Berserk

Chapter 9: Unarmed and Dangerous

I awoke suddenly to the sounds of shuffling feet. I sat up violently and spun around while on the ground. A decent distance away from our barricades was a small army of the dead. I stood fully to my feet and grabbed my rifle from the ground. I shook Raven violently to try and wake her up. She was in a deep sleep. No one else seemed to sleep as lightly as I do. I raised the rifle in the air and let off a burst of three rounds. People all around the camp jolted awake and sat up quickly to figure out what had tore them from their slumber. Now that some were awake, I focused my fire on the dead. I flicked the fire mode selector to semi-automatic. Aiming down the optic, I took precise shots, splitting the skulls of the dead. After every shot, red mist and chunks flew into the air. Some of the others grabbed their weapons and began to join in on the firing squad. Quiet taps sounded from within the group of biters. Occasionally I heard a subsonic bullet zip past me. Cliff was in that crowd. The suppressed Honey Badger he used was an intimidating weapon at close ranges. Hard impacts sounded around me as some of the shots landed in the soft armor and flesh of my fellow humans. One thing I noticed was that Cliff didn't land head shots. Had he taken my advice? I soon would know. I rushed over to one of the people who had been hit. I crouched down and stuck by their side. They bled heavily from a shot to the leg. I grabbed hold of one of the nearby animal skin tents and tore the material. I pressed hard with the skin against my ally's leg. "Don't let me die man," he said. I didn't reply. I didn't intend on him surviving. I ultimately wanted to see if Cliff had tipped his bullets or not. I held pressure, despite the wound lightly bubbling underneath my constant hold. The man whimpered and complained. "Shut up," I breathed in distaste. He was soft. Bone had no use for a man like him anyway so it was fortunate he was sacrificed to clarify my theory. The man's breathing became slower as he seemed to calm down. "My neck hurts," he complained. I dismissed this information, as it didn't seem important. Shortly after announcing this, the man's breathing stopped entirely. I stared at his face as the color drained from it and his eyes went bleak. I slowly released pressure on his leg which had stopped bleeding and had somewhat clotted. I watched the man's face closely. I counted the seconds in my head. One, two, three. Nothing happened. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Stillness surrounded his body as chaos erupted around me. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. His finger twitched gently. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. His eyes fully hazed over and his jaw began to impulsively move. I stood back and continued to observe. He blinked and looked around. He sat up sharply and tried to grab my legs. I pressed the muzzle of my rifle to his skull and fired a single shot. One of two things must have occurred. Either he bled out and turned, or Cliff indeed tipped his bullets in infected blood. I believed option two was true. The man turned too quickly for him to have bled out. That meant I had to be extremely careful to not get hit. I left the body of one of my former allies and returned to the line of fire. There weren't as many of the dead left, after the others had helped deal with the horde. I flicked my rifle selector to automatic and sprayed the rest of the bullets into the crowd. I reloaded and dumped that magazine as well. I loaded in my last full mag and retreated a bit to the tents. I rushed into Scarecrow's tent. "They're getting close," I informed him. "Have the important ones head back to the ship, you included," he said. "And the others?" I asked. "They'll fight for what they believe in, or they'll run," he said. "What about you?" I asked. He handed me his bolt action rifle. "Give me yours. I'll make a last stand for myself here," he said. I handed him my fully loaded weapon. I reached behind my back and grabbed the revolver with the single live round left in it. I also offered it to Scarecrow. "So it was you who had it," he said in an unsurprised tone. "I used it to save Raven. It's the least I can do now. If things go bad, at least you can have a peaceful way out instead of living as one of those rotten freaks," I said. He looked at me with a blank expression and took the handgun. I checked the chamber of his rifle and turned to leave the tent. "Mortis," he said behind me. I turned back to look. "You were the closest thing I had to a friend here," he said. I looked away and nodded slowly. "Do me and every other Berserker a favor," he said. "What's that?" I asked. "Kill that goddamn child and lead these people far from this place. Make them human again and not some animals in a world already full of animals dressed like men," he said. "You have my word," I said. "Good. Give em' hell," he said. I looked forward again and jogged out of the tent. The dead ones were very close now, just barely to the explosive buckets I had set earlier. I set down my rifle and pulled out my hand grenade. "Blow em' to hell!" I shouted above the gunfire. I pulled the pin and chucked the grenade past the barrier and near the powder buckets. There was a delay of peacefulness before each explosive began to individually detonate, igniting the powder buckets. All that was before the barrier was clouded in white and black smoke. Fire and dirt erupted after each thundering sound. After the dirt settled and the smoke began to clear, we began to see that the crowd of the dead approaching the blockade had been thinned. I stood still and took aim, popping off shots at the dead. I didn't miss. I focused in on one of the dead, preparing to fire off another shot, when it moved unnaturally for a biter. It zigzagged between the dead, using them as cover. I knew that it was Cliff. I followed him with the scope until he stopped moving. Before I pulled the trigger, he fired his weapon first. A close tap sounded, followed by a hard impact. My left arm was wrenched to the right, crossing my body. My hand instantly went numb. I shouted in pain and surprise. I dropped the rifle and got low to the ground. I brought my arm to my vision. My head spun and my vision was blurry with the release of all of the emergency hormones the brain lets loose in a situation such as this. There was a hole in the middle of the top side of my forearm, about the size of a nickel. It bled slowly. There was no exit wound. My breathing began to quicken as my senses blurred. My ears rang slightly. The blood trickled down my arm and dripped off of my fingers. I scrambled around on the ground and looked for solutions. As I crawled, Berserkers began to run in the opposite direction of the barricades. I looked towards the area from where they were running away from. The dead had breached the line. Cliff was with them. I forced myself up and I ran quickly into the nearest structure. I began to shift around, looking frantically for something, anything I could use. I didn't have many options. One option became clear to me, and I didn't like it...