PRL Serials

The PRL Event: CZS 6

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Special Agent Adam Altman is very proud to work in law enforcement. It didn’t run in his family like many of his colleagues, and he had happened on the profession by chance while trying to figure things out in college. He was a good student, but it seemed that every profession his peers worked toward was a boring desk job that promised months of vacation because they knew that the cubicle nine to five was not a natural state for human beings. He attended a recruiting session for the Federal Bureau of Investigations by chance as a senior in college and things sort of took off for him from there. He entered a training program and impressed everyone that he came in contact with, and after years training with the military and law enforcement, Adam never doubts his chosen profession. Not even when it seemed that there were members of his department of state police who were intentionally looking the other way while something nefarious grew and spread right under their noses. Adam would not look the other way. And he wouldn’t let bad people get away with despicable things. 

Adam’s desire to defend has led him to an apartment complex in NC, and though he has been forced to accept some really unbelievable things as truth lately, he has found help in his quest to uncover the origins of a woman who may have turned others into monsters, just like herself. 

Adam, and his fellow special agent, Manuel are currently at the apartment complex, knocking on doors and questioning residents. Detective Young’s associate, Ivan, had brought them here, the first place he had spotted the woman, and they are hoping that anyone can help them.

“You still don’t believe those two do you?” Manuel asks as the two walk to the last apartment on the first floor of the building.

“What is there to believe?” Adam asks. “So what their eyes glow? That’s not the concern here. I don’t care if their hair catches on fire, as long as we can stop this threat, that’s all I can be concerned with.” 

Adam has a singular focus. He thinks that if he allows himself to be distracted, it will only make him vulnerable to harm. Or he might allow himself to be saddened by the personal things in his life that were not going the way that he wanted. 

“We know what that woman could do,” Manuel says, “it’s a good thing to have some supermen on our side, that’s all I’m saying.”

They knock on the last door of the first floor, and an older hispanic man answers it. He appears to be sick and he has a bubble of sores down one side of his face. Both Manuel and Adam audibly wince when they see the man.

“Hola senor,” Manuel starts, covering his face with a hand like a mask to guard against anything. “Como estas?”

The man responds weakly. “Siempre están haciendo ruido allí. Nunca se detiene. Siempre haciendo ruido.”

Adam knows enough spanish to understand that the man ignores Manuel’s question and is complaining about noises above him. “What is he talking about.”

Manuel shrugs. “Senor, por favor, no entiendo. ¿Qué ruido?”

“Sobre mí. Me quejé al propietario, una y otra vez. Y entonces mis pipas estropean y los malos olores salen de ellos. No puedo permitirme moverme.” The man coughs, and both Adam and Manuel step back. 

“Let’s go check upstairs,” Adam says. “I wonder if this guy is infected.”

At the door of the apartment just above the old hispanic man, Manuel leans close to the door to listen for any sounds inside. “I definitely hear something in there.” Manuel bangs on the door. “Open up! Police! ¡Abrir! ¡Policía!” The sounds inside grows lounder. It sounds like people bumping into one another and falling over the floor.

Adam is annoyed and he pushes Manuel away from the door, then kicks it in. The door flies open. Manuel and Adam are both shocked to see a woman in a lab coat standing in the empty living room of the apartment. There is a big body on the floor. It could have been the woman Crude, but it is obviously a man and his skin is a sick color blue like he had been frozen or died that color. The man is big, that is obvious even from his position on the floor, and his face looks like that of a lizard. His eyes are bulging and his tongue is long and falls from his lips like a damp length of cloth. He makes noises of anguish, moans and occasionally his body jerks. 

“What the fuck is going on here?” Manuel screams at the woman. 

“I have a right to be here.” The woman inside says. “You don’t.” 

Adam reaches for his phone and calls for backup. He and Manuel are not on official business, so he uses his cell phone to call for Detective Young and Clay. They are up the stairs in a flash, staring at the blue man and the woman injecting him with something. Manuel has his gun drawn, and he yells at the woman inside the apartment not to move. But Manuel is afraid to fire on anything inside. He doesn’t know if blood spatter would turn him into a big blue giant. 

The woman stands and drops her needle that she had used on the man. She smiles and laughs, then darts to a room in the back. 

