Subchapter 7 - Caracal in the snow

After finding out what type of amnesia I had, and that I was not part of the DT. I was left with only one shred of hope. That the factory head will forward my picture to the Head Command Center because they have a large facial data base. Hopefully they will be able to answer the question I keep asking myself. Who am I?

Since we found the keys at the crash site, we were able to open the doors on the first level of the bunker. As you walk into the bunker, from the front entrance side, the two door first doors on my left and right, were sleeping quarters. The second door on my left was a scrap metal room and the second door on my right was a medical bay. The third room on my left was a storage room and across it on my right was an armory. We found food, brooms and other things in the storage room. Behind one of the doors was a room filled with scrap metal which we later used to wield the holes close. Luthor told us to take a long break, about 3 hours long, because everyone was working nonstop and were tired from the night before. Luthor and Ahana then went to explore some parts of the bunker alone. Azalea went to go sleep on a bed in the sleeping quarters on the first floor and I didn't see where Doc went. As I walked mindlessly through the passage thinking about my existence, I saw Doc in the medical bay. I walked over to him and sat on one of those patient bed near him.

"Well, I am sure that was not the news you were hoping for but at least you are alive. Who you were before the world ended does not matter now. As long as you can find a way to contribute to humanity then you will find your way in life and forge a new identity for yourself while doing so."

"Who were you before the apocalypse?"

"I was a gangster. They called me Rooikat, because I was always soaked in the blood of my victims."

"What!?... so, then you're not a real doctor?"(So, you are a Doctor Death, I knew it. I could see it in those dead eyes of yours)

"No, I am a real doctor. I got my degree and everything. I just lost my official license to practice."

"So, then what happened?"

Luthor and A-Gunner then started wielding the holes close.

"Things went south for me in my life. I grew up in a high crime gang ruled area within Cape Town. My older brother was a gangster, and I wanted to become one myself, but my brother didn't want me to and told me that he is only doing this because he could not find a job, our father was missing, our mother was very ill and that this was the only way he could support our family.

My brother told me that when he was young and I was just a baby, he was approached by some gangsters that wanted him to join *Die Bitsers. He told them no and then applied for the army, but somehow was not accepted and normally under those circumstances he would have demanded to know why but he had no time as all the other job place were either full or he didn't have the qualifications and so on. He really needed the money so decided to join Die Bitsers.

After some time, when I grew up to be 13, one night when my brothers fellow gang associates paid him a visit, I asked them if I could join but my brother said no. One of the members that was jealous of my brother took note and must have told the General who was the leader of Die Bitsers that ruled at the time. Our mother was feeling better from the treatments that my older brother was able to pay for and she was able to look after me again. My older brother was then promoted when the gangsters claimed new territory and he was sent to rule there as a captain in another area.

The leader of the gang then approached me to ask me to join and I joined without my older brother and mother knowing. I began skipping school to do gang entry level missions and the day came when I had to kill someone, which is this gang's final requirement for me to become an official member of the group and get my ink so that my brother can't say anything about it as it is one of the rules of that gang. I killed another entry level gangster from a rival gang. the fight was intense because we both had something to prove. It was bloody after I killed him, I was then dubbed Rooikat because of all the blood and I got my tattoo. My brother came back to find me a member of the gang.

My brother was angry at me for throwing my life away to become a gangster and that his sacrifice and his hard attempts to keep me out of the gangster life was for nothing. We fought and my older brother went outside. I heard a gunshot and went outside.

it was raining when I found my brother on the street. I saw my older brother bled out in front of me. I felt guilty that I could not seal up the wound so I blame myself that had I only knew how to seal up the wound, my brother would not have died. This causes me to strive to become a better person and I left the gang to finish school.

The leader of the gang allowed me to leave the gang with my life as he didn't know that I was Serval's younger brother and remembered how Serval always said that he didn't want his brother to end up like him. I later became a doctor instead of a police officer because my brother wanted to get them out of that ganged area and that me becoming a cop would only lead to conflict with me and the gang members as the gangsters see the police as gangsters with badges that work for a corrupt government that don't care about them.

After graduating top of my class at the place I studied, I unfortunately could only find a job in the district that was ruled by the gangsters from my childhood. The ruling General at the time of my brother, died and a new General was selected. It was the one who was jealous my brother and of me for doing so well for myself. 

