Death After Death (#2)

Chapter Twenty

Dawson carefully shut the thick iron door behind them, as they sheepishly stepped into the grounds of the compound. The entrance had been open, and the guard posts unmanned. An eerie sense of calm and isolation hung over the place like a stubborn raincloud.

"Something isn't right here," Dawson exclaimed.

Karl scoffed, "As if anything here was ever right."

There was no arguing with this, Dawson merely nodded and signalled with one flick of her hand for Karl to follow her. This is where she thrived, stealth. Moving through somewhere completely un-noticed, without leaving a trace.

"You think anyone's here?" Karl whispered.

Dawson sighed, stealth was difficult with Karl.

"I have no idea, but it's definitely not running normally."

Dawson ducked inside the nearest open door on their left, her neck snapping side to side in order to check every corner and blind spot. She was like a well-oiled machine, her feet dancing and shuffling like a world class ballerina, always ready to leap into action at a split second's notice.

Once she was confident that the room was empty, she gestured again with one purposeful swipe of the hand for them to move on to the next.

This pattern continued through the next five or so rooms, until Karl piped up.

"I don't think anyone's home, Daws. Look at this place, we've gone past at least twenty bunks, but no people, no clothes, no belongings. The place is dead."

Dawson relaxed for a moment, and turned to face him, "I think you might be right, something went down here though, for sure."

"I say we follow the main road down towards the centre," Karl suggested.

"Alright, but we duck inside at the first sign of life," Dawson insisted.

"Deal."

As they walked briskly down the abandoned street, it became ever more apparent that The Pit had indeed been deserted. Doors swung wide open, as if a huge mass of people had been forced to flee at short notice. The road was littered with discarded items, presumably deemed not important enough to quickly pack into a bag.

Then the blood came. Deep maroon marks stained the tarmac, like the looming footsteps of death all leading up to one door. There were no bodies in sight.

"What the fuck happened here?" Karl tremored.

Dawson shook her head in shared disbelief, "I don't know, kid. Nothing good."

She gingerly tip-toed towards the door, approaching it from the side in order to poke her head round and peer into the room beyond.

It was a bloodbath. The walls and floors were covered in the dripping remnants of guts and innards. Thick, gloopy pools of blood twinkled in the light, like puddles on a rainy Autumn morning. Discarded limbs littered the floor; hands, feet, fingers, and toes; Dawson was pretty sure she'd clocked a few eyeballs too.

Karl's trembling finger appeared at the side of Dawson's face, shaking, but clearly pointing towards the far corner of the room. Dawson peered past the iron bars of the cell, and recoiled as she spotted what her young companion had seen. A mountain of charred bones, piled up high, discarded like they were nothing.

Femurs, tibias, fibulas, cracked rib cages, battered skulls, collar bones, hips, knees, broken spines, burnt fingers. Every horror their minds could have imagined had been thrown into that one pile, as if it were rubbish at a landfill.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Dawson wretched, as she threw an arm around Karl and dragged him away from the horrific scene.

"Do you think Ha-"

"Don't," Dawson pleaded.

"But do you th-"

"Please just don't say it. Anyone who was here is dead, okay?"

"But maybe he g-"

"Karl, for fuck's sake! Open your eyes! They ate them! They ate them all..."

Karl turned on his heels, threw his hands to his face and began pacing up and down, "Oh Jesus, fucking hell, what are these people, Daws?"

"They are not people, not anymore."

"What the fuck are we going to do? How the fuck do we come back from this, look at it all! The world is dead! It's gone!"

"We don't know that!" Dawson argued.

"Don't we? Maybe we didn't before, there was always that glimmer of hope. But look around you! Does it look like there's any fucking hope left? This is what we are now! Humans turning into monsters, or just those delaying the inevitable."

"We're still alive though, Karl, we're still fighting!"

"What for? Just to live another day? Just to escape fucking monsters that want to rip the very flesh from your bones, and the humans who want to do exactly the same. The hope has gone, Daws, face it!"

"Maybe that's true, but we are still here. Maybe we have to make our own hope, maybe we have to be the hope for others. You're not gonna give up on me now are you?"

Karl took a deep lungful of air before admitting, "Course not. Can we please just get the fuck out of here?"

"As soon as we collect some supplies."  

Karl nodded and gestured for Dawson to lead the way, but he clearly wasn't too pleased about staying a moment longer than they had to.

It was like realising you were in your worst nightmare, and choosing not to wake up.

Dawson jogged towards the far end of the main road and darted inside what was by far the nicest looking house. She thought it was the most likely place to have some decent stuff lying around for them to take.

Karl followed her inside tentatively, swearing under his breath as he realised that he'd left his spear behind in all the commotion.

He turned around, then froze.

"Shall I break, or you?" JJ grinned, offering the cue to his twin brother.