Well, that's a pretty pickle you've left our heroes in! I guess it's a good thing that they didn't go down to the basement first, after all....
[And I ran over the post-limit, sorry. But looking at this I think it's a single scene so it's probably better to double post than to leave you trying to guess what I was thinking :) ]
Mine "Oh for fu-" I started, staring into the yellowish, demented-looking eyes of the lead person. They were wearing a dusky green shirt of some kind, and I suspected it was a uniform for the staff of the visitor's centre. "I guess it's a good job we went up and not down," he said, cutting me off and guiding me gently back. We edged around to put an air-conditioning unit between us and them as they pushed the door open and came out on to the roof. They made no sound, which was really creepy in its own way. If they'd just yelled at us, demanded to know what we were doing on their roof, or even who we were, it would have been reassuring. They'd have seemed human then. But the silence, and the way they shambled, barely lifting one foot enough to slide it across the ground, and lurched, because they didn't seem to know how far to move a foot or even how to walk properly any more, was way scarier than being shouted at for trespassing on government property. He tried to put himself between them and me but I moved to the other side of the air-conditioning unit. Some of it was bravado, I'll give you that; I wasn't about to be outdone by anyone. Some of it was anger; just when I'd started to think we had time to figure out what was going on we'd been interrupted, and rudely too. And one tiny, tiny part of it was practicality: they could come at us from both sides, so it was stupid not to defend one. They were slow as well. We'd only backed off maybe ten metres but we must have waited a full minute before all three of them were out of the stairwell and even then the lead shambler was still a couple of metres away from the air-conditioning unit we'd put between us and them. I got a better look at his face then: the eyes were dull and lifeless and the whites had gone yellowish. The skin was grey like the colour of sky that's promising rain in a few hours. His throat had been cut at some point: there was a ragged, messy slash that ran diagonally down from a little way below his ear and disappeared under his shirt. The shirt looked oddly clean though and while the edges of the cut were dark-red and crusty, almost rusty-looking, there was no other signs of blood. "Stay back," he said, getting a firm grip on the hunting knife and dropping into a martial-arts informed crouch. "Like hell," I said and ran across the roof to get behind the shamblers.
"What!" He sounded startled, and he wasn't completely the only one, I was very much acting on instinct. But the shamblers stopped and started to turn, so slowly that you'd think they were playing Grandmother's footsteps and I was behind the last one and swinging the axe at her legs before they'd even managed a quarter-turn. The axe bit into soft flesh and something snapped; a tendon probably. The shambler collapsed in a heap, silent and unprotesting and I felt like I'd murdered a child. I backed off, tears starting to blur my vision, and only hear the thump and tearing sound of the hunting knife dispatching the other two. Then he was next to me, holding my shoulders and talking. "Breathe. Take a moment and breathe. And think of it as though you're putting a rabid dog down. It's not nice, but it's necessary." We've hunted our own food on some of our hikes, so I'm no stranger to killing an animal -- and gutting and skinning and cooking it, for that matter -- but it's different when it looks like a person. He was right though, and finding that necessity helped a lot. I don't particularly want to kill a rabbit, but when you're hungry and cold necessity becomes much more motivating. I shuddered and exhaled, letting the emotion out, and then set the axe down and wiped my eyes. Two of the shamblers were down and not moving; he'd done a good job of taking them out. Mine was... still moving, just hamstrung. "Want me to finish her-- it for you?" I shook my head. It wasn't like this would be the last of them, I supposed, so I may as well get used to it. Chopping her head off was easy -- too easy -- and would have been messy if they bled, but it got me over my squeamishness. "That was... thorough," he said, with a hint of humour touching his words. That was a relief after the stress so far. "Yeah," I said. "Cathartic. But too easy." "You want them to be harder?" Now he did laugh, though it sounded slightly forced. "No! No, but a head is hard to cut off," I said. "All the muscle in the neck; even rabbits, remember? The muscle here is spongy, soft. And there's no blood at all, I don't get how they're even moving without blood providing oxygen to all the muscles. But it's like cutting up sausage. It's too easy." He looked thoughtful.
Greg - well, I've got three months left to find a way to not post the yearlong prompt on the very last possible day of each month. Think I'll manage it?
Yeah, me neither.
Mine:
"What is it?" I asked as we moved to leave the roof for the second time. "What are you thinking?"
