Empty: Book 1

6 : The First Patient

Illustrated: Nari

NARI

"She needs our help" I'm talking mindlessly, staring my concern out the shaded window— disappearing Joas' captor who helped us escape but is nowhere to be seen now after the horde of a newly appeared family of 'Unalives' took over her scene of the crime. Our lady corpse seems to have a debt to pay other than her guardian. But she saved us with her own will, didn't she?

"Come on let's go!" Conan yelled his proof of uselessness.

But the dead lady made me feel more useless and never questioned again after seeing the way she bounced across the window in the prime of spring's flex, landing in fiery coordination of her body, speeding as she dashed our way at that exact point where I'm thinking we'll be saved. The only tough woman I knew was me, but it's hard to believe she exists as a dead version of my qualities although might be one centimeter taller than me, approximately 5′4 in tallness but doubtful of the way she was sprinting like a horse.

She ran ahead of our frozen states fast as a wind— to then casually carried Joas' wrist as she passed by him, straightly taking him as her own as he accepted the flow all the way to her tip. Conan and I made an instinct of exchanging glances that caused me a delay before I took a brief look behind, and discovered the fact we were being pursued all along by a gang of half-zombified people with a desire for not just her, but us.

As they heed closer to be seen by eyes, we unfolded an exterior of entities who are nothing different from the first rarities we encountered in that dark stinky tunnel above, a similar kind and similar perseverance. Too obvious they were here for the man whose head has been lemon-squeezed after begging to spare his life but may his soul rest in peace now. These monsters will never let us take a break for a quick rest but our bones.

On this dark stony pavement of lawn with its foreign ambiance of everything so familiar yet so new, the five of us run at different speeds yet same direction as we remain on the go without knowing where, without trusting who, but guided by this known evil.

Now, unceasing a run on the ground where I can see few people, or rather, Unalives—being normal residents around while existing with the same hospital gown and same decomposing appearance with different scales of rot. But this woman sprinting with us is an exception for wearing a dirty white dress with an upper thigh level like it's made for a child, bare shoulder is partly exposed if not because of her wild length of hair, longer than her clothing if it's the perfect way to describe it. She's the sole half-dead on this ground I've seen like that so far, thus revealing her very... womanly buxom body and the most decaying skin. I won't be willing to be her friend just to degrade my personality.

An eternity passed and I'm the reason why we stopped, the shaking vertigo in my chest took over my yell from someone's clasp in my neck as something that I failed to predict. But I'm numbed to even sense the pain as I'm hurled to one of the walls and pain my groin, for I know there's a reason why I was instantly ejected.

With full agitation silently growing in my gut as I attempted to rise, Pana made a motion through her head for us to move while she was grasping my grabber to his hair. Frustration holds me harder knowing we have no idea where to go— so none of us responds in return for her willing sacrifice, we're already gracious, and we cannot die. Seconds after, we're convicted within the surge of heavy feet coming with their spikes, rising to touch scar to our guts and we only have her or we'll lose it. No. Where's my gun?!

While I'm shuffling my hands down to my pocket for my pistol, I know the massacre has begun. For us to learn, it's a massacre to confirm the power of Pana's protective violence as soon as it turns to be a wrestling show for us not moving— but we're left entertained watching the ogre figures failing to land a touch on any of our parts on their way of getting close, end up spinning around in blood caution.