Decayed:

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Decayed: Page 3

by Morgana Wray


  My tongue went a bit silent. I knew I had to choose my next words a bit more carefully. It was becoming more apparent that the guy I was dealing with was certainly a certifiable nutcase. For all I knew, he was a bit crazier than I was.

  Yep, he probably needed those delusion pills more than I did.

  “Sure sounds like I have missed out on a lot! Care to enlighten me?” I pushed a fake smile up, unto my face.

  There was really nothing to laugh at. I wasn’t in a funny situation. I was in a shitty situation. If I made one false move, Diane could easily have her wind pipe crushed by king Kong, in front of me.

  Now, that would certainly be a messy outcome.

  I needed to avoid that. I wasn’t quite keen on watching the kid suffocate, right before her neck gets fractured by the sheer brute force of the fat guard’s muscular hands. Her choking on blood from a ruptured vessel in her neck was not a pleasant thought.

  But it was all I could think about at the time. There was that slim divide; that slim chasm between life and sudden death. If I ever needed any bright ideas, now was the time for them to come flooding into my noggin.

  “Hey, eyes on me! Eyes on me!” I shouted on top of my voice. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare!”

  The guard raised his brow scornfully at me. He wasn’t keen on doing me any favours. He certainly did not appreciate the commanding tone of my voice. His face was a sight for sore eyes with a few scratches running down that ugly mug of his.

  “So you’re barking orders at me now, are you? Her sweet sweet neck! I could snap that at any second I choose!” the fat guard sniffed Diane’s fragile-looking neck.

  He was goading me. I knew it. He had the aces in his pocket. There wasn’t much of an edge from where I was stood. I had to be more clever than the brute of a guard. He was talking. That was something I could use to slow him down. Maybe buy a little time to somehow blindside him.

  I had to recognize the opportunity when it presented itself. If I moved in on her attacker too soon, then she would be a dead goose in a split second, and if I made my move too late that wouldn’t work out too good for the kid either.

  “Okay, I get it. You have all the power in your hands, pal. I am sorry that I was a bit irrational and raised my voice. I did not mean to cause any offense. I’ve got both hands up here. You don’t have to do anything rash.” I focused my gaze on the guard, or so I wanted him to think.

  He hadn’t quite noticed a frail figure walking slowly towards him from behind. He was enjoying his power trip way too much to even consider shifting his gaze from Diane’s rather vulnerable neck for even one second.

  The sweat dripping down my face bore the weight of anticipation that was weighing heavily on me. I almost had my heart jumping up into my mouth. I was that desperate for things not to go tits up. I wished I had a meat clever to plunge into that guys head. He disgusted me. Everything about him definitely had the wrong kind of goosebumps crawling over skin.

  “Yeah that’s right! I am running this show! Me! Nobody else!” the guard ranted at me, moving his lips rampantly.

  “Slap those on and don’t try anything smart.” The fat guard threw a pair of shiny cuffs at me.

  They landed right in front of me. I had to stoop to pick them up. I wasn’t going to be quick about putting them on and giving him what he wanted. The kid and I would both have been lame ducks if I did that. But on the other hand, I was dealing with an unstable meathead. He could snuff the life out of Diane in the blink of an eye.

  I wasn’t that fast. There was certainty no cape on me. I mean, I was as ordinary as they came.

  “Uh, you use these with all your whores? I’m not sure what I was supposed to do with these again?” I fooled around with the cuffs, spinning them around on my index finger.

  “You keep making those wise ass jokes and watch what happens to goldilocks over here,” the guard made a cold and serious threat, wrapping his meaty fingers more tightly around Diane’s slender neck.

  I could hear choke, as his fingers pressed harder against her neck. The suffocating noises seeping through her gritted teeth sent unsettling shivers down my spine.

  “Now put those on! Or she dies! Is that simple enough for you to understand?” The fat guard beamed a grotesquely evil grin at me.

