The Ruins Part 2 (Sequel to The Ruins)

Chapter 36

The creature lifted its white face to Sam and opened its mouth. Blood ran over the artist's broken teeth and dripped onto the front of the shirt.

"Mr. Sachet...?"

It nearly broke Sam's heart. To see the hush of the person and to know that what had made him human was... gone. Sam felt like his head would break if he tried to hold that truth inside.

The Runner stepped toward Sam, reaching with its broken fingers, and still Sam was frozen into the moment, rooted to the dirt kitchen floor.

Then the Runner sprinted and screamed.

It was terror and it was rage. The terror was for what was reaching for him- this dead and shambling thing; and the rage was for what had been taken from him- a friend, a person he knew.

Sam back-pedalled away from those clutching fingers, his feet slipping and sliding on the floor until his back struck the edge of the doorway that led to the middle room. The impact galvanised him and he spun off the frame and bolted toward the living room. He crashed into a small table and then flung it behind him, not bothering to look as he heard it crack against the Runner's shins. The monster fell over it, and Sam heard the thump of kneecaps and elbows on the hardwood, but no cry of pain.

He burst into the living room and dove for the bag of training equipment in the kitchen- the best weapons were knives, hammers, a toolbox. He grabbed the hammer. They would have to do. Sam turned as Sachet lumbered into the living room. The monster then charges in a shambling sprint, moaning and twitching abnormal.

Fingers brushed his hair and tried to grab hold, but Sam threw himself over the couch. Sam rammed the tip of the hammer against the Runner's shin. The impact had all of his leg fall over. It recovers fast as the Runner lurched toward him again and began clambering over the couch.

Sam jumped to his feet and backed away, and as he did so, he took the handle of the hammer, raising one arm.

The Runner pulls viciously, reached for him.

"I'm sorry," Sam said.

And he brought the hammer down on the top of the artist's head.

The creature did not stop.

Sam hit him again and again.

And again.

His arms rose and fell, rose and fell, slamming the hard wood down on the Runner's skull. Sam could hear screams as he struck. Not the Runner's. they were his own.

"STOP!"

Tom's shout cut through the air, and Sam froze in place, the hammer raised high, his hands slick with blood and brain matter. Sam turned his head to see Ton standing in the doorway.

"Sam," Tom said, "it's over." He reached up to take hold of the hammer. "Are you hurt. Did he...?"

"Bite me? No. He didn't. What happened?" Sam asked thickly, "Mr. Sachet... Infected got to him, the bite on his neck, but-"

"Look at his fingers. Tell me what you see."

Sam didn't have to look. He already noticed how grotesquely crooked the artist's hand had been.

"Someone did that to him," Sam said. "While he was alive."

Tom nodded. "His ribs are bruised, too, and it looks like someone knocked some of his teeth out, broke a couple others. Someone tortured him to death, Sam. And he was forced to be bit by an Infected. And when he reanimated as a Runner, he was brought here."

Sam realised at Tom with cold and dangerous eyes.

"Someone was trying to kill us."

And then there were screaming beginning. Soon after, there was a crack of what sounds like a huge thunder that was the loudest sound Sam had ever heard, and the sound was so familiar to Sam.