The Lost Chronicles Of Pangea: Apocalypse

Giant Lizard

Have you ever seen an ant standing before a golf ball, the sheer disparity of size and mass would be daunting. Standing in front of the lizard who only had half its body exposed from the rubble of Ahmed's ruined house, David really felt like he was an ant standing before the world itself where almost everything was bigger than him. The size of its head alone could be compared to a fuel truck, it was not as big as the bat David had seen when he first woke up, but their sizes were relatively the same. Its skin was the same yellow as Ahmed's, it even had the same green reptilian eyes with a lot of fury steeped in it.

It looked at David as if David had eaten its mother or child, but standing in front of this huge monster David could somehow not even muster an ounce of fear. The only emotion within him apart from the deep emptiness he felt was anger and an intense hate for the reptile in front of him. Pangea has existed long enough in its modern age to be able to catalog and register every type of ability possible. So David was able to recognize the fact that this lizard had used a parasite to control and slowly take over Ahmed’s body.

The abilities with mental control almost usually fell under the banner of mental evolutions, with some of them being registered as magical. Evolved plant life usually used spores or seeds to control, while most biological life forms with a brain used parasites. A select few among them could use bacteria, viruses, and even hypnosis. Ahmed was strong to have lasted this long, but David wished he didn’t. Being forced to kill someone you once knew and actually cared about was one of the worst feeling in the world, David felt as if he had lost something and this lizard in front of him was to blame.

But angry as he was David was not a stupid person. He had no way to beat this thing at the moment because he was sure it would take a colossal amount of bullets to bring it down. Half of its body seemed to be stuck within the house, so it was incapable of actually reaching David. But David knew some lizards had really long tongues, and with evolution involved, there was no telling what kind of fearsome abilities the stupid thing had. So David decided to go for a preemptive strike. Just running away would not have worked because David would have left his back exposed to the lizard. So he raised his gun and aimed at its eyes. Then he squeezed the trigger. Unlike the beast that was laying dead a few paces away, the lizard did not have any sort of natural defensive capabilities. Its skin could be penetrated easily which made things a little easier for him.

David is a good shooter, but not a great one. He still had a long way to before he could be considered an expert marksman. Due to the erratic movements of the lizard David was not able to reach his target of an eye, but the bullets were enough to clip the top of its nostrils leaving it with a disproportionate nose and a rather ugly wound. Not to mention quite a few of the bullets went into its face and caused enough damage to have the lizard roar in pain as it rapidly retreated and drew its body back into the shadows of the ruined house.

Its skin could be penetrated, but it was actually quite thick. That or the tissue beneath its skin was a whole lot tougher than expected. From the shadows of the house David could see the lizard glaring hatefully at him. Its green eyes were the only thing that could be seen while its painful growls and breathing rent the silence in the air.

David would have chucked a few grenades to try and finish the lizard if not for a number of problems. First it would be extremely loud and would probably attract a whole slew of monsters around the immediate vicinity, two he was not sure a single grenade would have been enough to finish the job, and three he actually didn’t have some on him. He didn’t think he would need it, not to mention the amount of attention it would probably draw to himself due to its ridiculously loud noise.(I mean come on, they have flying cars and spaceships, couldn’t the people of Pangea have invented a grenade that explodes silently.) David took a long hard look at the lizard his eyes both filled with a promise of how they would see each other again. And when that time came, only one of them would be left standing or alive. David took one last look at Ahmed’s pitiful corpse and said to him.

“May the stars be with you on your journey back into the light of the universe’s embrace. Rest well Ahmed.”

And then he turned and left. As he drove away on his bicycle some part of him admonished him for not trying to give Ahmed a proper burial, some other part told him he was too impulsive and there could have been a way to save Ahmed. But David knew standing around in one place for too long was stupid. With how the world now was you would only be making yourself a target.

But he still felt the guilt, long after he had left the estate and the commercial district could be seen in the distance David was still hanging on to the guilt. It was not as if he wanted it, but he could not get rid of this terrible feeling. He knew it was not his fault, but he still killed a person, and not just anybody it was someone he had known from childhood. Due to his amicability Ahmed could be considered to have been a family friend to a lot of people in the estate. There were people who did not like him, but they fell in the minority and their opinion couldn’t count for much. Ahmed had his flaws, really bad ones in fact, but he was not a bad person. He never deserved this but in the end he was left with no choice. Fate and a bunch of misguided kids chose this for him.

And that’s when it clicked, Ahmed had said his brother was among the group of people who had left him wide open and vulnerable for a creepy lizard to take over his brain. Mark was the resident bad boy of the area, but he was also known to be a somewhat polite kid who respected his elders, did good deeds, had the sexiest girls as girlfriends. Was the apple of their fathers eye due to how tough he was, all round good points except for the fact that he was now involved in a murder and was sleeping with his mother. (It was a double crime of murder and mother.) David paused a bit and let a rare smile cross his face, but he quickly wiped it off.

Surviving was one thing, but he also needed a goal. He could put finding his family and making sure they were all okay as a goal, but after that what next. He resolutely looked ahead as he passed the rubble of a burnt gas station and made a decision for his future. It was the only sense of peace he could get for himself and the only thing he could do to pay penance for killing Ahmed. He would chase and track down every member of that group, if they were alive and bring them to justice starting with his brother. But that was mainly because his brother was the only person he knew was there, he would have to depend on the bastard to track down the rest of those scums.