Rid the People

Chapter 4

The gargling stopped at once, cutting itself short against the crack of the knife. He slumped to the ground, just as Cassidy had with her head in her hands, her breaths leaving in a painful wheeze.

"Hey, Cass, are you ok?" Lizzie asked, rushing to her side. She placed a hand on Cassidy's back, whereby Lizzie's touch scolded her, burning her spine.

"No!" Cassidy screamed, pushing Lizzie away, holding her bloody hands against her chest in a pathetic attempt at calming her breaths. The image of Dan approaching was distorted against her flooding eyes.

"Cassidy," Dan said, breathless. "You did the right thing, thank you."

Cassidy sobbed, squeezing the warm blood between her fingers as she tried to suppress the urge to scream at them. Nothing about killing a man was right. Nothing about finding a dead body was right. Nothing about not being able to tell her mum, to tell her friends, to tell anyone, was right. Her fingers trembled against her own skin, slipping against one another. "I can't do this," Cassidy cried. "This is fucked up, I can't do this."

"You saved my life," Dan said. "You saved me."

"I didn't want to fucking save you! You shouldn't have opened the god damn door in the first place!" Cassidy screamed, smearing the blood across her face as she wiped away the glassiness in her vision.

Dan opened his mouth to reply when Lizzie had stood up, gasping. The three of them looked in the direction of the shop door, the familiar sounds of moaning and gargling appearing at once. 3 of them, just as bloody and deformed as one another, stumbled through the opened door with their mouths ajar. When their clouded-grey eyes landed on the three of them, they began to charge, their jaws snapping in a burst of animalistic vitality.

Cassidy rummaged for her knife, standing with Lizzie and Dan at once, watching as the 3 crazy people tripped and stumbled over the many items on the floor. They regained their posture and continued to charge, unaware of the disadvantage they had, oblivious to the weapons Cassidy and Dan had at the ready. They didn't care for the obstacles in their way. It hadn't mattered how they looked. They had one purpose, one goal, and that was to attack.

Dan pierced his knife into the first one, a woman, her cheek a fleshy mess from a bitten wound. Her grey hair was in a tangled mess, crusted with dried, flaky blood. Dan then made a move for the second one, another woman, much younger. The resemblance in their skin was obvious; despite the blood that had dried around their mouth, clinging to their cheeks, their skin had shrivelled to a grey, wrinkly mask. Their eyes weren't just pale in colour, but sunken, their sockets swallowing what it could.

When the second woman fell to the floor, Dan stumbled back, regaining his breath. The last one, a middle aged man, darted for Lizzie. Cassidy instinctively moved forward and did the same thing that ruined her before; dug her knife into the mans head. The consistency was different this time, softer, almost as if the man had been rotting for longer than the rest. His body fell to the floor with a sickening thump, silent at last.

"We need to go," Lizzie said, climbing over the body that lay on the floor.

"No shit," Dan said, bending over on his knees to regain his breath. "My arm hurts."

Cassidy refused to look at the corpses, focusing on the shelves of the store instead. She didn't cry this time. She fixated her attention to the bloodiest arm, her fingers weakly clinging to the knife that now hung innocently by her side. "Let's just go," She said, forcing herself to move.

Cassidy and Lizzie exited silently, waiting on Dan as he lingered behind. Cassidy felt as numb on the inside as she did physically, her arm limp, her feet sore, her heart mourning the loss of what it felt to never have done such a inhumane act. She had took another human's life, the very step that fooled people into insanity. Was she now insane? She didn't feel it. She didn't feel anything, accept a deep void of wallowing sadness, enough to make her drown, but not enough to make her cry.