Chapter 13 A Journey through Ruin #2
Right past the village, there was a crashed bus, which must have rolled over several times upon being catapulted from the road.
Lying there on the scorched grass, it looked like an empty cigarette packet that had been crushed and discarded.
There were corpses on the ground in its path, some intact and some broken apart by the impact.
The couple of infected stalking between them looked almost like corpses, too.
One of them had a piece of metal stuck in his abdomen, and the other’s torn clothes were caked with dry blood.
Their shoulders stooped, and they looked drunk, swaying on their feet as if about to pass out.
They appeared sad to me, almost as if deep inside there was a part of their soul untouched by their contagious madness, imprisoned in a body that was no longer its own.
As our bizarre road trip through the Armageddon-like landscape continued, the jeep’s trunk kept filling up with tanks of petrol, cans and packets of food, clothes, medical supplies and hygiene products salvaged from petrol stations on the way.
We reached the l’Ostriconi campsite just as the sun began to set, but we didn’t even come to a full stop before two infected males came running towards us from between the wooden huts and greenery.
“Bonsoir mesdames et messieurs,” Jean-Luc grated and stomped on the gas pedal.
The engine roared angrily. We tore away from the spot and ran over the roamers, the vehicle jumping up and down violently, the wild movement accompanied by loud bangs and nasty crunching sounds.
“One way to do it, I suppose,” I muttered.
Jean-Luc parked the car without turning the engine off. We sat waiting, collectively holding our breaths. But no more infected came our way.
“There were definitely more before.”
“Good, I’m itching for some action.” Einar rubbed his hands together, and I snorted. “Jean-Luc, stay here and keep the motor running.”
The rest of us got out of the car. Olive trees and hawthorns beckoned us with their trembling leaves.
The air was heavy with the smell of burnt rubber and blood of the massacred bodies that lay on the road further away from us, but underneath all that there was a flowery fragrance and the dewy smell of wet dust. A finch sat on a branch nearby, singing its enchanting melody like the ringing of a small bell.
As we walked closer to the huts, we heard growling. I nocked an arrow and lengthened my step.
“Will you dance for me again, trouble?” Einar asked me quietly, and I turned around briefly to register the flirtatious waggle of his eyebrows.
He wore black hiking trousers and a fitted shirt of the same colour, its seams stretching attractively around his broad chest and shoulders. The contrast between his fair hair and the dark fabric was enough to make my heart skip a beat. A large hunting knife and an axe were fastened to his belt.
“Depends. What do I get out of it this time?” I quipped.
“If you two are quite finished, could we please concentrate?” Albert hissed from behind me.
He carried the same equipment as Einar but looked distinctly less at ease. He was pale, and his brown ferret eyes were wide with fear.
“You can go back to the car if you’d like. I’ve got this,” I told him in an attempt at kindness, but he just scowled at me in reply.
“I’m going to draw them out,” I said to Einar, and once he nodded curtly in assent, I yelled from the bottom of my lungs: “Come out, come out, my furious friends! Fresh meat calling!”
Albert whimpered but stood his ground.
They came slowly. All were women and children clad in dirty rags, injured, exhausted and near death, their skin taut and grey, their limbs fractured, and their heads caked with dry blood from wounds.
They sauntered towards us, and I picked them off with ease, nauseated by my own lack of hesitation.
Taking human lives was no longer the terrible, monumental thing it used to be, separated from my existence by a barrier that was no less concrete for being made of invisible morals instead of bricks. It was becoming ... a routine.
Albert remained behind to watch, but Einar marched forward and killed a few furies in his own manner, which generally meant knocking them to the ground and splitting their heads open with an axe, an act that bore a repulsive resemblance to the cracking of a nut.
Whilst the day before it aroused me to watch his determined movements as he wrestled the male cannibal to death, this was different.
The furies were much smaller than he was, feeble and almost helpless, which underlined the practised brutality of his actions.
He wasn’t doing any worse than I was, but my kills were clean and detached, whilst his seemed hands-on and intimate.
And despite telling myself that I didn’t care, that it made no difference, I had to ask myself: who the hell was this man?
We walked on through the maze of little wooden huts on paths made of circular stepping stones, olive and mastic trees forming a whispering canopy over our heads.
All was quiet around us. We occasionally looked inside the huts through the windows and saw the remnants of a lifestyle lost there.
Folded pyjamas on the pillows. Cosmetic supplies scattered around the bathroom sink.
A sizeable onyx vibrator on a gleaming white bedside table.
“I can’t anymore,” I groaned as we got closer to the swimming pool central to the campsite.
I slung my bow across my shoulder and swiftly pressed both hands to my face to stop myself from gagging. The sweetly acrid smell of decay became so thick that it felt like a putrid syrup seeping through my nose and airways, a spray of nauseating taste inside my mouth.
Its primary source was the pool. Or rather, the bloated corpses of a woman and two small children floating in it. The water had a nasty yellow tinge, like chicken broth.
“No injuries. They weren’t infected,” I pointed out, forcing the words out through my clenched teeth. “They likely got trapped in the pool and drowned.”
“Not the best way to go,” Einar remarked stoically, holding the collar of his tee against his own face.
Albert elected to vomit into a large vase of dry oleanders instead of commenting on our macabre discovery.