Richard had to make his way through the multitude of parked cars in the middle of the road and inside the front lawn of the church. The fact that most of them had still their keys inside picked his curiosity, so he got near a SUV and opened with a claw the glove compartment. The whole thing collapsed due to the rust, and the driving license of a middle-aged woman, together with a ballpoint pen, which was an uncommon item, and a pair of gloves fell to the ground.

What could have happened to make everybody run here, leaving everything? Apart from the religious perspective, this didn’t seem a secure shelter in case of an attack.

All the crosses had been removed from the church and the belfry, while a giant twelve had been written on over the blocked front door, so there was no way anybody could get inside and ring the bells, as there was no outside entry to the belfry.

Richard grabbed the first plank and pulled it out without using much strength. When he had removed the last one, he found a large chain with a padlock around the handles. His teeth split the chain link and he threw it away, then rammed his shoulder against the wood. They really wanted to make sure that nobody could go inside, but they didn’t think about making it monster-proof.

It seemed like a normal church with benches and everything else, of which he had little experience because it was the first time he visited one in ten years. It would be interesting to ask a priest or a theologist how religion could explain what happened to him. Maybe God one day decided that men were too boring and that they needed a change.

The altar was covered in dried blood, and this wasn’t something very normal for a church. Neither having the pillars filled with bullet holes or the ground to be covered by paper cups. The door that brought to the belfry was inaccessible due to the debris of the collapsed roof that blocked the way. It’d take a massive a mount of time for him to remove all the rubble, but it was now evident that there must be an automatic mechanism to make them ring.

Beyond the altar, there was a stairway that descended towards the crypt. A skeleton wearing a police uniform was in front of a blocked door. His or her jaw was on the ground, and there were two large holes, one in the palate and the other on the top of the skull. The hand was still holding onto the handgun, which was marked in purple.

You have found an Ultra rare item. You can use this weapon to unlock a class, Gunman.

Richard pried the fingers of the skeleton open and took the gun, which was looking like a toy in his hands. He had little experience with weapons but at least he knew how to push the safety up and remove the magazine. There were still five bullets inside.

Nothing much could be done with five bullets, as he was already strong enough to beat all the low-level monsters by himself, and he doubted it’d have been of much use when he met the Lamia.

Pulling his badge out of the uniform, he discovered that the remains were of a recruit of twenty-five, and that it had been issued last month, so there was no way he should be already a skeleton.

What could there be inside the crypt? Maybe he should go away because it wouldn’t surprise him to find a high-level monster inside, but if this place was a dungeon, then there should have been a warning before. There was only silence if he put his ear against the wood.

As he did before, he removed the plank blocking it and the chain. Richard opened the door a little and peered inside. He slammed it shut, not sure if he wanted to open it again or just run away as fast as possible.

A skeleton that was grabbing the handle fell on the ground, raising a cloud of dust. He had to make his way by pushing all the human remains huddled around the door. His feet were making cracking sounds as he stepped on the many fragments of bone scattered on the ground. The door was full of vertical lines of nail scratches.

It should have been enough to make him bolt away from the place, but he went on. The whole room was occupied by heaps of skeletons, neatly stacked on top of the other to make piles tall enough to reach his waist, still wearing their clothes and shoes. They were covered in dust, with spiderwebs grown inside their eye sockets and maggots crawling between their teeth.

The ones nearer the door had all been murdered with a bullet in their forehead, temples or in the back of the head. Most of them were police officers or soldiers. But as he progressed, the remains seemed to lack signs of violence. He hoped at least that they could have died without pain

A small skeleton wearing a pink dress and a ribbon on her forehead was holding a teddy bear on her chest, highlighted in red.

He stormed out of the building.

Hundreds of people murdered, and he was the first to discover it after god knows how much time. He slammed his hands against the hood of a car, leaving a large depression on the metal plate. What kind of monster could have done that? His teeth grinded against each other and steam boiled out of his nostrils.

They were all dead and there was nothing that he could do about it, but the shock of having seen something that one might only hear at the news with his own eyes was going to haunt him for a long time.

His whole family might be inside a pile of bones like that, hundreds of miles away, and the last time he had spoken to his father at the phone was to argue with him because he wasn’t going to go back home for the holidays. At the end, he had sent him off and stopped answering his calls.

He slammed again his fist against the door hood. For fuck’s sake, he wasn’t ready for this.

Professor Brown’s home was the only place where he could find answers. With his eyes narrowed on the front door, he ran towards it with only a thought crossing his mind: to know the truth at all costs. Richard’s punch opened a hole inside it, and he turned the knob from the inside.

He quickly descended the steps that brought to the basement. The ground was filled with large rubber cables that must have been connected to something in the middle, but now only a circular mark of grease and dust remained on the ground. The shards of glass from the equipment of beakers, cylinders and flasks of the lab got stuck inside the bottom of his feet but the skin was thick enough to not make him feel pain.

The shelves on the right side were filled with skulls of husks, then another was occupied by the ones of creatures similar to elephant but without tusks and their teeth were sharp instead of flat like a normal elephant.

Richard opened one of the barrels under the stairwell, picking the lock open. The first one must have contained blood inside, but now it had evaporated. In the other one, there were two full rotten brains at the bottom, which turned into mush when he tried to pick them up. The words Wastes had been written on it with a sharpie.

Handwritten papers inside a plastic sheets were scattered on a desk. This was what he was looking for, so Richard took one of them. The ink was nearly gone

10th December 2021,

Captain Smith has arrived and told me that the Lincoln line has fallen and that the whole country was going to fall in a week. The army is no more, and most of the soldiers have deserted.

At last, it seems that our project will see fruition when it’ll be too late. Everything has been arranged, and the subject is ready. We have gathered all the pieces of technology we could, me, John S., and Richard A., two of my disciples that will help me in all of this. Now we all need to convince the police and the pastor to cooperate with us.

That was the end, so he took another one.

17th December 2021,

The twelfth one will be born tomorrow. The enemy has already started to bomb the city, with Downtown having the worst of it. Refugees are flooding everywhere, and they are desperate that they will believe anything that they are told.

The dematerialization experiment has failed spectacularly, maybe because that dimwit of Richard A. never listens to my instructions.

He had no recollection of doing anything that was written on this page.

25th December 2021,

We had to postpone the birth because Omega was not ready yet, but finally today the history of mankind will change, and if a great sacrifice is required, so be it, or humanity will be wiped away completely. The pastor has finally accepted after her wife poisoned her two sons and then herself after she had overheard what we were going to do.

It will happen during function, and a team of policeman will do the rest for those who even in hard times such as these don’t go back to God.

On last sheet of paper there were written just two words: She lives.

Richard dropped the sheet of the paper on the ground. He had cursed everybody who did this when he had been an accomplice all along, but why? Why did he do something like this?