Venator Introduction

Ravaged by war, the world has been torn apart. Humans were dying at an astonishing rate and armies were dwindling. To fill the gap the governments created clone soldiers. Faster, smarter, and better

Venator

The Hunter

 

 

A Good story never starts at the beginning, but this is not a good story. Indeed, there is nothing good, pure, or sacred to be found here.

     This is a bad story. This is my story.

~Ven

 

 

 

Introduction

The Beginning

 

     Soot peppered the ground like grey marshmallow dust. Both thick and light, it smelled of burnt promises and broken dreams.  I stepped quietly through it like the barefoot ghost of a child. Too terrified to touch my whole foot to the Earth, I left tiny toe impressions in my wake. I wouldn’t put my foot down, for fear of what, or who, would be beneath them.

     I thought- if I could just keep part of myself unscathed I would survive, but even those of us who lived were dead.  Seeing something so perverse, so two dimensional, changed us forever; it changed the world.

     It started simply enough: a hate crime, religious fervor, a bomb, a life, and then millions of lives. None of us that Are know exactly what happened then.  We know only the Hell that it left behind.  We know the fallout, the bodies, the stench, and the disease.  We know the fear and the loneliness of being the Are- the leftovers.

     As close as we can figure, the government- ours, theirs- had decided, in its infinite and infallible wisdom, to clone humans as soldiers.  From what records we could find we know that, due to the advancements in technology and weaponry, both sides of the Great War were losing billions of soldiers.  They had reconstituted the draft but every person old enough to hold a gun had already been inducted into the militaries. The world no longer had individuals, it had soldiers.

     Unfortunately, the powers-that-were neglected to grasp the reality of the situation they were in. The Great War lasted only 3 months, not long enough for the clones to realize their desired sizes despite having been programmed with a rapid growth rate and advanced learning capabilities.

     The war was over by the time I had emerged from suspension. I was nearly full grown, a woman and yet a child. I had been pure of intent and soul. I did not know suffering.

     And then, I stepped outside. I walked out into the horror and darkness of what they’d left behind.  I saw their destroyed world.  I saw the bodies: burned, rotted, and festering.  Some of them wore gruesome masks of petrified horror, their bodies frozen for all time at the brink of oblivion, looming like sickened gargoyles.

     Some of the bodies lining the blasted streets still wore masks meant to protect them from toxins and poison gases, but even those had stumps where limbs should have been.  Others were not as lucky.  The ones that had been infected by the chemicals were the worst.  Their limbs were twisted and their features melted. They had hollowed caverns where their eyes had been and their faces were half eaten away. Once, their bodies would have been distended with pus, but now holes gaped where their stomachs should have been.

     Hours after I’d emerged I’d seen these things with innocent eyes, but I did not cry.  I touched them with new fingers, but I did not contract their diseases.  I knew I’d been born different than they were, better. I was mankind improved.  I was a creation of their war, and I was not alone.

     I saw others emerge, but they were afraid. They weren’t born with knowledge. They didn’t understand who they were, what they were. They grew curious, asking questions of me. 

I gave them a name and thus they had a purpose.

     “We are,” I’d told them.  “We ARE.”

     We learned at a staggering pace. It was in our genetics after all. We digested reading, writing, and math in a matter of minutes. We discovered libraries, histories, museums, and hospitals. We studied anything that wasn’t burnt away by the fires of the War.  When, at last, we discovered some old medical journals in an underground bunker, we learned of disease.

     We decided to burn the bodies.

     We lit the world on fire.

     Or, at least it seemed that way. Everywhere we went we spread the fires.  We burnt the bodies, the buildings, and anything else the War had tainted.  We burned until there was nothing left and we could start anew.

 

     And then They came. They walked through the burnt out towns, tasting our fires on their forked tongues. They thrived on our ashes and danced on our funeral pyres. When they saw us watching, they smiled and bared their gleaming white fangs at us. When we ran they chased us, and when they caught us they killed us, burnt us, and feasted on our ashes.

     We tried to hide but they searched us out. They waited with their red glowing eyes and pointed noses for us to come out of our hiding spots in search of food. 

     We call them demons.

     They call me Venator- The Hunter.