Nightshift 42: Morris Park
It had been easy enough during the daylight to dismiss the idea of monsters as a mass hallucination or the result of some sort of psychotropics. Bond, standing in a bank of fog that had not been present just moments before, suddenly found it just that much harder to rationalize. The trees lining the park looked warped and twisted where their branches stretched out through the mist, and the grass beneath his feet was withered and foul-smelling. A quick mental review showed nothing eaten recently enough that its contents should have brought on delusions nearly this quickly.
He peered through the mist with narrowed eyes, straining to see anything more than distorted, vague shapes. The scrabbling of earth nearby brought his head around, in time for his gaze to light on bony fingers, flesh hanging in greasy shreds, poking up through the dead earth. There was an instant during which his mind...stuttered, trying to refute the information conveyed by his senses, the low moaning and eerie scrabbling and reek of rotting flesh atop the macabre scene. The dead didn't crawl out of their graves, couldn't.
Unfortunately, no one seemed to be telling them that.
Jaw set and expression grim, he cast about for anything that looked like it might serve as a better weapon than bare hands. The closest he could see were the limbs of the trees; hopefully whatever had fouled the earth and twisted the vegetation would make them easy enough to snap off.
"Well," he muttered, opting for dry understatement in the face of the horrific and impossible, "this could get interesting."
[for Alec!]
He peered through the mist with narrowed eyes, straining to see anything more than distorted, vague shapes. The scrabbling of earth nearby brought his head around, in time for his gaze to light on bony fingers, flesh hanging in greasy shreds, poking up through the dead earth. There was an instant during which his mind...stuttered, trying to refute the information conveyed by his senses, the low moaning and eerie scrabbling and reek of rotting flesh atop the macabre scene. The dead didn't crawl out of their graves, couldn't.
Unfortunately, no one seemed to be telling them that.
Jaw set and expression grim, he cast about for anything that looked like it might serve as a better weapon than bare hands. The closest he could see were the limbs of the trees; hopefully whatever had fouled the earth and twisted the vegetation would make them easy enough to snap off.
"Well," he muttered, opting for dry understatement in the face of the horrific and impossible, "this could get interesting."
[for Alec!]