Night Dancers

Chapter Four

As I lay there, imminently in the hands of death, I thought of something that had been pushed to the back of my mind for the longest time.

Like unpacking an old box of mementos, brief images of familiar faces crossed my mind. My heart ached as their names trailed back to me, whispering stories and grievances, lost hopes and dreams.

These people - a whole camp of people I’d traveled with, a year ago, had been my reason to live. They worked with me, trusted me, believed in me even when I hadn’t believed anything anymore. Their hands grasped mine when I was terrified - they risked their lives everyday, working with me, loving me like family, forming a bond so strong we believed nothing would ever break it.

Except…The Night Dancers.

In our perfect world of harmony and safety, there was always that sense of constant dread and fear. Of what might happen, what could happen, what had happened in our lives since the story of the undead unfolded.

We were pictures in a storybook of broken hearts. Broken families. We were just broken puzzle pieces in a world that would never be innocent or perfect again.

Their faces, the faces of wise men and young children, stung. My heart slowed down, and I clenched the dirt, barely breathing.

She left me for dead. To die, as they died. To suffer as they suffered. Maybe she knows. Maybe she knows that I lost them, that it was my fault. Maybe this is my punishment. A mirror image of myself, abandoning me.

I was suddenly calm even though my death was dangerously close.

“I’m so sorry.”

The words trickled out of my lips. My last, I figured, and the only words I could summon as I suddenly turned onto my back and kicked my leg from the Night Dancer’s grasp.

I screamed at the pain of it’s nails embedded in my ankle, my combat boot long gone, my flesh searing and burning at the stabbing sensations.

Infection would not spread through me by this manner - I knew all too well that it wouldn’t.

But, I realized, as I tried to stumble to my feet by placing my hand on the bark of a tree; she could bite me and that would be it.

The Night Dancer, female and slightly confused by my resistance, looked first at me and then the forest.

I stared back, dumbfounded.

“What are you-” I began, but was cut off when she hissed at me.

Hissed, like a defensive animal, a cat or a predator feeling threatened.

She stared at me, the flesh under her eyes already peeling in the decay process.

As if promising she’d be back, she smiled. 

She left me too.

And I was alone.

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I knew a lot of things about the Night Dancers. I’d been studying them with each one I exterminated, I’d been following them, determining any possible weaknesses, or changes in behavior.

1. They decomposed. Just like the dead, after “reviving” from the dead, there was a period of strength followed by decay. I’d watched a whole group of them eventually fade away into nothing.

2. They liked to travel together, typically characterizing a male as their leader.

3. They couldn’t speak. The only intelligence they had was, as far as I had been concerned before, was survival instinct. They hunted like animals, trying to corner their victims.