He only grunted in reply, not yet ready to share his thoughts, as he peered cautiously down the stairway. I, of course, found this infuriating, but knew better than to force the issue. He would tell me when he was ready and not a moment sooner.
So I tried to think my own thoughts as we moved silently down the stairs. But it was difficult to focus on any theories or potential explanations with the memory of decapitating that wo... that thing playing on repeat. I needed to get used to thinking of the shamblers as something other than human if I was going to get through this in one piece, both physically and psychologically.
He paused when he reached the door on the second floor landing and glanced back at me, one eyebrow arched in a questioning sort of way. It took me a moment to realize what he was asking.
The door, which had definitely been closed on our way up, had been left slightly open.
And he was wanting to know if I wanted to go through it.
"Bastard," I muttered. What I wanted was to go back to the safety of our locked rooms, with their coffee and beds and shower. But if we did that would I ever want to leave there again? I hefted the axe, felt its deadly weight in my hands, and nodded once. "Fuck it, might as well."
His smile was a mixture of eagerness and something else. Pride? That I wasn't wussing out on him? Whatever it was, I found it aggravating. Which reminded me that he still hadn't told me what had occurred to him on the roof.
Before I could renew my line of questioning he eased the door open wide enough to slip through sideways and disappeared into the hallway. I swore softly and followed before my newfound courage abandoned me.
The smell was the first thing I noticed. Like a freezer full of meat had lost power weeks ago and nobody had bothered to clear it out. I pulled my shirt over my nose and tried to breathe through my ears.
The hallway was wide enough to walk side by side but I let him lead the way, mostly because my eyes had begun to water and I didn't want to miss a detail that might mean the difference between a gruesome death and... surviving long enough to die a gruesome death somewhere else.
Over his shoulder I could see that a door had been left open up ahead on our right. From within a flickering light illuminated the hallway at irregular intervals as we approached. Was this where the roof shamblers had come from? Were there more of them waiting inside?
The smell, against all reasonable possibilities, was getting worse. I slowed, unsure how much more I could take. He slowed as well, I assumed for the same reason. But then I saw what he was staring at.
On the wall across the hallway from the open doorway someone had scrawled a message in what appeared to be blood. A warning.
3 comments:
Well, that's a pretty pickle you've left our heroes in! I guess it's a good thing that they didn't go down to the basement first, after all....
[And I ran over the post-limit, sorry. But looking at this I think it's a single scene so it's probably better to double post than to leave you trying to guess what I was thinking :) ]
Mine
"Oh for fu-" I started, staring into the yellowish, demented-looking eyes of the lead person. They were wearing a dusky green shirt of some kind, and I suspected it was a uniform for the staff of the visitor's centre.
"I guess it's a good job we went up and not down," he said, cutting me off and guiding me gently back. We edged around to put an air-conditioning unit between us and them as they pushed the door open and came out on to the roof.
They made no sound, which was really creepy in its own way. If they'd just yelled at us, demanded to know what we were doing on their roof, or even who we were, it would have been reassuring. They'd have seemed human then. But the silence, and the way they shambled, barely lifting one foot enough to slide it across the ground, and lurched, because they didn't seem to know how far to move a foot or even how to walk properly any more, was way scarier than being shouted at for trespassing on government property.
He tried to put himself between them and me but I moved to the other side of the air-conditioning unit. Some of it was bravado, I'll give you that; I wasn't about to be outdone by anyone. Some of it was anger; just when I'd started to think we had time to figure out what was going on we'd been interrupted, and rudely too. And one tiny, tiny part of it was practicality: they could come at us from both sides, so it was stupid not to defend one.
They were slow as well. We'd only backed off maybe ten metres but we must have waited a full minute before all three of them were out of the stairwell and even then the lead shambler was still a couple of metres away from the air-conditioning unit we'd put between us and them. I got a better look at his face then: the eyes were dull and lifeless and the whites had gone yellowish. The skin was grey like the colour of sky that's promising rain in a few hours. His throat had been cut at some point: there was a ragged, messy slash that ran diagonally down from a little way below his ear and disappeared under his shirt. The shirt looked oddly clean though and while the edges of the cut were dark-red and crusty, almost rusty-looking, there was no other signs of blood.
"Stay back," he said, getting a firm grip on the hunting knife and dropping into a martial-arts informed crouch.
"Like hell," I said and ran across the roof to get behind the shamblers.
