Chapter 1.
The man walked through the quiet, dark store, his flashlight scanning through shelves, looking for anything of value. His black armor and uniform helped conceal him in the unlit store, his helmet long ago abandoned, too weak to offer him the protection he needed. The place was in disrepair, gunshots peppering multiple shelves, the man taking care to avoid bloodstains and product on the ground, lest he kick one and attract any of the creatures to him.
He thought about it again and he scoffed. What creatures? They were all fucking dead. It had been days since he'd seen or heard their calls. White Spikes, the military had called them. They had completely decimated the militaries of the world, their attack coming faster than anyone could react.
They had originated from Russia, appearing in some unknown area in 2048. Within three years the entire world had been decimated, countless cities ravaged by the intense fighting that had occurred to try to protect them.
Some cities had been wiped off the map in the fighting, the military sending in tactical nukes to destroy the White Spikes there, which numbered in the thousands, all of them swarming and eviscerating any defenders there.
They were superpredators, capable of breeding at an insanely fast rate. Their young grow to adults within months, making the creatures almost impossible to quell. The city he was in had been overrun in less than a day, many people caught by them during the hasty evacuation that had been ordered.
Last he heard before his city was overrun, the military was working to find a toxin to finally kill the females, the queens of the White Spikes. He sincerely hoped they had been able to find one. There was no saving this world, he knew it, everyone else knew it too.
There was a well defended oil rig that had been researching it, but it had gone dark two months ago, the man hearing no radio messages coming from it since. Smaller outposts scattered around talked to each other, and the rumor was it had been overrun by the White Spikes. No one had reported rescuing any survivors.
On that oil rig had also been their one saving grace. A teleporter, bringing forces in from 30 years in the past. Had they not developed that they would have all died long ago.
Maybe the station had been able to get the toxin back to that world in time. If they did then that world wouldn't suffer the same fate his had. He wondered if we would ever be able to recover here.
It would surely take decades, maybe even centuries, provided the White Spikes didn't somehow make a resurgence. He hoped the fuckers had all died of starvation. Their superpredator nature and fast reproduction meant that they had completely massacred and eaten everything that could be eaten, including humans, and even their own kind.
They did this until there was no more to eat, and then they either moved on, or they starved. There were several corpses of the creatures outside, the things gaunt and thin. It was like that all over the city, and they had come like that too.
He'd watched them show up two weeks ago, the aliens fighting for scraps of meals, sometimes killing each other in the process, and then eating their corpses too. Their calls had only lasted about a week, and now the city was deathly silent.
The man walked up to a shelf stocked full of canned goods, smiling bitterly at it. Normally in an apocalypse you would expect to have to fight and forage for food, sometimes even conserving it. Our apocalypse happened so fast no one had time to do anything but try to run.
There were half full carts all over the place, several tipped over in the panic that had happened here. The city had fallen about a year ago, literal waves of White Spikes charging toward the city, so packed in together that the ground could not even be seen.
The air force had thinned them out considerably, but the attacking horde was endless. His squad had been wiped out, him being the only survivor. Him and a few other civilians had retreated into the sewers of the city, the sewage thankfully masking their scent and the smell of their blood.
The calls for support had been numerous for about 20 minutes, and then they were replaced with calls to retreat. Him and the civilians had quietly listened to his radio go off for a while, and after two hours a radio message coming from command had come through, saying the city had been overrun.
Civilian casualties had been at 90%, barely anyone had made it out of the city in time.
A year later, he seemed to be the only one left alive.
He pulled his pack off his back, letting his rifle hang off its sling as he stuffed cans into it. He shined his flashlight on one of them, seeing the word, "SPAM," written over it. Wasn't the most tasty meal, but it would have to do.
When his pack was a bit over half full, and a massive strain on his shoulders, he turned and made his way over to where he thought there would be water. Sure enough, a minute of walking later he found an aisle full of nothing but bottled water. He silently questioned the quality of it, considering it had been sitting for a year, but it was not like he was going to find water anywhere else.
Bombing runs had destroyed a lot of infrastructure in the city. Power, water, pretty much everything had been knocked out.
He pulled his canteen out of its holder, peeling a water bottle out of the closest pack, pouring it into the canteen. He threw it to the ground when it was empty, pulling a 2nd bottle out. The 2nd one filled his canteen up, and he put it back in its holder.
He slid his pack back off his shoulders, grabbing a bunch of bottles and putting them on top of all the cans of food. When his pack was completely full he hefted it up, groaning as his shoulders screamed from the weight now placed on him.
Now to begin the slow trek back, then up five flights of stairs to his room he had chosen in an apartment.
He lifted his rifle up, turning on the mounted flashlight, aiming it down each aisle he passed. He aimed it across the support beams above him, along the roof, knowing just how nimble the creatures were.
