#1

The awkward silence between the two was intoxicating. You can't recreate awkward silences when conversing with yourself, and if you can, you're past the point of alone and well-and-truly in deranged. Welcome to Insanity, Population: As many as you can dream up. So he cherished the moments of reverberating bat wings in the high metal rafters of the Wal-Mart and ghost-town breeze billowing through the desolate aisles. The bitter early-Autumn wind no longer bit at his fingers and toes. God rays blessed the filthy entrance. But there was the tiniest seed of doubt in the back of his mind. It didn't grow into a twisted, wretched plant, but it never seemed to sink into the soil to never bear fruit, it sat there, pulsing, begging for attention. [i]She'll kill you Dan. Chop you up. Eat you. Feed you to Zed. Use your helmet as a crapper.[/i] No she won't. [i]Yes she will. She's eyeing your chest. She's going to plant your shiny knife between your ribs and tickle your lungs with it.[/i] She can't. [i]She will. She'll heave your ribcage apart while you are still screaming and cook them. She'll sit you up so you can watch her lick off every strand of muscle.[/i] No... She won't... [i]After that she'll pick your eyes out with a splinter of wood. Then she'll shit in your sockets and let the infection set in, and giggle away watching the burning agony from your skull break away your reason to live.[/i] "What book is that?"

"Chicago?" The last time Metro was in Chicago was for the Blitzkrieg Clan Warfare event in which the Shadow Fury Clan won (as they had for the past seven campaigns) by sending out skirmishing parties to each of the five other clan's (all of whom Dan knew hated each other vehemently) and baiting them into attacking the SFC's headquarters through various tactics. However, Dan and his XO, Luke Winters had set up a magnificently staged HQ and ordered a quarter of their force to go about business as if it was their real HQ. The other combat groups spotted each other and what happened after that was the most magnificent display of paintballing ever; as if a daycare of children were released on the world and started launching paint at everything. When the fray was at it's peak, Dan ordered his remaining soldiers to split into six groups; five of sweepers, who would sneak up behind their targets and take out the enemy in a glorious second of pure destruction. The sixth group was the best shots in the Clan: they would head up the middle of the fray exactly thirty seconds after each group had attacked their targets and take out any runners or hiders. It was nearly a 30% fatality rate for the Shadow Fury Clan, their highest yet, but has become renowned the paintballing world over as the Rainbow War, and remembered fondly for it's intense multi-coloured carnage by those who were there. The Blitzkrieg event earned the SFC their nickname, the Rainbow Brigade. Cate, his girlfriend for nearly four years at the time, laughed at him. Never maliciously, but she enjoyed seeing him getting so excited over the hobby of playing toy guns with hundreds of other men-children. She enjoyed seeing the gleam of complete nirvana that his father could so easily wipe away with a single twitch of that replica-Tom Selleck mustache. "It's a bit of a shit-hole," the thought of Ellie dropping a deuce in his sockets runs through his mind, "but I heard the radio thing too. You really think it's not overrun?"

"I'll take you up on the offer of food, but I think I'm okay for sleep the now. I've been in a state of insomnia for five-ish days now, I don't think I would wake up," he half-joked. "We can rest wherever you want buddy, I'm sure I can build a nice little fort out of the crap around here. It would be marvelous! With turrets! And slaves to toil the fields!" Metro exuberantly said, hands raised like he was raising a body from the dead. Maybe he did raise the Zeds. Maybe he shouldn't have jacked off in the shower so much. Maybe he should've recycled more. He dropped his hands. Maybe the Zeds were his spawn. "Of course I'll go, I couldn't refuse an offer like that from a pretty girl like you, could I?"