Narrator:
Chapter 2 Christmas of Blood… Earth #8189, Zorrin-Tower, New York City, New York, New-Years Eve in the year of 2012. A boy looks down from his gilded tower at a fallen world of the dead. A boy lost in his own thoughts as he tries to process all that has happened to him… to the world over the past 14 days…
Ashton (Ash):
No one believed it at first; who could? It was just too crazy. It started as just rumors on the Internet and random acts of violence on the news. However, as the days wore on and the news got worse, people realized the truth. On Christmas Eve I watched the coverage of the Battle of San Francisco. The U.A.E. (United American Empire) Military, the San Francisco Police and the W.L.H. (West-Coast Legion of Heroes) clashed with what we were told was thousands of violent rioters.
I threw up, watching the massive horde swarming, ripping apart, and eating every soldier, officer, and W.L.H. hero they got their hands on. Even supervillains, knowing this strange eruption of uncontrollable civil unrest was a threat to them as well, joined forces with the heroes to fight the horde. Luckily, an evacuation had been ordered for the city six days before, so there weren't too many civilians left. No matter what police, military, heroes or villains did, the rioters just kept coming, like a tidal wave of death.
As the sun rose on Christmas Eve, only Queen Dante, the most powerful supervillain on Earth, was left fighting alone to hold San Francisco as the horde of millions swarmed all around her. In a stunning act of selflessness, she pushed her power to the breaking point, incinerating herself in a massive nuclear explosion.
A final act to take down as much of the horde as possible. Lady Dante's sacrifice wiped out the horde, bringing the Battle for San Francisco to a close, leaving the city and everything around it for 150 miles a smouldering radioactive wasteland.
An hour after the explosion, I watched the U.A.E. Secretary of Defence being questioned about the fall of San Francisco. He called it a virus, spread through a currently unknown means and efforts to develop a cure were ongoing. There was a moment of silence, tension filled the air.. then someone finally asked him the horrifying question. The question we all knew was coming, but no one wanted the answer to.
Reporter:
"Mr. Secretary, are the rumours true? Are these infected members of the living dead as some have suggested?"
Ashton (Ash):
Again there was silence. Tears of fear and shame showed in the secretary's eyes as the world held its breath for his answer.
Sec Def:
"Yes, the rumours are true... I'm so sorry... God forgive me,"
Ashton (Ash):
Cried the secretary, pulling a concealed handgun out of his coat and splattering his brains all over the wall.
A self-execution, for all the world to see. Humanity watched that moment unfold in horror, and the weight of it changed everything. A gunshot heard around the world. After that, the fear was absolute as people were faced with the dark, ugly truth. In that moment it all became so clear to everyone that nothing was ever going to be the same again, that this would be the world's last Christmas and it would be a Christmas of blood. It has been six days since then and all I know is my brother and I are still alive but for how long remains to be seen.
My name is Ashton, but my big brother, Edward, and his friends just call me Ash. At the time of the outbreak, Edward and I were in New York City. As CEO of one of the world's most powerful corporate conglomerates, Zorrin-Industries, my brother often has to travel all over the world, but this time I begged him to take me with him. I had always wanted to see New York at Christmas Time, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, the beautiful lights… Central Park covered in glistening white. Honestly, not the Christmas I was hoping for. The trip was also supposed to be special in another way because most of my brother's friends were also in New York for the 1st Annual S.P.C.(Super-Powered Community) East-Coast Convention. We were all supposed to meet up and spend the holidays together. We were so excited about the convention… the progress towards greater public tolerance it represented for the super-powered community.
Neither Big Brother nor I have powers but our closest friends… our family by choice… the only family we have do. After all the hatred, mistrust and bigotry they have endured from society over the past few years, they deserved a convention like this, and we were honoured to be invited to share the experience with them. However, with the outbreak, all those plans changed. We don't even know if our friends made it out of the city… or if they are trapped in the city with us… are they even still alive?
Luckily, Edward has always been a bit eccentric and… or perhaps what some might call paranoid. So when the outbreak first started getting bad, my brother ordered Zorrin-Tower where we were staying to go on full lockdown with instructions to use lethal force if necessary. He then set to work trying to confirm the location of our friends and arrange evac for all of us back to our family estate in Nornland, Scotland. It made sense… Our family estate is fairly isolated, self-sustaining and easily defendable, but things got bad so quickly and all travel to and from the United American Empire was grounded.
Even if we could get into the air, going home would not be an option as the G.G.E. (Greater-German Empire) had already ordered a complete lockdown of all its territories, including Scotland. Big brother and I were stuck, and things were only getting worse. New York City was hit hard by the virus and the order of evacuation came too late. Desperate to avoid another Battle of San Francisco disaster and to slow the spread of the virus, the U.A.E. locked down all of New York City, declaring it preemptively lost without a fight. They blew the bridges and set up massive barricades equipped with anti-air defenses. New York now belonged to the dead. No one in and no one out. The E.L.H. (East-Coast Legion of Heroes) did their best to defend the city they called home, but they were quickly overwhelmed.
Luckily after several days of recon looking for our friends using Zorrin-Industries Stealth-Drones, Big Brother observed a larger undead horde overrunning one of the deployed A.A. System Sites, creating a gap in the Military's Anti-Air Network enclosing the city. It was hard, but we knew we couldn't wait any longer. We had to hope our friend's powers would be enough to keep them safe. This was our best and only chance to get out of the city… We had to take it.