He then came to me and told me that I am still a member of the gang, and it is either I comes back, or I die as that is the only way out and that after they kill me, they will kill my mother and the girl I liked. I ended up killing him after the gang head killed my mother and girlfriend and I was then sent to jail for murder.

I was not part of Die Bitsers anymore because I killed their leader and now, I didn't have their protect in prison. I was on my own and had to kill lots of people to survive in prison. One night they ganged up on me. I would have died if it was not for the event that happened. 

I was laying on the floor in what i think was a basement and then their lookout told them someone is coming. They stopped and stood in front of me to hide what they were doing in case it was a guard. Then around the corner can a rather strange person with black finger. It was one of their gang members based on how they knew him by his name. Then he attacked them, and they fought back. They restrained him and then their captain demanded to know why he betrayed them. He said nothing and then froze the arms of the two man that were restraining him with frost the came as a mist out of his mouth. He broke free and bit the captain in front of him, but the others managed to stop him before he killed him. They were puzzle for a moment but then three more came around the corner and they started fighting. These things were biting and freezing some of them and the prisoner were fighting them. I managed to escape them while they were preoccupied with fighting.

I made it back to the dormitories. There everyone was fighting. These things were here too and for some reason the wardens opened the doors of all the cells, so now everyone was out. I could see that the wardens were fighting creatures too on their side. One of them dropped to the ground right in front of the bars. It seemed that I was the only one who saw this and went to search his body for the keys. Everyone was fighting and it seemed the wardens took off, so I opened the bar doors and grabbed his baton.

I made a run for it and before I knew it, I was not the only one. The other prisoners must have saw me because they were right behind me. I could hear someone call me Rooikat as I ran. It was the gang from before, the ones that were beating me up. I didn't stop to find out what they wanted because I knew that they wanted to finish me off. I run past a group of wardens that was eating the other wardens. They were quick to notice me and ran after me. I locked the bar doors behind me, that were open, and the wardens snared and growled at me behind them I could hear them cursing me for locking and told me that if I don't open that they were going to kill me. Then the wardens turned around and I could see far behind the gangster prisoners that there were creatures there closing them in. They were trapped. The creatures rushed toward them, and they began to fight. I left them there and fought my way outside using the baton. 

Outside I made my way to other people's houses to get rid of these inmate clothes. everyone was busy trying to survive that they didn't really pay much attention to me. I continued to tense up when I saw police cars drive pass me. they were on their way to the prison but didn't stop to ask me questions. I figured that by now they would have a search party looking for me, but I guess the wardens were too busy fighting for their lives to noticed that one of their prisoners slapped out. Either way the police had their own hands full. These things were in the streets now which meant that I should get off the street before they decide I'm next on the menu and before the police come to their sense. My luck has been just that, luck. I better not push it.

As I walked in the street, I saw a man and women ran out of their house and into the street. I quickly hid to observe what would happen. I saw that the man had blood on his mouth and was chasing who I presumed was his wife. She ran to her neighbors across the street seeking safe asylum, but they didn't want to open their door and told her to go away. The man then began to eat her, and others then came to join him in eating her. Then they broke down the door of the neighbor and eat them too. I could hear them screaming. I would have helped the wife and was about to, but I saw the other people there and chose not to intervene thinking that the neighbors that she felt would help her, would help her but they didn't. 

While they were on the other side of the road eating the neighbor and his family up inside their home, I went into the house of that dead women and locked the doors. I walked past a lot the blood on the floor and went for the fridge. I had just escaped prison, and I was hungry. I wanted to eat something other than prison food. There was a burger in the fridge and a cold beer. After I ate the burger and other food I decided to check if there was any one still here and where that blood on the floor led to. I followed it to a pink room, and I knew already what I was going to find. I stood there looking... then I close her bedroom door. I decided to deal with that tomorrow. I was safe for now. No one saw me come in and some of the neighbors were dead so no one could call the police. I could sleep on a real bed after all this time.

I stayed there in the area moving from place to place and as time went by it was got colder. There were fewer and fewer people whenever I had to go look for food and more of those things. It got so cold that the frost crept in, and snow started falling from the sky. That's when those things started to change. The black from their frost-bitten fingers had spread all over their bodies and their eyes were blood shot. They even stopped wearing clothes and you could see that they were no longer human. They were something else now.

