Modern Horror - Angel in the Devil's Shoes (Updated 13 October)

[Puppy Kicker]

Angel in the Devil’s Shoes
Part I

---​

Her dishwater blonde hair was a matted mess on her face and shoulders. The sign she carried was barely legible now, once clear magic markered letters now ran in the rain and spelled out “MERCY NOT MURDER”. The crowd around her was already starting to disperse and the execution wasn’t scheduled for another hour. Sally scowled openly at a young man as he abashedly slinked away towards his car.

“A man’s life is at stake here! Isn’t that worth dealing with a bit of rain?!” The youth hunched his shoulders and looked at the ground, but continued towards his car, now followed by a couple more weak-willed protestors. Sally turned her anger towards a gawking middle-aged man. “And what do you think you’re looking at?!?” He looked away quickly and waved his sign with a little extra token gusto. Sally looked down, wondering why he was so interested. Oh. Note to self, white shirt at rainy protest equals bad idea, she thought.

Sally’s scowling blue eyes found their real target now. Anger at the petering anti-execution protest and the gawking man was refocused to the other side of the road where it REALLY belonged.

“You’re being a moron, Sean! How can you approve of this?!”

There, among a crowd of people bearing signs with “EYE FOR AN EYE” and “VICTIM’S RIGHTS” a slightly balding, slightly overweight man returned Sally’s angry gaze. “Killers don’t deserve to live. Why are you being so difficult!”

“It was an unfair trial! It was a kangaroo court, Sean!”

“Kangaroo court? What, do I look like the %&#$ing Crocodile Hunter? How should I…”

---​

Sean’s words tapered off as a prison security guard stepped between them, purposefully interrupting their view of one another. Just a uniformed barrier in their already barrier-filled marriage. Sean looked away in frustration and half-heartedly waved his sign. It was getting dark now and his polo shirt clung disgustingly to his overfed belly. He self consciously pulled it away from his skin and squinted as the floodlights around the prison burst into a blinding luminescence.

“It’s funny how they all come on at the same time, isn’t it?” A muscular young man next to Sean covered his eyes as he spoke. “Like the heavens opening up all at once.”

Sean shrugged. “I think it’s just some light sensors, so when it gets just dark enough all the lights turn on. Same as streetlights.”

The young man chuckled. He had a high and tight haircut and some kind of Chinese writing tattooed on his neck. Part of it was obscured by his jacket. “Yeah, I think you’re right. But I like to think it’s a more heavenly approval of what’s going on tonight. The man killed people. Now he’s going to be treated as he deserves. Anyway, looks like you have an enemy on the other side.” The young man glanced over towards Sally, who was scowling at the prison lights and waving her sign.

“Yeah, seems that way sometimes.” He extended his right hand towards the young man. “Sean Hanson. Good to meet you.” The young man took Sean’s hand and shook it. “Mike Holmes. Nice to meet you too, Sean.”

The lights went out. A popping sound like a crushed over-ripe melon to Sean’s left preceded a wet splash of fluid and spongy material on his face. A woman screamed. Another popping sound a second later. As Sean’s eyes adjusted to the evening light he watched brains and blood splatter across Mike’s face.

“Sally. Sally! SALLY!” Sean screamed as fear for his wife clouded all other thoughts and he dropped his sign. He sprinted blindly though the dark towards the other side of the road as the sounds of screaming, falling bodies, and death surrounded him. A body on the ground caught him unawares and he slammed to the ground.

---​

Sally crouched in the mud, cradling the body of a young woman she had met not five minutes before. A hole in the girl’s chest gushed blood onto Sally’s white shirt. That’s going to be so hard to clean out, she irrationally thought. The girl’s eyes were still open. Her mouth tried to form words but she had no lungs to exhale these words to the world. A body fell to the ground next to her. One of the security guards. Sally whispered at the guard’s corpse. “You should arrest whoever is doing this.”

Sally heard her name being called but she didn’t know who was saying it or from where. The guard had a gun at his side. It was still holstered. You should take that gun, Sal. Things are very bad right now.

She did.

---​

Mike wiped the brain matter from his face, dropped to a crouch and scanned the area. In the few seconds it took for his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness he had already unholstered and disengaged the safety on his government issue 9mm. Bodies were falling around him, people were screaming, fluids were spraying.

None of this concerned the young agent. The dark figure he could now see on the other side of the prison fence concerned him. The figure seemed to be clad in robes and his hands were performing an intricate series of gestures. Mike knew what those gestures could do. He also knew how to stop them. He raised his pistol, held his breath, fired two shots. The robed figure had not even finished slumping to the ground before Mike was scanning the fenceline again. “Now where are your friends, you vile son of a &%$#@...”

