"EEEURRAGHHHH!!!"
Their screams never get old. I could go deaf, I'd still hear them. Still feel the reverberations ripple across the floor and bounce around the walls like tennis balls.
Id still smell them. Id still feel my Knight-Hunters step into that state of violent evolved inhumanity that only they could access.
Ahmad ran beside me. He was beginning to look just like his brother, Lance. Hard. Cold. Like his armor had become his skin and his unsheathed blade became his hand.
"Let's go!" I led them up the stairs, high ground was man's greatest weapon. Especially in tight spaces. If you can funnel a Husk horde, you can drop bodies like flies.
We hit the stairs hard, skipping three at a time. Lance bounded ahead, cracking the steps in all his six foot seven two hundred and fifty pound glory.
We'd been fighting together so long I understood it was no accident.
I followed his steps, breaking holes in the stairs with splintering snaps and pops that blended with the hordes screams.
They moved so fast they tripped and spun over eachother like a globulous ball of glowing rot. If we were on the street there'd be no running.
Lance pulled me up the last set of steps just as a straggler nearly caught me in it's ten fingered hand.
They wasted no time doing what they knew best.
The Husk's ran up the steps, and they cut them down.
The shadows danced inside the cold and dark abandoned High Rise as they got to work. Every slice— every stab, sent rivulets and arcs of glowing rotted tissue. It splattered against the walls and stayed their like Christmas lights.
Watching Knight-Hunters fight wasn't beautiful. It was nasty— cringeworthy and visceral.
Ahmad and Lance moved at the top of the staircase like they shared a brain. Their dark metallic riot gear and knights armor clinked like a machine switching gears repeatedly. All one working unit.
When Lance went high with his heavy blade, Ahmad was sliding low across the top step with his dagger, ripping open legs and spilling innards on their feet.
They were a near perfect duo. Even before their genetic advancement gifted them something nearly superhuman…..
The gift of psychopathy.
Like surgeons with a scalpel, they cut down the outer bunches of Husks, trimming off the useless and noisy fat of the whole meal laid out before us. The center most numbers were caught in the broken stairs and each others own greed.
Crabs in a bucket.
Which put them in phase two.
The Husks stopped trying fervently to rip into the slaughter machine that was Lance and Ahmad— who now glowed with all the blood and entrails dripping off their gear.
Instead the Husks stood, erect and poised— which came in a variation of ways due to their shapes. Twisted spines, tendril skulls, multiple heads eating each other slowly. But the eyes. They were all the same. Swirling dark pools.
"Ahhh….." They hummed, that familiar noise that instilled an impossible to comprehend fear into humanity.
The fear of nothingness. The fear of what they were. A Husk. An empty shell. Flesh bound by the incomprehensible. Death walking.
But a Knight-Hunter didn't fear death. They didn't have that human ability.
Hence, gift of psychopathy.
Lance and Ahmad stared into the void as if they were observing inanimate objects. The same way they observed everything. Without emotion. With calculation and zero hesitation.
And through meditative practice, drugs, hell body language? They could reverse the effects. Mirror them, even.
Knight-Hunters, the best— to the point of predation.
The Husks recoiled at their gaze, shrieking as they attempted to turn heel and run from the fear of beings with no fear.
Key word, attempted.
While Lance and Ahmad were having all the fun getting a sweat going, I made my way back to the bottom of the stairs.
And unlike them, I was a lady with two Dicks.
Lance and Ahmad took off in a blur as I ran my two Pop Pikes through the closest Husks. They went limp as I plunged past metallic and stone infused skulls to soupy brain tissue.
The others tried their Void Eyes on me.
I'm not a Knight-Hunter, I don't play that.
I aimed my Pop Pike's— Husk corpses attached, and fired.
The boom shook the stairs as flaming shrapnel ripped its way through the line of Husks. The sight was chaotic. Heads exploded, sending bone fragments everywhere and flesh along with it. The bodies stood, headless and in shock like chickens before slowly falling one by one as the dust and gunpowder settled.
Even with the triggers being high up on the pike, the recoil still rumbled up my arms and into my shoulders where it nestled deep and comfortably like it was back home.
Doesn't matter.
Wayne.
I exploded up the stairs, slipping on the giblets and grime of the eviscerated Husk Horde until I reached the next floor.
Nothing. Thankfully I had ears. Two floors up. At least thirty Husks. A few dead men.
I entered the scene and fell in rank with a quick observation of the situation.
I was wrong.
Forty Husks. A few hung from the cieling, scaled and slashing at my men with serrated tongues.
Four of my men were already being consumed— transformed. A few of the others blended in with their human garb.
Wayne, Ahmad and Lance led a tight formation to backdown and control the room.
A few of the Husks broke off to go after me— the assumed easier meal.
"Hey! Keep the Husks with Human gear in working condition! Remove the arms and legs just don't damage the gear!" I yelled as I unsheathed my blade and busted open the dirty windows at my backside with my elbow. Light and snow spilled in.
The closest Husk— humanoid with skin like a Rhino, flinched at the sensory change.
I swung, feeling the tug and snap of tendons and spine as I cleaved its head off.
Before the brute could fall i front kicked its left shoulder, forcing it to spin around. Then I kicked it's backside, sending the thing crashing into the stragglers after me.
With the few seconds of time I bought myself I ran to my downed men.
The most vocal were the most alive. Easy.
In the back corner of the room a woman screamed at the top of her lungs, legs flailing as a fat crusty thing with sloppy jowls and oily black skin took pieces of her arm off. All while whining for it's husband.
"My….SHRIP— my husband…." Another bite, "mmMHelp My husband! Ple—"
I reached the Husk, running my sword through its head and kicking it off my soldier.
