Upwards, 36 days after initial outbreak

RED Pyro awoke, his bed a line of crates with a cover over it. He yawned, looked out next to him, off the wooden ledge in spawn. They, Him, a Demoman and an Engineer, have been at a mountain region codenamed by their employers at “Upward”. He got up, yawned, and stared at the sunrise, then down at the ship, a large and imposing freighter, looking like a child’s toy from the top of the mountain. He grabbed a can of chickpeas from the surplus, and walked towards the hallway.

The Pyro saw the Demoman, a Texan demolition man, whose been blowing up buildings, abandoned oil rigs and anything you could put explosives in from the time he was six to five months ago. He was sitting down next to a crate, can of beans in one hand, the speaker of his ham radio in another.

“Well, howdy.” Demoman said. His radio was very fuzzy sounding, as the closest radio tower was crippled by an infected heavy, during it’s fight with something that didn’t really exist. Pyro could make out a few words in between the static.

“…sota Vikings….bears…14 to 9…3rd quarter…”

“Football again?” Pyro remarked. The Demoman looked up from his can of beans. “Well, it’s either that or static, pick ‘yer poison.” The Pyro remarked back “Well, that isn’t much worse than this. That hunk of fat heavy last week just had to mess up the tower. We had baseball until that lard-o came around…“. He marked his tally calendar on the wall, for the 36th time, and sat down with the Demoman.

Right at this time, the Engineer came down from his quarters. He was a Russian engineer, enlisted to build a series of “defense” mechanisms in his previous career for his country during the current war between America and Russia, in exchange for any supplies he would need later in his crafts.

“Good day, comrades!” Engineer bellowed, in his usual loud, resonating voice. He helped himself to a can of fruit, and sat down besides his teammates.

The group sat down, and immediately the Engineer turned to the Demoman and asked “So, have you feexed the vents yet?”. The Demoman looked away and muttered “Yeah, well, uhm, ‘bout that…”

As the Demoman and Engineer got into yet another volley of screams and curses, the Pyro didn’t referee this argument like he has been doing for the past month. He was concered with the sound of metallic thuds from the vent.

As the Pyro listened even more closely to the sounds coming from the vents, he began to hear the inane mutterings from them.

“Hey… hey knuckle head…. You you…. Ain’t gonna win… win this…”

The Pyro signaled the Demoman and Engineer to be quiet, and for once the argument instantly ended. He grabbed his double barrel and walked towards the vents.

“I think we got another crawler…” Pyro remarked. The Demoman replied “Crawler? You mean a scout?”. Pyro turned to him. “They aren’t scouts anymore… they’re… just demon spawn…”

The Pyro held his double barrel to the vent. “Shh… I think I got it…”

He placed his hand against the vent, feeling for vibrations. Suddenly, he stopped feeling vibrations, but heard the metal thuds and the sound of rending metal. The Pyro shot a round into the vents, hitting nothing but metal.

The scout jumped straight through the vent, and onto then ceiling. The Pyro quickly shot another two rounds, nicking the scout in the leg. It’s screech, sounded something between a chalkboard being scratched and shattering glass distracted the group long enough to allow the scout time to get in another vent. The pyro watched carefully at the vent. He lost track of the scout for a few minutes, only hearing the faint stammering of the once-human. Suddenly, he heard metal breaking.

He turned around and yelled “Watch it! It’s coming!” Right after that, the Scout leaped out the vent grate in the cart room. It galloped at them on all fours, like a monkey-hyena hybrid. It leaped at the Pyro mid-air, but he retaliated with two quick shotgun blasts in mid-leap, sending the wretched thing in five different directions across the spawn.

The Pyro glared at the Demoman for a few seconds, the he threw up his arms and shouted “Okay already! I’ll fix the darn vent for ‘ya!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Sniper leaned against the wall in the meat freezer. The only thing between him and an infected heavy was an iron door with rusty hinges. Rosary beads in hand, he kept his head down, quietly repeating "Dieu aie pitié de moi, que Dieu ait pitié de moi, que Dieu ait pitié de moi...". The frenchmen was certain that his leg was broken, and that this room was where he would die.

He failed to notice the rusty shelf he had leaned next to. He leaned to the left a bit, and this small bit of force was all it took to make the shelf fall over.

The heavy, extremely sensitive to sound, lumbered towards the sound. He ripped the iron door off the hinges, and saw the sniper, half dead and almost frozen, both metaphorically and physically. But all it took to enrage the heavy was the sniper's blink.

He screamed "LEETLE BABY MAHN! DO NOT HIDE FROM ME!" and picked the sniper up by the neck. He threw him out the freezer, hitting hard agains the wall. At this point, fear had overcome the sniper, and his heart had already give out. But the heavy didn't care. He picked up the iron door, and threw it at his body.

He screamed "AND THAT VILL TEACH YOU NOT TO MESS WITH REAL MEHN!".