The Diseased Heart

Chapter 1

[This is book 2!]

The truck rumbled and roared as it rolled and jostled over the uneven terrain of the forest. Despite any efforts made to even the path, the truck couldn't stay level. The man driving was focused on getting me where I needed to go, however, and the bumpy ride was not a concern to either of us.

Looking out the window at the passing trees and bushes, I could see several drones scouting the area above the truck, watching out for any threats. The only thoughts in my mind were that we might have found one. A real one. The drones were unnecessary, wasted on this trip. There would be no threat here but wild animals, and there was nothing the glorified children's toys woùld be able to do about such a thing.

Crawlers were eradicated several centuries ago and the most we have found were skeletons. We knew they were Crawlers and not humans by the mangled spines, second ribcage, and large fangs, their Crawler legs would not remain part of the skeleton, sadly. But now, sources say they saw something here.

The frost coating the plants, despite the spring months, showed we were in the right place. This area of the continent stayed frosted two seasons of the year, frozen solid during winter, and remained cold during summer. It was a supernatural occurrence if anything, and many of the locals called it a spirit's territory, that any who enter will never return. I had studied this place in my third year of college, I knew there wasn't such danger.

Driving up to a frozen lake, the truck slowly stopped, allowing me to hop out onto the ice. The boots I was wearing had glass embedded into the sole, to keep me from slipping on the ice as I carefully walked towards the small group of people out there.

I walked over to the middle of the lake, where some of the ice had been chipped away by a small team of diggers so we could get a better look at the creature below that some had claimed seeing in shadow.

I slid down the side of the small ditch and looked through the thick ice, a wide smile spread across my face unintentionally. It was true.

There, suspended under the ice, was the silhouette of a person, with large bug like legs protruding from their spine. Their head was not attached to their body, but instead frozen apart from the body itself, completely preserved in the solid lake.

"Yes! We really have one here! Perfectly preserved within the ice!" I called out to no one but the drones, as the truck was too far away for the driver to hear me. This was something I simply needed to celebrate, though.

I would call the team to remove the body from the ice, this was very important. They were over three centuries old at this point, we had to be extremely careful. If something were to happen to their fragile body, there would be no second chance.

I examined the ice around them, admiring this creature, when I saw something else hidden beneath the ice. Could it be?

I quickly left the ditch and ran above the other figure I had seen, there were two of them. There were two Crawlers hidden beneath this lake's frozen surface! They were both perfectly preserved and suspended in permafrost!

This was incredible!

I could barely see this second Crawler, so I went back to the first under the ditch. I could somewhat make out what they had been wearing, it seemed to be some sort of hoodie and sweatpants. More of her appearance was vaguely visible, I could see long hair tied back, and some bandages around one hand. As human as she looked, the Crawler legs extending from her spine proved who she really was, she was one of the last things we could use to teach future generations of the event that shaped humanity.

It was truly a shame that her head had been severed. That was one of the two ways one could kill one of these creatures, the other being removing the heart. I had spent months reading and re-reading the book, 'Hidden Sanity', it was a book the author had written documenting her experience living in the Crawler apocalypse, including her two friends who had been Crawlers, both were considered 'sane'.

I had studied the apocalypse for years, yet this book was a goldmine of information. Everything from her first days after it all started, to meeting her group, to researching possible cures.

She had written that after a brutal storm, she and the other Sane Crawler had gone looking for the one who had been left behind in an attack, but when they found her, she was frozen under ice with her head removed. This was undoubtedly the same child, and she was still here, just as she had been back then!

You are Riley, the first sane Crawler to ever live. And you are now proof that your species were a force to be reckoned with, yet so much more than mere zombies.

Any scars she had that were visible matched perfectly. I could see the slashes across her face, and both bullet holes in her head as well. Everything else was too hard to see or was covered at this moment.

When the team arrived, I would supervise the excavation, to make sure these creatures would be taken out safely, God forbid any harm come to them. The tragedy of Riley having her head removed was bad enough, but the other, they seemed unharmed for the most part, and Maria herself had proven that even if a Crawler was deprived of oxygen for months, they could still come back as long as their head and heart remained.

This Creature may still live, and this was not going to go to waste. Whether that was good or bad would prove itself in time. This was a massive discovery.