Blackened elongated nails cut through the air inches from my face, dodging the wild swing, I catch the undead's wrist and trip it slightly to get it off balance. With my spare hand, I stab my knife into the old woman's temple, ending the undead's second lease on life.
“I really need a nap, my eyes and body burn,” I mutter, liquefying the area around my blade, allowing me to pull it out of the corpse with ease. “And a shower, I smell like a skunk just shat on me.” Ducking under another undead’s mindless swing, I straighten up, slamming my palm into the young man's chin, tilting his head back before slamming my knife down into his eye and puncturing his now useless brain.
The corpse goes limp but I hold it up by the neck as a middle-aged man lunges towards me with hate-filled eyes and jagged teeth that oozes a thick black liquid. “Hmmm, I wonder if it's some kind of crime to use human corpses as weapons?” The undead thrusts its open maw next to the corpse's head that I was holding up in an effort to rip into my rancid-smelling flesh.
Channelling my liquefying ability into the corpse's head I push the semi-solid slush made of bones and grey matter onto the undead before relinquishing my power and gagging slightly at the aftereffects. The bloodied sludge quickly solidifies on the undead's face effectively wielding its jaw and eyes shut with solidified bone. “It's properly some obscure law somewhere,” I stab the undead in the temple and let both corpses drop to the bloodied floor. “Maybe it was linked with cannibalism, or disturbing a corpse?”
Two more undead shuffle towards me, bringing a cacophony of horrendous growls and grunts with them. They were moving at a noticeably faster speed than the day before but it didn't stop me from taking advantage of their low agility. I shake my head to try and clear the metaphorical cobwebs and get into a beginner's self-defence stance “It's not like laws or much else really matter anyway.”
I perform a basic sweep kick in front of the first undead and channel the liquefying power through my foot and what was left of my boot to liquefy the muddy ground causing the living corpse's foot to sink into the floor and become stuck as it solidified. Due to their strength kicking the legs themselves wouldn't have produced much in the way of results but I could trap them or at the very least slow them down.
With the leading undead immobilised I retrieve a javelin from my inventory and end the foul creatures suffering by stabbing the metallic point into its skull through its left eye. Clear optic fluid dripped onto my improvised spear before blood and brains started to spill out of the empty eye socket as I use my javelin to push the standing corpse backwards and onto its former pack member.
It stumbles for a moment before I penetrate its brain through the eye socket. “Such an obvious weak point for humans to have, we should have evolved something better, like echolocation, although if there are gods maybe we were just made to fail?” I mutter as I wipe my javelin and knife on the corpse's clothes to clean them. I search their pockets and belongings but I don't find anything of use so I head back to the Sky lurkers corpse to eat my fill of the high-powered corpse before putting some of its meat in my inventory and heading off in the direction I believe my home to be.
Lush trees stretch into the sky, their dark green leaves and deep browns contrasting against the pale blue sky and rays of golden sunlight that fall from the heavens. The thick undergrowth rustled with activity creating a symphony of animal sounds and rustling leaves that seemed to calm the mind and heal the spirit. And then there was Jacob. Screaming about being a plastic doll in a plastic doll world at the top of his lungs.
“Life is plastic, It’s fantastic! Ooooo that rock looks familiar, Have I seen you before Mr rock?” I spin around dramatically and point my javelin at it accusingly as if it was the cause of me being lost in the nature reserve and fighting off undead and a few stray highly aggressive mutated animals. Normally this wouldn't be as much of a problem but the nature reserve was so overgrown that none of the paths or landmarks remained and I was slightly delirious from exhaustion.
“Wait a minute, I have seen you before!” I rush over to the small boulder and rip away the overgrown plants to reveal a faded metal plate describing the history of the nature reserve which I have never bothered to truly remember despite reading it while waiting for a date that never showed.
“Alrighty! Now, what means the path should be here!” I dig through the undergrowth and find a once unblemished concrete path now cracked and crumbling with roots pushing up sections to make an uneven mess that definitely would not pass safety regulations. “And that means home is that way!” I point dramatically to what I now know is south.
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“Thank you, Mr Rock, your sacrifice will not be forgotten.” I nod my head in respect towards the inanimate object. “ Now, usually it's a 15-minute walk to get out, but the path is overgrown and I can't melt growing plants because technically they are still alive so that's double the time.” I begin to hobble southwards, using my javelin as a makeshift walking stick to help lessen the load on my weary body. “And we can't forget the murder squirrels, those little bastards are vicious little nature ninjas that I really hope don't have rabies. Plus whatever else didn't run away from the falling sky lurker. Soooooo like an hour? Easy peasy lemon something, something profit?”
I pursue my lips “That's a perfectly normal thing to yell incoherently into the forest in the hopes that my friend with a hive mind will hear me and send help. Hahaha, how the world has changed! Mai you sexy piece of shit hurry up and find me I want to take a nap!” I snort to myself before continuing my song as I limp through the forest “You can brush my hair…”
20 minutes and a very angry duck later I find myself hacking away at a wall of thorns with a machete and yelling nonsense to try and attract Mai’s attention and keep myself awake when finally a small yellow-headed bird lands on a branch and tweets to get my attention as it hops from one foot to another.
