A mare to keep

I had been so complacent that morning that I hadn't even noticed my rucksack digging painfully into my spine. I reach the town and meet the first obstacle of many. Any survivors who were foolhardy or just downright stupid enough would take up residence in towns and cities for they were closer to food. Before I tackle the dumpster that straddled the corrugated iron barriers, I zip open a side compartment and ready my trusty hammed in my grubby mitt.

I took care not to cut myself on the prongs of glass that project from the decayed dumpster for the disfigured people would smell the blood and come in their hundreds to feast.

I am just about clear when I hear a deafening whinny. I abandon the caution and thusly rip my calf open on a thick shard of glass. I hurry through my slight limp back to my noble steed. She has been startled by something. I fear one of the wretched corrupted had fancied her as a hearty meal. I follow her pinprick emerald eyes and find a harmless squirrel.

Already, I can hear the townscape ignite with the banshee screams and harrowing howls of the raging corrupted. I wrap my right arm under her chest and join it to my other arm that gently drapes over her poll. I need to calm her down. Such a pain is this timid friend of mine.

A searing pain climbs my leg and ripples up to my jaw. It was the tiniest of scratches, but there again I am a bit of a pansy. I notice I have dropped my hammer in my haste. I back cautiously away and keep my index finger pressed against my closed lips. “Shush. Be quiet Applejack. You know what those things will do.”

She shyly nods and settles onto her haunches. I cannot stress how important silence is in this world. It hides us from both fellow survivor and ravaged corrupted. I creep back to her side. She wearily turns her head and nibbles affectionately at my fingernail. I stroke the length of her long, platted mane and fiddle briefly with the brilliant red ribbon that ties the end and forms the neat little bunch.

I wince as I crouch to look deep into her fearful, flighty eyes. She sneezes all over my face before snorting loudly as she laughs at my snotty short black hair. She turns her head away and gazes apprehensively towards a small pillbox construction sitting at the foot of yet another hill. At his angle, the scintillating light highlights her cute freckled cheek perfectly.

I shrug my near empty rucksack off and unclip the main compartment. I gingerly grasp the bear trap from inside and tread carefully as I once more block Applejack’s fearful vision. I place the trap. I trust her instincts better than I trust my own.

She tilts her head up to look at me and pulls a mischievous grin. "Andy, I eat nothing but grass and hay. What if I, you know, have to fart?”

I playfully return to my rucksack and benignly glance into the innards. “We could always stuff a cork up there, if you think that would help.” I jab.

She lets out a demure nicker and munches the tallish grass in front of her. Not much grows anymore.

I shimmy back into the rucksack straps and scratch at the stubble on my chin. I turn back to her as I leave the haven of trees. “Don’t worry; I’ll be back in a jiffy.” I promise and couple with a cheeky wink.

Amid the ashen stacks of burned wood and charred land, the rusty old hammer is easy to find. I snatch it up and promptly gambol over the dumpster. I land on the other side and am immediately foiled by my haste.

I can hear the awful corrupted bleeding through the cracks in the fissure-filled town. I get as far as a shattered glass window before I collapse. I seethe as I grasp a pernicious shard of glass that is jutting out from my right knee. How foolish I had become. The noise was not for my startled mare, but the blood that hemorrhaged from me and formed tantalising puddles on the fissured asphalt street.

Thankfully, the shard had not cut me too deep. I pinch the blade where it is bluntest and drag it out of its patella tomb. I nearly faint as the spearing sensation courses up my spine. I galumph through the cumbering window display and negotiate with a freaky mannequin that poses gaily therein. After the slight altercation, I slip from the window ledge and end up sandwiched between a pair of slanted shelves.

I briefly survey the store for anything resembling food, a crushed or warped tin perhaps, anything would suffice. I am to leave empty-handed. I am on my way out when I hear something smash in the backrooms of the shop. I pause and firmly hold my hammer, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

I approach the counter and peer over in some ill-conceived hope I would find something. Once more there are empty shelves and empty table tops. A shadow glides around the corner and something turns the handle. I back away with fright as awful screams split through my ears. The door busts open and a duo of the corrupted launch from the darkness it had shielded me from.

The portly shop owner has trouble vaulting the counter whilst his mere twig of a wife overcame the trifle with no issue. I am woefully underequipped. The hammer I wield is more for realigning Applejack’s shoes than dealing with the corrupted mobiles.

Nevertheless, it seems to me as if the door they had come from was locked. It may be a long shot, but locked doors usually brought the promise of food. The curse that vexes these people is translated through sweat. I have devised a simple rule for dealing with them, don’t.

The first symptoms the victim suffers are the loss of both hearing and hair. But they thirst for blood, they pine for it. I am a veritable vending machine at this point for my knee is gushing and my calf is seeping. The scantly haired corrupt woman lunges for my throat but I am too quick.

I take a clumsy step up to the window display before driving my blacksmith’s hammer through the bare cap of her skull. She spits out a wad of sanguineous fluid from her maw and her eyes turn back into her head. She collapses, dead. The best means to dispatch the corrupted was to destroy the skull. The anger was caused by the inflamed amygdala, a side effect of the mystery cure.

I taste something metallic as a warm droplet slides to the back of my throat. I retch at the horrid sensation and firmly grip the blacksmith's hammer.

I try to prise the head free of the skull as the portly husband bumbles towards me. He can scarcely squeeze through the narrow aisle. He brushes the empty wrappers and dusty cobwebs from the sides as he closes in on me. As he plods his maw releases great daubs of blood and saliva. I clean the hammer from the dented skull and feebly swing it into the assailing corrupted’s temple.

As soon as I deliver the pathetic swing I knew it would not be enough. I climb back onto the window display and snap the arm from the mannequin. From what I can remember of anatomy, eyes are pretty vulnerable. I shaft the appendage forward and send the flat of the fibreglass hand straight through the corrupted’s eye.

He joins his wife on the floor in a sort of touching reunion. I slip from the window ledge and my naked face nearly touches the hairy, flabby arm of the male corrupted. I jerk my head away and respectfully step over the victims of the so called march of progress.

I notice something peeking out of the man’s back pocket, a revolver. I snatch it with my fingerless gloved hand and continue towards the backroom. I wait at the aperture and whisper into the gauze of pitch blackness. “Hello? Is anyone in there?”

I feel foolish, probably speaking to the corrupted children of the shop. I have never fired a gun before. Back to my forgetfulness, I have left my torch back in my shack.

I feel around the dank nothingness until my fingers run across something cold and metallic. I dig my nails into various slots and holds until finally something opens. I lean down and smell the contents but alas there is nothing in it. Either that or it is a tin full of oats or wheat or something like that. In my sensory deprivation, I can smell the fetidly rotting bodies of the corrupt. They are doomed to be forever decomposing.

I conceal the six-shooter in the seat of my raggedy jeans before skipping over the fallen corrupted and sliding through the sunnily disposed display set.

Once out in the street I smell something entirely different to the stench of decay. It smells almost like a freshly baked pie, right out of the oven. I jog along with a far more apparent limp until I reach a fork in the road. In one direction, I hear the discontented public screaming and howling. I opt to avoid the corrupted when I can and start down a narrow alleyway.

I continue in my clumsy fashion, my foot triggers something. Once more my feet betray me. I hear a whip crack and I am helplessly hoisted upside down into the air. My momentum carries my weighty head into a brick wall and knocks my lights clean out.