Dark Fall

The Second Phase

Just a few minutes ago, while Alex went to deal with the two Volonoids that were waiting in ambush outside of the building, Maxie and the others quickly did as they were told and took shelter on the building’s second floor.

They moved into one of the rooms and were hunkering down in there after they blocked the windows by knocking down some of the furniture that was inside the place. The building they were in was actually a single home so the rooms were connected so Maxie had to watch the two entrances into the room.

Unfortunately, for them, they never expected the monsters that Alex was talking about to suddenly come from above as they broke through the building’s roof.

Thankfully, Maxie was able to react quickly enough so once the first Volonoid landed on the ground, he immediately shot the grenade launcher without any hesitation although he was completely frightened by the monster’s appearance.

“Kill it, kill it!” Jesse yelled hysterically.

Unlike Maxie, Jesse wasn’t given a weapon but this was understandable as he was still ‘injured’ and Alex didn’t trust him with one since he appeared a little unstable.

The grenade that Maxie fired blasted the Volonoid through one of the walls and it died immediately from the explosion but Maxie was too close so so he was slightly caught up in the explosion and was thrown back.

Thankfully, he wasn’t injured too badly but the blood of the Volonoid had splashed on his leg, causing his pants to corrode away and a bit of his skin so he started bleeding. His flank was also cut by one of the debris that fell through the roof when it had broken apart but he hastily shook off the pain and got up.

“Move to the other room! Quick!”

“D-Dad!”

Maxie turned around and saw that Jesse, who was already injured, was once again hurt after a bit of the Volonoid’s blood splashed across his back as he was protecting Josh.

“Diane, help him up and move to the next room! There’s probably more of these things!”

Maxie deduced that because Alex had given him a fully loaded grenade launcher so this meant that there was likely more than one of these monsters. He didn’t know where Alex was able to acquire such a thing, but he had a Barrett so this much didn’t surprise him.

He was grateful that Alex trusted him enough to give him the weapon and he managed to kill one of the monsters that attacked them with it.

“Dad, get up! Get up!”

“Aghh...Josh, are you okay?”

“I-I’m fine, Dad, but your back!”

“W-Who cares about me, just move to the other room with your sister! Go!”

“The hallway, go! Another one just jumped in through the window in that room!”

Diane and Josh both helped their father up and they moved out of the room. Maxie followed after them and with a brief moment of hesitation, he grabbed his injured calf and bloodied his hands before wiping it across the wall as he made his way down the hallway.

“Please get here already, Alex!”

He was trying to leave a trail for Alex to follow with his blood but it was a bit unnecessary since Jesse was similarly bleeding and leaving a trail of blood on the ground.

Once they arrived at the end of the hallway, the group was forced into the room on their left as another Volonoid jumped through the window and landed inside the room to their right.

“Ahhh! Die! Die!”

He fired another shot and blasted the Volonoid through the window it came in from but another one was already waiting right next to him.

“Maxie!”

The previous Volonoid had herded the group into the room where the final Volonoid was waiting for them and if it weren’t for Maxie’s instinctive reaction to duck down, the monster’s sharp tail would have pierced into his head.

He rolled on the ground and raised the grenade launcher but it was already too late as the monster was already pouncing on him. His life flashed right before his eyes but his death never came.

The Volonoid that was pouncing on him had suddenly disappeared from his peripheral vision as he saw another ‘monster’ tackle it to save him.

Maxie saw that this monster was actually Alex. The only strange thing about him that made Maxie think that he was a monster was the numerous sharp tendrils that were growing out of his body.

He still retained his human look but the tendrils made him scary. Maxie saw as Alex pushed the monster through the window and dragged it down with him. He heard the impact of the monster landing on the ground before Alex’s scream and cursing.

Diane quickly rushed over to him and helped him up, “Maxie, get up, get up! Th-There might be more of those things around!”

