//------------------------------// // Vinyl Scratch I: DJ-CarNaG3 // Story: EGZ // by Dustchu //------------------------------// The bumping music and the raging crowd was enough to make any DJ that night feel pumped up and ready to keep blasting music well into the morning and afternoon. The building was practically bouncing on its foundation as the crowd of a hundred of so jumped in time with the beat, stomping their feet and losing themselves to the tunes. DJ-PON3, otherwise known as Vinyl Scratch lived for this kind of reception, this kind of raw energy fueled her made her shows all the more powerful. She never did toot her own horn much, but she knew she was damn good at this, she was a goddess behind the turntable, with her mastery of the musical arts at her fingertips and her keen mind and ears, she could win over hundreds with her sick beats. She dragged it on and caused the crowd to roar, and then when the bass dropped... It was like an earthquake of excitement and sound that rocked everyone and everything. She could never get enough of it. To her right, she had her companion, DJ-CarNaG3 who was currently adding to her amazing beats with his own unique twist on the already popular genre of music. He was a rising star under her tutelage, and she saw him making it in the world if he kept at it. She found his beats and rhythm almost magical, how he worked the turntable and sound setup was masterful, he was a prodigy in his own right, on the way to stardom in the nightclub scene. The crowd loved him, and Vinyl was right there alongside them. Shame how good things like that can so easily come to an end. Vinyl Scratch stood inside of the very night club where she had spent the weekend, blasting away with some amazing tunes and rocking the house. The crowd was especially large this time, even more rowdy than she was expecting the night before. The people were intense, screaming and shouting, the building was rocking even more, the music pumping and filling the air with energy that only fueled the mosh pit of chaos in front of her. Then her fellow DJ was yanked off stage and into the carnage down below, and her shades were splattered in blood and other fluids she had trouble identifying in the flashing lights. It didn't take long before the music suddenly died on her with a sudden thump, and the flashing lights mixed in with the screaming crowd of terrified people only shattered the dream of a night full of dancing and wonder. Instead it was a bloodbath of monstrous proportions, with people ripping one another apart and stampeding monsters filling the nightclub. Tables were torn down, the counter was flooded with them, and people were being brought down left and right. Amidst the chaos, Vinyl struggled to find her friend, but lost him in the darkness and flashing lights. She didn't have much of a choice left but to abandon him and run to safety, and hope he somehow got out of it alive. Over the course of several hours after Vinyl locked herself inside of the night club's security office, up on the second floor. The whole week she had spent inside of the club—it was one of her famous week long club hops—and she had little to no contact with the outside world, until recently. The world outside was a mess of chaos and destruction; there were crowds of monsters flooding the streets of Manehattan, attacking innocent civilians and bringing down entire blockades of soldiers who had been sent in to combat them. The military was active in the city dealing with some kind of contagion that was turning people into ravenous monsters, from what she could understand. But seemed to be losing the fight; she watched the TV before everything went dark, and they were being pushed back somehow despite having the technological upper hand. She only had the security cameras to help her see the club and the city outside. She sat in the office, door blocked off and locked up tight, and watching in stunned silence as people were getting torn apart left and right, burned, shot, and blown away by military firepower, the undead, or one another in the chaos. She had no idea what in the hell was going on and it wasn't helping her nerves any. She was alone in a dark room, watching as Manehattan crumbled around her. The alarms had been tripped some time ago after the zombie like creatures crashed through the fire exit, following something, or someone out the door, most likely the latter. The main dance floor was a bloodbath, with twitching and mangled bodies everywhere as pools of blood began to dry. A glance to her left and she peered into the feed of one of the outside cameras, and she could see parts of the city had caught on fire somehow, and helicopter were flying all around; medical, news, and military. Was this really happening? Had she really been partying for a week straight while the city