---​

 

[Puppy Kicker]

Angel in the Devil’s Shoes
Part II

---​

The drizzle had become a downpour and increasingly deeper rivulets of water streamed down the hill from the prison gate, past Sean's still face, under the feet of the surviving protestors as they scattered towards their vehicles to be met by slightly drier protestors coming from their cars up the hill to see what was happening. Bodies fell, enormous bleeding holes opened up with no apparent cause. People screamed. More bodies fell. Gore sprayed. Gunshots echoed from somewhere.

Sal’s mind slowly recovered from the initial shock and she examined the scene around her, vision blurred by tears, rain, and the ever increasing darkness. A pistol rested in her left hand, unfamiliar and somehow as terrifying as the mayhem around her. Her right arm cradled the body of the dead lady. Even in the abhorrent conditions Sal’s nursing training enabled her to see that the woman could not have survived. Sal brushed the woman’s eyes closed. But what was she supposed to do now?

“Sean,” She whispered, her suddenly frenzied eyes searching the scene around her for her husband. She saw a single man standing amongst the many corpses, then her eyes settled on a body lying in the mud. Her husband’s body.

The girl in her arms moved.

---​

The robed figure had fallen with two 9mm slugs in his body, but the protestors continued to gruesomely die. Mike scanned the prison fenceline but there was nobody to see. No guards running out to see what was going on? Troubling. The towers normally reserved for rifle-armed sharpshooters stood empty. The courtyard leading into the prison offices was equally empty, with the exception of the single robed corpse.

…the single robed corpse that was getting up. Mike temporarily regretted his choice of the easily concealable Beretta M92 over something with more stopping power. He shrugged. “Quantity over quality tonight, it seems.” He pulled the trigger twice and watched the robed man’s head wrench backward as he fell to the ground again. As the guy’s body fell one hand flailed towards Mike and the agent felt more than saw the stream of black energy that singed the air inches from his left ear.

The scene around him was now quiet. He saw scattered corpses all around and a single woman kneeling in the mud cradling the body of another woman. Mike recognized her as the angry screaming lady with whom Sean had been “conversing” earlier. Her eyes met his temporarily then settled on something lying on the ground between them.

Mike noticed that the screaming had stopped about the same time a hand grasped his ankle.

---​

Sal leapt up, letting the body of the woman fall into the muck at her feet. The woman let out a groan as she fell, which Sal was too occupied to notice. She sprinted towards Sean’s body. His body was not moving, but in her peripheral vision she saw movement. A lot of movement. Bodies were beginning to rise.

Oh thank God, people are alive! A man lying on the ground between her and Sean stood, a gaping hole where his face should be. Oh dear God, people are alive! Sal screamed and pulled a Heisman maneuver, dodging the groping arms of the suddenly living dead man and skidding to a stop near Sean’s body.

A woman with a missing leg crawled towards Sal then, groping and whispering unintelligible and somehow disgustingly vile words. Sal leapt out of reach of the crawling woman, almost into the arms of the faceless walking corpse. He moved with an unnatural grace and speed and it was sheer luck more than running-back maneuvering that kept his groping hands from attaching to her.

Sal gulped. She braced the guard’s pistol in both hands. She pointed at the faceless man’s faceless head and pulled the trigger. Tried to pull the trigger. Nothing. “Sh**, sh**, sh**...”

The faceless man’s body rocked backward as the sounds of gunshots filled the air from behind Sally.

---​

Mike jerked his leg away from the grasping hand and kicked at another blood-spewing body that had somehow taken an interest in his loafers. He looked desperately around for an escape path as the gory corpses all around him began to rise. The only other survivor, the angry woman, was being besieged by a blood drenched walking corpse. He watched as she tried to shoot him and failed.

Mike’s gun erupted, four rounds pushed the corpse back and gave the woman some breathing room. He rushed towards her and grabbed her elbow. “Come with me if you want to live.”

She scowled. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Then a look of horror crossed her face. “My husband!”

“He’s dead. We need to get out of here or we’ll join him.” Mike yanked on Sal’s arm and looked down the hill towards the parking lot. All along the path the previously dead were standing, clawing at cars and at other corpses. There was no way to get out of here. He looked the other way, towards the prison.

The previously closed gate was now open, the sillouhette of a robed figure stood menacingly at the entrance. Mike pulled the trigger. Four more slugs slammed into the robed figure’s already multi-punctured body and he fell to the ground yet again.

