by Morgana Wray
“Get away from that thing! Get away!” I yelled at the blonde girl.
She froze and turned to look at me. I thought I heard a growl. Before I knew it, the supposedly dead fox sat up and bit into her hand. It gnawed on her flesh and she screamed in agony. It dragged her by the hand into the near by bushes.
“Stay with the kids! I’ll go after her!” I turned my head back and yelled to Miss Maple.
“Wait! You might need this!” Miss Maple said, tossing me something shiny.
I scooped it up in my hands. It was a magnum. It was loaded too. I wanted to ask why she was carrying a lethal weapon but I just didn’t have the time. I didn’t want to know the answer to that question either. I tucked the gun in my belt and marched straight into the bushes, following the messy trail of blood that the previously dead fox had left behind.
I walked past a couple of bushes. I soon came to a narrow gap between some bushes. I couldn’t go over it. There were sharp barbs on the damn thing. My best chance was to somehow squeeze through the gap in the bushes. It wasn’t a very big hole, but just the right size for a slim guy like me. I pushed through the gap in the bushes.
There was a solitary tree on the other side. The trail ended at the bottom of that tree. I didn’t see the girl there and the fox that attacked her was no where in sight either. I felt this sick feeling that something bad might have befallen the blonde girl.
“Girl! Girl!”
“Where are you, girl?” I yelled out into the distance.
I didn’t hear anything in response. There was a gentle breeze rushing towards me. The skies had darkened. It looked as if it was about to rain. If that happened the track would be gone. I hurried up my efforts to locate the missing girl.
I ran and ran in a straight line until I found a bloodied stone. I was in luck. The stone was a headstone in the midst of other headstones. I was in a church graveyard. It was a disheartening place to be in. I wasn’t comfortable being among all those dead folk pushing Daisy’s in the ground so I started to look for clues.
There was a church in front of me. It looked disused and abandoned. There was blood on the steps of the church. I heard the front door slide open quite eerily. The not so subtle creeks of the sliding door gave me the creeps. I didn’t want to go in. But I didn’t have the stomach to leave a child behind if she was alive. I couldn’t live with that on my conscience. I was not that kind of guy.
“I should so not be going in there. Creepy burial ground and an old church. Definitely not looking good.” I gulped some hot saliva down my throat.
I crept cautiously into the disused church building. The place looked empty. That was the obvious conclusion that I had come to. I took some deep breaths and leaned against one of the pews. I was about to leave when I heard a small yelp coming from somewhere inside the church. There was no one seated on the pews. I could not ignore what I heard.
Pulling the magnum out of where I tucked it, I started to snoop around. My eyes caught a glimpse of a suspicious-looking blue door. Crouching a little, I placed my hand over the door handle. Just as I was about to wrap my fingers round the door handle, I heard something moving behind me. My heart thumped quickly in my chest.
I turned around so quickly that I nearly twisted my ankle. Thankfully, I did not. The magnum in my left hand was pointed at the little person that had crept up behind me.
“Don’t do that! I could have blown your head off, kid!” I screamed.
“My name isn’t kid. I am, Diana.” The injured blonde girl flinched tearfully.
Her messy, golden hair was a sight for sore eyes. She had bruises all over her arms and her hand was pasted over the bleeding puncture wounds on her left arm. She seemed composed for someone that had just been attacked by a rabid animal.
“Thank Goodness, you are okay. We shall need to put a bandage on that wound and disinfect it.” I bulked at the sight of Diana’s bleeding arm.
She looked at me with abject fear pasted on her squeamish face. She clearly was frightened of something. I could see the hesitation in her eyes. She moved herself a few inches away from me. She did not want to be touched and it seemed she had no interest in having her bite wound steeped in alcohol.
“No! I don’t like being touched!”
“I don’t like hospitals, or nurses either. Their hands always smell funny and they lie to you. They tell you its okay and that it won’t hurt. But the pointy needle always hurts.” Diane sobbed profusely.