"What!" He sounded startled, and he wasn't completely the only one, I was very much acting on instinct. But the shamblers stopped and started to turn, so slowly that you'd think they were playing Grandmother's footsteps and I was behind the last one and swinging the axe at her legs before they'd even managed a quarter-turn.
The axe bit into soft flesh and something snapped; a tendon probably. The shambler collapsed in a heap, silent and unprotesting and I felt like I'd murdered a child. I backed off, tears starting to blur my vision, and only hear the thump and tearing sound of the hunting knife dispatching the other two. Then he was next to me, holding my shoulders and talking.
"Breathe. Take a moment and breathe. And think of it as though you're putting a rabid dog down. It's not nice, but it's necessary."
We've hunted our own food on some of our hikes, so I'm no stranger to killing an animal -- and gutting and skinning and cooking it, for that matter -- but it's different when it looks like a person. He was right though, and finding that necessity helped a lot. I don't particularly want to kill a rabbit, but when you're hungry and cold necessity becomes much more motivating. I shuddered and exhaled, letting the emotion out, and then set the axe down and wiped my eyes.
Two of the shamblers were down and not moving; he'd done a good job of taking them out. Mine was... still moving, just hamstrung.
"Want me to finish her-- it for you?"
I shook my head. It wasn't like this would be the last of them, I supposed, so I may as well get used to it. Chopping her head off was easy -- too easy -- and would have been messy if they bled, but it got me over my squeamishness.
"That was... thorough," he said, with a hint of humour touching his words. That was a relief after the stress so far.
"Yeah," I said. "Cathartic. But too easy."
"You want them to be harder?" Now he did laugh, though it sounded slightly forced.
"No! No, but a head is hard to cut off," I said. "All the muscle in the neck; even rabbits, remember? The muscle here is spongy, soft. And there's no blood at all, I don't get how they're even moving without blood providing oxygen to all the muscles. But it's like cutting up sausage. It's too easy."
He looked thoughtful.
Greg - well, I've got three months left to find a way to not post the yearlong prompt on the very last possible day of each month. Think I'll manage it?
Yeah, me neither.
Mine:
"What is it?" I asked as we moved to leave the roof for the second time. "What are you thinking?"
He only grunted in reply, not yet ready to share his thoughts, as he peered cautiously down the stairway. I, of course, found this infuriating, but knew better than to force the issue. He would tell me when he was ready and not a moment sooner.
So I tried to think my own thoughts as we moved silently down the stairs. But it was difficult to focus on any theories or potential explanations with the memory of decapitating that wo... that thing playing on repeat. I needed to get used to thinking of the shamblers as something other than human if I was going to get through this in one piece, both physically and psychologically.
He paused when he reached the door on the second floor landing and glanced back at me, one eyebrow arched in a questioning sort of way. It took me a moment to realize what he was asking.
The door, which had definitely been closed on our way up, had been left slightly open.
And he was wanting to know if I wanted to go through it.
"Bastard," I muttered. What I wanted was to go back to the safety of our locked rooms, with their coffee and beds and shower. But if we did that would I ever want to leave there again? I hefted the axe, felt its deadly weight in my hands, and nodded once. "Fuck it, might as well."
His smile was a mixture of eagerness and something else. Pride? That I wasn't wussing out on him? Whatever it was, I found it aggravating. Which reminded me that he still hadn't told me what had occurred to him on the roof.
Before I could renew my line of questioning he eased the door open wide enough to slip through sideways and disappeared into the hallway. I swore softly and followed before my newfound courage abandoned me.
The smell was the first thing I noticed. Like a freezer full of meat had lost power weeks ago and nobody had bothered to clear it out. I pulled my shirt over my nose and tried to breathe through my ears.
The hallway was wide enough to walk side by side but I let him lead the way, mostly because my eyes had begun to water and I didn't want to miss a detail that might mean the difference between a gruesome death and... surviving long enough to die a gruesome death somewhere else.
Over his shoulder I could see that a door had been left open up ahead on our right. From within a flickering light illuminated the hallway at irregular intervals as we approached. Was this where the roof shamblers had come from? Were there more of them waiting inside?
The smell, against all reasonable possibilities, was getting worse. I slowed, unsure how much more I could take. He slowed as well, I assumed for the same reason. But then I saw what he was staring at.
On the wall across the hallway from the open doorway someone had scrawled a message in what appeared to be blood. A warning.
They don't stay dead
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