“Where are we going to go!?” Sal screamed. She pointed her pistol at a groping zombie and squeezed at the trigger. Again, nothing happened.

“Into the prison! I’d rather deal with that Energizer Bunny™ cultist than swarms of brain-eating zombies.” He tugged her arm, fired two more shots into the nearest zombie, and sprinted towards the gate.

“Brain eating?” Sal shuddered and ran after him, casting one last glance at the body of her husband. She shed one last tear.

---​

 

[Thomas Hobbes]

Am reading.

 

[xenoflare]

bang bang zombie fun! this is good brain-eating! update?

Yours,
shao

 

[Puppy Kicker]

Angel in the Devil’s Shoes
Part III

---​

Oh, that hurts. The throbbing pain in Sean’s head intensified as he tried to open his eyes. His right eye responded appropriately. His left seemed to be submerged in mud. Somebody stepped on his arm. Muddy feet flitted in and out of his line of vision, heading towards the prison gates. He groaned and raised himself slowly onto an elbow, wiping mud and blood from his face. The rain helped finish off the cleaning process. He looked around.

Why were these people with enormous holes in their bodies walking towards the prison? Why was his wife running towards the prison entrance carrying a gun? Why was that guy he’d met earlier running with her? What were those robed people doing, following the should-have-been-dead people? Why were all the walking hole-filled people suddenly stopping and looking at him? Doh.

Sean stood up as quickly as he could, searched his memory banks for some random bit of knowledge that might be useful in this odd situation, and came to a quick conclusion.

Sean joined the zombie horde and began slowly ambling towards the prison. “Need brains…” he tossed in for good measure.

---​

Sal and Mike skidded to a halt at the entrance to the main office. Mike jerked on the door handle. Nothing.

“They’re coming towards us!” Sal screamed.

“Shoot them!”

“I can’t!”

“Yes you can! They’re not people any more. They’re dead. Shoot them!” Mike pounded on the reinforced glass windows with frustration. Their only means of escape was closed and the horde was not going to treat them kindly.

“I know they’re dead!” Sal waved her pistol in Mike’s face. “I mean I CAN’T shoot them! My goddamn gun doesn’t work!” Mike’s left hand reached out and flicked a latch on the rear of her gun.

“Safety was on.” He backed up a step and emptied his own clip into the mesh-filled window. Sal turned her back to the door and fired wildly into the crowd of slowly advancing dead. Her bullets flew wild, though two successfully landed in the body of a robed man who was just pushing himself up from the mud. He fell to the ground.

“I got one!” She shouted.

“Get more!”

Sal’s wild firing stopped. There, slowly advancing with the rest of the zombie horde, was her husband. “Oh Sean. Oh god…”

“He’s dead. You’re not.” Mike’s right hand released the clip on his Beretta while his left dug another from a jacket pocket. He slammed the clip home and looked into Sal’s tear-filled eyes. “You’re not.” He returned his attention to the window and pumped round after round into it.

“You’re right…” Sal dramatically shook the water from her hair. “You’re goddamn right I’m not dead!” Sal emptied her clip into the advancing horde. She didn’t miss.

---​

Sean tried to subtly nudge his way towards the front of the slowly advancing horde of zombies. He had stopped commenting on brains when he noticed that nobody else seemed overly concerned with them. He could see Sal at the entrance to the prison office. She was waving her gun in Mike’s face and shouting. Mike did something with the gun, said something... then Sal started shooting at him! She stopped shooting for a moment when she saw him. But then started firing again!

“I didn’t think the marriage was THAT bad!” Sean stepped behind some zombies to dodge the incoming lead.

Looking around the horde he could see several robed figures walking in a line towards the prison entrance, passing the horde on the right. The entire horde seemed to be slowly advancing on his wife and her new friend.

“I guess we all have the same destination in mind then,” he whispered and continued his advance.

---​

Mike reached through the mangled mess of glass and wire and slammed the door open. “Get in there!” He grabbed the back of Sal’s shirt and shoved.

Sal was hurled through the door into a waiting room, tripped over something at her feet and skidded across a thoroughly waxed tile floor to come to rest face to face with a dead man.

“A zombie!”

Mike slammed the door shut behind him and looked around the room for something to brace it with. “No. He’s just dead. Bullet hole in the head.” He looked towards his feet. “Same as this guy.”

“Oh. Thank YOU, doctor Feelgood.” Sal scurried to her feet and looked around. Chairs and tables lay neatly around the room. A couple of magazines sat in racks on the wall. Two doors stood closed on the opposite side of the room and a desk sat between them. With the exception of the two corpses on the floor and one slumped across the desk it looked like the type of waiting room you’d find in a doctor’s office or DMV.