“You don’t have to worry about that. I have got no needles here and I hate hospitals too,” I spoke softly and as calmly as I could to the distressed blonde girl.
“I am not stupid. You’re trying to trick me. Stay back.” Diane walked backwards, away from me.
Her chest puffed out and sank in very rapidly. She was genuinely scared. I could see I had to thread very carefully. Her eyes said that she didn’t quite trust me. She was like a wild horse that was ready to bolt at the sign of anything that resembled a threat. I needed her to know that I wasn’t a threat. I needed her to know that I wasn’t hiding anything nasty so I tucked the gun in my hand away in my belt and raised both my hands in the air.
“Look kid, I haven’t got anything hidden away. Look at my hands. They are empty,” I spat the words out, sighing with exasperation.
“Are you sure?” Diane’s lips quaked, as she halted momentarily in her tracks.
I paused for a brief moment. It sort of seemed like a trick question, or so I thought. I tried not to lose my patience with Diane. I held back my less refined side and pushed up a smile on my face. I smile gingerly at her, “sure I am sure, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid! I am Diane!” Diane threw a tantrum before stumping on my foot.
I was a tall, grown up man but the force of that girl’s foot stumping on mine really hurt. I hopped around in pain for a bit before balancing myself on one of the nearby pews. Nothing was broken. I was just a bit sore. She sought of reminded me about the reason why I chose not to have any kids. I didn’t know too much about kids. I was sure I would have made a useless father anyway-just like mine was to me. He was a drunk and a layabout.
I was cut from the same cloth as my old man. After all, the only parenting I ever got was the shoes on my back and a few slurred drunken obscenities hurled my way after my old man had had one too many bottles of ale. Three failed marriages and a string of failed relationships wasn’t exactly going to win me any personality contests. I always found a way to break everything I touched. Nothing I got involved with ever lasted long enough to blossom into anything useful.
Whining about the past wouldn’t get me very far. I needed to keep my head in the now and not in the past. There was a girl in need of help. Whether she wanted that help or not was irrelevant. I couldn’t let her ignorance, or ridiculous phobia for needles get in the way.
“Diane, you need to calm down. I’ve got your back, okay. Nobody is going to be messing with your hand.” I tried to keep a straight face, as I lied profusely to the injured kid.
“Okay! You promise!” Diane’s eyes watered with warm tears.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” I replied reassuringly.
I stooped down and caught her in a warm hug. I think she needed that. There was some sobbing on my shoulders. I could feel her tears soak my shirt. At that point, I pulled away from her and handed her some tissue. I always had some of that in my pockets in case of emergencies. A crying kid was definitely one of those emergencies.
“Are we all done kid? The others are going to be getting worried, aren’t they?”
“I reckon we should start heading back to the bus,” I spoke suggestively to the sniffling blonde girl before me.
“Sure!”
“Why not? Do you remember the way out of here?” Diane nodded approvingly.
I sighed a bit and scratched my head. Then I clutched the arm of one of the wooden pews in my hand. I took my time to access Diane’s question. I wasn’t really sure if I actually remembered how to get back. Part of my journey to
the church was actually guess work and I hadn’t left any trails behind to use as clues to retrace my steps back.
With my knuckle against my chin, I stood as still as a log, pondering my options. I didn’t have to think too long before a rattling noise shook me out of my inward thinking. I withdrew from the pew very quickly and shifted my head from side to side. I wasn’t sure where the banging was coming from.
“The door! It moved!” Diane chirped with an alarmed look etched on her troubled face.
“Might be rats. This is an old place,” I suggested, placing a reassuring hand on Diane’s shoulder.
The thuds against the blue door soon escalated and became more urgent. The loudness of the thuds rattled Diane even more. She buried her face in my chest and started to wail softly. She was uneasy. So was I.
“Let’s just slowly back away. On three, we start to walk back real slow.” I stared Diane in the face.
