by Kypers, Ryan
“Okay then, we have a lot of work to do with you,” I said while trying to think up a plan for his exercise. “The key to what we do is get a cardio workout along with practicing the slaughter of contaminated silently. So we basically ninja them while getting a workout.”
The bags under his eyes seemed to droop lower at the mention of the contaminated, “Nu-uh. I’m out. Those contaminated scare the shit out of me. I’m no match for one of them without a gun.”
“Well good thing! That’s the whole point of the training,” I clapped him on the back as he finished his cake. “If you are to be a member of our group, then you need to learn to quietly defend yourself just like we can.”
“You kill the contaminated too?” he asked Chelsea.
She gave him a big smile and nodded, “I tear the shit out of their faces with the baseball bat of mine. I’ve ripped off a few of them in my day, if it isn’t too flattering to say so.”
Zach looked from Chelsea to me and back to Chelsea, “Fine, but don’t expect too much from me. I’ve never swung a bat, but I probably could catch on quickly. Just don’t make me do anything too intense today, okay?”
“It’s my training schedule, but don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you.” I lied.
We made our way out to the field equipped with three baseball bats and a wrench. I was fortunate that my basement was filled with the aluminum bats. My father had been an avid softball player as he aged and my brothers and I had all played little league baseball and each had a bat of our own. Needless to say, I had a plethora of aluminum clubs to smash faces in with.
The training started with us jogging around the field, which took Zach some convincing to do. He finally agreed to do it, whether it was because I promised to carry the wrench with me as a weapon against the contaminated or a motivation for him to run, I don’t know, but it worked.
We completed our lap and Zach and I stayed back as Chelsea kept on running. “She’s a real workhorse,” Zach said through gasping breaths. “I barely made that.”
“Well, you’ll feel it tomorrow, trust me,” I said as I pulled over the bucket of baseballs and his bat. “We’re going to work on your swing now. Show me a practice swing.”
He took the bat and held it in a right handed stance with left handed grip: the left hand above the right hand while facing the plate from the right side. He took a swing full of stiffness and off balanced feet. He shook his head in disappointment, “I told you I was bad at this.”
So I would have to start him out more fresh than I thought, “Well, yeah. But it is somewhat easy to pick up. Let me show you,” I walked behind him, placing him in an open stance. I fixed his hands and aligned his knuckles while spreading his feet wider and bending them at the knee. “Do you feel the balance here?” I asked.
“Well, sort of,” he replied.
“Take another swing.”
He swung again, this time he almost fell forward towards the plate. “Nope, not feeling it.”
“You’re not putting your hips into it, and your wrists are stiff as boards,” I moved over to him and placed my hands on his hips. “Don’t worry, I very much like my girlfriend and am doing this in her defense.”
“Not what it looks like to me,” Chelsea said as she passed us, completing another lap. She laughed as she kept jogging towards the next baseball field.
“Whatever. Just rotate your hips like this and give your wrists good movement and your swing will be much more fluid with power,” I said. “Now swing again.”
And he did, probably the most glorious third swing ever taken by an individual. I doubted that I was an amazing teacher, but he did catch on quickly. This was good. We moved on to soft toss so that he could get a feel for the swing.
We were doing the soft toss for about fifteen minutes when Chelsea approached me from behind, tapping me on the shoulder and pointing to the end of the field. “Contaminated, over there.”
“Good,” I said, finding my wrench. “Zach, stay here but pay attention to how I fight.” I began to make a light jog over to the contaminated who met me half way, hissing and sputtering blood from the mouth as he went. I hoisted the wrench over my head and slammed it down on the contaminated, crushing the left side of the head with the hook of the wrench. It collapsed to the ground in a second.
“You see?” I said as they began to make their way over. “Nothing to it. They’re generally stupid creatures and easy to take –“
“Daryl move!” Zach said, whipping out a small revolver from his pocket.
Not wanting to question the man with the gun, I rolled to my side. I looked back and saw that the contaminated was still moving on the ground, its head gushing blood but the body moving in my direction. Its arms were stretched out, clawing for my flesh. The legs of the creature were snapping, trying to push it forward and to me. The contaminated was effectively crawling towards my body until a shot rang out through the field, loud and echoing. The remainder of the contaminated’s head exploded in a fleshy red and white of blood and bone chips.
“Easy to kill, sure,” Zach said, putting the gun back in his pocket. “We should get inside before more of these things show up to investigate the gunshot, now!”
Not thinking anything of it, we gathered our things and ran inside the house right before more of the contaminated showed up in the field. “Why didn’t it die?” Chelsea asked as we made it inside.
“I don’t know, but tomorrow we will find out.”
Chapter 16
We were at the kitchen table, watching out the back window at the mess of contaminated flocking to the field where we were training. It must have been over one hundred of the contaminated walking around the field, hissing and yelling at nothing but the air. They were loud, kind of like the obnoxious dads that would be on the sideline of middle school football games yelling at the top of their lungs at the children on the field. Zach’s nose was pressed against the window.
