“Don’t regret it if you don’t get there in time” That was not the response she expected and the look she gave him told him that. She was mildly offended and perhaps a little scared by his words, as though he had just spoken her greatest fear out loud.
Seth wasn’t a horrible person though, his scowl faltered at that look and a defeated sigh left his lips. She really was determined to make him talk properly. “I didn’t mean it that way, I know you are doing the right thing morally… and your sister will probably be really proud of you. It just stings…” Ah, there it was, the inquisitive expression on the redhead's face that caused him to look away and drain half of his beer into his throat. “My brother used to look at me like that; he looked at me that day these things invaded, and I played hero just as he’d always wanted… but I couldn’t save anyone, and when I ran back to him; I realised that I hadn’t saved him either”
“Seth…”
“At least you have managed to save some already, doing better than me” He grumbled, finishing off the last of his beer before pushing himself to his feet; clearly done with this conversation.
Suddenly, Seth Pyper made a lot more sense to Katya.
Despite their talk, Seth did not warm up to Katya or anyone else in the following days to come. In fact, if the red-head wasn’t mistaken, he was actively avoiding situations where he might have to speak to someone. Perhaps he thought she would have gone around telling people what he had said to her that night. She hadn’t of course, though Axel had told the story in his own words when Oliver had asked after being snapped at once again by the black-haired soldier.
It wasn’t until they had passed Newark-upon-Trent, and were slowly making their way to Nottingham, that Seth was faced with a situation that was nothing but something out of a nightmare.
The journey to each town was made considerably longer by the fact they had to head back to the last safe place every time they found civilians who wouldn’t be able to get involved in the fight when they got to the next factory.
They had spent time on this main road a few times now, they could find shelter in the broken vehicles, they could take cat naps and eat safely with the smell of lingering oil around them, all kinds of vehicles masking them from view on all sides. They kept look out of course, still conscious that the Nerushi and Hiko would be able to sneak up on them if they were not careful.
That day, the chill of a winter’s day had set in, meaning all members of their little troupe had looted themselves some warm clothes. Pulling her hoodie closer to her as they settled down on the floor beside a lorry toppled sideways, Katya massaged her leg softly through the black combat trousers she had acquired. Her wound was healing well, though it still twinged now and then if she put too much pressure on it.
“How’s it feeling?” Oliver asked as he sat down beside her, leaning against her shoulder lightly.
“Definitely better. Leo is one hell of a medic; I’ll give her that” the red-head chuckled as she took the opened tin of beans which Oliver held out to her – it was amazing how good cold tinned food actually tasted in these days. Somehow, after seeing the tanks in the factories, all food seemed like a delicacy to her; at least she wasn’t having to consume that pink liquid.
“So, a few more days and you’ll be back in the fight then” Oliver’s soft eyes glinted with jest as he spoke.
“You bet your backside, I will be.” Katya laughed.
Within a second, her smile had vanished from her face as her blue hues had glanced past her best friend’s head.
“Hiko!” She snapped as the tin of food clattered to the ground and she stumbled to her feet, reaching to her belt for one of her curved blades.
It was all a mess, and it all happened so fast. Three Hiko had come from the side which Katya had spotted. Logically they should have known to look out for three Nerushi as well, but when three of the hellish cats bound over the bonnets of cars, it was more prudent to focus on them first.
At least, that was what Katya had thought as she jumped up with a very slight wobble. Everyone else had jumped to arms the moment she had called out, it was just more difficult to fuddle through when they had taken the bulkier weapons off when they sat down to eat. It was only Zen and Axel who had all their gear.
Everything was uncoordinated and for the first time in a while, Katya’s mind had gone completely blank.
Had the presence of others always helping things go smoothly made her feel more secure while she had been injured? It seemed that there had been a feeling of security and maybe arrogance growing in her mind where she had thought they were getting an upper hand.
But this was all it took to see them struggle to survive. Three Hiko, and very soon after, three Nerushi. Six against six was not easy; not when they were very overpowered, and not when one of their party was clearly having a moment of PTSD.
Seth was frozen against the side of the lorry having been disarmed in his nervousness by a swipe of a pointed tail belonging to the Hiko which had rounded on Oliver and Katya as they managed to take a Nerushi down in the confusion. Axel had managed to take out a Hiko while Zen and Leonora had taken down another Nerushi, but this meant that there was still another Nerushi and Hiko keeping their focus.
As the Hiko rounded on them it swiped Katya one way with its front leg while sending Oliver flying into the side of a car with its tail.
“Olli!” Katya yelled as she rolled over on the ground to grab her weapon.
Oliver didn’t move.