She didn’t put up a fight. She was malleable to my suggestion. I prompted her with a tap and then started to count, “one, two..”
Before I could say three, the door flew off it’s hinges and crashed to the ground. There were people behind the door. They weren’t speaking to each other. They just stood still and seemed to be staring straight at us.
“Are you guys okay? Did someone lock you guys in there, or were you hiding from someone?” I asked rather inquisitively.
“They don’t look very friendly. We should probably leave,” Diane whispered as discretely as she could to me.
I squatted down and held Diane's chin, looking straight at the people behind the door frame, saying, “look at them. They look like they’ve been exploited by really mean people. They probably haven’t had a bath or a decent meal in days. We should help them. It is the right thing to do.”
I put one leg ahead of the other and stepped forward. I walked towards the strange-looking people behind the door frame.
“You don’t have to be frightened, okay! I can help you guys!” I yelled out as loudly and as clearly as was humanly possible. “Do you guys understand what I am saying? Does anyone amongst you speak English?”
Their eyes didn’t blink and they let out only faint, inaudible groans. Their unresponsiveness soon turned into rampant sniffing of the scents in front of their noses. I could barely see their faces but I could tell they were moving. The thudding of boots revealed that much to my alert ears. The small group of people soon stepped into the light. They all looked foreign. They sure didn’t dress like they were from around here.
One of them was a woman. She had glasses on. She seemed to take the lead and moved hurriedly towards us. Her feet were sluggish but there seemed to be a burning zeal to get us. There was drool dripping from her gaping mouth.
“huuu!!” grunts escaped from the approaching woman’s lips.
“Stop! Don’t come any closer!” I barked warnings at the woman in glasses.
She did not listen to my words. She was unresponsive. Her eyes were pale and dead, like those of the fox we had encountered earlier. I watched her slam hopelessly into pews, as she zigzagged towards us. She was either disoriented from lack of food or was as blind as a bat. I wasn’t exactly sure whether the latter or former was true. Not that I really cared which of those fun facts were correct.
I wasn’t comfortable with the place I was in and I wasn’t exactly feeling comfortable with being around these malnourished-looking strangers. My hand hovered indecisively over the gun tucked away in my belt.
“She doesn’t look right! She looks really sick!” Diane moaned, as the stumbling woman in glasses got closer to us.
“Get behind me, kid!” I barked commandingly.
Diane didn’t argue. She didn’t have the nerve to do much else than shiver and exude a great deal of panic on her clearly perturbed face. The snarling from the lady in glasses became louder. She had planted herself in front of me. I could see the black, bulging veins on her face pulsing rather ominously.
Something was seriously off about her. The clothes on her were filthy and her nails were unkempt. The diseased woman in glasses soon got handy with her nails. She launched an attack on me without any provocation. Her first irrational move was to push her full body weight on me. She flung herself at me without any care for her own safety. She was a nineteen stone woman. I was knocked down on my back very easily.
Luckily, Diane wasn’t hit. She had the sense to dive out of the way just in the nick of time. The crazy lady was soon on top of me, launching a tirade of swings at my head with her fingernails. I blocked her onslaught with my hands. I wasn’t into hitting women. I wasn’t a violent guy. But this was becoming a really dire situation. I had to do something.
I saw the diseased woman’s mouth widen. Her brown set of teeth almost looked like sharp canines. Her eyes fixated on my neck. I could sense nothing but sinister intention towards me. The sudden movement of her head in the direction of my neck immediately made me think she intended to take a bite out of my neck.
“Close your eyes, Diane!” I yelled out with great urgency in my countenance.
“Why?” Diane stuttered, tearfully.
“Just do it now, kid! For both our sakes, just do as I say!” I snapped angrily at her.
“Okay, I’m shutting my eyes,” Diane whimpered, reluctantly squeezing her eyelids shut.