“Why does a prison need a waiting room? I thought, by definition, the entire prison was its own waiting room.”

Mike glared. Through the window he could see the advancing horde. They were moving slowly but with great purpose. Several robed figures were advancing down the horde’s right flank. “Try those doors. We won’t be able to hold out here.”

Sal rushed towards the doors, trying the left then right. She shook them furiously.

“Locked.”

“Sonofabitch.” A figure was breaking free from the horde of zombies and sprinting towards their little fort.

One of the doors clicked open. “Got it.”

“How…?”

Sal held up the set of keys she’d pulled from one of the guards’ belts. “Let’s go!” She pulled the door open and stepped through. Mike ran towards her, slamming the door shut behind him the moment the entrance slammed open.

“Sean!”

Sean sprinted to the door. He skidded as he tried to slow down, soaking wet shoes and immaculately waxed floor creating an unforeseen alchemical combination. He slammed to a sudden stop at the door. “Let me in!”

“No,” screamed Mike. “He’s a zombie!”

“Yes, he’s my husband!”

“Let me in!”

Sal shoved the door open. Mike yanked Sean in and pressed the Berretta to his temple. Sal slammed the door shut and the lock clicked. Through the reinforced glass they saw the first of the real zombies stumble into the waiting room and tear the arm off a guard’s corpse.

“Got a plan, Captain America?”

Mike looked at the door, then down the hallway that was their only obvious escape route. “Not really.”

“I’ve got a plan.” Mike and Sal both looked expectantly at Sean.

“It starts with you removing the gun from my head.”

---​

Ryan Hobbes breathed heavily, not quite hyperventilating. Through the bag over his head he could not tell what was going on, but he knew the power was out. He knew that partly because the lights had gone out, but mostly because he was still alive. If there had been power, 50 thousand volts of it would have already shot through his body.

The straps on his arms and legs were tight. The strap around his torso was constricting his breathing. The metal of the electrodes on his shaved head had heated up to body temperature but they still pressed uncomfortably. He could smell the mixture of sweat and fear emanating from his own body. He could hear nothing but the creak of the leather straps as he struggled against them. The voices he’d heard in his head for the last two years were strangely silent.

Footsteps. Sneakers probably, too quiet for the dressy shoes that the guards wore. “Who’s there?”

The pressure of the leather straps was instantly released. Ryan tore the hood and electrodes from his head and leapt to his feet, scraping his scalp on the metal coif that would have been his death. The room was perfectly dark and with the exception of Ryan’s own harried breathing, perfectly silent. “Who’s there? Talk to me!”

Silence.

Ryan Hobbes, convicted of the cold-blooded murder and cannibalization of twelve people, stood alone and free and wondered what to do now.

---​

 

[Capellan]

You know, I think I might want to keep reading this

 

[xenoflare]

This story r0x0r! is Sean also a PC?

Yours,
shao

 

[Puppy Kicker]

Yup, Sean is a PC, though when he ran towards the door the other two didn't know that. He was gone the beginning of the first session (so he went unconcious for ease of play) and when he came back I had him play the zombie horde while Mike and Sal tried to escape. So when Sean broke out from the horde and started running towards them they honestly didn't know if he was playing a zombie or himself.

We played this series a long time ago. Had fun with it though so I figured I'd use it to try to stretch my storytelling muscles before I started recounting more recent games. Feedback is welcome, because there's going to be more coming whether ya like it or not!

 

[Puppy Kicker]

Angel in the Devil’s Shoes
Part III

---​

Shuffle, clink. Shuffle, clink. Shuffle, clink. Shuffle, clink, thump.

It was a body Ryan had just kicked in his blind advance through the execution room. He’d been around enough corpses to know how they felt when he kicked them. He crouched low and ran his hands over the body.

Bald head. Johnson. Abusive sonofabeech… no pulse… uniform insignia… name tag… pen in the shirt pocket… belt… cuffs… holster! … empty… keys!

Ryan fidgeted with the keyring, trying one after another on the manacles hindering his wrists and then ankles. The cuffs fell to the ground with a final clink. He gave the body a solid kick for good measure. “That’s karma mother%$#@#$.”

Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle, thump.

“Damn!” He rubbed his forearm and felt along the corner of the wall he’d abruptly slammed into. Stone gave way to something smooth - the plexiglass window into the viewing area. Ryan knew the door was left of there. He found it. It was open. This is where the warden should have been. The warden who’d sat there reading Field & Stream while he waited for Ryan’s brains to cook and his body to twitch like a wiggling little strip of frying bacon.