“Okay,” I said breaking the nervous silence. “What the hell happened out there?”
“You hit it square on the head, tearing half of its face off,” Chelsea replied. “Why was it able to get back up?”
Zach shook his head, “Maybe the head isn’t exactly what you’ve been destroying when fighting these things. I mean that’s what all of the television shows and movies show, but that’s also Hollywood.”
“I wasn’t talking about that,” I said, walking up to Zach. “What’s with the gun? Didn’t I say that the whole point of the exercise was to kill them quietly?!”
He took a step back, hands raised, “Woah, calm down. Do you really expect me to go out there unarmed?”
“You were armed. Chelsea and I were there too!” I said as I slammed my fist down on the table.
“You could’ve gotten us killed with that gun if there were more around. We can’t have the contaminated following us back here, and you shooting off like that doesn’t help anything.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that I saved your life over there,” Zach replied.
My frustration was building, “Look, this is the last time I’m going to say this. You have to listen. We’ve been here for over a month surviving with very little conflict or interruption. We’ve been exercising in that field and practicing our fighting in that very field every day, and now it is swarmed with contaminated. I don’t mind you staying here, but you have to listen. I need you on our side.”
He looked at me, thinking. His eyes were squinted and tongue was moving through his cheeks. He sighed, “Fine. Okay I’ll do it. No more guns or anything. Once the field clears up we can do it again.”
I sighed in relief, “Thank you. We best get some rest, but someone should stay watch on the contaminated just in case they start coming this way. I’ll take first shift while you two change and whatnot.”
Zach nodded and went off into the other side of the house, but Chelsea came over to me. “You okay?” She asked.
I nodded, “Yeah, just a little frustrated at him, t
hat’s all.”
“Not about that,” she said, kissing me on the cheek. “He did save you out there. We never would have thought that the contaminated could survive a hit like that.”
“I know,” I said as I grabbed her shoulder. “But he’s got to listen. We have something good going here, and I won’t risk losing that or us because of someone else’s stupidity.”
“Well, we’re in a world of risks now,” she said with another kiss. “There’s not much that you can do about that. Just get along, okay?” She said as she walked away to go upstairs her light steps echoing through the hallway.
My attention returned outside to the field. The swarm of contaminated were just standing there as if they were some group cult or something. They began to walk around the field as the minutes began to pass. Eventually every contaminated in the field was walking, and with a pattern to the madness. They were circling someone or something, but keeping their eyes straight ahead at the contaminated in front of them like a human train.
Suddenly one of the contaminated broke off and tan to the center. I could not see what was going on from my angle, but an eruption of hisses and hoarse cries erupted from the outer regions of the circle.
I jumped up out of my seat and sprinted upstairs into the spare bedroom that had an overlook to the field in the back. When I got to the window, the noise had stopped and the commotion calmed down. The circle was moving again in a slow rhythm of marching contaminated feet. I looked to the center of the pack and saw two bodies. One must have been the contaminated that Zach shot. The other body was bloodied and torn into pieces. An arm was nearly ten feet from the body, and its other was right next to it with a streak of blood soaked grass pathing all of the way to the body. It must have been the one that I saw when by the downstairs window that broke off from the pack.
Suddenly another of the contaminated broke off from the pack and made a b line towards the center. It reached the body missing two of its appendages and dove into its back near the neckline. The contaminated began to claw at the back of the neck, blood flying through the air as it dug its fingers into the skin. It began to tear and shred the skin away, revealing bloody neck bone. I swear that I saw it lick its lips.
Before it had a chance to dive in, the swarm of contaminated were on it, pulling it in every direction. The contaminated being torn to pieces let out ear curling hisses and yells sounding like when a cat’s tail gets stepped on. It writhed and pulled in every direction, failing to free itself from the other monsters’ grasp. Suddenly its head was torn off, flying nearly thirty feet behind the body. Its leg went next, winding up with the contaminated that had successfully pulled it off. The severed neck shot blood nearly thirty feet into the air, spraying down onto the contaminated circling it below.
This time the group of contaminated stayed and did not go back into their cult circle. Instead, there was a mad frenzy at the body recently maimed at their own hands. Other contaminated took to the previous two bodies lying in the field, each different one tearing at the necks before anything else. They were drinking, or eating, or both. It was hard too see from my vantage point with a few barren trees blocking a bit of the view, but it was a buffet of contaminated. Twice I saw others being ripped to pieces when trying to reach for a piece of the body while one was at the feast. Each of those bodies were in turn ripped to pieces and distributed amongst the crowd.
The eating was almost scarily organized. Each contaminated would take a free section of the body and eat their share, put it down and let the next contaminated to jump in have some. The larger of the contaminated were able to push their way to the front and tear into limbs first. If one of these were pissed off, they would rip into the contaminated getting in their way as if they were a ragdoll, sending them flying, and if they were lucky, all body parts intact.
