[Longlisted!] -Ghosts of Galena- [#Wattys2018]

Dog Eat Dog

I'm not immune to fear. I'm not even close. Even now, my bloodless hands are shaking, my entire body gripped with a tremor I can't control. The adrenaline rush has me so dizzy that a tunnel of black is slowly closing in at the edges of what little sight I have left. My heart is beating so hard that I can feel it pulsing in my busted face, ticking like the seconds on a clock that's about wind down.

I am not. Immune. To Fear.

Fight or flight.

I would run if I could. I would climb the fence and put myself as far from here as I could, put as much distance between me and them-- all of them-- as I could. I would leave Ree, because she would just slow me down. I would steal a horse, maybe, but that's about as good as riding a meal through the city with this many undead walking the streets.

I don't know what they were thinking, bringing us all here to die.

I don't know what they're thinking now, those dark figures, clad in skulls and fur, as they step away from us, leaving us to bleed. They form a line, a weak barrier of bodies standing sentinel as a fourth wall while the zombies advance upon their backs. I don't get them. I don't understand them. I don't--

-- want to die here.

Not like this.

Uncle Matt would be so mad.

Bringing my arms up again, I brace myself, drawing in a deep breath that I can scarcely hold onto. My lungs want to keep sucking in air, keep letting it out, keep panting until the oxygen that floods my brain finally tips me over the edge into unconsciousness. It's extra hard to take a breath and hold it, keep it, use it to support everything that I have left. Pain radiates from every point, inside and out, and I feel so tired.

Do it, Jesse.

The swift downward motion of my arms pulls a scream from me this time, a wicked, guttural thing that rips from my broken chest, tearing through the cries of the others. I couldn't hold it in, not forever, and there's really no point, anyway. The din is insurmountable, a wall of sound and panic flooding the pain-bent insides of my mind.

Again.

Because this stupid tie won't break. Because it stinks here, reeking of death and urine, of old bones and dusty furs and green grass, mulched with the bodies of those that came before.

They are fertilizer. They are compost.

I. Will. Not. Be. That.

Again!

The arms go up; I stretch them to an apex, bending myself further, pulling them higher, as high as I can, disregarding pain and noise, ignoring the impending death slowly shuffling my way.

One.

I suck in a breath.

Two.

I brace myself.

Two and a half...

And for a second, I think I might not be able to do it. With my eyes closed, breath hissing in and out between my teeth, agony radiating through my chest. I start think it might be easier just to let the Dead Ones eat me. It'd stop the pain, that's for sure, and if I'm lucky, they'll make such quick work of me that I won't even have to be one--

"Jesse!"

Her voice, Ree's, raw with drought and tight with fear; she speaks my name first, just a rasping hiss into the tumult of several dozen screaming boys. My eyes flash open, fixing on her face, and out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of The Leader, his head turning to connect the dots, but surely he already knew we were friends; I remember him from the woods.