The blue man slowly stands and the four men at the door watch as he struggles to his feet. When he is standing, his head hits the ceiling and it drags along, loosening the white material that falls behind him like a cloud of debris. 

“That has to hurt, why isn’t he stopping?” Manuel says. He aims his gun at the man.

The blue man has what appears to be a normal, human male torso, but it is much bigger and a shade of blue that is unnatural. Huge veins bulge the advancing torso that supports a neck as thick a tree trunk, and in the moment, it is bent to the side at an angle that would cause serious damage to the normal person, but he is undeterred. His arms are as big as his neck and his fists are the size of pumpkins. He never blinks. And then he yells loudly, shaking the men at the door. 

“What do we do?” Young asks. “It’s not a good idea to touch that thing.” He looks around at the stairs of the apartment building, and he becomes annoyed at the growing crowd that is gathering. They can’t see the blue man, but they can hear his noises, his screams. And suddenly, there is a crash that shakes the entire floor of the building. Young yells for his guys to run down to the parking lot, and when they reach the bottom, they see that another of the monsters is on the loose. It had jumped through the side of the apartment that the woman in the lab coat had disappeared into. It is not blue, and it is not as muscular as the blue man that is still screaming as he struggles out of the apartment. The new one is tall and thin, with limbs like sticks, and a head like a battering ram. It is screeching and chasing down the people who had gathered. When it catches up to them, it snaps at them with its fang like teeth. 

“What the hell do we do?” Young repeats.

Clay’s breathing intensifies and the light in his eyes gets brighter. He can feel the muscles of his body reinforcing, and then he growls, louder than either of the monsters. The long one stops and swings its long, thin neck around so that its head can rest in the direction of Clay. Clay cracks his knuckles, and the light in his eyes has subsided, but he is still bigger than he had been. 

“What the fuck?” Adam says when he notices the changes in Clay. “Don’t do it, Clay. You can’t touch that thing.”

Clay looks at Adam and responds with a loud yell. The three men back off.

“Where is Ivan?” Adam asks.

“Still with his family?” Young says. “I don’t know, but this is ridiculous. What other choice do we have? We have to let him fight it. Or it’s going to kill someone. We can’t stop him anyway.” Young remembers what Clay did to Sonny.

Adam shakes his head. “No. We can’t let him turn into one of those things. Imagine how bad that would be.” Adam takes off his button down shirt and pulls his t-shirt out of his pants. “I’m gonna distract that thing. You all try to talk to Clay. And if you can get Ivan on the phone, tell him to get here now.”

Before anyone can object, Adam takes off in a sprint. He has a gun in each hand and as he nears the long monster, he maneuvers through crowds of people, yelling for them to clear the area. The long monster screeches at Clay, who responds with his yell, and just as the monster is about charge, Adam fires a shot that whizzes past its ear. It startles, yelling loudly, then turns its attentions to Adam. Adam aims both of his guns as he backs into a tangle of trees behind the apartment building.

“Come on, you ugly piece of shit.” Adam says to himself. He fires again, not really aiming to kill. He is hoping to shoot it when it is far enough away from the bystanders still creating chaos all around him. 

The long monster swings its neck at Adam, and as its head swings toward him, Adam maneuvers away from it, then pivots back by jumping and kicking off of a tree so that he is level with the head in the air, and he opens fire with both guns on the huge, bulbous head of the monster. It swings faster than he anticipates, and Adam hits the ground, then tucks and rolls just as the head hits the ground. Adam seizes on it, firing from a safe enough distance that he never comes into contact with the yellow viscera that explodes out with each shot that connects. 

He runs back to where Young and Manuel are doing their best to calm Clay who has turned his attention to the blue man who has managed to descend the stairs. He had avoided the stairs altogether, actually. After he forced his way through the door, the blue man either jumped or fell from the second flood.

“I killed the other one.” Adam says. “Keep Clay calm and I’ll put this one down too.” Adam advances on the blue man, firing from both guns, but the bullets seem to fall right off him. He retreats.

“We’re screwed,” Adam says, as he, Manuel and Young stand between a bullet proof monster that is probably contagious, and a friend who is ready to try and tear it apart.