Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

Chapter 50: Massacre And Depth

"How long until we understand? How many more need to die? How can we not all see it? How is it that we have not gone to greater lengths to eradicate our natural enemy?"

-Bethome Meleme

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Silence.

Only silence could truly capture the emotions swirling in the air, many had died tonight, murdered brutally and without any thoughts given to them.

Man at least felt something when killing its own, there was a purpose when man hunted beasts down.

But there was neither feelings, nor a need when an undead took a life, it simply did and would proceed onto the next one without any more thoughts given.

It seemed as though there was no purpose to killing, the corpses they left in their wake were hollow, devoid of meaning, or so the living seemed to think.

Helena and Milo were frozen in place, David had had no final words, only his last, sacrificial action was left as a testament of the man he was, the hit had been instantly fatal, the pain instantly knocking him out, only leaving him a few moments as he silently suffocated.

Helena could only curse herself for not being more forceful when she had tried to convince him to move into the city with her, but David would never leave his fields behind, he had always been intent on breathing his last here.

Milo’s head was empty, he barely had any memories of his time before meeting the somewhat goofy old man, he had been his only parental figure, and he had been a great one, even if, truthfully, their time together had been short.

"Could you help me carry him?" Helena was the first to break the heavy silence, her tone and face distant as put her hand on David’s shoulder, it was already cold.

The warmth had been robbed.

"I’ll take care of it" Milo was similarly disposed, but he felt distinctively sick.

He picked up his foster father, David had been old but strong, yet his body felt so incredibly light, when had he gotten so small and frail?

Helena didn’t need to tell him what to do, he was already aware, David had had the poor habit of constantly speaking of what to do when he died.

He wanted to be buried beside his late wife, frankly, Helena didn’t want him to rest eternally next to her, but she would never be able to bring herself to desecrate her father’s wishes in this matter.

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Deep into the earth, amidst murderous stalagmites and impending stalactites, here too, silence ruled over all, any sound made here, even the slightest, even if incredibly subtle, it would echo, resonate throughout the intertwined caverns, reaching deeper into the earth than any had ever gone.

Or at least, deeper than anyone had ever come back from.

Where the slightest movement of an insect was a cacophony, a loud and wet slapping sound silenced the critters, petrifying them in place.

Bats rose from their deep slumber, flying away in fright at the strange newcomer, the loud sounds were generally rocks breaking off, but this was nothing like it, nor was it the sound of heavy rain.

A scrawny figure, with minuscule, glowing eyes crawled over from a small passageway, clicking its tongue against the inside of its mouth, dark, protruding spots, each much harder and than its pale skin rubbing against the stone as it tentatively moved its disproportionately long arms closer to the thing that had just landed there.

This monster was a curious one, chattering its teeth constantly as it got closer, its vision was incredibly poor, in fact, it was pretty much blind and would suffer immensely by being even grazed by a ray of sunlight.

It could feel the foetid smell, but as a creature that fed on decaying corpses and faeces, it wasn’t shaken by it, even if the smell was much stronger than what it was used to.

It’s curiosity was simply too great to be left unsatisfied, the chattering of its teeth grew more and more rapid, reaching the immobile mass of rot, it just wanted to poke at it, a simple thing, just touch it and see, it was all that it truly desired from the strange thing fallen from above.

Its nailless finger neared the pile, it was still unmoving, it got closer and closer, already imagining how it would feel to push against the rotten mush, but once it reached its mark, it didn’t touch anything.

The pound of putrefaction moved at the last moment before closing in, ensnaring the hand and wrist of the foolish creature.

It shrieked in pain as it tried to pull away, it was digging into its skin and flesh, emanating some sort of oily liquid as it did so, as though it was trying to inject him with venom.

Willing its strength against the stack of flesh debris was very successful, but simply meaningless, some of the rot popped, sending a straight jet of black blood directly at the monster’s face, getting into its nostrils, small eyes and mouth, pretty much forcing its way in like a congregation of disgusting snakes.

The harrowing cries of the monster filled the caves, perhaps some of its kin would come to help.

None would, the cries of one of them was a sign to hide and run, not a call to rally and unite their strength.

The rot dragged itself along the ground, much like a slug, it left a dark trail behind itself as it crawled upon the convulsing monster, following the blood, the rot turned more malleable and made its way inside, through the throat, directly to the stomach area, before bursting with a stream of foul blood.

The monster stopped struggling and laid still as it experienced a fastened process of decomposition in certain areas of its body.

Its corpse lost all of its meagre muscle mass, much of the flesh was lost as well, leaving only a thin layer of skin floating around the bones, its eyes hollowed.

The meat and muscles were replaced by rot as something became engraved on its abdomen, the skeletal face of Loimos, as the remaining half of his skull pushed against the skin from the inside.

The corpse stood up, walking away with a straight back and a calm walk, completely unbefitting of itself.