I had a feeling that the larger of the contaminated were the oldest from the initial contamination. They were able to feed longer and grow to the size of a football lineman, but without the fat. There were also fewer of them, and I only spotted about three of the giants in the mess of contaminated. If there was a hierarchy in the ranks of the contaminated, these guys were on the top.
They tore at the bodies until there was nothing left but reddened bones and flakes of cartilage hanging off of them. Some of the contaminated even broke apart the bones to get to the marrow on the inside, drinking it as if it was a cocktail. The group started to circle again, giving me a better view of the center.
There was one appendage lying in the middle of the group, a leg ripped off of its body. Blood was trickling out of the hanging veins and large artery, draining into the dead yellow grass.
“What’s going on?” I heard Chelsea say from behind me, resting her head on my shoulder.
I shook my head, “I can’t fully tell, but I think it’s a sort of feeding ritual.” I noticed that the larger of the contaminated had left now along with the more healthy looking ones. The crowd had shrunk to maybe a third of the initial size. Most of the contaminated remaining looked decrepit and on the verge of death. “Zach!” I called.
“What?” I heard him call back.
“Come here! You need to see this!”
“You could have just sent me to get him instead of yelling,” Chelsea said.
“Yeah, but I rarely get the chance to yell anymore. Have to savor these moments,” I smiled back.
Zach reached the top of the stairs and I called him over. I pointed to the field out of the window to the contaminated cult circling the leg in the field. “There were more of them. I counted five ripped apart by their own and feasted upon.”
“What do you mean feasted?” Zach asked.
“Just that. They’re cannibals, but I don’t know why,” I replied.
“Maybe they just ran out of food and have nothing to eat but themselves – is that a leg?!” His face looked disgusted and turned a little shade of green when he spotted it.
I laughed a little, “Yeah. It’s the remains of one of the feasted.”
“Interesting way to put it,” He said.
“What’s the point of the circling?” Chelsea asked.
I shook my head, “I’m not sure, obviously. It seems as if it’s a sort of a game to them. They have the body in the middle, tempting each of the contaminated in the circle to go for it. When one does – oh there it goes now!”
One of the contaminated broke off of the pack and bolted for the leg. It was smaller than the rest, possibly a teenager when it initially became contaminated. It was pale, as were most, but this kind of pale was much closer to white. It reached the leg in a matter of seconds and ripped apart a section of flesh. The contaminated held it to its mouth and drained some of the leaking blood. It threw the chunk of skin and muscle down onto the leg again and sprinted back to the circle, none of the other contaminated moving a muscle.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“Feeding, what else?” Zach said as if it was a known fact.
“No, I mean that hasn’t happened yet. Each of the other contaminated that goes after the body gets ripped to pieces and fed to the group. None have made it back to the circle.”
“Maybe they were just too slow,” Chelsea said. “I mean he went in, got a bit, and got out. Quick.”
“Hang on another is going!” Zach said, quieting us.
It ran to the middle in a full sprint, picked up the piece of muscle and flesh that the previous contaminated drank from, and pulled out a full bite before sprinting back to the circle. It was safe. Another contaminated did the same thing, but on its way back, it tripped and fell down. Before it had a chance to get on one knee, the group was upon it. Arms flew and legs kicked as the entire set of thirty or so contaminated jumped it.
It made the crying and hissing noises signature to the dying contaminated until its head was severed and blood gushed out once more. There was a frenzy this time without any form of organization. The contaminated flew at the body just as women would to a fifty percent off shoes sale. The
se were the smaller of the contaminated, which meant the larger would keep the order, a sort of leader to the monsters.
This feeding was over quickly. The contaminated eating were smaller and hungrier, and the eaten was smaller, but no longer hungry. The crowd dispersed finally, leaving broken bones stripped to the core as the only remains.
The field looked peaceful after the contaminated were finally gone, a bloody, dead sort of peace.
Chapter 17
“I think that we can all agree, that was some crazy ass shit right there,” Zach said after the crowd of contaminated had finally left the field. The strangeness of the whole situation left the three of us relatively quiet, the air standing still from the shock of what we just saw. “Like some really, really crazy ass shit. I don’t think animals even do this kind of stuff.”
“Hang on,” I was trying to process what just happened in my head. “Give me a minute of quiet.”
“Dude they’re not going to find us up here-“
“Shh!” Chelsea quieted Zach’s rambling.
All that I could think of was the contaminated tearing apart body after body. The image of how they ripped it up stayed in my head clear as day and showed no signs of fading. The worst was the image of the bones being broken in half and the contaminated drinking the marrow of the former person as if it meant nothing to them. It was so hard to grasp that the contaminated would kill one of their own without any hesitation and gorge on their body without thought, though I may be giving them too much credit because I do not believe that they have the ability to comprehend.
“Alright, we just saw something that many probably have not. Agreed?” I asked the two of them. They both nodded their heads. “Okay. Now we’ve concluded that it was a feeding ritual type thing, correct?” They nodded again. “They’re cannibals who eat their own kind, but only those that are willing to risk themselves.” They nodded instinctively even though I did not ask a question. “We can use this to our advantage.”