  “Okay! Okay! Just don’t hurt her!” I slapped the handcuffs around my wrists hesitantly.

  “Good. Now I shall have to lock you back up in your cage.” The fat guard burst into laughter. “That is where dum animals like you belong. Maybe, those flesh-eating mutant freaks out there will finish you off if you do not starve to death in confinement. You will not be getting away today. We can’t have our lab rats leaving the kennel now, can we?”

  I sucked in some air and sighed softly. The brutality of being poked and prodded and beaten like a dog wasn’t a pleasant prospect for anyone to look forward to. I wasn’t going to go back in that hole. I would rather have died than spent another day in confinement. I had had enough. I could bear no more.

  He walked closely behind me. He expected me to be a good boy and play nice. That was not going to happen. He didn’t know that I hadn’t completely locked the cuffs. I just clipped it enough to fool his eyes into thinking that they were tight on my wrist.

  I paused and held my sides, “ouch! My sides are really hurting! Must be my kidneys or something!”

  “Get the fuck up, you lazy piece of shit!” the fat guard barked angrily at me.

  When I felt his breath against the back of my neck, I smashed the cuffs into his face. I was so angry that I kept hitting him in the face until I broke a few of his teeth-the ones that hadn’t rotted yet in that foul mouth of his.

  I kicked him, and he staggered backwards.

  “I am so going to kill both of you, now.” The guard roared angrily, wielding a pocket knife which he drew quickly out of his back pocket.

  “I’d look behind you if I was you. It’s not us you need to worry about.” I held Diane close to my side.

  I had snatched her away from the fat guard when I slammed the cuffs into his face.

  “How stupid do you think I am? I’m not falling for that!” the guard licked the blood off his busted lips.

  He made a move to launch an attack on us. Before he could get an inch further, sharp teeth ripped into his shoulder. There was no saving him from the undead thing biting into his succulent fat flesh. He used his girth to try to slam the pale woman that was attacking him into the wall but she only bit deeper into his skin.

  She was ravenous in her onslaught. Her teeth looked more like daggers than human teeth. They were yellow and bloodstained. I was almost in a state of shock when I saw the meat being stripped very quickly from the fat guard’s neck. In minutes, his head was hanging by threads of flesh from his neck. The Riser had nearly taken his head clean off with just a few bites.

  That was something very bizarre to watch. I tried very hard not to gag at the sight of the chubby guard’s head being decapitated by a ravenous flesh eating woman, or what used to be a woman anyway. The thing before my eyes was barely anything that could be referenced to as being human. All that was left behind her hollow sooty eyes was a ghost of what she used to be.

  Chapter 4

  The kid and I, had somehow managed to get to the gates of the stronghold where we had been held. There wasn’t much resistance from the guards. Most of them had either fled, or been devoured alive by the hordes of Risers that had somehow overrun the place. I was unsure about what had drawn the undead to the prison facility, but I was thankful that we were fortunate enough to find freedom at that point in time.

  We sure weren’t out of the woods yet. We were still surrounded by dead things whose sole interest was to rip our guts out and feast on our delicate insides. Caution was the most important word that crossed my mind.

  Diane was emaciated. She certainly had had a rougher deal than I did at the hands of those unscrupulous shady government agency henchmen. I was a man. I could take the hurt. But Dian
e was just a kid when she got snatched by the spacemen.

  “Well, the air isn’t toxic. I don’t think we’ve been nuked, yet,” I peeped from behind the wall where Diane and I were keeping ourselves hidden.

  We weren’t sure of what manner of horrors that awaited us on the outside. We hoped that somehow there would be somewhere on the planet that hadn’t been overrun by flesh-hungry crazy people. I was awfully fond of my head and did not want to lose it in such an vicious, unceremonious way, like the fat guard did some moments ago.

  “What is it like out there?” Diane asked with some burnished enthusiasm.

  “Not good, kid. Not good. There are lots and lots of flesh-eating crazies out there. Looks like a whole mob of them.” I clenched my fist into a ball, and cursed our luck.

