~ six

~ The patient cuts out the last two from the picture, leaving only her dancing.  She smiles and hangs it up while the cat thing stretches and back to sleep.

Elder - On a literal land line, "Yes.  I understand."  She sets down the phone with a sigh ... looks out the city facing window at the rising smoke.
____

Teacher - "I ... only know what the news tells me."

Student one - "They don't let us watch that."

Teacher - "Oh !  I ... "

Student Two - "You literally are the news.  This town has never one time been mentioned online."

One - "Ever."

Teacher - "Wow.  Okay.  Well the news says there a lot of riots with escaped prisoners, and the National Guard is here for that.  All downtown in the city circle."

Kid in the back - "And the beast ?"

Teacher - "Beast ?"

The kid kicks a cellphone across the floor between the desks, stopped by the teacher's foot.

Teacher - Picking it up, "You know, we used to throw paper airplanes."  Looking at it he gets hit in the head by one.  Ignoring, he looks at the screen.  "Jesus."  Three heavy knocks at the door.

He opens to the elder nun, who motions him out to the hall and closes the door behind him.

Elder - "We need to leave.  Now."  A sigh ... "And now we finally can."

Teacher - "You mean the riots ?"

Elder - "No ... I mean the circle.  It has been broken.  We can leave now."

Teacher - "What are you saying !?"

Elder - A compassionate hand to his cheek, "Oh ... Dr Astorius."  And endearing smile, "You really don't know."  She smacks him lightly but poignantly, "But we really must go all the same."

He hears a sound at the door, opens it to the children piled listening.

Quiet student - "We have buses.  For field trips.  It's ... been a while ... "

Elder - "Well we're going on one now.  All of us."

The whole school gathers to a lot of stout nuns at the motor pool with wrenches and tools, hoods open on half the buses.  One slams shut.  The cat thing looks up wide eyed and jumps out the truck's window.

The prison faced explodes wide open, the beast at the front followed by a slew of transformed convicts, moving like a militarized mob of monsters, showing their teeth as they leap into the police line, while those of the hospital and asylum attack from behind.

I guess sometimes they do still make a line.

The minds struck alone by his very appearance, just strolling through destruction as though to survey it, no fear of it or any of its victims around.  Let alone what it means.

As one horrible thing leads to another.

Lightning strikes here, a car swerves there and into another as the hail crashes their windshields and hurries the masses.  The traffic here now halted, and as with all hail which hits hard and fast it passes quickly.

Freed inmates spread from behind him, circling out to pick off the weak from alleyway to alleyway, ignoring civilians if not enjoying their flee, 'plenty to go around til tomorrow old chum'.

One car strikes another, a delivery truck swerves to hard, skidding it into the police line it seems this beast needn't do a thing, his pack enjoys the profits.

Now reaching the front line, he starts to fight, the patients flood.  He throws a car aside to swipe at those hiding behind while piercing a wing through others behind another, pulling it out hard as a blade.

 

Crushes a skull, then punches through another sending it's shards to the face of the next, dropping the first and looking ahead to the gathering arms against him in their terror to face.

Their wide and dumbfound eyes watching as he rises in flight before taken by that distraction from the side.  It's a form of vampire born of this, these soldiers bred to win history's wars.

And like his own serpentine teeth and those of Eresh, they fold out as a venomous snake's, here a poison sack filling to pressurize the bones' mechanisms.  Be know to the biologist that this disease is viral, but the poison which carries it bacterial.

 

He works a shoulder.  Cracks the neck, he may feel a bit old.  Roars to the skies with a final strike across the field, these patient feeders taking it like an ecstasy as it flays their flesh before regrowth, whatever old wrinkles they just once had now begone.

While among other are worn medals of historical warfare.

He stops.

Beast - Looks around in a moment as the world gives pause as he stretches his wings out full, roaring "! MIDWICH !"  He breaths the calm in with smoke from this grinning mouth exhaled in return, "Run."

Children's feet marching up schoolbus steps, soldiers preparing the line.  A wire unspools from the bridge charges to the control, more feet march up the steps.

At 0:42 the merc commander spots the distantly raised dust from the schoolbus caravan, being joined by more of the city populous.  He lowers the binoculars.

...

Commander - "You heard the man.  Nothing gets through."

~ Three bombers take off from the base.

More soldiers join the two tanks at bridge end in turning their guns on the incoming, demolitionist heading to switch.  The soldiers open fire, children scream ducking.

At 1:00 the patient's semi swerves through the caravan, still decorated with bits of bad men and blowing the horn.  Behind her the inmates leap car to car as she had done, she follows the cat-thing madly as it bounds through.

One of the men on the grill may still be alive ... hard to say as it bobs its head with the veering.

At 1:20 as the switch is about to be flipped, the beast lands on the demolitionist, crushing him.  Tears the wire out and pulls it hard, a demolition pack on its end meeting a tank with a blast of his own fire on contact.

A wing through the line, he jumps for the tank like it were a competitive beast, an elbow drop to its cannon over the knee snapping it.  He flips it over then swings for the next tank while all the soldiers are now on him.

A child peers over the seat through the windshield, past the swerving truck, watching the beast struggle flipping the second tank from their path, merc soldiers forget their approach with this distraction of a giant smashing their toys.

~ When the bombers drop the load over city center, all the soldiers inside looking up with the rest in that moment of peace.

The semi plows them through, the beast watches with a smile as she's followed by the rest, the explosion rips through the city, that ball of fire fast approaching.

The mercenaries crushed (their commander apparently absent like the teacher and back of the class kid from all this).  The beast watches the semi drive away proudly, joined by the rest of the released, roaring in defiance at the oncoming blast before the blinding flash.

Song over as they all drive on, she looks at the passenger seat, the cat-thing there sleeping.

Patient - "Cat."  Smiles proud of herself and blows the horn twice.

(credits)

Note if this version isn't available in your county, this is the really stupid video which is the only legit version of the song available on the tube.  Like real bad.  So bad it makes the song sound bad.

Common malady.

Musically, the only difference is that it begins with a woman saying "Yeah."  In a way appropriate to answer the patient's last (and only) word.  Then the beat like the common version.

Also it's a scratchy old record.

~ dumb video ~

After the credits, the teacher cooks in a suburban looking kitchen when the front door crashes open.  The kid from the back of the class runs up the stairs, "Hi Dad !"

He watches after and shakes his head ...

She flops on the bed and pulls out the book reading, ""When all is said and done, all tales be told and every battle lost and won, all fallen to their own vain-glories with eternity lost, all that will ever be, will only be, her own imagination."

~ The End ~