outside was burning down all around her? She leaned back and looked at the main camera which showed the front doors, two sets of double wide doors that allowed dozens of people to come inside, but for some reason they were still closed. A glance at a camera showing the front doors outside revealed why. Several buses had crashed out front, blocking the front doors. Fires surrounded the front and sides, and crept up to the camera. The windows shattered, and burned corpses climbed out before giving chase to the few vehicles still able to move through the cluttered streets of Manehattan. Most of the roads were filled with crashed cars, blockades built by military and police, or desperate survivors. Maybe that was why no one was able to get inside to safety, or why no one was able to get information about the outside. This can't be happening. She pulled out her cellphone and hit the speed dial to her girlfriend, Octavia, she waited as the phone began ringing. Ring ring... ring ring... ring ring. "We're sorry, but the lines are currently busy, please try again lat-" She shut the voice off and tried again, and again... and again. Still no answer from Octavia, and she slammed the cellphone down on the desk. "Damn it!" She slammed her fist down on the desk. Vinyl glanced around the room before she stood up, and ended up knocking over a fan before pacing around in circles. Where was Octavia? Was she okay? Did she get out alright? Octavia was in the richer part of Manehattan, in her own penthouse that Vinyl sometimes crashed in when she wanted to, Octavia didn't seem to mind much, in fact she gave her a spare key! She better be alright... goddamn it! Vinyl knocked over a file cabinet in her anger and panic, spilling its contents onto the floor. She heard the clatter of something on the floor, which drew her attention. Her eyes focused on the object, golden in color and polished, large with several magazines lying next to it and a box of .50 Action Express rounds. It was a magnum of all things, inside of the club? She wasn't sure, but from what she remembered, the laws of Manehattan didn't permit private ownership of some firearms and this one was most likely ill gotten, probably owned by the night club's manager. She knew how most of these clubs worked, you'd be hard pressed to find one that didn't have a manager delving into something illegal, so finding a firearm wasn't too impossible. Considering what was going on outside, she found her hopes of survival going up once she picked it up. The magnum was heavy, but fit nicely into her hand despite its large size. She gave it a check and found the magazine easily held seven rounds. The spare magazines she had would serve her well alongside the box of ammo. Vinyl needed something to carry it all in safely, but for that she needed her backpack, but it was in the party room downstairs which would be tough to get too, assuming the path was even clear to begin with. Her essentials were in that pack, mostly personal items and such, but it'd help to have a pack with her to carry things in. She stuffed the magazines in her pocket and the rest of the bullets in another one of her cargo pants pockets. Vinyl was glad she managed to keep herself from dressing too provocatively, and actually had some loose fitting cargo pants that were perfect to carry things in. That only left her top, which was cropped and exposing a lot of skin around her chest and mid-drift. Vinyl knew how to dress, even in the darkness she knew what really drew in most of her male audience. After making sure she was loaded up and ready to get moving, she went about unblocking the doorway. Hammer cocked, loaded, and her nerves steeled... she kept her one singular goal in mind. Find Octavia! She pushed the door open and peered out into the hall, discovering ruined light fixtures and bloodied halls. There were no bodies at first, probably a good thing—hopefully a good thing, she wasn't sure how well she'd be able to handle seeing a corpse, let alone one that might still be moving. This whole thing honestly reminded her of those old horror movies she watched with her brother back home, when she was a kid. The old b-movie horror films about the living dead, coming back to feast on the living for whatever reason; black magic, a government developed virus, or just some alien fuckery. They were fun to watch and her overactive imagination tended to take them a bit too seriously, but in the end it was all actors and makeup. But right now, it was the real deal, unless she was dead asleep or passed out on some drug kick that has her hallucinating. Maybe that's all this was, and she was back at her own penthouse on a drug trip? When she entered one of the halls and found a corpse lying against the wall, she gulped. Her heart rate accelerated, and she carefully aimed her new gun down