  “You never had much foresight, did you?” Diane stared at me with great irritation, as if I had noodles for brains. “We don’t need to fight the lot of them. We just need to distract them long enough to make our getaway. That lot don’t look like they have much going on between those dead eyes.”

  I was livid at the kid for berating me as she often did. I could have abandoned her to fend for herself. But I guess she knew I was a big softie at heart. I wasn’t one to take little insults to heart. I was more of the kind of guy that concentrated on getting shit done.

  Shit needed to be done at that point in time, and I was the only one in good enough shape to do any of the leg work. The kid could barely lift her own weight on account of being severely dehydrated and underfed.

  “You see that megaphone, up on that jeep?” Diane whispered in my ear.

  “The red and white one?” I pointed ahead of us.

  “Yep, that would be the one. If you could use that to get their attention for a few seconds, then that would be all the time we need to get past that breech in the face on the west side.” Diane panted a bit, throwing her head backwards and resting it against the wall behind her.

  She had shut her eyes and had set her body to rest mode. I wanted to say something before I left her to take on the task she had sent me on, but I decided against it. She seemed to be at peace with herself and I didn’t want to spoil that for her.

  I creeped and crawled on all fours, trying desperately to keep under the radar. I didn’t want to be detected by the ugly ones with rotting body parts. If they had any inkling that something living was nearby, they would have had my guts for garters, literally.

  My heart was racing like a clock with dodgy springs. I wasn’t feeling brave. Far from that, I was completely steeped in the bathwater of abject fear. I had a feeling I was getting closer to being meat for the undead with each onward step that I took towards the megaphone.

  Finally, I was near enough to reach the jeep. I climbed up the back of the parked vehicle without ripping my pants. That was a good sign.

  I grabbed the megaphone and I crawled away from the jeep with it. Diane would surely be happy to see me, the miserable little sod.

  Something that looked human with shoulders that looked like mountains hopped right in front of me. There was drool all over the undead thing’s face. He did not mean to hold hands with me. No. His intentions were way less polite than that. The black eyes in the undead man’s face were laser-focused. He was aware that there was something with a heartbeat in front of him and he was ready to pounce.

  His fists were massive. He could easily have knocked my head off with one blow. I avoided him, as he wrecked the windows of the jeep behind me. I crawled between his legs and slid behind him. The brute narrowly missed crushing my skull beneath his mammoth-sized feet.

  He did not seem pleased. Undead dude took swipes at the jeep. He was bigger and bulkier than most Risers. I did not believe it but he actually knocked the jeep over. His strength and brute forced could easily have been comparable to that of a rampaging rhinoceros.

  Boy was I shitting my big boy pants, now.

  If I was the praying kind of person, I would have been saying prayers to whatever god that cared to listen. I was way in over my head with that thing. I had a sick feeling swirling around in my gut, telling me that I could certainly snuff it that day.

  I hid under a row of other cars. I wanted to just make a run for it. But I soon remembered that Diane was counting on me. Her neck was on the line as well. I hated to be a dick and bail on her. The plan was simple. Distracting the Risers was easy enough. But doing a disappearing act after they take the bait-that was easier said than done.

  “Get the megaphone, distract the walking undead. Yep, sounds easy enough. Not at all complicated.” I shook my head sarcastically.

  My plan was to leave the megaphone pressed against the horn of one of the vehicles in the parking space. That option was looking more likely to be more of a total suicide mission than it was before. That hulking thing was still milling about, slamming his large frame into every car he came across.

  I swear, he must have known I was still around. He had probably caught my scent and was unto me. That Riser definitely wasn’t one for quitting easily. He must not have had a decent meal in weeks, and here I was, heart pumping, flesh untainted.

  I was certainly a sitting duck, ready for the taking.

  There was no real escape plan for me that did not involve confronting the 7 foot obstacle head on. In every likely scenario that played out in my head, confrontation with that giant Riser ended up violently bad for me. I could not conceive of an outcome that did not result in my head being squashed like a soft melon.

