirt, and some of his chest with her claws, she grabbed him and dived back out the opening behind her, taking him with her, still screaming; the pilot had just barely gotten his sidearm out, but too late to help.

Back in the cabin, another soldier finally put the fiend in the doorway down with his pistol, but out one of the side windows, another succubus could be seen latched onto the side of the helicopter, drawing a glowing red ritual circle on the side of it. Another fiend entered the cockpit, right through the opening the first succubus had made, landing next to the pilot. The pilot got a couple shots off, but not enough to stop the fiend, who started clawing the pilot repeatedly, killing him painfully. Well, the helicopter was definitely going down then, but it still had plenty of forward momentum, so at least it might be a bit of a gentler, gliding crash...

Then the succubus outside activated her ritual circle, completely stopping the helicopter's momentum; even the rotors ground to a halt, stalling the engine. "Goodbye" the succubus said in an unnaturally deep voice, like it was going through a modulator, as she waved a single hand at the remaining occupants. Then she kicked off of the helicopter a flew back out into the darkness, and the fiend left the cockpit to do the same. The helicopter dropped out of the sky like a rock.

The only two survivors of the crash, the Israeli soldier and the A.S.H. conscript, were now approaching Green Fields from the South West. They were definitely worse for wear, with a number of cuts and bruises, but miraculously neither of them broke any bones or had any other major damage done to them in the crash. The demons that had assaulted the helicopter apparently decided that making it crash was good enough, because they encountered no resistance as they salvaged what they could and left.

Now they could hear the unmistakeable sound of gunfire in the distance ahead of them, and cresting another small rise, they got a good look of what was ahead of them. There was the town, Green Fields, with the West side sparkling with muzzle blasts like a line of monotone Christmas lights. Beside the town was a moving mass of monsters, some surging for the town but others caught up with the jeep that was driving around the edge of the mass. It looked to be mostly if not entirely giant spiders from here. They were a bit distant, and attacking the horde directly would be suicidal; they could try to get the attention of the jeep and grab a ride if the jeep got over to them, or they could swing East and approach the town from the clear South side and try to enter.

edited 22nd Feb '14 11:39:16 PM by FirockFinion

Recon felt the imp. He decided to kill two birds with one stone.

Reaching around to his back for his quad-barrel, he pulled it out of the holster on his back as violently as he could, making the upper part of his coat viciously throw itself upwards.

If that still didn't work, he'd reach around and thrash, trying to get the imp off before it did something bad like stab him, unaware of what it was drawing on his back.

edited 22nd Feb '14 11:55:20 PM by gameknight102xx

Molly almost tripped, as she kept pace, the words...he forced the thoughts from her head, terrified. She reached out, attempting to grab the passing Hellhound and smash it to the ground in an effort to break it's neck.

edited 23rd Feb '14 8:59:58 PM by TroyandHawk

"Come here,... ugh... die, little... son... bitch!" Max grumbled out, taking his left hand off of the Tommy gun, and trying to grab the imp with it while blindly firing off what was left in the gun in the general direction of the horde.

Shay met the girl's gaze steadily and only caught the color change out of the corner of his eye. His first thought was his eyes playing tricks on him, but, as he looked again to confirm that the vest had indeed turned blue, he dismissed that thought. Mistaking blue with red wasn't easy. Magic was his second thought, and that meant that these people were either witches or not human. His hand going to his Glock, Shay strode closer to the helicopter, calling out, "Oi! Since when did teenagers learn to fly a helicopter? And get color changing tops?"

Jeep

"Brace yourselves!" Red hollered at Max and Recon, before slamming on the brakes in an attempt to throw off the imps inside the Jeep. Then he started reversing the Jeep as fast as he could in an attempt to lose the spiders in front of them.

Outside Town

Earl Harper was a bit worse for the wear - with a bloody nose and numerous cuts and scrapes on him. But he didn't care about any of that right now. He was more concerned with the preservation of his own life.

"Are you fucking nuts? Why are we still heading to this town? You saw what those fiends did the copter? That was probably a fraction of this supposed Deceiver's strength. We could head to this GPS station they have, radio in for evacuation, and let UNAM figure out another plan. There's no shame in that - two men aren't going to be taking on a demon." the UNAM conscript complained in a noticeable Southern accent.

Nevertheless, he followed the Israeli man. Much as he hated the thought of going into town, he hated the thought of being alone with a Deceiver on the loose even more. He patted the spare M16 magazine that he'd taken from the copter crash to try and reassure him that he wasn't going to die. It didn't help.

edited 23rd Feb '14 6:29:47 AM by FantasyLiver

“In'al dinak^translation curse your religion,” the Israeli soldier cheerfully told his companion as they made their way to the southern side of the town. “Not a matter of shame, Earl.” A pause. “We've a job to do, and plus, those people look like they need help. Sure, we can try and get UNAM from the GPS station, but there're two problems with that.”
The soldier paused, adjusted his vest and looked out to the west. “The GPS station is thataway, where the trouble seems to be the thickest,” he said. “That's one. Second is that we're not evac'ing and leaving those people here. Despite what you say, one gun — heck, one shot — can make a big difference in the battlefield. So we're gonna help those people.”

edited 23rd Feb '14 10:45:54 AM by desdendelle

Outside Town

"Yeah, well living to fight another day could make a difference too, you know..." Earl muttered not too quietly. Nevertheless, he followed the Israeli to the town. It seemed the man's mind was already made up and besides, the town would provide a safe haven - if only temporarily. When they got to the Southern entrance, Earl would holler at anyone in town he could see to let them in.