The Price of Humanity

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Six

Mia stands by the fire, changed into some old thick clothes. Watching in disgust as Zane cuts open the walker behind the counter.

I pick up the clothes placed by the fire, assuming the pile is for me, and hide by the stairs to change into them. When I come back, wearing one of Zane's tracksuits, Zane is covering Mia in guts.

And Mia looks like she's going to throw up any second.

Zane grabs another handful of guts, using a towel so he doesn't get any on his hands, and smears it down Mia's back.

Once he's done with Mia he turns to me and I look at him in disgust, well more looking at the dead person's guts. He starts smearing it on me.

The smell overwhelms me, how he put up with this long enough to go for a walk outside I have no idea, I can barely deal with five seconds of it. He continues smearing so that my front, back and arms are covered with a dead person's guts. An infected dead person's guts.

Let's not try to think about that.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Mia bend over in the corner of the room and spill the contents of her stomach all over the floor. I hear and smell it too, making me want to throw up myself.

Zane notices that I'm starting to turn green and concludes, thankfully, that I have enough walker guts all over me. He moves to the door and motions for Mia and me to follow him over.

I glance at Mia, who's still holding her stomach, trying to calm herself down. She takes deep breaths and looks up a me, I give her a small smile and that seems to help because she moves over to Zane, ready to go.

Before leaving, I hide my katana behind the counter and take a knife out of one of the bags. My katana, although brilliant, isn't the most subtle weapon.

I join the other two and Zane plants his hand on the door handle, checking that we're both ready to go. When he sees that we are he opens the door and we start to walk out into the street.

The smell hits me first, even before I can see anything. Now don't get me wrong, I know this smell. Hell, it's all over me right now. But I've never been surrounded by it when it's this potent. I've also never been in the middle of a horde before.

All the dead carry this smell, the smell of death and decomposing. The walkers closest to the door turn and look at us. I hear the door click shut behind us as we walk out onto the street.

There's fewer walkers than I thought there'd be. The men cleared out most of the dead with their guns, there's still too many for us to kill just the three of us but enough for us to wade through, disguised.

The walkers take notice of us for a few seconds before moving on to the next thing.

I turn to the left, the direction where Mia and Zane have started staggering towards. Now I realise where most of the walkers have gone. Piled up at the fence is easily a hundred dead bodies, slumped against the fence.

They obviously took out a lot of them. Zane gives me a side look, obviously thinking the same thing as me, but he doesn't say anything.

Otherwise the walker's might realise we're not one of them.

One particularly rotted corpse walks straight between me and Mia, disrupting the formation the three of us naturally formed. I stagger away from the group a bit and the walker gives me a second glance, walking straight up to me.

I begin to stagger, pretending to be undead, and continue to walk towards the fence with the others just in front of me. The walker puts his face in mine and I try my best to stay neutral. I start growling slightly – trying to be more walker-like.

I continue walking, shoving past the corpse and continuing towards the other two. I take a deep breath, realising that the corpse has left me alone. Zane glances out of the corner of his eye to make sure I'm alright.

He slows down a little bit, ready to intervene if needed.

Mia reaches the fence first, swaying slightly and standing before the wall of bodies, she follows the lead of the walkers and begins to climb up the bodies, very ungracefully.

She reaches the top of the pile just as Zane reaches the bottom, she will still have to jump in order to get over the fence but she stays put for now – waiting for me and Zane to get to the top with her.

Zane starts climbing and I reach the bottom of the pile, climbing up after him as fast as I dare, while still looking like I'm dead.

The other's take no notice as the three of us stand on the pile of bodies, which is a terrifying and disgusting sentence in itself.

I feel the bodies move underneath me and once again feel the urge to throw up, I grip my stomach and keep walking though so I'm in line with Zane and Mia.

Zane glances at both of us while we all lean against the fence, I see a walker turn to me out of the corner of my eye but keep focused on the plan, hoping he won't come too close.

Zane knocks on the wood once, attracting a few walker's to where we are, when he knocks on the wood the second time, the signal, we reach up – somewhat simultaneously – and pull ourselves up and over the fence.

If only it had gone that smoothly.

Zane manages to pull himself up and immediately turns to Mia to help her up, since she's the weakest out of the two. I manage to pull myself but only just, before a walker grabs onto my ankle.