clandestinement | End of the world

End of the world - for @worthallthis

For a moment, it had almost seemed like they'd won.

Won at great cost, because the thing that had swarmed out of the portal deep in the Wetterstein mountains had been all razored tentacles and venom-tipped fangs in too many mouths, and it had gone through the village surrounding the keep like a hot knife through butter, leaving those who weren't just torn apart rotting on their feet. Not the walking dead, but the tortured dying.

It had gone through half their strike team, too, before they finally forced it back into the portal, and shattered the strange, writhing statues that had kept it open.

For a moment, it had almost seemed like they'd won. But the creature wasn't a weapon, as they'd assumed, meant to slaughter HYDRA's enemies, along with anyone else within tentacle's reach. It was a vessel.

And all that suffering, all that death, concentrated in one boiling mass of mouths and limbs and hate, was the key to a door that had never been meant to be opened.

Ninety seconds for relief. And then the horrid buzzing had sounded from the bowels of the keep, burrowing into the minds of the remaining members of the strike force, turning them on one another in pain and terror.

She and Barnes had been immune.

They'd been immune, too, to the wave of sickly, gangrenous light that had errupted in the wake of the sound, twisting flesh and liquefying bone and folding stone and metal and wood at impossible angles. When they'd finally made it out of the keep, they'd found the mountains folded around them, strange curving arches and spires forming a maze of razor-edged rock. It had taken four days to escape.

It's been nearly a month now, and they've yet to find anywhere untouched. The wave of chaos had lessened as it sped away from the keep, but it had still taken the better part of two weeks before they found the first survivor whose mind was intact enough to merit being referred to as such.

They've collected others since, and their small band is now huddled for the day in a collection of buildings that had once formed what Peggy is certain was a charming high street. It's rather less charming now, walls scorched and windows boarded, letting in as little light as possible. It's daylight that's dangerous now, as though the sun itself has been infected, and though the transformations are slower, the madness creeping, exposure is cumulative.

Peggy's still immune. And so she's retreated up to the rooftop of one of the occupied buildings, to what had once been a rooftop garden and is now a tangle of vines the colour of rotting blood that seem to shift in her peripheral vision, though whenever she looks at them head-on, they're in the same position as they had been the last time. A dull yellow mist chokes the streets, obscuring the view she'd hoped to get of the town; that it doesn't rise above the second storey of the buildings is disconcerting. Somewhere in the mist, several streets over, something howls, the sound rising at the end in something that sounds half like laughter, and half like screaming.

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"If I had to guess, I'd say it was a rat. The ears and tails would fit, if there weren't quite so many of them." She nudges the creature with her toe, checking that it's well and truly dead - some of the things they'd encountered could keep moving even when critically injured, shedding damaged parts like so much dead wood. For those, the only solution was to scatter them into enough parts to render what remained harmless.

Fortunately, this little monstrosity doesn't seem to have come with that feature.

Another cackling shriek sounds. It's no closer than the first, but it's definitely moved - that, or there's more than one screamer in the fog.

Still doesn't entirely rule out being somebody's pet, but: "Chop the thing in half and we'll keep moving. They are." He stops peering in her direction, and instead looks in the direction of the new scream. "That came from almost dead ahead from you, up at least three blocks."

Which is considerably to the north of where the first one had come from. He looks behind them, as well. "Might be aiming to box you in."

"Well, it's hardly the first time." There's a hint of humour in her voice, but it's threadbare, an echo of the illusion of invulnerability she tries to keep up for the sake of the people relying on them. Both of them are more than human, and it's been all too easy for their charges to come to rely on that.

"It would be rude to keep our hosts waiting. Moving out."

He takes his refuge in stoic silence more than confident quips, the blank affect of HYDRA's asset or the determined glare of the soldier. She's their leader; he's the body between them and danger. It serves a similar purpose, and he's just dehumanizing in its own way.

He's not much good at humor these days, anyway, even if he kind of appreciates Carter's attempts.

"Copy," he answers her. With luck, they won't be expecting her back-up from above. "If the effects are starting to thin. They might have more brain left even in the early stages." Which means being boxed in is definitely a possibility.

"Hopefully they haven't regained enough to think of luring us away," Peggy says. So far, none of the afflicted they've encountered have managed more than the most rudimentary tactics. That can't last forever, but they can hope it will last long enough to get their charges to more permanent safety.

The cloying mist seems to thicken as she continues, rendering her nearly blind beyond a few feet, and muffling her footsteps so they sound strangely distant.

"Even if they did, there's no way they could get in to the rest," Bucky assures her, following along the rooftops. He has to climb down one building that's lower than the others, leaping across as quietly as he can. "Not unless they can mimic us, and know the password I gave them."

Bucky takes that job very seriously, keeping their little collection of survivors safe and sane. They're locked in securely, now, as securely as Bucky could make them.

There's another cackling screech from up ahead. "Sounds like a coyote," Bucky mutters, scanning the mist in the hopes of spotting it first, or spotting a second circling around.

"Zoo escapee, maybe?" Peggy wonders aloud - coyotes are a quintessentially American animal, and they are far indeed from those shores.

Of course, there's no reason to assume what the creature sounds like now is anything like what it would have sounded like before the world twisted and tore itself inside-out. But it's nice to imagine, for a few moments, that the probable pack is animal in origin, and not human. Putting them down will be a mercy either way, but she's sick to the bone of killing people whose only crime was not being able to find a pocket of safety and hunker down.