I stayed hidden for months only coming out to look for food and to stash away food on a boat I found. I was going to live by way of the sea because when I left the area, I saw that other places had worst problems then I had so I decided to stay. After some time I saw no one. some died from the cold frost and others were eaten. So, it was just me and those things until one day I saw a woman outside. I found Azalea when I went to look for food. I knew she was still human because she was calling for people and had clothes on and she had normal skin. I think she was looking for signs of life and she was going to get it, because if I could hear her, so could those things. I quickly ran outside to shut her up and drag her inside. It was easy because she shut herself up. She fainted and I curried her. I looked after her until she woke up."

"So, what made you save her when you didn't save the lady before?" I asked.

 "I had not seen anyone for a long time and living in the cold, I thought that I was better off away from people and on my own but I guess I got lonely, and it was nice to see other humans. She was dehydrated and fainted from hunger and exhaustion. We stayed together and later after some time we decided to leave that place. The creatures became too much then, and all the other places had problems of their own, so we decided to take a boat and leave. I thought it would be nice for us to live on a yacht, but Azalea had hydrophobia. She told me what happened, and I understood. We then stayed for a little longer but the longer we stayed the closer those things were to finding us and one day they did. I killed them and we had to make it to the Yacht. It was the only way now because we got trapped in. A horde of them came after us and we had to set sail. it was hard convincing Azalea to get on, but I think when she saw that horde that was when she changed her mind. The seas where rough that day which was good because they could not freeze the water and that's how we made our escape."

Azalea was up now because I saw her walk pass the door in the passage. I think she wanted to talk to Doc but then saw me. I went out and stopped her. I asked her if I could go over the footage.

"Hey Azalea wait up."

"Sup, are you feeling better now?"

"Uhm... no, not really but I was wondering if I could go over the footage. Having nothing to do makes me think about it a lot so I'm just looking for something to distract me."

"Sure, no problem. My laptop should be done charging by now we can set it up in the kitchen and watch it there."

"Uhm yea but I think Luthor and A-Gunner are still wielding that side so maybe somewhere else."

"Oh, so that's what that noise was. Sorry about that I just got up. We can watch it in one of the rooms. let me just go grab my laptop in the telecoms room and I'll be with you."

She went to go fetch her laptop and I went to sit on one of the beds in one of the sleeping quarters. When she came back, she placed the laptop on a nightstand that we moved so that we can watch on our little TV.

"Let me just plug in the hard drive and... there. Now although some footage is fairly long, about one hour, most of it is static so they are not really long."

She opened a folder and inside were several videos. She scrolled down to the last three named:

DT 11:00pm (1hr long)

Corrupted

 BT 12:24am (12 mins). 

She clicked on the third last one, the DT 11:00pm (1hr long) and said that this is footage is from the Delivery Team as well as that this one only has visible content of about 1 minute of footage then static all the way.

The footage starts playing. We could see some men dressed as soldiers. The footage was being recorded from one of the soldiers' body cams. It showed us that it was night as did the flashing 11:00pm in the corner of the screen. They had the flashlight out and we could make out with the little light they provided, that they were surrounded by huge rubble and then one of the soldiers said that they are almost done digging a way out then you could hear stones falling from the rubble and the soldier looked at the rubble, showing us that some stones rolled down the rubble but when he looked up to see what was causing them to fall the video went static.

Then she played the last one, BT 12:24am (12 mins) and said that it has 10 minutes of footage then static on the last 2 minutes.

The footage starts playing. It showed that two people were in the vehicle driving in the night and we could hear them talking about the crash. The footage was mostly about them driving but when they got to the crash the footage went static for 2 minutes. 

"Is this all?"

"No, I suspect that the rest was uploaded somewhere in the bunker perhaps in the lower levels. I must still go search for them, but I had a long night and want to rest.

"...and we still had to clean. Nah I get it."

Before Azalea could say anything, we heard Luthor called everyone for a meeting. We went to the main room and saw all the holes were patched up.

"Alright everyone. Since we got access to the rest of the bunker, and we have found the fuel, I have decided that we are going into the city!"