The Last Of Us | tk ✓

forty-two | mouse in a trap

Taehyung’s throat felt scratchy, gulping for oxygen as he hops over a fallen bough, wails echoing in the frozen forest of the undead behind him. The man who tried to assault Taehyung is not a foot away, panting and gasping himself. The trees bounding the scrambling pair thin, shortening, and straight ahead is an opening into a vast town overlooked by the cliff they stand, catching their breath. 

A grandma clicker gives a guttural whoop of joy to witness two gift-wrapped lunches, ready to be devoured, as it pounces unto them, towards the ridge.

Taehyung growled in discontent at the swelling horde of the infected. Stupid, stupid, Taehyung, he chides himself, Why, oh, why did you blow that trumpet for an invitation of the grande feast? Shooting at the stranger was a misinterpretation. As Taehyung puts down the clicker with his nocked arrow, he detests his tactic, now.

The quiver would be empty at a moment’s notice. The trouble he went to accumulate his ammo would be squandered on an attack he delivered to himself. There was no chance to shake off their chasers, perhaps...

This was the only reasonable choice left. Taehyung thwarted a runner by swinging his red wrench upside down to strike the underside of its chin and addressed the stranger haughtily, “How far is your refuge, man?” He knew there was something incredibly wrong, but once more, he waved it off.

The man shook another one of the undead, scoffed, and said mockingly, “Oh, now you want my help?” Taehyung doesn’t reply, preoccupied with shaking off a pair of ragged stalkers. The guy, in his thirties, replies shortly after some consideration and simultaneous pummeling of another savage runner, “It’s just around this deserted settlement.”

Taehyung was not adequate to catch the inauspicious glint in the stranger’s eyes, answering in his hoarse voice with subsequent authority, “Let’s go, we need more backup for these fuckers after us.”

The crowd of undead somehow dwindled, providing a solid chance for Taehyung and the sore-faced stranger to turn their backs and descend briskly, haphazard rocks protruding out aiding in a gratifying approach to narrowly escaping a sixty feet fall to certain death.

The snow-covered houses and roads slowed the duo, but the blood-curdling screams urged them on.

Taehyung does not stop to admire the front porches dug deep in nature’s whiteness or the skeleton of a soldier hanging from a streetlight. He and the other guy hurl onwards, into someone’s backyard, followed solemnly by the resolute infected.

Just then, guns ablaze, a shootout begins; hunters emerging from behind dustbins, windows, roofs. Taehyung ducks, head in his hands, taking shelter by storming inside the creaky house. Bullets knocked down yowling beasts, and how quickly it started, the loud bangs came to an instant stop, prompt silence which initiated a ringing in Taehyung’s ears, who held them underneath his palm, grimacing.

Once the clinking sensation subsided, Taehyung scrutinized his surroundings and his heart sank.

Men and women, well-off and weaponized, encircle him like sharks around a tasty bait. The guy who has run alongside him resurfaces among the dominating denim of the herd, smiling with obvious hostility that Taehyung withheld to take several steps back.

“Yeah,” Taehyung narrowed his eyes, recovering from the sprint, asserting, “I’m gonna go now.” He attempts to casually stride out the door. The malignant simper the man casts him says otherwise.

A huge couple, one burly pair of man and woman, block his path, sneers crafted upon their balefully crude features.

The Taehyung two months younger would not have liked these circumstances, but the one standing steady on his feet with repugnance towards the mob around him knew if he was going to die this way, he is going to put in every effort to bring some down with him.

“You wash your face sometimes, dickwad,” Taehyung smirked, the insult directed at the man he considered was the leader of the flock, next to a real deceiver. Taehyunng frowns cockily, “Or not. You don’t need to be a dead body to be rotting.”

The man side-smiles, a baseball bat swivelling between his knobby fingers. He registered Taehyung, playful and malign, “You see, little boy, you are very important to us. We don’t want your last words to be so spiteful.” He raised his gaze to the bulked-up woman behind Taehyung acting as a barricade, nodding his head curtly.

“Hey, fuck you, man—” Taehyung never got to finish.

The glass bottle is smashed across his head by the female, and Taehyung crumbles to the ground.

Twelve kilometres away in the dusty tuckshop, Jeongguk jolts awake.

…

There is something sharp digging into Taehyung’s back, his skull buzzing with raving bees as he moans. He feels his hair clumped together, opening his eyes to extract his fingernails caked with dry blood. Increasingly vexed over his position, he spectates his area with dilapidated thoughts.

Directly opposite him is a fading paint of a beige wall, another one on his immediate right in similar condition. His stinging head rests on the steel bars that also consist of the fourth and left margin, imprisoning him as the rectangular cell overwhelmed with the nasty smell of decaying meat.

Taehyung’s jade parka is gone. So is his backpack and armoury. The person looks over at the open room and almost slips off his masked demeanour of placidness. The room is pretty empty, not considering the giant slab on which a man is placed, dead, by the stillness of his stomach.

Not far from him is a metal tray laden with exceptionally sharp tools; knives, pliers, axes, saws. The scimitars, blades for butchers, tucked like a prized possession on the wall made Taehyung retch, realizing the situation he had made an appointment with.

Two men, both from the showdown in the woods two hours ago, enter the room, deep in conversation. The leader guy is fervently ordering, “Take the girl out, it's been long since we had a decent dinner. “ He gestures at the deceased man placed over the slab, “I told Blizz and Bruse to do so for this pal too, ready and store him.” His eyes land on Taehyung, a devilish smile morphing into his face. “Look who is finally awake!”

His companion sniggered appreciatively, approaching Taehyung with a cuckoo impression. “Wakey wakey, little birdie. Ha, ha.” When he is right next to the steel bars, Taehyung spits at him.

“You fucking bitch!” The man grunts out, wiping the saliva off with his sleeve, glaring daggers at an unperturbed Taehyung. 

“Let it go, Wacko,” the leader instructed. One more pair of men, identical twins, are admitted and allowed to lift the slacked figure of the dead guy. As they depart, the leader commands once more, “Get the kid out.”

Taehyung only launches into a spar when Wacko wrestles him unto the vacant wedge, the latter huffing at the amount of labour it took to tie up a scuffling boy of eighteen. Even strapped, Taehyung scuffles, wordless with his gaze scorching with fury.

“Fucking get me out,” he barks, lifting his injured head a bit to glower at the honcho.

With a pathetic glimpse for Taehyung, the other leered in his loathsome conceit, “Not so arrogant, are we, now?” He plumps for a well-whetted blade, running his dirty nail on its sharpened edge. “It’s okay,” he smiles, evidently drooling, “If you don’t make a good mouth, you’d make a splendid meal.”

__

man i wish all the
cannibals were as nice
as caleb from b99 ):