Katya’s weapon had clattered away, far out of her reach. Her other ulak was in her backpack over by the lorry; they have wanted to keep that side of her free of weapons while her thigh was healing.
And the Hiko was advancing on her.
Glancing around desperately, Katya could see nothing within reach that would help her. This was it? This was as far as she could get towards finding her family?
Turning her head back to look at the Hiko she attempted to get to her feet again but her wounded leg buckled as she placed too much wait on it. She could do nothing. Those sickening yellow teeth bared down at her while those blood wine eyes glowed with what could have been mistaken for murderous glee.
Oh god…
Chapter 10
There was loud, out of place, bang that followed the dread which had set into Katya’s mind. The Hiko was jolted off course by something small hitting it squarely in the weak point on the back of its neck.
With its mouth parting a little, as a warning of a snapping attack, the creature wheeled around, and Katya saw that it was Seth who had fired something at it. In his hands was what looked like a piece of DIY equipment. Was it a nail gun? Katya had never done much handy-work, but it looked like one to her.
The raven-haired male seemed to falter as he was rounded on; he had clearly only acted out of pure instinct to save someone but now he was facing what had taken everything dear to him, he trembled.
“Seth! Good shot! Aim for the mouth!” Katya found herself yelling, encouraging his actions from where she lay, propped up onto one elbow. “It’s ok! You CAN kill these things!”
She could see the uncertainty in his eyes as her words reached him; this was a hurdle he wasn’t sure he could conquer, after all, he had tried everything to kill these things before and failed every time.
“Just shoot! It’s already bleeding, you just gotta get a deeper shot in!” Maybe Katya could have gotten to her weapon in the time it took her to yell these things. Maybe the Hiko wouldn’t have torn Seth to shreds but the time she had been able to bring the fight back to her. Either way, those were a risk, whereas Seth had a good chance if he just took the shot.
His calloused hands shook a little, though the nail gun was kept raised and aimed well at the Hiko as it moved back into a readying position, its tail swishing carefully back and forth.
Seth only had seconds to act now.
That position meant that creature was going to pounce, and when it did, it would be over. It was too fast and too accurate to hope
to fight off once it had pounced on you. Katya had only been lucky with her leg because of the distance between them.
“SETH!” It wasn’t just her voice, but Leonora, Zen, and Axel’s, as well as they, turned from their other dead aliens to realise the situation occurring away from them. They were a chorus of fear, shock, desperation, and urgency.
It got through the haze of fear in Seth though.
Bang!
Bang!
Two more nails were fired rapidly from the tool, piercing through the back of the Hiko’s mouth and through into the important body.
It faltered and then collapsed with a dull thud onto the concrete ground.
A pause of silence… then…
“Nice shot Seth!”
“You did it!”
Zen and Axel had been attempting to get over them and so saw the whole thing. The only reason Leonora hadn’t joined them as she was dashing over to Oliver to make sure he was ok. Katya was left torn between her worry for Oliver and relief for her life.
Seth had stepped up and saved her. Her worry for Oliver won over though, pushing her to stumble to her feet and move over to her best friend. “Is he…?”
“He’s fine” Leonora stated quickly as she examined the back of his head “Think it just knocked him out, but there’s no blood or anything; so, he should be awake with a slight concussion soon.”
Katya slumped against the car in relief as she looked down at Oliver “Thank god” she whispered, before catching herself and glancing over to Seth. God hadn’t saved them, it was just a good shot taking on his fears. The warmth of gratitude, and what was probably pride, swelled in her chest.
“We need to go… there could be more of them” Axel commented, clapping Seth on the back. “I’ll take him” he motioned to Oliver, walking over to him and easily picking him up and slinging him onto his back, fireman lift style “Can someone take his backpack?”
He had barely finished his sentence when Seth had moved away from the lorry and picked up Oliver’s stuff; his face was as stoic as usual, but his hands were clearly shaking.
As they walked off from the road and into the woodlands along the edge, there was still a high amount of tension in the air, none of them spoke but kept glancing around every now and then for another attack of sorts.
Had they been followed by these creatures? Katya couldn’t help but wonder about it. They had the theory already that the aliens couldn’t hear them, and they had kept their movements fairly hidden from the eye.
Well, they had done their best at any rate.
So, if they had been followed, how the hell had they managed it? Could they see things that people didn’t realise they were leaving behind?
Her mind was wandering around the ideas of other extreme senses; the Nerushi didn’t have mouths so taste probably wasn’t the way forward unless the hellcats worked like hunting dogs…
They had not gone far, not so much had relaxed around them before they heard a rustling to the side of the wooded area.
Spinning around with their blades at the ready, Leonora, Katya, and Zen moved in front of Axel carrying Oliver, Seth automatically glancing around behind them expecting to see another group out for their blood. He had left the nail gun behind, so he only had a small blade in his hand.
