The Diseased Heart

Chapter 13

"Oh, So that's how Crawlers hu-"

Jack was cut off by my death glare over my shoulder, if he kept talking as much as was he would scare away my prey.

Jack, Maple, and Olive had come to see me this morning, and Maple had nearly been bitten by me. My instincts were very active being put in a natural environment with live prey within arms length after so long without. The only thing that snapped me back to myself was Jack throwing half a broken brick at my head, knocking me back and jolting my brain back to reality.

At the moment, I was crouched down in the bushes, watching the raccoon that sat upon a stump of a fallen tree, cleaning its face with its paws. Though my head still throbbed from the brick to the skull, I needed to hunt now or else things woukd get much worse in a few minutes.

I stalked closer, careful not to make any sounds amongst the leaf litter on the forest floor. My Crawler legs were positioned a bit ahead of my body, ready to help me pounce forward, while my human body was low to the ground, much like a stalking wildcat. I sat, waiting for the right time.

The raccoon turned and faced away from me, I took this as my chance, and launched myself forward with minimal sound effects, the raccoon didn't even turn around before I had locked my jaws onto its neck and snapped it, its body going limp almost immediately. They never even knew they were being attacked, thankfully.

From behind me, I heard Olive sigh, "It is a bit sad,"

I dropped the raccoon and turned to my spectators, wiping a small bit of blood from my lips, "Maybe, yeah. But it's nature. The way I hunt, I make sure the animal never suffers or has to run. Other Crawlers would just give chase until they had caught their prey, I prefer not to scare the animals that way. And at least I'm not like a seagull, eating things alive and such."

Olive shrugged, "I guess, I just wonder if maybe they had...like a family or something."

"Well, for example, I would never attack an animal that had babies following it, or some sort of pack leader, if you know what I mean. There's a lot more to hunting than just finding prey and attacking, most of the work is done subconsciously by my instincts though, so even I don't know all the details."

She nodded slowly, accepting my answer even if she didn't fully like the implications. Jack looked at the raccoon, "Are you actually going to just, eat that?"

"No, I'm going to tie it up a tree," My tone dripped with sarcasm the same way my fangs dripped with blood," Yes, I'm going to eat it, dude. I'd suggest that, unless you three want to see some blood, guts, and bones, you may want to head back to the treehouse."

Maple left so fast I'd almost think she was a Crawler herself, with Olive following suit, but to my surprise, Jack remained. He leaned against a tree, and took out his phone idly. I shrugged, "Suit yourself, bud."

I started tearing into the animal. Careful with not staining my clothing beyond repair. I was not bothered by the tearing sounds and snapping of bones, I was used to it. I glanced at Jack several times, but he didn't seem as disgusted as I had assumed he would.

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Once the raccoon was no more than a skeleton with a few scarce shreds of meat, I stood up, and wiped my bloody mouth on my sleeve, I heard Jack walk over from behind me, he kept a fair distance, though.

I turned back to him over my shoulder, still wiping my mouth. He raised his eyebrow with a smile of both mild amusement and nervousness, "That was definitely disgusting. But at the same time, weirdly interesting. I used to go eith my dad to hunt deer when I was a kid, and once we saw a bear tearing into one."

He tilted his head, "It's weird how similar, yet different you were to it."

I shrugged, "Glad you didn't run like a squeamish girl, to be honest. There's a small river nearby, I'm going to go wash this out of my hoodie before it stains too bad. A few stains I can manage, but at this point with people chasing after me, I'd like to keep evidence of murder to a minimum."

He nodded, "Mind if I come with, then?"

"Sure, but I won't be slowing down to accommodate you."

With that, I jumped up with my Crawler legs and started moving through the tree branches towards the river that I could smell more than hear.

Once I had gotten there, the small stream likely flowed from some sort of piping, but the water smelled perfectly clean. I took off my hoodie, showing my white T-shirt that I had worn since before being trapped in permafrost. I realized it was very bloodstained from many times before. Mostly being when Raven attacked me. I completwly forgot that I hadn't managed to find any suitable clothing afterwards, though I had looked.

I shook off my Crawler legs and started washing out the blood in my hoodie, there was absolutely nothing that could be done about 300 year old blood stains. Several minutes later, I heard Jack come up behind me, panting lightly from the quick jog. He walked over to the riverbed, and sat down on a large rock along the side.

"Geez, what's up with your shirt?"

I glanced at him, then down at my shirt, and shrugged, "A lot of things. The life of a zombie creature during the apocalypse is filled with people trying to kill you."

"Fair enough."

He paused, thinking for a moment. He slowly turned to look back at me, and spoke tentatively, but filled with curiosity, "What was it like back then? During the apocalypse and all."

"Eh, it wasn't too bad, all things considered. Being part of the apocalypse makes it easier to live through. Then again, I remember from before I was infected, while I was still travelling with my friends, everything was absolutely horrible. We were all at school when things broke out, and we tried going to some of our homes...none of us found our parents.

"When I saw my home, it was a couple weeks after the first outbreak. My livingroom had a massive hole in the side of the wall, and there was dried blood around the floor."

Jack grimaced, and gave me a sympathetic look, "Do you think...?"

I knew what he was getting at, and sighed, "At the time I was still human. But even if I did have the sense of smell to tell what the blood came from, it was almost a month old. Whether it was my parents, some survivors, or a Crawler...it doesn't really matter. It's been almost three hundred years, even if they were alive they definitely aren't now."

I managed a chuckle. I rarely thought about my family. The only things I really needed or wanted from my home were a few personal items. I didn't have them anymore, obviously, though I did wonder if they were still around somehow...

I shook my head, "Once I was a Crawler, though, things weren't terrible. I just had to stay out of other Crawler's territory, and watch out for people who might have been dangerous. It was much easier than it sounds, because by that point almost all humans had joined a safe zone or vault of some kind, or were small groups travelling as safe as possible. It was only the really bad people I had to watch out for."

He nodded slowly, "But you did have run ins with these people, right? You'd have to."

"Oh absolutely. I never really let on I was Sane when faced with these guys, just that I was smart. Sometimes they took that as a warning, and got out before I did something no other Crawler could. But occasionally...they thought that if they could capture me, I could be a weapon of sorts to them, being smarter than the average Feral. Of course, I wasn't going to let anything like thst happen though."

He nodded once again, going silent. I turned back to the water, rubbing the blood out from my clothing, and letting the red fade as it was swept away by the weak current.