Slaughterhouse

ONE.

Beantown burned.

Dark clouds hovered over the city as thunder boomed with irregular pulses, like the faltering, erratic beat of a titanic heart moments before it finally failed. But the clouds were made of smoke, and the inconsistent rumblings were not that of thunder, but explosions. Artillery, the King of Battle, was firing its final salvos before the curtain finally fell on the stage of murder, death, and madness. Boston was took its final bow, and the crowd went wild.

A wildness born from laughing insanity.

The Infected pranced and darted through the smoke-filled gloom, sticking out their tongues, trying to catch the falling ashes as if they were snowflakes. They carried grisly trophies—severed hands, heads, breasts, penises. They came from all walks of life. Postal workers. Firemen. Doctors. Winos. Actors. Carpenters. Criminals. Priests. Housewives. Dotcom executives. Insurance salesmen. All laughing, cackling in uncontrollable glee as they chased down the ones who cried, who tried to fight, who tried to flee. The adults were easy to catch. The children were tougher, but they earned a special place among the Klowns.

The Infected impaled the young and carried them past Faneuil Hall, writhing and shrieking, living effigies of the prey they hunted.

The Klowns did what the British had only dreamed of centuries earlier. In less than two months, the city of Boston had been murdered, dying a death of a thousand cuts, courtesy of rusty, salt-encrusted blades.