Decaying Hearts

Chapter 19

    Once we made it to the road, we stayed away from direct light. We stayed on the edge, so we would see ahead and see what was coming. I couldn’t really tell which was better; the uncertainty yet coverage of darkness or the revealing light that surrendered our safety.
    Cars scattered all across the road into town. It would be impossible to drive a vehicle through here. The cars were either empty with doors open wide or home to a body that would never be recovered. With the street lights I could see that some of the bodies moved, heads rolling side to side as though in a struggled sleep. Only we knew they weren’t simply sleeping.
   Some of the corpses staggered in between the cars left askew, their breathing heavy and wheezing. So we split, taking our own path through the wreckage. Robert and Jake took a side of the road each, whilst Lenny and I head through gaps in the middle. Each one od silently took out the teeth walking the streets, clearing them, making our escaped safe – hopefully.
   As we made our way through, something in one of the cars grabbed my unwanted attention. A woman sat dead in the driver’s seat. A gun in her hand a bullet wound in her head. She must have been there a while as maggots crawled and gnawed at her rotting flesh. But It wasn’t her that caught my attention.
   Across the back seat was a series of toys, a rubber duck, a children’s book and a little ring of multi-coloured plastic keys. There was a muffled sound, almost like a groggy cry. Just next to the array of toys was a simply baby seat strapped in, with a blue blanket showing the outline of covered little body. Then the outline moved, little arms outstretched reach for something it couldn’t see.
  I could only picture the desperation in the poor baby’s mind, surviving alone in the back of a car as its mother laid dead in the front seat. It’s slowly starving body nothing but skin pulled tightly over little bones. I could only question how the poor little mite had survived. As I pulled the blanket back, what I saw was much worse than I could imagine.
   Just a small baby sat in the seat, dressed in tiny denim dungarees and a blue stripped top underneath. A dummy clipped to his collar had fallen to hand down his sides. His shirt was stained red and I desperately hope it was splatter from his mother’s suicide.
   The blood was dark and outstretched as if it had pooled out from his body, like a wound, like a bite. And there it was. Across his cheek was the deep indentations of teeth marks; one row of teeth across his cheek and the other circling the back of his ear. His skin was pale, white as snow, and the veins in his arm and neck shone through. His eyes were harsh and... Evil. The colour of a greying sky with what looked like a thin film covering his eyes, making something once so innocent appear like the devil.
    “Kid, watch out!” Lenny called.
   Suddenly I felt hands grab my shoulders and drag me to the ground. I fell on to my back as a corpse pinned me down, teeth snapping only inches away from my face. Dried blood had been wiped across its face and up past its haunted eyes. It was sinister. It was going to eat me.
    Its body was so strong, I struggled to fight back. Decaying hands grabbed hold of my wrists and held me to the tarmac, no matter how hard I tried I could not budge. I tried to kick but only moved the teeth closer to my face. I could smell the rot, the mould growing in the body of the teeth. That was going to be me.
    Panic surged through and I fought and I called for help. The teeth clamping closer and closer to the vein in my neck. This was my fate. I had survived the world alone only to feed the dead to save a group. I would die at least knowing I had given others the chance to live.
   All of a sudden, blood scattered across my face and the corpse went limp. I instantly pulled my face away. It just laid atop od me. It didn’t rip me open with its bare hands of dig its teeth into my flesh. It was dead.
   “Boy, that was lil’ too close for comfort don’t cha’ think?” Lenny huffed with his knife firmly in his hands, crimson dripping from his blade.
    I threw the body off of me and on to the tarmac and scurry backwards on the palms of my hands until my back pressed firmly against the metal of a car. My heart was racing, sweat and blood had gather in the palm of my hands. I could hardly think. I could hardly breathe.
    “Far too close.” I finally said through heavy breaths. I dragged a hefty hand through my hair mechanically just as Lenny held out a hand. I grabbed it and was instantly pulled to my feet.
    Adrenalin lingered within me, my head dizzy and my body ached. It was times like this that I missed those dreaded iron bars of my old life. At least there would have been that security of being hidden away from the horrors that took the world.
    The body at my feet seemed to twitch and convulse, as though the rotten mind was fighting against its final death. I decided to help the bastard out. I rammed my foot into the head and my boot easily broke through the skull. In seconds the body was still. Finally the soul could rest in peace.
    I leaned into the back of car that was the grave of the mother and infant. There I retrieved the toys from the back seat as well as the little blue blanket, careful to avoid the reach of the little nightmare with its reaching claws and violent clenching teeth. The baby was gone and replaced by a monster. He no longer needed the comforts of society, but Rosie’s baby still had a chance and would hopefully live to see the world as it was.
     But there was no time for thoughts to linger on what I hoped would be, there was only time for the now. So we marched forward to the enemy camp, prepared to carry out our mission.