When I was sure Diane wasn’t watching, I punched the rampaging woman off me. She rolled off me, slamming her back into one of the pews. Strangely, she picked herself up very quickly. She did not even feel anything from the collision with the hard wood of the pew which she was forcefully slammed into.
“I am so sorry, Miss! I did not mean to do that!”
“Are you hurt?” I babbled on in a panic.
The woman in glasses was not swayed in any way by my placations to cease her impulsive attacks. She had no emotion behind those still, dead-looking eyes. Her snarls only got more urgent, as she chose to run at me again. She appeared raving mad and was grunting as if madness had taken over her.
I could see nothing but deadly intent on her face. I blasted a hole into her shoulder. Black blood oozed out of the perforation in her upper torso. That did not stop her acceleration towards me. She had blocked out whatever sting that she was meant to have felt from the bullet.
Some cackling noises seeped through the crazy woman’s shaky lips, as she got closer. I blasted more shots into her chest. She was knocked off her feet by the force of the bullets.
“Is she dead?” Diane asked.
“Don’t look at that kid. I thought I said you should keep your eyes closed.” I pulled Diane’s face away, removing her gaze from the blood-soaked body on the ground.
The kid looked shaken up. I didn’t know exactly how to tell her that someone had just been murdered in front of her and that I felt I had to get my hands dirty to protect the both of us. I had really made a mess of the woman’s chest. I could see her rib bone stocking out of her chest. That was one pretty fucked up sight to look at. The crazy woman that had attacked me was in a bad way, sprawled on the floor with thick drool running down the side of her face.
CHAPTER 3
The other people behind the door frame had not moved. They seemed to be in some sort of inert state. Their bodies were statue still and their unmoving eyes stared into nothingness. There was zero human expressions on their faces. I had never seen such mannequin-like behaviour in a person before. What the hell was wrong with them? Was this some sort of weird cult? Could they have been on some sort of new drugs?
Yep, those guys definitely looked wasted. I didn’t plan to hang around to see what they would be like when they woke up. I had barely held my own against that demented woman in glasses. I did not intend to push my luck with a group of ten. I didn’t count but I thought that there weren’t more than ten people squeezed into that small backroom.
“Come on kid, Let’s get out of here. We should be getting back to the others.” I looked down at Diane.
“Finally, you are starting to use your
head. I could have told you that ages ago,” Diane hissed, looking a bit exasperated. “Adults can be so full of crap sometimes.”
The kid wasn’t wrong. I was so carried away with overthinking things that I didn’t see what was under my nose. The people I was trying to help did not look right. I shouldn’t have been too keen to dish out help to people that were not right upstairs. There were more of them than me. I would have had zero advantage if they decided to vent their rage at me.
They were definitely a small mob that would make anyone incredibly unsettled to be at the centre of their ire. I walked side by side with Diane, looking cautiously behind me as we headed for the exit. I kept having this feeling that those spaced out guys behind the doorframe would snap out of their docile, unresponsive state at anytime. I was almost certain that they would chase after us if they did. I hoped that whoever drugged them gave them a big enough dose to keep them that way. I wasn’t sure my theory about these people being crazy was accurate. I wasn’t sure that I knew shit about anything that I had just witnessed.
I was just as clueless as the blonde girl walking beside me. As we slowly crept away towards the front door of the church, I heard an eerie whizzing noise coming from behind me. I froze in my steps and my heart thumped hastily in my chest.
Slowly my face shifted backwards to look behind me. What I saw nearly made my jaw drop in shock. I was sure that I would have been completely white in the face if I could see my own reflection in a mirror. The unthinkable had happened. The woman whom I had shot was back on her feet. Her organs were hanging out of her chest and belly.
She simply made snarling noises. Her gaze was fixated ahead of her. Her nose twitched away ceaselessly as if she was a hunting dog sniffing out it’s prey. She shifted her gaze unexpectedly in our general direction and let out a chilling, inhuman roar.