Üksi - Red (8)

Hey Meh! Long time no see! Sorry for such a huge gap since the last installment: I had a perfect storm of work stuff, producing a comedy festival, traveling for a wedding, and installing a roof by myself. Anyhoo, back to the weird macabre story that grows and evolves with your feedback.

Previous installments: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

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The smell of blood is intoxicating.

Any sense of humanity is thrown screaming down the back of my mind and a pure, animal bloodlust roars up my spine from somewhere deep and dark inside me. My muscles, once atrophied into brittle uselessness, are suddenly lithe and burning to carry me faster and faster towards the screaming. I lost my eyes and eyesight long ago but now I’m laser-focused on the sounds and the smell of bodies. I hurl myself over the sandy hills towards the meat.

I can’t see their faces but I can smell the fear, I can hear the footsteps in the dust and I can hear the impact as the bodies are thrown into the dirt and piled on. And the voice in my head is a howl, demanding I feast. It takes me a moment to realize that the roar I hear is coming from my own mouth.

I reach the first victim, a man, screaming in fear. Before I can rip him to the ground, I’m knocked off my feet by a whipcrack of force. It’s Poe, one of the others from the oil tanker. He’s on the man, and I can hear flesh tearing and blood bubbling up from deep-tissue arteries. It hits the sand with soft, stubborn beats that become more and more ragged. There’s no more screaming, just ripping and tearing.

I don’t know if it’s the jarring impact or the fury at having my kill stolen, but it grants me a temporary moment of clarity. Not meat. People. Humans.

Not meat.

I tackle Poe and send him sprawling into the sun-baked dirt. He screams in fury, flesh hanging from the gaps in his teeth and blood spraying with his breath. But he doesn’t attack me. He’s too focused on gorging, and now that his victim is dead his attention snaps to the nearest screaming and he sprints off.

Now I’m following the pack, trying to catch up. The ground is barren and soaking up blood. I can hear the flies already feasting. A man, or the remains of one, is crawling away from me on the ground trailing the tattered remains of his torso and intestines. I push myself to keep moving before I give in to the distraction.

I follow the sound of hammering until I’m outside a shanty, dilapidated and failing against the elements. Poe is banging furiously on the makeshift door. I charge him as he breaks through. I see them, two men and a woman, huddled and screaming in terror. Poe doesn’t reach them. I throw myself into his back and tackle him to the ground. His fury is instant, and he twists wildly to rake my face with his nails. I feel the flesh scrape and fall away, hanging tattered from my skull.

I return the favor by clubbing my fists down onto his snarling face again and again until I feel the bone behind his cheeks give and hear his teeth splinter into the dirt. The rot is advanced in him, and he’s brittle. I can feel the bone give way to brain, and the brain gives way to the dust beneath him.

I turn toward the screams to check on the people in the shanty. That’s when the axe buries itself into my shoulder.

Did I just save these people to have them kill me? Can I try to communicate with them, or escape before I have to hurt them?