Aftermath of the Reckoning

Chapter 12

No longer able to resist the urge to pee, Patch arose and extended his arms as he stepped away. Zoey asked him to wait, but he had to take care of business at some point, and there were definitely some things for which he would not accept assistance.

After nearly an hour of waiting, darkness blanketed the area and Zoey had not yet returned. A waxing moon shed its ivory glow across the landscape, though Patch could barely detect any difference between the opening and closing of his eyes as he treaded forward.

Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.

He found a tree with a knot facing the direction back to camp and made a mental note. Twenty paces should be far enough. Rounding to the opposite side of the tree, he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his jeans without much difficulty.

At least there are some things I’m still good at.

The discomfort in his bladder lessened as he finished. Breathing a sigh of relief, he zipped up and turned around to head back.

The knot, where is it?

Momentarily disoriented, his heart rate increased slightly as his hands explored the tree in search of the marker he’d identified earlier.

Ah, here it is.

Now facing in the proper direction, he began his short journey back.

Three. Four.

A loud crash interrupted his progress. It sounded like a large animal falling to the ground from significant height. He turned to face the sound.

“Zoey! Is that you?”

Patch doubted Zoey could have or would have made such a disturbance, but she was supposed to be returning around now. Upon hearing no response, he knelt and withdrew his BK7 combat knife from its sheath mounted to his belt. Holding the knife in a forward grip, he slowed his breathing and listened intently.

Seconds stretched endlessly as nothing but the sound of leaves rustling in the gentle wind captured his attention.

Whatever it was, must be gone now or —

From nowhere, what felt like a knee impacted his jaw, fracturing his mandible and nearly rendering him unconscious as his head snapped back. Adrenaline restored his awareness and he thrust the knife upward, sinking deep into something with the consistency of flesh but not quite.

His adversary emitted no cry of pain. Instead, Patch heard his own cries as razor sharp teeth penetrated his jacket and buried into his left shoulder.

The creature withdrew spoke in a guttural voice, “You quiet.”

Patch took advantage of the moment to withdraw his blade and thrust into the gelatinous substance, again and again, until his knife caught on something hard. He could not free the blade from its spongy prison.

Strangely the creature just remained motionless, while Patch sweat with exertion. Patch inhaled deeply. “Z — “

A ridiculously strong arm slammed his torso back against a tree, forcing all the air from his lungs, effectively stifling his shout. The hand continued to bear down on his chest, the weight so great that he could not breathe. It felt like a car dropped off its jack and landed directly on him, threatening his life with compressive asphyxiation.

Gripping the forearm of the beast, he scarcely perceived the unusually pliable texture of the flesh surrounding steellike bones, which applied a force like that of an industrial grade hydraulic cylinder.

He barely heard the voice of the thing as it whispered, “Hush.”

And after Patch finally lost his battle with unconsciousness, he didn’t even feel the teeth that ripped a large chunk of his deltoid muscle and jacket away from his lower shoulder.

***

Zoey held the bag containing a rabbit and various fruits in her left hand while she used the moonlight to help guide her way back to where Patch waited. Her spirits soared.

Took a little longer, but Patch is going to love cooked rabbit!

Earlier, the flash of white fur caught her attention as it darted through the trees near a small creek. It paused to nibble on some grass and she took a shot with her bow from a distance of roughly twenty yards. The arrow went straight through the side of the rabbit’s chest, impaling it to the ground. She approached and quickly broke the rabbit’s neck, preventing it from suffering further.

Patch still had some matches so it should take less than an hour to gut it, skin it and cook it over an open fire. Her mouth began watering at the thought.

This is going to be so much better than persimmons.

Suddenly, a muffled cry interrupted her reverie. It was a male voice.

Patch!

She dropped the bag and moved with astonishing quickness to the clearing where they stopped earlier. A sickening feeling formed in her stomach as anxiety crippled her thought process.

No! Focus.

She ran west, toward the direction of where the cry appeared to have originated. As she pushed through some thick brush, the sight before her eyes carved a memory in her brain that would haunt her dreams forever.

Patch lay lifeless and limp against a tree, arm torn from its socket, bleeding profusely.

A man — if it could be called that — hunched over Patch’s form. The thing appeared to be taking large bites out of Patch’s dismembered arm; rivers of blood ran from its mouth. The man-thing looked up at her with vacant eyes, as if she had disturbed his evening meal.

Then, it dropped the arm as if suddenly drawn to something far more tantalizing. The words “Bloodflower” came out of its mouth in a gargle, spilling a torrent of flesh and blood down its chin.

A tsunami of unmitigated horror and despair crashed into Zoey’s soul with the force of an atomic bomb. She felt her sanity ebb as her mind transported to a different plane.

Zoey froze as the one armed man-thing dropped its meal and charged her. She didn’t flinch as the thing’s hand slammed her into an oak so hard that three of her ribs snapped. She didn’t notice her body falling to the ground in a heap or the Bloodflower being torn from her pocket.

Instead she floated before a door in her mind that had not been touched in twelve years. Brilliant green light poured from cracks at the seams of the door. Slowly, but with resolution, she opened it and walked through. Reality shifted before her eyes and she once again observed her surroundings.

But not with her eyes, with her mind. She could feel the earth — granules of sand, rock, sticks and leaves — well beyond the location of her body. Her sixth sense telekinetically outlined the tree beside her and those for yards in every direction.

She could feel the world around her with her mind. She could no more easily describe the sensation than one could explain the color yellow to a blind person.

She felt  the thing returning to its meal, gnawing at Patch’s torn arm in a feeding frenzy. Zoey opened her physical eyes, intensely blurry with tears of anger and sorrow. She no longer needed her real vision however since she could feel the creature before her.

Zoey slowly gathered herself and stood shakily, leaning against the adjacent tree for support. The pain in her chest made breathing difficult but she didn’t need to move much now.

In fact, she wouldn’t need to move a muscle for what came next.