“I hope you’re dead.”

Ryan stumbled through the dark of the room. Thoughts of freedom sped his step and overcame the thoughts of vengeance and hate.

Your work on this world is not done, Ryan Andrew Hobbes. More must die.
“Goddamnit, no! Noooooo!!!” Ryan’s screams echoed back to him but they couldn’t silence the voices.

You have been freed for our use. More must die.

Ryan whimpered. His lips mouthed no. Thoughts of freedom faded.

---​

“It starts with you removing the gun from my head.”

“Right. Sorry about that.” Mike dropped the Beretta to his side. “Now, about that plan?” He looked through the window at the rapidly filling waiting room. The zombies were devouring the bodies of the guards but Mike doubted they would be occupied for long.

“Oh god, Sean! I thought you were dead!” Sal hurled her arms around Sean’s neck.

“Nope. More alive than ever, bunny. Scraped my forehead though.” He returned her embrace. “First thing we need to do is call the cops.”

“That’s your plan?” Mike pressed his face against the window. The phone sat on the desk, partially obscured by the remains of a dead guard and the gyrating of an undead brain-muncher. “Reaching out and touching someone’s going to be a bit harder than you might think…” A zombie hurled itself towards Mike, rocking the metal door and spiderwebbing the reinforced window. “Plan B?”

“Get the hell away from these brain eating zombie bastards!”

“Good plan, pookie. Let’s go.” Sal led the way down a clean passageway at a vigorous trot. No clue where she was going but damned if she didn’t LOOK in charge.

“What’s with the brain-eating anyway?”

Mike shrugged at Sean’s question. “Low carb maybe?”

---​

Getting into the prison was certainly easier than getting back out. Locked doors and the occasional dead guard were their only scenery. The sounds of the zombie feeding frenzy had long ago faded in the distance. They felt safe to slow down then, but noone had a clue where they were. With hearts racing and breathing coming in shallow gasps they universally decided to stop in a small office that seemed to oversee the entrance to a cell block. Two guards lay dead in their chairs here and the Holy Grail sat on the desk between the corpses. A phone.

“No tone.” Sean slammed the phone back onto its cradle, rocking the desk and causing one of the guards to flop to the floor.

“We’re in some kind of sh** here, you know?”

Sean and Sal both nodded at Mike’s painfully obvious remark. A moment of silence.

“Why the gun?” Sean suddenly asked.

“Beg your pardon?”

Sean took a step towards Mike. Cautious. Wary. “The gun. Your gun. Why do you have a gun?”

With his left hand Mike pulled his jacket back to reveal his holstered weapon. “This… is because of this…” With his right he pulled out his wallet. It flipped open to reveal an FBI identification card. “Somebody important thought something bad might go on at the protest. We were sent here to keep an eye on things.”

“We? I assume you have a partner then. Where is he?”

“Last I saw him he was chewing on the head of a dead security guard. I’d say we currently have a conflict of interest.”

While the boys talked Sal was examining the corpses of the two guards. Like the others they’d seen these two had been killed by a single gunshot to the head. Sal had been on enough late night shifts at the ER to know gunshot wounds. “Small caliber. Close range.”

Sean pulled his suspicious gaze from Mike. “What?”

“Like the others we’ve seen I imagine. I just haven’t had a chance to examine them. These two guards were both killed by a small caliber round to the head at a very close range.”

“Fine. Small caliber, close range. Who’s doing the shooting? Seems to me that’s the question of the day. At least, that’s what I care about.”

Sal glared at Mike. “I’m telling you what I can. I’m not a damn cop.”

Mike flipped his wallet closed and put it back where it belonged. “They have their weapons out. Guess they weren’t surprised.”

“I take it you know your guns Mr. FBI guy…”

“You can call me Captain America.”

Sal tossed Mike a fake smile as she tossed him what she’d found on the floor. He caught it.

“9mm shell. Guess they shot back or this is what shot them. 9mm sound about right for the bullet hole size?”

Sal nodded.

“Alighty then. We may now deduce that they were killed by a 9mm. Now about the zombies…”

“Safety’s off on both their guns.” Sal was now intimately familiar with the safety mechanism on the guard’s issued pistols. “You know what I think?”

“What’s that, bunny?”

“They shot each other.”

---​

 

[xenoflare]

Wow. the guards shooting each other bit is depressingly chilling... this is great! the gallows humour (low carb) works well too. I take it that Ryan -isn't- a PC, though? Thanks and keep the updates coming!

Yours,
shao