"Probably not even a coyote from the start," Bucky figures. "Just what it sounds like. Think I spotted it," he adds. "The mist is moving again. Still where it sounded like it was coming from, before." Dead ahead. Now only one block away. The mist isn't as thick as high up as he is, so he can at least see the rooftop ahead he's jumping to, but it's like looking down into a cloudbank. "Nothing from behind or to the side yet. I'm at your eight."

"Maybe we'll be lucky and it will stay that way," Peggy says. The fog eddies around her, a humped shadow looming suddenly ahead. For a moment, she thinks she's looking at a colossal worm, some twisted thing broken free of the spiralling chaos at the heart of the breach - and then the edges resolve. Two cars, rusted far beyond what time should have done, tyres melting into the street below, backed by stacked rubble.

"Looks like someone survived long enough to create a barricade."

She tries not to feel a twinge of hope, faint though it is, that said someone might still be surviving. If they are, they're more likely to be the source of the cackling than anything resembling an ally.

Yeah, that's not really a good sign as far as Bucky's concerned. It means whoever it was is more likely to still be alive and kicking and coming to kill them. "I see it," he says, coming up to a closer building, one turned halfway on its side with the spacial warping so he's crouched next to a window. "Can you go around it? You'll be a sitting duck if you try to climb over it." He supposes she could just jump it, but jumping without knowing what's on the other side is an equally bad idea.

There's another yipping screech. It's definitely from the other side of that barricade, but not right no the other side.

There's a pause as she examines the barricade more closely. "Not on this street," is her conclusion. "Trying to wedge myself through a gap's not much better than climbing over, and I don't much fancy trying another block."

The barricade could be an attempt to hold off the horrors created by the warping of the world - but it could just as easily be an attempt to funnel anyone else who survived into an ambush. One the pair of them should be able to deal with, certainly, but that doesn't mean she likes the idea of walking blind into a potential trap.

"Looks like I'll be joining you topside for a bit."

"I won't mind the company. Come on up--"

He breaks off suddenly as the cracked window next to him explodes outward, with a twisted almost-human-looking creature leaping out towards him. He falls back instinctively, firing as he does.

Another leaps from amidst the wreckage, this one even less human-shaped but still human-sized, for Carter's back, the instant she turns even a little towards the sound of gunfire.

She catches a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye as she turns, but the thing's fast enough that she can't duck out of the way before it collides with her, oversized claws scrabbling against reinforced kevlar. She staggers under the impact, twisting to throw the thing off as it tries to gain purchase on her shoulders. The thing lands hard and bounces to its feet, tripartite jaw unhinging in a rattling hiss that shows far too many rows of teeth.

The mist shifts, coiling as she backs away from the wreckage, giving herself more space to maneuver - and more chance to see incoming hostiles. The chance that this is the only one on the ground seems...slim.

There sure is a third, charging at Peggy from her left, out of one of the folded-over buildings. The same one Bucky is currently scrambling back along, firing as he goes, while the corrupted person-- he's pretty sure this one was, indeed, a person originally-- claws at his legs to try and drag him back. Its mouth opens in a full circle, revealing rows of sharklike teeth that can't possibly be useful for actually eating.

Unless it eats by literally shredding food like a blender.

Bucky kicks it off and fires again.

She turns, arm swinging in a backhanded blow with her shield that catches the charging creature in the jaw hard enough that it would have snapped its neck, were it still anything natural. Instead, its head bends back, like it's all muscular tentacle beneath the bubbled, grey-streaked skin. It's still enough to stagger the monster, giving her time to skip backward and brace for the first beast as it begins to lunge in again.

Begins, and then stops, sidling closer to the second creature and issuing a grating cry. Something shifts behind the barricade, metal and concrete groaning.

Brilliant. They've learned to coordinate.

Bucky finishes yanking the head off his own assailant with the strength and implacable grip of the metal arm, hurling both pieces in opposite directions along the sideways building just in case they might try to crawl back together again somehow, then scrambles for his rifle and scope again.

Where is Carter. Where-- there. The mist is still thinner where she's been moving. He draws a bead on the things harassing Carter with bloody hands. "Taking out the one at your nine o'clock," he warns in her ear, then fires into the back of its head.

Whatever's in the barricade is for her to deal with, first. He can't shoot through the rusted car.

The thing's head erupts in a shower of gore as the bullet hits, tarry black and smelling more like swampwater than like blood. It staggers, then drops, still twitching faintly as random electrical impulses fire along its ruined nervous system. The remaining creature lunges - and it, at least, has a more traditional skeletal system. Or a more traditional ribcage, which caves in under a solid blow from Peggy's shield.

Whatever's behind the barricade doesn't emerge yet, but that rusted car shifts, like something massive is trying to push through.

That's the vanguard down, but it sounds like the party isn't over yet. "Do you have a better view of what's under that car?" Bucky asks, already moving to the edge of the wall, preparing to join her if she needs backup against whatever that is. "I can't see anything from up here."

"Not yet--" Peggy begins, then cuts off as the car heaves, and pale tentacles studded with vicious stingers the size of her fingers lash out. She springs back, rolling beneath one of them, and droplets of venom sizzle as they hit her armour.

"Scratch that," she says, voice gone a little bit thin. The thing that hauls itself out from beneath the car is - looks - like several people fused together; she counts at least three heads, and far too many limbs, all pitted with sores where droplets of the venom had landed.

Yeah, he can see it now, and he's already crouching, sighting, and firing, taking one of those three heads out through the temple. Christ, that's hideous, and also horrifying in its implications. If that was multiple people... that's something new that neither of them have seen yet. And quite possibly closer to what the mist is trying to achieve and hasn't managed until now, given how much more like the tentacle horror it looks.

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End of the world - for @worthallthis

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