  Yeah, The Mountain versus Oberyn came to mind. I was going to be a bug and Mister big boots out there was going to be stumping all over my ass in all the wrong kind of ways.

  I didn’t have any real weapons that would remotely slow that thing down. I wasn’t sure I had anything strong enough to decapitate a Riser that big.

  “What the fuck?” I screamed in abject terror, as I felt strong hands wrapped around my ankle.

  I was dragged very quickly out of my hiding place. There was no skulking around in the inconspicuous corners anymore. I had been dragged into the naked light. The giant Riser had me by the foot. He was about the grab my neck and snap it like chicken bone when I smashed him in the face with the megaphone.

  I hit the giant Riser several times in the face. His face broke the megaphone. That bought me just enough time to yank my foot free from his grip. I ran off. The big guy wasn’t too fast. But he wasn’t exactly creeping like a damn tortoise behind me.

  I saw a shadow form around me. The damn Riser had leaped over my head. Since when did Risers have the ability to jump that high? What kind of nightmare had I released myself into?

  “Hell no!” I shouted out in complete awe, rolling quickly out of the way.

  The Bulky undead man left a small dent in the concrete beneath his feet, as he came crashing feet-first into the ground. Those size twelves could easily have crushed my ribcage underneath their weight. I would have had a collapsed chest if I hadn’t been quick enough to notice what the big undead thing was up to.

  Guess coming back from the dead doesn’t turn you into a complete imbecile.

  These things were certainly mean and unrelenting hunters. I was beginning to learn that the hard way.

  He was close. He was in touching distance of me. The drool on his lips smacked against the dry ground. Those black eyes tore right through me. All the undead guy in front of me could see was a living sack of blood and meat. He wanted to rip me apart and he wanted to do it in the most savage of ways. I could see that much in his eyes.

  He leaned in to get a good whiff of his kill. That was some really freaky shit. I could physically feel both good knees knocking together.

  In a crazy moment of defiance, I dragged the stun baton out of my belt and shoved it in his eye. He shrieked violently and recoiled away from me. He must have felt that. Electricity must hurt the undead bastards.

  The damn thing was pissed off. His eyes burned orange, now. The black had receded away from his pupils.

  The big Riser dug
both knuckles into the dirt and ran on all fours, picking up speed as it launched forward on all fours as if it was a silverback.

  “That is not good! That is definitely not good!” I swallowed a thick mouthful of spit, as I started to run in circles hoping to somehow shake off the Riser who was unrelentingly tailing me. I was so scared of the brutish violence that the hulking Riser was capable of that I ran through a small horde of undead just to get away from him.

  Looking back as I fled, I saw him tear other Risers in half just to get to me. His temper and menacing violent outburst seemed to have been turbocharged when he was pissed off. The adrenaline running through that thing’s body must have been off the charts. Not that I cared to take a reading.

  Some Risers tried to get me. I pushed and kicked them away. Most of them were slow. But I wasn’t about to let the swarm me. That would increase my chances of getting bit or eaten.

  Somehow, I didn’t think the big Riser would like that. He did not seem like the sharing type. He was coming for me and I didn’t think there was anything that could get in his way.

  I clutched the stun baton tightly. If this was the end, I wasn’t going out without a good fight. The big guy flung a bunch of Risers out of the way. He threw them into the air like javelins. Finally, we were face to face, again.

  He held back a bit. He showed some restraint. But he still wanted to gut me.

  “You’re scared of this, aren’t you? Want to fund out what this is going to do to you?” I grinned, pressing on the stun button.

  The sizzling noises of electricity rushing through the baton, sent the Riser into a frenzied state. He pounded the floor and came straight at me. I jumped sideways and stuck the stun against his back. I amped the electricity up to the max.

  The big brute slapped me off his back. I went rolling sideways. I raised my head to see a big burn mark on his back.

 

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