||Series Removed|| OTB

24 - Bite Me

24

"...Dan... iel..."

The purple-laced monster in front of us growled my name with a heavy rattle, reaching her bloodied paws to snatch at the air between us. This was not Blessing... It couldn't be.

"H-Has this... happened before?" I whispered towards TB, who was already making baby steps back towards the farmhouse.

"Hmm... Yes, actually. She ran out of meds once, in South America."

"Really? What happened?"

"We'll just say, she's not that welcome there any more."

I flipped my gaze between them, watching a mass of drool rappelling from the corners of Blessing's mouth only to fall sizzling into the embers of grass below.

"Great, that's just... great. Keep that story to yourself in the future-" There was no time to finish, as the blonde charged in our direction once more. Her movements were lucid enough, although there was a hint of the Lost's impaired shambling in her step.

I knew that I couldn't outrun her. While TB made haste for the swings, I scrambled up the metal slide of the playground. The heavy thuds of her army boots followed close behind, and I could only hope that I could shake her off for a couple of seconds within the jungle gym's complexity of bars.

"Daaanieeel..." The infected girl hissed with a childlike laugh. It was all she could say, and it was the only reason I hadn't tried to engage her already. She was still in there somewhere, hidden behind that primal thirst for blood.

Throwing myself into a stifling cylindrical tunnel, I could only crawl for a few paces before I felt my legs being pulled back in the other direction. With her hands on my feet, the grip reminded me of the same one that had torn my arm clean-off.

Panicking with my lack of central balance, I started kicking wildly and tried to slam my cowboy boots into her stiff shoulder as a warning.

"Back off, Bless! This isn't you... I know you can hear me! You don't want to hurt me, I'm your friend!"

Upon hearing the 'f' word, I felt her claws loosen and I slid my way through to the other side of the kiddie tunnel. Jumping around the balcony-like bars to the outside of the elevated jungle-gym, I must've forgotten about my amputation as I reached my right arm to hang off the side. My stump breezed past the metal support, and I tumbled down into the dirt where I'd just came from.

I was no good like this... I needed proper rest, or painkillers. Even if I could move like a fully-bodied person, I had no chance of escaping a born-and-bred hunter like Blessing.

The sound of a person landing on playground brought me back to my senses, and the Puppet's towering figure found itself hovering over my own limp body.

Her deep-red eyes shifted slowly over towards Legion in the distance, and let out an amused rasp as her hand motioned upwards in a curious fashion.

Almost as though the creature had received instructions, a trail of bloodied bodies slowly started seeping out from under the burning glob's mass, wrapped around each other in single-file. Slivering like a unified snake across the ground, it followed Blessing's gestures as though it was attached by a string.

The dead were crawling straight for me... She was going to feed me to this monster, this grave insult of an entity that forced its victims to keep on fighting, no matter what.

"I... I don't blame you for this." I croaked, flashing her a weak smile to hide my growing fear.

"Uuah?"