Mealots are a vicious lot.
They only attack in overwhelming force, and then they attack with an utter ruthless viciousness. The toxic pong that stems from the odours of their necrotic and frozen flesh, can send bats flailing their wings in stomach, bouncing between ribs and spine in a swelling frenzy of excitement.
What Olaf hates about mealots the most is their disgusting habit of eating their own dead, which explains why they are always seen with a pallid, bloated look on their faces. He can't imagine how horrible it would be to have to perform such a nauseating ritual.
Strangely enough, it is implicitly noticeable that mealots are a race of their own and apparently, humans are the only targets of their ruthless attacks as if they attack humans, not to eat them, but for the pure sake of it, then they would certainly feast on them in a pitiless manner, devouring them alive. It is this fact that makes Olaf despise them to his very core. But, there is no retreat, and there is no surrender. These mealots are no exception.
The breeze meandered against his porcelein skin, sending cold yet sweet chills down to his spine. His
golden hair danced gracefully as he works on the barricade. Olaf is helping his team to build a barricade because the Mealots are on their way to destroy the little sanctuary they have built for themselves.
It took them almost a year to construct it. Plenty of hardships and tribulations had to be endured in rigid perseverance to complete this basic fortress so that they can remain unassailably sheltered here.
He briefly wonders how his sister is doing. He hopes she is managing well without him. Then, suddenly, a feeling of unease creeps over him. Something feels wrong.
"Why is it every time we build a barricade, there's a counter attack?" He asks, glancing at Hank with his ocean eyes gleaming as he notices slickly unpleasant moisture exude through the pores of Hank's skin as he is sweating nervously.
"I just get this creepy feeling that we're being watched." says Hank while working on upgrading his
favorite weapon, which is his trusty clockwork chainsaw. It is a steady and obvious clanking sound that draws Olaf's attention to the larger man as he works.
By observing Hank, one may assume he is an intelligent worker, but one would be mistaken. He lacks the ability to think in a team. He works well in the smaller, confined spaces of a barricade, but if it weren't for Olaf, he would get himself into terrible trouble.
Olaf remains silent for a moment and then, he sits beside Hank. He pats Hank's shoulder and attempts to muster up encouraging words, but he fails because cold nervousness is crawling up inside him too.
So, in order to get another opinion on the situation, he stares at Omer's direction, giving him a helpless look.
Omer dipped his head towards the cold air, yet the snowflakes melted on his face, unable to penetrate his leather duster which Olaf is jealous of. This coat was a treasure, a gift from his mother. It kept Omer nice and toasty warm, no matter what the temperature. He looks up from the potion he is working on. "You're being paranoid again, Hank. Relax, we're fine."
Hank doesn't look convinced, but he takes a deep breath and stops sweating.
Olaf steps back to let Durge, a heavily bandaged man with a chubby belly and a huge hammer join him, and help him to finish building the barricade.
Once again his friends are doing their best to protect it, but this is not work that they were meant to do. They are not warriors and they are not soldiers. They are not trained to stand against the constant attacks of monsters. Olaf, however, is a survivor and a fighter. He cannot let them die because he needs them to help him build this barricade.
The touch of the barricade feels like a cool breeze on his skin. He closes his eyes and breathes in the calm air. He thinks to himself that it does not need to be fancy, just sturdy and strong enough to stop a small ballista bolt. He sets to work with the others and after a while they have a fairly solid defense up. This will have to do for now.
They hear a bunch of noise outside like a warzone. Growls, screams and the clanging of metal fill the air along with the trampling of feet as if thousands of men went to war in this valley. However, these are not from men, not from something earthly, something that is supposed to be fathomable to the unwary mind of humans, and not from any kind of beast that Olaf has ever heard of or met. It is infact so terrible, that he feels the calmness leave him in an instant. His heart beats faster and he feels the hairs of his back rise.
"Oh lord! did you hear that?" Olaf says.
"Yes! What in the name of the lord of war was that?" Hank replies as
he trembles in fear. His legs muscles twitch like they are about to burst from his skin, and a pale expression runs down his face like slow moving wave, a wave that is dread as he hears the clamor of death drawing near.
"Heck! It sounded like a thousand men screaming!" Omer says, becoming equally as terrified.
Durge kneels down, leaning on the barricade. "Folks, get a grip! We need to check on our defenses!"
Durge's voice is calm, but his face is pale and drawn. He trembles even more than Hank, distancing himself from the general panic that is hitting him as if it is airborne and destined to infect the weak-minded.
It does not take long to begin ramming the barricade in an attempt to break through for the first group of monsters that look like unholy children of an undead goblin and a fiend.
"Alright you guys, stay strong, I'll be back as soon as I can." Olaf says to his friends while adjusting his creamy-mint jacket of his camouflage-battle uniform, and runs off to fight the monsters. He's a veteran commando who once killed 100 soldiers in a mission and wounded 18 of them. He can do it. However, this isn’t human soldiers that he is dealing with at the moment. It’s something far more sinister and unfathomable to human understanding.
Goosebumps dances all over his body. It's as if it captured the essence of struggle and survival, its both uplifting and epic, like he's ready to take on the legions of hell. Yet it's also sinister and evil, as if this is the destiny of man, to struggle against forces beyond our control.
