782. Outer trail, 6
(Temee)
I’ve ran well, without being closely pursued. And to avoid being so.
We eventually arrived near the city where we’ll hopefully be able to rest for a day, and with some luck find some supply.
I approach it carefully, for it’s not the inhabited city of the county.
It’s a city long abandoned, near the impassable mountains on the south side.
Rocky and floral natures have taken back control of this city for decades. This one was abandoned long before my birth. And nature marks this difference clearly. Not one building is left spared after all this time.
I enter dirty and uneven streets, eerily quiets. The noises of the wind around here have turned similar to those in forests now.
I climb an easy wall from a tall building still sturdy. From above, I have a look at the land around. In the north and west, the region is civilised with lots of woods. In the south, the impassable mountain wall climbs fast and dominates the region.
It’s the natural and wide barrier with the southern poisonous valley, far behind.
It’s not just a mountain, but the start of an immense land of mountainous chains, practically as wide as it is long, where nothing but rocks and frost grow.
It would be too much of a risky gamble for me to attempt crossing this land randomly. This is why my road is taking the long detour around, parallel to this wall currently. The safest and shortest mountain pass is still far from here, and surely well-guarded.
Humanity understood where the frontiers with the boiling things of the valley were.
I’m not equipped nor train to cross this high altitude domain elsewhere but near the frontier where a road is marked on my map.
I just need to reach it before Winter. Which is doable I believe, but maybe not won yet.
So we’ll rest just for one day in this deserted city.
~
Until nightfall, I rummage through the buried ruins looking for preserves of food. I find a few ones still edible.
All the flavours are gone, but between that and various wild vegetable, I cook something good.
Glasgow swallowed her spoonful and falls into deeper sleep to digest it.
Her infection has grown, but she’s suffering less from it. Me, I’m alright.
I think over our plans to adjust our paths on the morrow.
I scatter broken glass shards around us for the night. I know it’s a superstitious bet, a little dumb, but it doesn’t cost much and reassures me a little bit.
It’s then my turn to fall asleep, near the embers of the dying fire.
~
Something gets me tensed like a cramp in the middle of a dream.
I feel my lucidity animating in the midst of a dream, making me grow fully aware I’m in between.
I tell someone or something to wait as I need to think about it, now looking aside and trying to figure out what is going on.
Dark things react around me.
Something is going on...
I feel it and I wake up, very tense. Something is happening.
I hear a muffled yell in the distance. I didn’t dream that.
I dress us up fast and silently.
Glasgow herself becomes very tensed when I touched her. Her pain has flown off to new heights. I apologise and lift her to carry her away as delicately as possible.
Shades are rummaging in the darker corners of the rooms and corridors of this building where we are.
I hear noises of hurried footsteps, then another scream or muffled bark. It’s closer.
I take a peek through the holes in the walls, toward the street below. I barely see the movements between shadows and nocturnal cityscapes.
But I can guess... For it reminds me of another time just like that.
So I begin to run away through the road I had checked yesterday for that.
~
I walk briskly away but quietly, out of the building, through a discreet back way, partially collapsed.
After a street corner, I notice two people working on muffling and catching a third one. I don’t quite get what is happening through this penumbra. They seem to be panicking, acting energetically on that person but also terrified.
One of them sees me. The big apparatus over his face lets him see me in the dark far better than I can.
The man now muzzled is sitting on the ground, seemingly unconscious, while the two captors now aim their weapons at me and attack.
I step back, a little shocked but not yet panicking.
I find a bottleneck of narrow street and climb behind once passed.
The two weird people appear below me as they followed, and I strike.
My blade wounds the first one straight, and our combined weight falling onto the other one crush him on the ground.
T - I’m sorry...
I take hold and control of the second one. I find my strength back as I push him down into the ground.
The first one manages to escape, trying his best to hold down his voice, despite the pain of his crushed fingers which my attack broke.
I hear more screams as I stand up. Then gunshots ripping my eardrums, echoing then abruptly all around me.
They’re not here just for me. There is clearly something else.
I turn around to find the other person I had shocked on the ground and left unconscious already gone.
In a matter of seconds, both my pursuers have vanished.
This other one I find a little further away, massacred, and not by me.
I keep my sword in hand tightly. There is clearly another monster lurking here.
The flesh of the dead, already scattered, begin to boil on the ground. An acrid smell rises. I cough and leave without trying to examine it further.
~
There is no simple escape road from the city here. No canal nor clean and open road. Only the surrounding forests.
I can run into them in full night, but I think that would be taking unacceptable risks this time, and not being the better choice.
There are some men, and probably some other thing, after me. I know neither how many nor where, but I know they will be at more ease than I for a nocturnal pursuit. That much is obvious.
However, I’m noticing that they are killing each other.
So I’m looking for a refuge hard to access and easy to escape and defend, against humans and monsters. And I’ll wait for dawn from there.
I hear other shots fired, and a noise somewhat animal. I turn back and head somewhere else, without managing to make work over my face that machine to see through the night alas.
I head toward a crevice that allows me to enter a small building I had been through yesterday.
But along that road, I bump into someone and get shoved on the ground.
- Don’t move!
He’s aiming at me and about ready to shoot. I just have the time to grab my handgun, when he suddenly aims somewhere else behind me, to shoot at a more pressing threat.
A shadow jolts and throws itself over him while taking his shots straight on. Monster’s blood is splashed on me.
The man is screaming a last time, now crushed a few steps behind. I’m standing up, overly tensed now. I’ve taken hold again of my sword from the ground, and clench on it tightly.
The monster drops the disembowelled body and turns toward me, without rush.
It’s observing me? It doesn’t see me as a threat?
Is it seeing me as...
Its moment of hesitation ends, and it charges me.
Here we go, dear me...
~
Sharp shapes like claws are scratching me, but my sword reaches it better.
I feel my heart drum under the efforts, but I’m winning. I make it fall under the few good strikes I landed.
I have enough time to take hold of my axe.
The monster gets all softer under these strikes.
Appendages like tentacles stretch toward me and the corpses, but I cut them in time.
The mass of flesh that is losing its solidity growls and groans now.
Another form emerges from the volume, like an enormous tongue, gooey and tired. It drops flat on the ground at my feet. I get ready and about to cut it down just as violently as the rest, when its orifice there growls.
- Te... mee...
Frost paralysed me for a second of terror.
I behead the thing that then was making its last jump to tackle me. I ended it.
But something broke down inside my heart now.
~
