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The Back Page - Here is the Front Page
Message From the EditorThis is the Back Page, the extra edition stuff. We couldn't fit it on the main page, but it had to go somewheres. Anything could be back here. Just so you know. That's it really, the rest of this paragraph is mainly useless blather designed to look good, and take up a pleasant amount of copy space.
NewsGMTBC Makes Inroads In CommunicationWe've actually seen and spoken with them", astonished Ridleys claim
The Breakfast Club has broken their almost ritualistic silence in an effort to counter claims that they "don't exist". Members have been seen chatting in IRC with other horde elements, and even forum activity has been noticed. Readers are advised that this is not a sign of doom, but is rather a good thing. The GMTBC are indeed, well, not alive, but kicking still. Check the feature below, "A Blast From the Past" for Club members to get an idea of how long this team has been operating. Nice to hear from the ancient ones of the Front! We salute you.
FeaturesA Blast From the PastHistoric site reveals many ancient traditions still upheld
This ancient archaeological site was recently unearthed in a discussion between friends about the paper. Links were clicked, links which opened the dusty portal to a time before Barhah (barhah.com, anyway), when Ridleybank was hosted in the land of .org. See if you can spot any familiar faces in the roster list. Believe it or not, there are still folks on that roster with the RRF! Some ancient news archives are also here, going back literally years. Enjoy this unguided tour through our history, not only of the paper, but a look at the very past of the Front.
The Writer's DeskThe occasional fit of creativity, presented in text form. Presently picturing the painful painting of a Team America strike from the petrified perspective of the partaken.
John Q Harman shivered, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he tried to stay awake. These NecroTech buildings were always cold, even at this time of year. The steel and concrete structures seemed to just suck up warmth, and the generator they had installed that afternoon had barely been enough to get the lights on.
From across the lobby, he could hear moaning and rustling as the other survivors slept, exhausted. He thought he heard the quiet crinkling of someone stealthily snacking on a packet of crisps from the broken vending machines, now propped against the front entrance. A stack of televisions and monitors, some planking and several sheets of drywall that had been in the Maintenance room, now all in a tight pile with the vending machines, were their only bulwark against the inescapable hordes outside.
As he waited, light shone through the chinks of the barricade. Peering out, he saw a flare rising into the moonlit sky. He leaned back against the wall, picturing the geography of Malton in his head. Probably somewhere near Blackmore, he decided. Personally, he thought flareguns had outlived their usefulness, but some people apparently (boom) thought...
... thought that it would be a great idea (BOOM)...
He stood up, pressing his face to the barricade, straining to see into the darkness.
BOOM
He felt the vibrations in the planks under his hands; he heard something outside splintering and falling to the ground. He ran back into the building’s lobby, shouting, “Zombies, zombies are at the barricades! Wake up! Everyone wake up!” feeling like a dipshit Paul Revere in a bad high school play. Most of the survivors in the lobby had long since developed the ability to come up from a dead sleep and hit the ground running. He already saw several of them looking for things they could use to reinforce the barricade, and several more were checking their weapons one last time. The pounding outside the building was now regular and unmistakable. There was a terrific crashing from somewhere inside the building as the lights flickered and died.
Despite the efforts of the other survivors, the last of the barricades suddenly collapsed, crashing down in a billowing cloud of drywall dust. For a moment, there was only silence as the survivors waited.
Suddenly, a thin red beam of light pierced the hanging cloud, sweeping an arc across the lobby. Behind it, the moonlight illuminated a misshapen figure trudging towards them. It stopped, and then threw its arms out and its head back, letting out an inhumanly loud bellow. He could feel the sound pressing into him from all sides as it echoed around the lobby.
A shot, then a flood of gunfire as the survivors began to panic. The thing continued forward, becoming distinct. It looked like some twisted child had fused a corpse with a Rock’em Sock’em Robot. Above its shining red eye, a steel cap covered its skull. Wires trailed from it, their terminals hidden behind the bulk of the creature. Its steel arms were oversized, huge, ending in massive, clumsy fingers now curled into fists. The NecroTech logo, stamped into its shoulder, was defaced, and the words “Team America” were scratched into the metal below it. Tendrils that looked like the cords of payphones unfurled from its groin and began to waver in the air in front of it. The gunfire did not seem to slow its steady and relentless advance, the bullets impacting its flesh bothering it no more than those that spanged off its metallic arms. In the moonlit dust, other deformed shapes began to appear behind it.
Each of them was monstrous in some new way, incomprehensible in behavior and aspect alike. One of them, who had perhaps once been a woman, leapt forward on raptor-like legs, seizing one of the human defenders by the shoulders. As he shrieked, writhing in her grasp, a steel prong shot forward from her mouth, punching into his forehead and making a noise like a hammer hitting a watermelon. There was a sharp crackling sound, and the air was filled with the smell of burning meat and ozone. She withdrew her tongue from the smoking hole, and gripping the body by the shirtfront, she growled, “Bahbah!” and slung him behind her, into the shadows. Another shape converged with his, and there was a thick slurping sound, then a gravelly chuckle and a wet-sounding, “Zhangz.”
The hulking monstrosity, now it the centre of the lobby, reached out a massive hand and pulled a screaming woman out of a huddle of humans. His tendrils snaked out and wrapped around her calves. Placing his left hand on her back, he slammed his gigantic right fist into her chest. Blood sprayed from her mouth and nose as her ribcage shattered. As the tendrils unwound, he grabbed her by the legs and hurled the body out into the night, through the gaping hole where the doors had been.
Another creature emerged from the dust-cloud. It had grotesquely long arms ending in metal claws that would have made a hardened sadist quiver. It scraped them along the floor, making sparks and a rusty squalling sound, a look of vacant pleasure on the remains of its face. One of the shotgunners broke and ran, and with surprising speed, the apelike zombie charged forward and thrust its left arm through his back like a pitchfork. It turned the man towards itself, vacantly grinning as it looked him up and down. Its empty gaze seemed to coalesce on his legs, and it cried out, “Nah! Ahz ah bag harman! Bag!” It raked its right hand down his legs, stripping away his pants along with several pounds of flesh. It began to slap him, forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand, obliterating his face, turning it into an unrecognizable, screaming red hole.
Unable to think with any of the higher brain levels, John turned and ran down the corridor. He saw lantern light coming from the door to the Maintenance room and grabbed the doorframe to brake himself. In the dim light he could see the generator, smashed beyond repair. On the floor was a man’s body, its head laying on a toolbox. His back was a mind-numbing profusion of stab wounds. The handle of a screwdriver protruded from his left eye, and his blood had overflowed the open toolbox to run into a drain set in the floor. John’s overloaded brain finally triggered his gag reflex, and he vomited helplessly. Staggering away and wiping his mouth, he stumbled further down the hallway.
He came to an office at the end of the corridor, and wrenched the boards away from the windows. The glass was long-since gone. Gripping the sides of the window frame, he levered his right knee up onto the window ledge. He was just swinging his other leg up over the sill, when he saw something moving from the corner of his eye. He turned and looked directly into a face like a steel skull, its bloodshot eyes glistening wetly in the moonlight. “Barhah,” it whispered, and reached for him.
WAAAAUGHBLBLBLBLBLBL!Less a column, and more a state of mind
If You Read Both Pages, Congratulations!If you didn't, then start here.
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