Urban Survival: Prologue (editted)

Joe’s fingers tapped ever so impatiently on the desk as he read through the file. He had to find the right one, the perfect one, one that would allow him to leave no trace behind. He glanced up at the mountain of files on his desk. Each one contained old blueprints, information, history and occupational status on temporary and permanent military bases alike. Joe missed his days as a soldier when he led missions for the safe house as opposed to plan them from behind the safe house's walls. He clenched his jaw in anger. His injury had grounded him in a cowardly place; stuck behind a desk instead of out there in the field. It wasn’t fair!

He had to find one base, just one that had been overrun by the freaks who had been dubbed the Cretin by the United Nations, yet still was not too far from the safe house itself. Then he would be able to exact his long awaited revenge.

Joe thought back to when the US Government had used up most of their money in order to build the hidden safe houses deep within many of the United States National Parks. It had all started with those freakin' aliens who called themselves the Ayra. Once they had began to turn hostile the government's priority was to protect the civilians, and to them shipping everyone into local safe houses seem the most proper.

The Morristown National Historic Park's safe house had made itself a home to Joe as soon as he had moved in during the incident. He almost felt bad for the human-like aliens. All they had wanted was a place to stay since their planet had been destroyed. He winced and began to feel pity for the poor Ayra… until he remembered he hated anything that was not Human.

Joe’s head suddenly felt like it was going to split in two. He heard an ungrateful noise, the same noise he had heard ever since his injury where he had nearly been killed by one of the Cretin. He could feel a tear leak past his clenched eyelids as he heard the “purring” of the Cretin in his head. How was this even possible? It seemed even after his accident he could still hear the freak of nature as if it were literally in his head. The “purring" then changed into unrecognizable words. A harsh whisper which unnerved him.

Maybe he had been infected and the parasite? And the Kreton was attempting to turn him into one of those things? No, no! He was only getting paranoid that's all. Joe knew he was immune and it was impossible for the little pests to turn him.

The whispering was making it tough to think though, so he put his full concentration on it and his brain slowly worked out each syllable into comprehendible words and finally into a full sentence. But once he was able to understand the words, his head began to ache even more. The words chanted in what sounded like a chorus of raspy whispers, all of which said the same thing over and over like a broken record, “Kill him! Kill the man that did this to you!”

The violent whispering slowly died down, however, after what seemed like days and he was able to start thinking clearly.

“They’re right! They’re always right!” Joe yelled aloud, punching the desk with so much anger his knuckles began to bleed.

He looked around the room slowly. He was glad he was in his private quarters because there was no telling what someone might think of him if they had seen him. They would probably lock him in the loony bin.

Many people said that the “purr” of the Cretin could make a man go mad, Joe on the otherhand thought this was rubbish. No sort of noise, of any type, would be enough to make him break psychologically! Joe rationalized the voices in his head by saying they were nothing more than his conscience telling him what he should, or needed to do. But just to reassure himself that he was still sane, Joe liked to use big words as a way to prove to himself that he still knew fact from fiction.

But this was the whole reason he hated anything not human. Because of what that Cretin had seemingly done to him... If it was not of human origin it disgusted him. Some claimed that the Cretin were still human and this was where the arguments got him for the Cretin were of human origin... In fact they had been humans at one point in their lives. Well, except for the Cretin who were born to Cretin parents. But he hated when people said such things. According his rules anyone or anything that is a cannibalistic psychopath deserves hatred and should be destroyed.

Joe leaned back in his chair and rested the file on his lap, continuing to read through it. Most of the words he read through were blobs of black and white as he began to blank out all of the “boring” bits. He stopped to relish a few words such as ‘death’, ‘died’, ‘explosion’ and the like. Although all of these words dealt with violence and misfortune, Joe couldn’t help but feel intrigued by them.

