Tuesday, August 4, 2009

#0047 | 08/04 | 02:33 AM

We didn't bury Hector with Sean, under a dying tree.

Unpoetically, we chucked his infected body into the trunk of a car. A car we'd jimmied open on the frozen congested main road to north of the school. We had more important things to occupy ourselves with, you understand.

Not that Hector didn't give us anything in his death - his infection provided us with something supremely useful: a reprieve.

The dog-Freaks that had been, literally, hounding across the school grounds, fled unexpectedly at the sound of Hector's feral screams. They did not return for the rest of the night.

Again, more behavior we know shit about. Why did they flee? Was there something primal in the scream that made the dogs think they were intruding in another predator's territory? That's what Henry thinks.

Plausible, I guess. But it seems strange. They fled because of one single human-Freak? An entire dog pack should be able to bring one down easily...

But Henry assured me, their increased cautiousness was probably related to their higher brain functions. Their superior cooperation hinted towards some sort of social hierarchy. They could even mourn. And they were predators outside of their territory. Encountering danger, their first instinct might be to retreat and regroup.

And then morning came and the situation only deteriorated.

Dead humans. Four of them. Laid out viciously on the central building's roof. Above our heads. Sometime during the night.

I'd found them first, as I took to the roof for my customary morning watch.

From our little school settlement, it was possible to make-out two other survivor stations. A block east was a survivor family, a father and daughter and mother, that had barricaded themselves in their home. And to the south, a small little Asian man had barricaded himself inside a liquor.

It... eased me to see that each settlement had survived another night. Of course, we'd invited each to join us days ago, but each had declined. So be it. It was their choice after all.

They had not survived this night.

The father was an elderly Caucasian man. I think I'd seen him at the corner store a few times, before the End. He had a boisterous laugh. His head was lying near the roof's hatch opening. One eye missing. His tongue lying a few feet away.

The daughter had been ripped in half. Her upper body an unrecognizable grizzly mess, pushed up against a wall. I found her legs later, on the ground below, behind some bushes.

The mother had worked at the infirmary near the school. The one I'd visited weeks earlier. I remember she'd attended to me on the many occasions I'd feinted sick to avoid school. She had been very pretty. And she was pretty now. She was lying, prostrated on her back, in a pool of drying blood. A calm expression on her face. Her hands were gone. We never found them. The back of her skull smashed open.

And the little Asian liquor man, well actually, he wasn't dead. He was lying near the dead little girl, against the wall, crying softly. His legs had been shredded viciously. He wasn't going anywhere.

I shot him. He was infected. Had be been rational he would have thanked me. But since he wasn't, he cursed at me instead.

Then I alerted the others.

Shit was obvious, the dogs went out of their way to track down and mutilate other humans in the area. They actually brought them back to the school. To the roof of the northern building.

It couldn't be coincidental. And how did the dogs even find the others? The dogs knew we were here. I should have realized before. They can fucking smell us. They know we're here.

And last night, if Hector's mutation hadn't surprised them and caught them off-guard, they would have come for us next.

For revenge. For their fallen.

Christ.

Jesus fucking Christ.

So we got a reprieve. A whole fucking day. Hurray.

But we're still in deep shit.

The dogs will be back tonight. Whatever threw them off about last night will not occur again. We're fucked. They're coming for us. Whatever strange ass social dynamic they have going on, it demands our blood. And we wont be able to do shit about it in a straight up gun fight.

So...

So we came up with our plan. I'm not in the central building tonight. None of us are.

Tonight we hunt the motherfuckers before they hunt us. Tonight, Hector's reprieve will save us.

Tonight is gonna suck balls.

I'm hiding out in one of the home's to the north of the school, on the other side of the street. I've barricaded the doors. Track me by smell? Yeah, fuck that. I spent a good hour showering the entryways with fucking turpentine.

I've got Henry on the line, he's in one of the houses to the south of the school, on his security camera system. I hate having him so far away, but the city's power finally went down it seems, and we needed the juice for the plan. The house he's in has a back-up generator. We couldn't move the monitors from the school, they were far too heavy. So he's using the home's TV as a monitor. He spent the day hooking up the security system into the home, getting into the network or something. Fuck the technical shit...

Anna's with Monica, in a house two blocks west of me. Technically, she's the farthest from the action. But it's a safety precaution. If our plan goes to shit, I wanted to give her plenty of breathing room to get away.

And what exactly is the plan?

We're going to blow the shit out of those motherfuckers.

Cliche, I know, but why mess with success?

We've had to tap a lot of the stationary car's jammed in the streets for their gas. When that proved too slow, we hit up the nearest gas stations. The first one, a Shell six blocks to the north was dry, but we struck liquid gold when we tried a 76 five blocks to the south.

Again, none of us could exactly claim explosions of any means within our repertoire of skills, but we assumed if we littered the northern building with gasoline, placed a few containers filled with gas around the place, and lit the bitch, the place would go up like Chicago.

We hoped.

Again, I'm playing the most dangerous part here. We spent the last part of the day creating make-shift Molotov cocktails out of long neck soda bottles, rags, and gas. The bottles and rags being courtesy of the little Asian man's liquor.

I've got some of those with me here. Along with a lighter.

And the rest are stashed at the school to make a good bang even better.

I'm supposed to run out there, light the things, toss em, and run like a bitch. In fact, Henry just gave me the okay from his little security station to the south. He's watching the freaks on his make-shift monitor.

But...

Henry reported that they're back. In full motion. The dogs. The whole pack's in the school again. This is our chance to take them out.

We wont get them all. But shit, we'll get a lot of them.

So I should go. I should go and finish this shit. I should...

Ah god, I feel so dizzy all of a fucking sudden.

And instead of going out there to ensure our survival, I'm dicking around inside...

God...

Anna kissed me today. For the first time.

Right when I was leaving their little guarded post to return to the school. She walked me to the door, held it open, I walked out, and she kissed me. Then she told me not to die and she shut the door in my face.

Christ...

Not die? What the fuck...

Shit, shit... shit.

...

Alright.

Alright, fine.

I wont die.

3 comments:

  1. Fanilly 'Alex' and Anna get there thing going.

    Took long enough...

    ReplyDelete
  2. how does hector not think the dogs will come if hes dead?

    ReplyDelete