Foundered

Zac I: Where the Shadows Lie

The sun was setting, Zac knew he had to act fast or risk his life. He hastily swung his hatchet in an attempt to sever the branches so he'd have the firewood he needed. As the sun sank below the city, Zac looked at the pale watery sun with despair. The cold was growing; he needed some firewood or risk freezing to death in the night.

"Damn it, I should have started earlier," he thought as he struck the branches with his hatchet, occasionally fixing his glasses and rubbing the sweat off his brows. A few minutes into it, Zac's strength gave away, he stopped swinging his hatchet... but the chopping noises didn't.

Zac looked in wonder; the sounds confused him for a while. Was he hearing things?

"Maybe," he thought, but thereafter a noise, far feller and stranger made him reconsider. The scratching of claws on the soft forest mud instilled terror into his heart, for he knew not from whence it came – whatever it was, it was not friendly. He looked around to behold nothing but utter darkness embalming him, the light of the dying sun was scarce, and he could see nothing but the silence of infinite darkness.

He closed his eyes and prayed in his heart for those sounds to be merely his delusion, but just as he finished chanting it loudened. Suddenly a shrill cry filled the whole forest and the smell of rotten flesh haunted his nose, the bloodcurdling sound and disorienting smell made his ears and nose go numb. He closed them in fear, though he knew that his senses were what he needed the most in this dark hour. Zac stepped back from the spot from where the smell was coming, but to his dismay he found himself at a cliffside, surrounded by menacing shrieks and sounds which no living thing could emit. He looked around to see not a living soul in the darkness, was it even a living soul? After all: it didn't smell like something living.

Suddenly, two pale yellow eyes flashed at Zac from the darkness, peering into his soul. His heartbeat began to rise, for he felt then that there was a creature in the darkness – five feet tall, with bony fingers lade with long claws of bone, and horrible rotting teeth in its mouth. The creature advanced towards him, taking short steps and into the light of the rising moon, and that is when he saw it: it roughly resembled a man, or the form of a man, but it was bent and ugly. A man it may have been once, but now it was a shadow of its former self. It had no skin and very less muscle mass, there was nothing in it but bones and tendons, it was in no way living.

Zac moved back but found himself stuck with a cliff behind him and a ghoul before, he knew now that there was no way for him to survive. As the ghoul leapt at him, snarling in the most menacing manner, Zac closed his eyes and covered his face with his arms, prepared to die.

All of a sudden, there came the rumbling thunder of a shotgun going off. All sounds ceased thereof, and Zac was still living, unhurt and untouched. As he opened his eyes, he saw the ghoul once more, but this time armless. Someone, it seemed, had shot his arm off into the precipice below.

The ghoul looked back, and so did Zac, and there behind the ghoul stood the shooter. Though Zac could see nearly nothing, he made out the guy to be garbed in a jacket with a shotgun in his hand.

"Hey!" he quacked in a smooth feminine voice, "why don't you pick on someone of your own size?"

The ghoul snarled terribly at him, thereof leaping to charge with its remaining arm. Zac watched as the armless beast now hopped up and down trying to reach the boy with his arm ready to cleave. All of a sudden there was another bang, and the ghoul's hand was no more. As Zac looked, the ghoul collapsed to the ground unable to stand, below the guy who had saved him. He smiled in joy as the guy smashed the ghoul's skull, ending the zombie. As the zombie collapsed to the earth, the guy approached Zac.

***

"You all right?" the boy put his gloved hand forth for Zac to get up. Up close the guy looked even cuter, his face finely carved with a visage of raven black hair covering his face.