“Mia is that you?” I ask the bird like a completely rational person. Sunny gives one sharp tweet in response before taking flight to land on my head. “Thank Wheelman for that, I was running out of songs to sing. Is there another sky lurker coming?” I ask, pausing for a second to allow Sunny to perch on my head properly before I start swinging my machete again.
Another single sharp tweet. “Yay, more tentacle monsters. How many hours away is it?” One tweet, pause, three sharp tweets. “One hour, maybe?” I ask for clarification. A single sharp tweet confirms my translation. I let out a long sigh and start to flood my bloodstream with oxygen for the third time today and grit my teeth in pain. My veins and arteries swell close to bursting, filling my body with energy and pain. My inventory opens as I take out some sky lurker flesh to consume.
The invigorating sensation fills my body with strength at the cost of tearing apart my respiratory and circulation system. With a scream of agony, I start to rip and tear my way through the brambles at a frenzied pace, my skin flushed red with blood and shining from sweat and dried sky lurker blood.
“Are the others hurt?” I ask Sunny in a strained voice. She responds with two sharp tweets. “Good. Are they at home?” Two more sharp tweets. “In the caves?” Two more sharp tweets signifying another negative. I pause for a moment “They’re coming here?” Sunny answers in a single sharp tweet. “We best get moving then,” I grunt out as I attack the wildlife with renewed vigour.
10 minutes pass in relative silence as I hacked away at the never-ending foliage as I tried to ignore the pain and small amount of blood leaking from my mouth.
I pause ‘Is that?’ In the distance, I can hear the now familiar sound of branches breaking and the distinct sound of human voices. “Is that you guys?” I question Sunny but instead of getting a response from the bird perched on my head, I hear Mai calling my name in the distance. ‘Finally!’
After another minute I finally see Noah burst through the undergrowth, the brambles and nettles doing little against his crystalline skin and enhanced strength. “Jacob! You’re alive!” He rushes over and gives me a hug causing Sunny to fly off my head.
‘Oh great, now I'm being touched again.’ my face grimaces slightly but I appreciate the sentiment. Behind him, Ella appears and also rushes over to join the hug but instead of only enforcing physical contact she also starts to heal me.
“Thanks, Ella, I’m going to partially collapse now.” With that I abruptly stop flooding my body with air, causing me to groan and sag like a wilting plant, my eyelids become heavy and my brain starts to become cloudy again. Lucky Noah helps hold me up and Ella continues to heal me. Ava, Sam and Mai all express their relief at finding me alive before Ella asks the question on everyone's mind.
“You look and smell like shit, what happened? We thought you died until Mai saw the Sky lurker start to shake.” Ella asks, crinkling her nose slightly at the smell.
“Can we walk and talk? Another one will be here in roughly 25 minutes” At Mai’s prompting we started to head back to the house so we could finish gathering our things and head down into the caves to escape the Sky lurkers. With a premade path, healing and someone to lean on the rest of the journey was far easier.
Along the way, I described what happened once I was dragged out of the living room’s window and how I managed to kill the monster from the inside. “So long story short I’m even more into vore than I was before, not so much into acid though.” I finish off as we cross over a stone bridge signifying the edge of the nature reserve as the plants have yet to cross the small river separating the greenery and streets beyond.
Mai snorts before adding “We got about 15 minutes until Jacob can explore his Vore fetish again.” Now that we were in the streets we were about 5 minutes before we reached our barricades but luckily most of the undead appear to have gone into the tunnels and caves opening that dot the streets so we only had to deal with a few of the living corpses that Ava managed to trip with her water manipulation before stabbing them in through the eye into the brain with a modified screwdriver. ‘Again with the eyes, glad someone other than Noah and I is actively killing the sorrowful fuckers though.’
We killed a few more before we made it to relative safety with Sam closing the car door we crawled through to get into our closed off area with 10 minutes to spare. Given my current situation Ella and I went into the tunnel that appeared in the dining room and sat against the cold stone wall so that Ella could continue to heal me while the others finished organising the gear we would need to bring with us.
When Mai finally gave the signal everyone came into the dark earthen tunnels with Noah taking the lead with a head torch while Sam was at the back, allowing his enhanced senses to pick up anything coming up behind us. Mai on the other hand had started making a map with the paper and pens we brought along.
After approximately 100 M we deem it safe enough for me to finally rest without the Sky lurkers being able to find us but not too deep that we would find any subterranean creature thirsty for our blood. So without much fuss, I retrieve a pillow and sleeping bag from my inventory and finally close my weary eyes to fall into the blissful abyss of sleep while Ella sits next to me and keeps healing me in intermittent bursts when she is able.
‘I can finally rest’