The Plague

Chapter 59

So, the forecast predicted a lot of pain and death, if I remember correctly?

Well then.

In other news, the OC contest winner has been decided on!

I'll put the winner at the end of the chapter.

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Seto's POV

Head down, eyes up.

Stay alert, but silent.

Mess up and you will die.

Push back the pain. You can't die now, for whatever cause.

Head down, eyes up.

It repeats, over and over again, like a mantra in my head. I follow it to the last word. My head is tilted downward, face in shadow, but my eyes rove cautiously about the area.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a flash of red as Mitch walks by. His hand is white around his sword, and he is in a half-crouch position as he moves. He nods at me as we walk next to each other, but neither of us say anything.

The moans of slow ones are everywhere now. Behind us, in front of us, to both sides. We had all gotten split up a while back when we had encountered the first large herd of them and decided it would be easier and we would draw less attention if we were apart.

A hand brushes on my wrist, and I look down at it in surprise. Mitch is in a full crouch now, motionless on the ground. He holds a finger to his lips and points behind me.

I crouch down next to him, mentally cursing as my aching muscles protest, and turn around once I'm down with him.

A large herd of slow ones. Impeccably huge. No way to fight through it, clearly. They ought to be smelling us any minute now.

Mitch shoots me a questioning look, and places one hand on his bow. I shake my head, and he frowns. He gestures to the left us, and I turn to see Devin and Ian crouched behind trees a few blocks away. Ian waves a hand in direction of the slow ones, then flicks it violently. Mitch and I both shake our heads at the same time.

Devin points to himself, then to Mitch, and then puts his hand a block height off the ground. I frown in confusion, but Mitch just bites his lip and shrugs. Devin frowns and glances back the way we came anxiously.

Ian points to Mitch and then flashes the number two. Mitch looks confused for a moment, but Ian does it again and he makes an O with his mouth and gestures up in the tress, and then to the right of us.

Mitch two? What the nether does that mean? Unless... oh. Jerome and Ryan. Jerome is in the tree's, and Ryan is to the right of us.

Slowly, silently, I painstakingly slide along the ground over the where they were kneeling. Mitch was doing the same, according the the low rustle as he pulled himself along behind me.

As soon as I got over to them, Ian knelt down and began speaking softly in my ear.

"Ryan and Ty are to the right of us. Jerome is in the trees. Jason and Quentin went far left. I haven't seen Connor and Quirren since," He hisses. I nod in understanding and relay the message to Mitch, who's eyes widen in worry.

"We need to find them before we move on." Devin states. Mitch immediately nods in agreement, and Ian and I do to.

"Let's find the others. They might have stuck with another paur or something." I whisper.

Some time later, and about 300 blocks to the left of where we had been, we find Jason, Quentin, and Jerome. We communicate in hand ignals and hushed calls for a while, until we finally get the whole situation across. Jerome goes back into the trees to look for the others, and we'll head in the direction they're supposed to be.

Meanwhile, the slow ones stay in the same area. One breaks from the cluster every once in a while and stumbles off, which at one point resulted in Quentin jumping nervously into a stream and splashing us all, but we remain mostly unaffected.

As it turns out, Ryan and Ty hadn't seen Connor or Quirren either. Devin is practically shaking at this point, and Mitch has sliced through a branch on a tree.

"We can't go on without them," Mitch argues.

"We know, Mitch. We aren't planning to." Ryan immediately offers.

"We just need the best plan to find them. Splitting up, staying in a group, waiting it out, what do we do?" Ian asks.

Mitch suddenly stands up, face pale. "Found 'em" He whispers.

We spin around.

Quirren and Connor sprint through the trees, eyes wide with fear, chests heaving as they gasp for air. Connor has gained the lead by several blocks, and runs full force into Mitch who pulls him against his chest.

"No. No! NO! QUIRREN! QUIRREN!"

Devin screams and screams, but it's pointless. The slow ones are too may, and we've made too much noise.

They circle around her, cutting off her path to us. Devin makes to run towards her

He can't. Moments ago, we had been in a relatively clear area.

Now we weren't. Slow ones poured from between every tree, stumbling over each other, face-planting on the ground with moans.

"HELP ME!" The scream splits through the air, high and shrill. There were so many surrounding her, cutting her off from sight, encircling her.

"QUIRREN!" Without hesitation, I throw myself into the mass of slow ones. There are grunts as the other do the same. Mutilated hands yank at my hands, and I knock them aside. A pair of teeth snaps against thin air as I yank my head back, and I shove it aside with a grunt. But it's pointless. The crowd is just getting thicker and thicker, building a wall between us and them.

I can't see for all the slow ones around me, their rotting stench filling the air as much as their corpses fill the ground. It's nearly impossible to shove them away now, they're so thick. But Quirren has got to be there. Got to be in this mess somewhere.

She's still screaming, notch. Screams of terror that rise high above any of the moans.

Then, suddenly, there's a flash of pale skin in front of me, a choked sob, a flash of white, and she's in my arms.

A furry hand appears above my head from in the foliage, and I hand her up. She disappears, and the hand reaches down and yanks me up by he hood a moment later.

Quirren settles against the branch, sobbing, as Jerome bounds off into a different tree. She's trying to say something, but she's crying too hard, so I just hug her and let her knead her fists in my torn robe.

I am just breathing a sigh of relief when an anguished wail rises up above the moans. There's a horrible scream that last for far too long, and then the moans of the slow ones.

And then, rising above the din. "NO! CONNOR! RUN, CONNOR, NO! PLEASE! CONNOR! CONNOR!

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Unintentional cliffhanger that I didn't plan to be a cliffhanger yayy

Anyway, for the character contest.

You should know, this was a hard decision. We literally delayed deciding for about 6 days, and then it took like two hours of us text screaming and a depressing process of elimination that I think we both hated doing, to be honest XD

And we still couldn't decide on a winner

*sigh*

SO WE BOTH CHOSE ONE

The characters are Lilac and Aishas by @Life_is_Good and AJC_343!!!

CONGRATULATIONS!

To those not chosen, you should know how incredibly difficult it was to choose. Don't tell bloxie, but I wanted to use all of them, to be honest. However, we chose these two. Thank you all for participating, and to those who won, expect to see your characters in the story soon!