Josh had tears streaming down his face but he kept his mouth shut and didn’t wail or cry out since he remembered Maxie telling him not to be too loud. Jesse was covering him but his consciousness was slipping though he still saw Alex’s monstrous form as he dashed into the room and once more saved them from peril.

Maxie had dropped the grenade launcher earlier when he had resigned to his fate so he quickly picked it up again and aimed it at the two openings leading to their room.

“Get back! Don’t stay in the center! One of them might drop in from the ceiling again!”

He was completely scared out of his mind but his judgment wasn’t clouded. He kept a tight grip on the grenade launcher and pointed it towards the doorway when he heard something coming from there.

“Maxie, it’s me!”

Alex stepped past the doorway with his hands raised as he slowly made his way over to the terrified young man. He moved his hand onto the grenade launcher, flipped the safety on before patting Maxie on the shoulder.

“W-Was that the last of them?” Maxie suddenly asked.

Alex replied with a nod and said, “The one I threw out the window was the last of them.”

“Th-Th-Then we’re s-safe now...Th-Thank god…”

Maxie’s tension was released and he fell onto his back. Alex took out his gauze and bandages before telling Diane to help the others apply them to their wounds. Diane nodded before quickly getting to work.

There was a fear in her eyes that previously wasn’t present before but Alex thought that it was only natural that she’d be afraid of him. He didn’t want to show it to them, but at that current timing, there was no way he could’ve hesitated, or else Maxie might have lost his life just now.

The corroded parts of his clothes revealed that the injuries he had sustained from being splashed by the monsters’ corrosive body fluids had been completely healed. His current set of clothing was made from his biomaterial so they were slowly mending themselves but no one else noticed this, thankfully.

It was just one hectic event after another. Maxie and his group couldn’t even catch a break for just one day since the apocalypse started. Yesterday, they were attacked by an alien and now today, they were nearly killed by the monsters of the alien invasion’s second phase.

Diane quickly finished patching up Maxie since his injury was only on his calf and wrapped it up quickly with the bandages that Alex had given to her before she moved to take care of her father’s injuries but she noticed something strange when she was administering the medicine on her father’s injured back.

The corrosive injuries on Jesse’s back were being healed at a rapid rate which shocked her so she turned her head over to Alex who was helping Maxie up. She eyed Maxie’s injury before noticing that he wasn’t limping like before after getting up saying that Alex’s medicine was really pain-relieving and effective.

Diane had so many questions but she didn’t dare ask them after remembering what Alex was capable of turning into so she quickly finished applying the medicine on her father’s injuries, bandaged it up before returning the items back to their owner.

“We have to move right away. We can’t stay here. Those monsters are looking for survivors and attacking them. They’re not as strong as the aliens but it seems like they hunt in packs.”

“Those things...are they from the aliens? That thing earlier looked almost exactly like the alien from ‘Alien’!”

“They’re probably from those aliens. We should move already. The evacuation site might be in danger so we have to get there before the monsters do.”

Jesse was unconscious from the severe injury he had received so Alex move over to him and carried him up like a sack and put him on his shoulders before moving out of the building.

Diane, Josh, and Maxie quickly followed after him and the party moved away from the place as quickly as possible. They no longer needed to take a detour so they continued traveling through their intended route.

Alex let Maxie continue holding onto the grenade launcher but he taught him how to switch the safety on and off, and how to reload it. He had used 2 shots earlier so there was only 10 grenade ammunition left.

They didn’t move too hastily as every once and a while, Alex would pick up a pack of Volonoids moving in random directions, and on their way to the evacuation sites, they were able to hear the sounds of gunfire and people yelling but unfortunately, it didn’t take long before those sounds were silenced, meaning that the people the Volonoid packs were hunting had bee killed already so they couldn’t help.

Alex also didn’t have any time for that because he already had his hands full helping Maxie and his group. He wanted to help other people, but he wasn’t stupid enough to endanger the lives of himself and the people he was already helping.

It would be pretty stupid of him if he tried biting off more than he could chew and Scourge constantly reminded him of this.