Margaret "Peggy" Carter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
warsoutthere) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
clandestinement2023-07-02 12:36 am
warsoutthere) wrote in clandestinement2023-07-02 12:36 am
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.
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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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."
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"It would be rude to keep our hosts waiting. Moving out."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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There's another yipping screech. It's definitely from the other side of that barricade, but not right no the other side.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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Unless it eats by literally shredding food like a blender.
Bucky kicks it off and fires again.
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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.
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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.
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Whatever's behind the barricade doesn't emerge yet, but that rusted car shifts, like something massive is trying to push through.
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"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.
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