It had been a while since I went through the other side of the gate and followed the path ahead of me. When I looked at my watch, it showed 00:20 am – more than four hours had passed since the base was destroyed.
It had also been a few while after the last unexpected encounter with the unlucky survivors, making me curious as to how the condition would be on the surface. Some or few citizens of Chicago might still make it somehow, or it was probably only me left in the sewers as all people on the surface had already been wiped out. Indeed I could still hear few faint beamshot noises from some of the sewer grates that I passed once in a while, but there were no more voices from someone at all, and not even a scream was heard.
Aside from that, I felt a great thirst as I had not drank again, and fatigued as I had not been able to rest at all. I desperately mustered up my strengths before I got up on my feet again and walked for some short time before I started to see a slight pool of water in the middle part of the sewers.
Following the direction of the water that kept on becoming wider and deeper, it eventually led me to a pool of water with around 2 depth feet. Apparently, the pool was created because of a water flow coming from the nearby sewage pipe.
Giving out a relieved sigh before gulping down with a little bit of excitement, I rushed towards the pool to take a drink out from it until my eyes see dark red liquid rushing down from the sewage pipe, indicating the very thing that the pool of water was containing – blood. It seemed that the blood originated from whatever died at the surface, flowed down through the nearest sinkhole and eventually entered the sewage pipe and ended at the sewers.
Realizing that I nearly drank blood-stained water, I could somehow smell the stench from the blood pouring out from the sewage pipe in an instant. I had let my senses down and making myself unaware of my own surroundings in the process…
'So much for quenching my thirst… But it is still better to hold it than to drink blood-stained water I suppose…' I convinced myself before going on again.
Sure, my throat felt like it was getting dryer with every taken step, but it was also too much of a risk in forcing myself to drink that water. So instead, I just decided to get up again and headed further to the left turning path ahead of me, moving further away from the pool of water, or rather blood.
As I turned left, and walked about several more minutes, I decided to sit by the edge of the wall to rest for several moments. I rested my head against the wall, and I only took several few seconds before I closed my eyes.
.
'Brrrtttt'
.
I expected that I woke up with some restored stamina and at least reduced, if not without fatigue, but that was not the case. A sudden loud and violent rumbling from the wall I leaned my head against woke me up immediately.
'KRRKKGBOOOM!!'
As I got up and turned to the wall to try to guess what was going on, something broke through the wall and exploded. The explosion blown me back hard to the wall behind me, but that was not all of it.
It turned out that the thing was some kind of an aircraft with a large size. What shocked me more though, was that the part facing right towards me slowly opening in the manner of a fighter jet's canopy. From inside of the canopy, a figure emerged and came out with flame burning its full body.
At first I thought the figure was not looking at my direction, but I was completely mistaken. It walked bent towards me slowly, while giving out a loud and slow growling voice and had its right arm aiming towards me.
First it was about five feet of distance from me, then four, and three, two, eventually one. I wanted to hold it back, but I had no more rounds for my submachine gun, and I had left my handgun because it was broken.
'This is it?' I thought to myself, 'After all that fight with the behemoth?'
But then, it fell down right in front of me with a distance maybe less than half a foot, not moving anymore. Still gasping uncontrollably, but eventually calming down, I finally managed to regain my composure back and sighed heavily before slowly getting up on my feet again and still leaning against the wall behind me. As I slowly tried to observe the burning figure, the first thing that I realized was that it was significantly different from the previous alien that I encountered.
The previous alien had a height of nearly nine feet, but this one might have been about seven feet. The burning figure had a relatively shorter torso and arm than the previous one – about three feet as opposed to four feet. Its legs, however were roughly the same in length of four feet compared to the previous one.
I also noticed that no spikes were coming out from its legs, and no sharp bones mace was at its left hand. Aside from that, I could not observe clearly on the figures other physical characteristics as even after it had no longer moving, flames were still burning its whole body.
I took a look around me before following the path again and leaving the burning figure. After walking straight for about a long half an hour, I came across an intersection, and as I walked to the middle of it, I saw a faint orange light coming from the direction of my right side.
I decided to head towards that direction as I assumed that could be the exit to a canal. The more I walked, the orange light was becoming more vivid. Eventually, I ended up in a gate separating the sewer with the canal.
This time, the gate was already horribly corroded and it only took me a couple of kicks to knock it down. I could finally get out, and determined myself about the condition of the town.
"Oh my God..." I said silently as I looked at my surroundings of building ruins and roads and vehicles.
As far as my eyes could see, every time I tried to look at any sort of vehicles all I found was nothing more than a vehicle frame completely engulfed in a dancing fiery flame. Fire poured out once in a while from numbers of buildings somewhere in the distance not too far from where I was standing, succeeding in enlightening the pitch dark blackout midnight. Shortly then, cranking sounds were heard from my left direction, coming from the water tower of a burning building that was slowly crumbling just next to the canal, taking down another building across together with it.
'This… this is not Chicago anymore… this is inferno…' I thought to myself as my mind battled the possibility of me being the sole survivor inside the whole city…