Gallows Humour | Watty's 2023

The Battle for the Caravan

Blood slicked the warehouse floor, their boots slid on it. For an instant they feared a bloodbath, that the warehouse had been converted into a morbid ice rink. But no, they just hadn't been watching their step. Most of the floor was dry. Shouts echoed off the walls, footfalls and crying joined in ugly harmony. It was quieter than it should have been.

Cal appeared with Mu in tow, red splattered up Mu's owl face. "Almost everyone's out, you should go, too. There's no one left to fight."

"No one?"

"We were late to the party."

Come to think of it, that Factioneer had come from this direction. True grunted, stepping back to include Radio. It was washed-out and ragged, its sharp eyes skimming the gutted warehouse.

"You're getting out, too?" they asked.

"We're lookin' for the kid," he answered.

"Valdivia's?"

A curt not from Cal, sparking anger in True's gut. They clung to it, with their strength flagging fast they needed whatever they could get. A chill was fighting its way down to their bones, fog cooling their skin from the surface, adrenaline coating their core.

Radio smacked True's arm. It pointed, aiming everyone's attention northwards and up to the open maw of the second floor. Broken concrete and crooked rebar teeth delineated the first floor from the remnants of the second floor. Most of what remained was overgrown ledges, wide enough for a single person to teeter across. Or two people, if they squeezed really really tight.

"What the hell," Cal said when the first body flopped out of the murk swirling around that second floor ledge and snapped to a halt at the end of a very short rope. The sound of breaking bones cracked through the air, leaving a beat of silence in its wake.

A decrepit corpse swayed in the fog. Rotted visibly, even from a distance. Blood black with age clumped over the stumpy cauliflower remains of its head, its clothes were torn and the skin that showed through was purple with bloat. From the knees down it looked like a savage animal had used its legs as chew toys, stripping away clothing and flesh until what was left were lumps of pink and white and oily grey-green. A fat white maggot squirmed out of a hole in the wet membranous sole of a foot that had been scraped away to muscle and tendon. It hit the ground and burst like a boil.

This was not a fresh kill, neither was it the corpse of a long-dead victim of the disease.

It took True until the horrified screaming started to recognize the lank blond hair dangling from the remaining scraps of scalp.

"She has lost her fucking mind," they muttered, mostly to themself.

A sheet of paper had been nailed to the Hrōkr-corpse's chest, the writing rendered unreadable by fog and distance. True dared a step closer, squinting to make out the message. Just in time for the second body to drop.

The civilian didn't gargle, didn't thrash. Judging by the crumpled quality of her head, she'd been dead before the swan dive. She, too, had a note nailed to the front of her body. They could see the outline of someone moving in the overgrowth, hear the scrape of another body on the concrete above and a thin, keening groan. Whoever was left up there getting dragged around was alive. For now.

Radio gripped their shoulder, it jabbed at either end of the building and sent them towards the nearest end with an insistent shake. Great, they were playing rescuer now.

Ivy vines and tall nettles padded the brown walls in thick layers, they scratched at the fauna. There had to be a way up, that Factioneer had hauled those bodies up there somehow. They followed the wavering line of the wall to a ladder that had seen better days, maybe fifty years ago.