He flipped to the last page of the file and began to read it over. It was a typed log of the bases last comm. link transmission. He skimmed through it blanking the words out like he had before but then stopped and sat up quickly as he read the last three words, “we are overrun.” Joe’s eyes widened as he went back and reread the whole transmission over again.

Quickly flipping back to the first couple of pages in the file he found a map of the base's location. And after staring at it for a few moments he stood up and with somewhat of a limp, walked over to a bucket in the corner of his room. The bucket was full of many maps of various sizes, which he rummaged through hastily until he found the exact map he was looking for.

Rushing back over to the desk he knocked the mountain of files onto the floor carelessly with a single sweeping motion. Joe then unrolled the map quickly and threw it on top of the table smoothing out its edges. He glanced at the map in the file then looked back to the jumbo map and smiled. New Jersey was certainly a beautiful state.

Opening a drawer in the desk and pulling out a marker, Joe plotted out the coordinates of the base in the South Western regions of New York City and then the coordinates of the Morristown National Park’s safe house in New Jersey.

Joe stood back and admired his beautiful, yet sloppy scribbles. To him a master piece... others, not so much. But he was proud of it.

He then proceeded to cap the marker and throw it over his shoulder. He then walked his fingers from point A to point B chuckling more and more as his fingers neared the final destination.

“Perfect!”

He hurried over to a shelf on the opposite side of the room and fumbled with the objects atop it, until he found his radio.

Pressing down the button he spoke into it, “Miss Jane… Miss Jane, are you there?”

He released the button and heard static. So he tried again, “Miss…”

“Yes Mr. Hunt?” a young female voice interrupted him before he was even able to finish his statement.

Letting out a sigh of relief he calmed himself, “Miss Jane, is the Drone still up over New York?”

Jane stumbled to say something but paused and after a moment replied, “Yes?”

“Good! Transfer the controls to my console please,” Joe said almost gleefully running over to the computer in the other corner of his room.

“Yes sir... may I ask what for?”

Once he saw that he had the control of the UAV he stated simply, “I love Drones.”

Upon saying this he shut off the radio and grabbed hold of the joy stick which was sitting on the computer desk in front of him. Images of buildings far below appeared on the computer screen and flew by quickly, reminding him of some videogame he used to play as a teenager.

Joe typed in the coordinates of the military base into the computer letting the Drone autopilot itself to save himself the time of trying to find it manually. Rather soon afterward a message blipped on the screen indicating that the Drone had arrived at the destination.

“Excellent!”

Once again grabbing the joystick, Joe piloted the drone angling it down, closer to the ground. When he felt that it was at a sufficient altitude, he locked it in a large circling course above the buildings in that sector. He then took control of the camera and began looking at each of the buildings trying to find the base.

After a few minutes and some conformation from pictures in the file Joe was sure that he had found the base.

He sat there watching the building for about thirty minutes and was about to give up until at last, he saw what he was looking for. Around the back end of the base in an ally, Joe saw the pale nearly naked bodies of a group of Cretin enter the base carrying the dead bodies of some other Cretin, likely to be from a rival clan; in other words their food.

This was great news for Joe, it meant that there was a Cretin clan living in the base and he could enact his revenge.

Suddenly the splitting headache started again and Joe grabbed his head as if holding it would keep it from splitting in two. Just as before he could hear the Cretin’s “purr”, and as it got louder and louder it turned back into the harsh, raspy whispers again whispering the same thing, “Kill him! Kill the man that did this to you!”

This time the voices began to laugh after a few choruses as if what they had said was the funniest thing in the world. Joe joined into their madness and the headache died away but the laughing voices remained as they all laughed in unison.

“Yes!” Joe cried out, “It shall be soon!”

Joe grabbed the file and tore out the comm. link transmission. He then produced a lighter and proceeded to burn its edges. Once it was ablaze, he dropped it into the metal waste bin at his feet.

“My revenge shall be fulfilled! The man who did this to me shall pay!” The voices laughed more gleefully than before as he spoke the word 'revenge', “Max Urban shall pay for what he did!”