Rules of Survival | afi

day six -part 2

"There is no scarier chasm of darkness than the human mind."

-Roseanne Barr

•••

The cold air stings at my cheeks as Ashton and I sprint for the shack across the road, passing our destroyed car, our bags slapping against our backs. The adrenaline is boiling in my veins, fueling my aching body. I crash through bushes, leap over potholes, until we're both skidding to a stop in front of the shack.

I cock my gun, and don't waste any time shouldering the door open. Being out in the open air, in view of anything within a mile radius, makes my skin crawl even more than the thought of walking into an occupied shelter.

Luckily, it's empty. Ashton follows me in, breathing hard, shutting the door behind him.

The first thing I notice is the smell.

It's horrendous. Like rotting flesh, shit and blood all at the same time. I have to hold my breath to keep from gagging as we slowly move into the first room.

The place looks to have once been a cabin, with crumbling wooden walls and a rickety floor. Every step produces a squeak, even with my skills. We've entered a living room, with molding couches, a single table and a shattered tv in the corner.

Even though the place appears empty, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something is wrong here. Really wrong.

"Ashton.." I whisper, tightening my grip on my gun.

"I feel it too." He mutters, eyes scanning the room with his pistol.

Slowly, I move forward, stepping carefully on the carpet around the couches and trailing everything with my gun. The air feels heavy, stuffing my nose with the filthy stench as we enter the next room.

It's a bathroom, filthy and rundown, but empty. There's another door on the opposite end. My hands shaking, I reach for the knob.

Ashton stops my hand, pressing his ear to the door. There's a distant humming sound, but no movement. He nods.

The second I open the door, my eyes burn. I nearly drop my gun at the overwhelming stench, coughing, and Ashton swears colorfully at the sight before us.

There's a corpse lying on the floor, having slipped of the bed in the middle of the room. Flies swarm the body. It's several days old, it's stomach sunken in and starting to rot. The multiple stab wounds across its torso and slashed throat confirm the cause of death. There's dried blood all over the carpet, and intestines clinging to the bed from where the corpse had fallen off.

However, none of this compares to its face. Or rather, lack there of.

The guy has no face. At all. It's been meticulously cut off, leaving nothing but muscle tissue and shriveled eyeballs.

I've seen a lot of death in my field of work. A lot of corpses, a lot of carnage. But with the smell, the bugs, and the situation altogether I can't handle it, and I drop my gun to double over and throw up.

Ashton just stares, his gun at his side, with a look of sheer disgust on his face. I'm sure he's seen worse, being a cop in California, but I haven't seen anything like this.

"His face." I get out, wiping my mouth. The nausea is overwhelming. "How, w-what -?"

"I don't know." He says, swallowing. "But the important question is, where is his partner?"

I force myself to my feet, retrieving my gun from the soiled carpet. "Let's just get out of here."

I can't stay here. Not with the smell. I don't even want to know what's upstairs.

We make our way back into the living room, where we walk slowly through the furniture once more and train our guns on any possible enemy entrances. When I go to step on the carpet once more, however, a massive crack rings out through the room.

Ashton and I freeze. That's not normal. It was hollow, and when I press my foot down again the boards give through the carpet. Ashton is staring at the carpets edge, and with a jolt I realize it's been folded up.

All of the pieces connect at once, and I reach down and yank the carpet off to the side.

It's a trap door. It's small, only about 4' x 4', but the worn out hinge tells me that we are not the first ones to discover it. Ashton shakes his head, eyes wide, but I know that there could be valuable supplies down there. At the very least, a safe space for the day. It's worth a look.

I bend down, but Ashton grabs my arm. Holding a finger to his lips, he pulls out something silver and cylindrical in shape from his pocket.

A smoke bomb.

Genius.

'On three' he mouths, and I reach for the handle. "One, two-"

I rip open the door just as Ashton yanks the pin off the bomb, throwing it down into the cavity. Training our guns on the opening, we listen as hysterical coughing rings out from below, along with swearing, yelling and bumping movement. All from one person.

Without really thinking it through, I storm down the stairs and just start shooting, blasting at any and all movement until the swearing stops and a loud thud resounds through the air. Then, everything goes quiet.

The smell is even worse down here. As the smoke clears, I begin to make out blood, splattered on the floor beneath my feet. Old blood, and recent blood. Stained deep into the wood.

My throat goes dry.

I'm so focused on the red beneath my feet, I don't notice the rest of the carnage. So when Ashton drops his gun, sending a loud bang throughout the room, I flinch and look up.

The smoke has cleared enough to see.

If I thought the bedroom was bad, I was wrong.

There's shelves lining the walls of the room, and on those shelves are heads. Dozens of them, all dripping onto the floor beneath us. At the far end of the room, there's a girl slumped in a chair, and laying on the floor below her, a man.

He's dead. The white lab coat he was wearing now has bullet holes from my gun, and fresh blood rolls down his chin. The girl is dead too, looking at the floor, and when I reach to pull her chin up I'm met with a gruesome sight.

The man's face from earlier, the one in the bedroom, has been sewed carefully onto the girl's own. The eyes line up, the nose, the mouth, the skin of his face stretched over and sewed along the sides of hers with what appears to be hair. Her hair, which flows in matted blonde waves down her shoulders.

When I take a closer look at the heads on the shelves, I realize that all of them have fake faces as well. All sewn on.

The man on the floor is clutching a pair of pliers, a chunk of blonde locks in the grips. He was in the middle of his newest addition to the collection when I saw him.

I don't know what to say.

I don't know what to feel.

I would throw up again, but the nausea has reached a point where it is so bad that I can't. I'm speechless, like Ashton, who just sinks to his knees with his hands over his face.

This is more than just bloodlust. This is pure, uncontrolled insanity. The kind of insanity needed to survive this long in the competition. The kind of insanity that can only be released in this competition.

And it terrifies me.