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A Resurrection of Death
Posted By: Steve Ollett<sollett@clydematerials.co.uk>
Date: 12 February 2004, 3:43 PM
Read/Post Comments
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A RESURRECTION OF DEATH
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Darkness. Endless Darkness. John could feel the sensation of falling, but couldn't see his surroundings.
Is this what it was like to be dead? John thought. Maybe he was in limbo - trapped between worlds.
No! He thought, I can't be dead!
The realisation of the situation came flooding back to him. I'm in Cryo-Sleep! John exclaimed in thought.
A sensation of burning grew in his limbs. John tried to flex his fingers and toes, but couldn't see or feel any success in regard to this task.
They told me about this! John thought to himself, They must be reviving me!
Try as he might, John couldn't move or open his eyes.
After the troubles and violent persecution he faced before the voyage began, he couldn't wait to open his eyes and see his new homeworld.
John belonged to the 'Church of the New Worlds' - Its' origin following the troubles and turmoils of Earth's history following the third world war, where mankind was brought to a hair's-breadth away from total annihilation. Their doctrine, simply put, was that God would bring judgement upon man who has ruined the Earth and inflicted so much pain upon his fellow man.
To escape this judgement, one of their founding elders, Jonas Getty, had been 'inspired' to sell his family's business empire to fund the construction of twelve colony ships - twelve modern-day Noah's arks to carry all of the sects members, plus as many biological samples, of the surviving Flora and Fauna as possible.
Each colony vessel's final destination was unknown, except to a few high-ranking elders of the church. Of course this had already determined by Getty's so-called 'inspiration'.
John, was an orphan - his parents killed in one of the many senseless conflicts raging on Earth in it's 22nd century.
Already being a member of this church, John had eagerly signed up for the voyage.
Even with the cutting-edge ion-drive technology of the day, the voyage would take hundreds, if not, a thousand years to reach the New World. Everything and everyone that John would leave behind would be dead and gone by the time they arrived. With this new propulsion technology, coupled with the benefits of the new cryo-sleep technology, a thousand years later he would step out onto an alien world, one free of the hatred, persecution and violence that they had left behind. A new people to inhabit a new world where mankind could begin again.
This colony vessel's name was The Mayflower 2.
John could vaguely hear noises now, cacophony of sounds. Not the soothing calm that he had expected, but a mixture of blood-curdling screams and the fearsome roars something else -Something Un-Earthly. This was punctuated by the sounds of explosions and bulkheads explosively depressurising.
Finally John's eyes opened. He wished that they had stayed shut.
Lights flickered erractically, and smoke hung in the air like patchy fog. Blue white flashes arced in the distance.
From the vista presented through the glass window of his up-right cryo-tube John could take in the horror of the scene.
Small figures scrambled and ran like scared animals, scattering before several larger forms that pursued. John realised that the small figures were people that must have been roused sometime before he was. Who the other, larger forms were, was anyone's guess.
John blinked and rubbed his eyes. The giants were still there.
Were they the Nephilim that he learned of when he was a child? The giants that came down from the sky and unleashed violence on the Earth before the Flood came?
John looked more closely.
No He thought. These 'giants' were at least eight foot tall, and although they looked like giant men from a distance, were they something else even more evil.
Their bodies were red, or maroon coloured - John couldn't discern the colour properly due to the poor, flickering light. They possibly wore armour of some kind.
The Flaming swords that they wielded whirled in the dark confusion, accompanied by screams of agony from their unfortunate victims. Deep wicked laughter echoed loudly as the onslaught continued.
These creatures were in a frenzy - a bloodlust - and everything that crossed their path was cut down, or literally torn apart.
Looking out on the scene of carnage, John was rigid with fear. He wondered if this is what Dante had in mind when he wrote his famous 'Inferno' depiction, because John believed that he had woken up to hell.
He was musing over that thought when a shadow was cast across the glass window of his cryo-tube.
He had been spotted!
As the figure of one of the perpetrators of the ongoing bloodshed loomed closer, John took in the features of the giant creature.
It wore an angular armoured helmet that bore strange italicised symbols. Cold, penetrating eyes stared back, and it's mouth - if you could call the four jaw like appendiges that hung open as part of the creatures' mouth - was caked with a mixture of human blood and it's own foamed up yellow saliva.
The creature stared at John for a moment, and tensed itself briefly before ripping the door off the cryo-tube in a tremendous display of strength.
John stood helpless as the creature swung a blue-white blade. Searing hot pain shot through his body as he slumped to the floor. The creature let out a deep, malevolent laugh.
John lay in an almost dreamlike state on the cold durbar patterned deck plating, his blood slowly spreading across the floor. As his vision began to dim, John could just make out the form of a small creature that appeared to be in a floating chair drawing closer, as his former assailant stood to attention...
The End.
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