The mealots in this first wave are rather pathetic. Indeed, some of them are so pathetically weak that they are able to be crushed by the ram attacks of the monsters behind them. Still, the fact that so many of them can be killed so easily is a sign of things to come, for as soon as the mealots in the front have been dealt with, a new wave of monsters begins to appear.
These ones are larger, meaner and far more resistant to damage. It appears that there are classes and ranks among mealots. The first wave was packed with the weakest foot soldiers of these fiendish creatures.
Olaf needs to stay to fight, but he also needs to build the barricade higher.
He picks up a heavy stone and hurls it at the mealots like a shotputter. It demolishes two or three of them. They may be large and tough and have a lot of meat on their bones, but they are not made of steel.
However, this is far from enough. The mealots reform in the meantime and charge again.
Some of the more intelligent ones realize that he is attacking their comrades and begin to target Olaf instead.
He is smart enough to use the palisade they have already built as cover, but a few foolish mealots still find a way in.
One leaps at him from the top of the palisade like a monkey that has gone mad from isolation.
Knowing well that he is too strong and fast for it to really matter, but he chooses to use his influence over gravity to crush it under some massive tusks he picked up, like an anthill might crush a cockroach.
A second one manages to get through the palisades by jumping on Olaf's back. He spins around like a dancer trying to avoid an embrace and ends up knocking this mealot into the tusks as it lands on his back. Olaf then pushes this tusked mealot off of him and the creature lands on the hard tusks with a bone crushing crunch and a lot of grayish and somewhat transparent, slimy blood spills out that looks like mucus coming out of several orifices and the mealot's spindly limbs are flailing like a broken kite's strings.
However, more and more of them find a way in and he feels the pressure.
What he needs is the perfect defense, something that will stop everything, but be simple and easy to make.
In his spare time, Hank used his mechanical skill to make a ballista, an ancient military type siege engine in the form of a crossbow to hurl large bolts, and has better accuracy than a catapult at the expense of reduced range, with enough power to destroy a monster's skull, while Durge crafted a simple giant spiked ball.
When the time comes, Durge jerks his huge mustache and quickly loads the giant spiked ball into the ballista and ready his trigger finger. It's uncanny how loud and powerful the thing is, almost like a catapult.
Hank also used his mechanical skill to create a repeating crossbow out of a sconce, which he grabs and draws his bolt firing it like an oversized pistol at one of the new breeds of beasts that have made their way through the barricade.
Olaf can see the bolt going towards one of the mealots that have breached the barricade. It flies true, but he feels it has less than lethal power, but efficient enough to at least wound the monster.
The mealot squeals in pain as the bolt slams into its skull, but does not go down.
Olaf fires his own bolt, though he feels it goes wide.
He reloads and fires again, passing the ballista over to Omer who takes aim at one of the larger monsters. He pulls the trigger and the bolt flies true, hitting the mealot in the chest, but it's only enough to cause it to stumble backwards.
Meanwhile, bouncing his chubby belly, Durge sprints and takes in charge of the catapult, a device or weapon for throwing or launching large objects in long range, fires and loads in a stone. He looks at Olaf and grins, "Come on, get out of the way, I need to reload!"
Olaf is about to object, but he sees a large chunk of the stone go flying and directly into one of the mealots. It squeals in pain as the meat and organs are torn apart inside of it.
"Reload!" he says gleefully.
Olaf grabs the shell casings and quickly reloads as he fires again. This time the stone slams into the monster's head, and it's no mistake either. The mealot's head blows apart and chunks of meat and gore shower down upon him.
The battle is going well enough that Olaf can focus on other things, like building up the defenses of his castle. He makes trip wires around the palisades and inside the castle itself. If a zombie should stumble into any of these, the death penalty will be inflicted upon it.
The moat is hard to get to, but he finds a way. There is a constructed bridge of wooden planks and rope. He plans to attract the creatures, then having Omer light it on fire.
The mealots cannot cross it, and the heat will harm any that touch it. He uses this to trap a large number of the beasts, then just like that the bridge goes up in flames, killing all the mealots within.
For now, the wave of mealots is at an end. However, they know another one is coming, and soon.
Once few weeks go by, and sure enough, a new group of monsters will come screaming out of the blue at them.
Mealots are a strange race of zombie-like creatures that are indigenous to this world as if a god trapped them in this dimension.
It took one year for them to build this sanctuary after they spawned in this dimension. The unfortunate event happened one year ago:
Hank, Omer, Durge and Olaf ; four friends who accidentally stepped into a portal and rendered themselves transferred into a dystopian world full of monstrous creatures. Now, they must fight and struggle against the nightmarish horrors of this dystopian world to survive.
Hank is a mechanic, Olaf is a veteran military commando, and Durge is a talented blacksmith and craftsman. Omer is capable of crafting potions and drugs to help himself and his team. They must work together to survive in this horrible place.
They must build deeper friendships within team, and learn to work together in order to survive against all the odds.
This is a story of teamwork, loyalty, friendship, and the strength of the human spirit.
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