"I'm… it bit me. I'm hit…. I'm gonna d—" even in the shadows she was as pale as snow. Shock.
"You're fine, sister! If you don't want to die then fight, ain't no time to be lying here dying." I said while tearing off my poncho and tying it around the top of her arm. Above the grisly bite wounds and spreading black veins.
"W-what are you doing?" The soldier asked as I took her blade and lifted it.
"Saving your life."
The chopping sound that comes with removing a human limb is distinct. Different from Husks. The bone isn't as dense. It's just bone. The flesh isn't crusty and crumbly. It's fatty and soft. It's different.
But her arm came off all the same.
She screamed. She screamed louder than I'd ever heard. Full of life. Full of fight. She'd make it.
I got her up and slung over my shoulder just in time to see a thin leopard print skinned thing with fangs and protruding ribs lunging for me.
Reflexes saved me. I caught it by the throat with my only free hand and stumbled backward in the wake of its immense strength.
"LANCE!"
An object whistled through the air. Splattering as it hit its target.
A throwing knife peeked through the forehead of the Husk that was once snapping at my face.
It's hands loosened from my arm and it fell. When the adrenaline faded I realized how ungodly the bruise would be. Even on my dark skin. Even with my armor that was now cracked.
Risky.
Silence fell. That kind of silence that only comes after battle. Heavy breathing and quiet steps all around. Like everyone's only just beginning to assess the situation with a human mind.
I looked over to find the other three downed Soldiers dead with the Husks corpses on top of them.
Lance stood over one. Nothing on his face as he removed his helmet.
The others looked relatively the same except for one.
"Aunty! You see that throw? I'm too nice with the knives….. ain't that right, Lance?"
Lance didn't reply.
I had the floor.
I stormed over to Wayne. His grin only barely faded as I stood in front of him. He was already taller than me. He sometimes looked more like my brother than an adoptive cousin. Stray snowflakes stuck to his dreadlocks. He had them braided down in corn rows like me. His wide nose scrunched up with his smiles that put his full conniving lips on display. He'd be a lady killer just like Lance one day. If he didn't get himself killed.
I slapped him.
Everyone spun around, still freshly alerted to violence.
"ARE YOU CRAZY?!"
Ahmad tried to hide his chuckle. Id have to slap him later.
"What?!" Wayne grabbed his cheek.
"You are not a man yet! You're sixteen, you do not lead Units of Soldiers twice your age into combat— especially when you have no Intel!"
"Knight-Hunters are men the second they commit—"
I cut him off, rage and worry for a loved one was a terrible mix, "Don't play with me, boy."
My finger hung in his face, "I'm in charge. And you all know Knight-Hunters no longer are promoted by the killing of an enemy Knight or any enemy human. We don't promote human murder and child soldiers anymore. We don't need to. You, don't need to be here. Unnecessary risk."
Wayne threw up his hands once and his smile only barely faded some more, "So you want me holed up in the castle all day. Reading books….. that shits wack, aunty."
"That shit will save your life. If you think training is what, then I'll demote you myself."
"You wouldn't."
"I will if you don't tighten up, boy." I grabbed him by the back of his neck. Lovingly. With intensity because I wanted him to listen.
"You don't know half the shit these things can do. You don't know what's beyond the Five Tundra's. So you aren't ready. Let me make you ready before you….."
Wayne put his hand over mine, "Aunty…. You always speak like you know some secret about Husks… but you never tell us. Why?"
Lance and Ahmad turned as they listened.
The answer was I didn't know. I just had this feeling. A feeling that these things— this pile of filth on the floor was not the worst of our worries.
I patted Wayne's face, "Good work out here."
I looked around the room. "Let me get some Soldiers to carry out these Husks for an investigation back at base. Lance, Ahmad and Wayne, carry the dead."
"That's unnecessary weight." Lance interjected, "If we run into another Horde they'll slow us down. Their blood will surely attract some."
"We're ten minutes from home. And this unnecessary weight is somebodies family. Pick up your bro—"
Light flashed.
I thought it was lightning at first.
But lightning wasn't purple.
And the thunder that followed wasn't a screaming cackle.
And lightning didn't strike sideways.
It came from down the street.
"What the hell was that?!"
"Still want us to carry the bodies?" Lance questioned.
I glanced at them. Eyes glossy and empty. Bloodied. Dead.
"Fuck! Everybody head to the roof, we're going on foot we'll come back for the Horses once the scouts give us the all clear tommorow!"
We dashed out of the building.
The rooftop was covered in ice and dead birds. They crunched under my boots with the added weight of an armless soldier strung over my shoulder.
Grapple hooks curled over the ledge and ran across to the other rooftop, built over wjth wooden planks to create walkways, connecting the rooftops of the many high rises of Tundra Five's Zone Twelve. It was better to be on the roof than on the floor just in case another glacial flood came.
"HAAAh"
Another blast came as we ran across the walkways to the next rooftop.
This one was aimed at us. I was sure of it as a distant skyscraper's midsection was blown to kingdom come by the purple lightning blast. The whole structure slowly tipped over, letting out a metallic scream followed by a heavy boom.
Just like lightning and thunder.
"Keep going don't look back!" I yelled to my soldiers ahead.
But I didn't follow my own rules.
I spared a glance backward.
The dust settled just enough for me to see the highway. The same one me Lance and Ahmad ran across to reach Wayne.
A Horde of Husks moved in a disjointed mess.
At the center the thing screamed another blast, hitting the building we once ran across. Missing seemingly on purpose as it laughed.
It's cloak fluttered in the snow but successfully hid its face the whole time it spit purple hell after them.
I was left with another question as we continued our retreat back to Camelots Keep.
Was that another Husk in human clothing? Or was that my suspicions being made real in a far worse way?