“Whoa, whoa. Please don’t throw those at me!”
The figure which walked into sight was tall, but it was no nine-foot Nerushi. Instead, it was a man, broad and strong, six and a half-foot roughly with an unkempt beard and long hair pulled up into a bun at the back of his head. He looked like a stereotypical lumberjack, tartan shirt with sleeves rolled up and jeans tucked into hiking boots that were probably once quite stylish but now covered in mud and undergrowth stains.
He only had one hand raised in surrender with a ring on the middle finger, thick and black with silver around the centre. The other hand was cradling a bundle of scarf to his chest.
“What the hells in the scarf? Drop it!” Axel demanded before anyone could respond; it stopped them all letting their guard down. Sure, the guy was human, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t about to stab them. They had already had a couple of close calls from paranoid maniacs that they had to disarm before getting them to safety.
“I can’t! They’re just puppies.” The man explained urgently, carefully using his free hand to lift the edge of the scarf to reveal two small, fluffy puppies with grey-black fur. “Husky-Leonberger crosses I think. Please, they’re completely harmless”
“Where did you find them?” Katya asked after a moment of consideration from them all; collectively they hadn’t seen a dog since this had started.
A wash of relief moved over the man’s rugged face, bringing softness to him that couldn’t strike anyone as dangerous. It made him look rather nervous and shy in fact, it wasn’t like the softness that Zen had, fatherly and calming, it was more like the man was a bit of a lost puppy himself.
Nonetheless, he spoke “I found them, in a farm barn about 10 miles that way. There was no sign of their mother even though they are only a couple of weeks old. I assume with these aliens, she bolted and abandoned them, so I’ve been mixing up some specialised milk to feed them with and keeping them as safe as I can until they are older.”
As he spoke, one by one the blades they were holding were placed back into their sheaths. Axel grinned widely at the bundle of scarf material “well ain’t that nice of you… though I must say, I never thought I’d be so happy just by seeing a baby animal” he chuckled, receiving an agreement from everyone else – even Seth gave a sort of agreeable grunt.
“We should keep moving, though” Leonora interrupted “I don’t want to risk more of them being on the way” briefly she glanced at the newcomer “I suggest you come with us, it’ll be a lot safer.”
This new man was very amiable about it all, obviously viewing this rag-tag group of people to know what they were doing if they were carrying this much gear and being followed by aliens.
His name was Kit Rosenthil they discovered as they shared their stories, and while he had a crossbow strapped to his back, it apparently hadn’t been used to kill aliens, but more as a tool for food and shelter finding. He was a seemingly gentle soul, stammering now and then if too many people fired questions at him at once, but he did his best to answer all that he could. His family had been dragged off it seemed, and being from Nottingham, he was glad to find this group was heading that way to save survivors. Of course, he had questions, about the factories they mentioned, about the unconscious Oliver still on Axel’s shoulders, but most of all he seemed to be more curious about the people themselves.
Kit Rosenthil seemed like that one guy down at a bar who would talk to everyone, get to know their life stories, and yet he flushed and awkwardly asked as though he was an introvert at the same time. Maybe it had just been so long since he had seen another human that the need for company was pushing through the usual shyness? After all the initial questions, he seemed to settle into a quiet role, adjusting the scarf for the puppies to poke their heads out of to sniff at the air around the new people.
Katya couldn’t take her eyes off them. They were so small and so innocent. Tiny faces looking around with their noses sniffing eagerly and their ears flicking at the crunch of twigs beneath the human feet as their kept their route well off the beaten track.
“Do you want to hold one?” Kit asked, obviously noticing the way she continued to look at the puppies as though she was seeing a paradise.
Stunned a little by the offer, Katya’s eyes flicked up to meet his honey coloured ones. Upon her slight stammer, he chuckled and reached around to his backpack under the crossbow and untied another scarf from the shoulder strap of it.
“Erm…. Yeah, sure” Katya finally stammered out as the scarf was handed to her, obviously another one which the puppies were used it. Carefully, Kit’s large freehand scooped up one of the tiny puppies, the smaller of the two, and moved to hand it over to Katya, placing it carefully in the scarf she had bun
dled on her left arm, secure against her body.
“That one’s called Mishka” Kit smiled “This one is Turi.”
Ah, she got it now. The way he smiled so much more confidently when he looked at the puppies or spoke about them… he was very much an animal person, more so than a people person if she had to guess.
Looking down at Mishka in her arms, Katya couldn’t help but smile as the pup sniffed at her fingers before licking them happily.
Silence of the Apocalypse- Journey Home Page 9