at the body. Slowly, Vinyl approached, and she saw it was one of the night club's security guards. His face was torn apart, his arm missing, and his legs broken and suit ripped to shreds. He didn't move, didn't breath, nothing. The man was dead, and Vinyl almost threw up. The smell was horrible, the scene was like out of a nightmare, and the screeching and screaming outside only caused her nerves to teeter on the edge. Those things could be anywhere, around any corner, waiting to spring out or sprint towards her and take her down without giving the girl a chance to fight back. A swallow and she moved past the corpse, and continued to move through the hall with her gun raised and listening to the sounds around her. The hall was empty and luckily for her, Vinyl Scratch was able to navigate her way towards the party room in the back, which was down the stairs and to the right... which was also near the emergency exit. The party room was in sight now, just down the hall and the door was open! She kept her gun level and zeroed in on it, her pace sped up and she quickly turned into the room. The party room was a chaotic mess, but organized like how she remembered it. It seemed the infected hadn't rampaged through the room just yet. The discarded clothes of her friends lay on the couches and chairs, the stench of booze, weed, and sex lingered like a bad air freshener. She ignored most of it for the time being and instead hunted down her bag, which was buried among the junk somewhere. "Come on, where is it, where is it?" She needed it! She couldn't leave it behind, not while the world was going to hell around her. She tossed aside clothes, empty snack wrappers, even a couple of chairs in her search. Vinyl was scratching at her neck most of the time she searched, trying to get rid of an itch. "Damn it!" Where? Where was it? She had forgotten completely about what was going on outside and focused instead on the bag, the dull gray backpack that had been her companion since her early days of being a DJ. Once she threw a jacket aside, she discovered her pack buried under someone else's pants and pulled it free with a grin. "Finally!" A sudden growl near the door alerted her to something, and she suddenly remembered why she was holding a magnum in her hand, and what was going on outside. At the door, she saw... She saw her friend, DJ-CarNag3, standing in the door. His clothes were torn and stained with blood, his face was torn to pieces and his eyes... His eyes stared at her with hunger, and his maw, torn open and stained with blood, gurgled and hissed. "P-Point?" She muttered as her shades slid down her nose, showing him in a clearer light. "Buddy?" He threw out his arms and screamed at her so loud she almost dropped her loot, he kept screaming too and it caused her to backpedal just to try and gain some distance. Her gun went up as fast as she could get it to go, and aimed it directly at him. "Point! D-don't make me shoot you!" The DJ turned monster didn't listen, from the looks of things he wasn't even there anymore. Whatever had turned the others into ravenous monsters had claimed his soul as well, and he only hungered for one thing. Her flesh. The DJ stumbled forward before he sprang towards her, sprinting with another eat piercing shriek and jumping over the furniture to get to her. Vinyl was back against the wall, bag dropped and gun raised. "POINT!" She pulled the trigger in a blind panic, and during it, she was aiming right at him. The kick of the magnum was hard, and it sent Point flying back once it made contact with his flesh, specifically his forehead. His neck snapped back; blood, brain matter, and skull exploded from the back and rained down on the opposite wall, painting it in a rather grotesque manner. He fell backwards in a heap, and collapsed completely. Dead. Vinyl's senses were battered and she slumped down onto her knees, the gun falling into her lap, clutched by shaky hands. She just shot her best friend, and killed him. Was that really him? Something caught her eye and to her left, she saw the bag had spilled some of its contents. Several of the plastic bags drew her attention, and her already shot nerves suddenly gave her some ideas. She dropped her gun and hastily gathered up the bags before shoving them back into the pack, but left one out that she quickly opened up and stuck her finger into. Scooping up some of the contents, she brought it to her nose and after a moment's thought. She inhaled sharply. A sudden rush surged through her body, the shaky nerves plaguing her body and the anxiety muddling her mind disappeared, buried under a wave of euphoria and energy. Zipping up the baggie, she stuffed it back into her bag and stood up. Magnum in hand and body calm, she felt her body re-energize as everything came into focus for her. She had a friend to find.