Corpse Eaters P2

The long green truck clunked and rattled loudly through the ruts and brush that pointed back to their temporary home. The headlights cut a dull path through the black of the night, exposing piles of snow and old machinery. We were silent, not that Niko had much to saw most of the time anyway, my mind working to accept what my eyes had witnesses. All the horrors of the war had left their scars upon my mind, the screaming, the earth churning explosions, the dead, yet there was something different about these monsters. A man can come to terms with what he understands.

“I’ve neve been that close to one” I said out loud without thinking.

Niko let out a gravely chuckle.

“Aye, it gets worse friend” he responded, a smirk cracking his red lips.

It gets worse, a man in a dark uniform missing half of his left arm had once said that to me. He had an old arrogance about him, as if he had been a proud general at one time, reduced to an empty husk that welcomed death just as soon as victory. There were many like him, not always missing arms or legs, you could see it in their eyes, the creases across their brows and around their eyes that made young men appear old. My eyes looked no different I imagined, brown empty pools that had witnessed the worst a man could dream into existence.

I hope that man is sitting back at home next to a warm fire now, his wife serving him a hot meal and maybe even a few little ones running around. The warm gentle thoughts have kept me sane this far, I often think of my own family, that small house, my wife Lana. She sleeps only a few hundred miles from me, but without any fuel nobody is getting just yet, so we wait, deep in the bloodlands, we wait.

The smoke came now followed by a handful of dull lights shining through windows as Yarmin came into sight, no more than a hundred buildings and sheds sat next to the colossus that was the military garage on its south side where we would be entering from. The town appeared cold and unwelcoming, but the residents were kind even with the supply shortages. We had scavenged all day before the hunt and come up with just enough old rations and clean water to cover the floor of the infantry compartment that sat behind us. A few gallons of diesel strapped carefully in, siphoned from an disabled panther, would be just enough to allow us out again tomorrow.

Knobby tires thumped across the frozen ground at the entrance, slowly coming to a halt a few yards from a cobbled together bunker that housed a few men at any given time. A small light began bobbing through the air like a firefly on a warm summer night, when we had visited Lana's father in Italy years ago. my eyes twitched in and out of focus instinctively, trying to find the face of the man that I had met here a dozen times.

“Any luck boys?” a tall lanky man with a beard down to his chest questioned as his boots struck the steel running boards and he pulled himself up to the window.

“Luck? No, but I would not call it bad luck either” Niko responded as he stared down the wide street in front of us.

“Could be worse then, well go on in and unload, ill meet you at the Bigtail in an hour when Igor relieves me” the man said, jumping down and slapping the hood of the truck.

“I like him” I said, smirking at Niko.

“He’s alright” He responded, taping the dash impatiently.

Diesel fumes filled the air once more as the truck lurched forward, slipping on a patch of ice for a few feet over the entrance to Yarmin. The unload would be a disappointment, but it was better than nothing, and it wouldn’t hurt to keep the truck in the garage for a night. A few hours on a generator in a moderately warm building should give the battery enough life for another week.

Niko and I walked slowly down the dirty road that would take us to the center of town, rubbing our hands together to warm them after the cold steel of the provisions we had gathered nipped and burnt them. The stock master had not been noticeably displeased with the meager rations we had brought back, but no doubt expected more. We had not told him of the girl in the snowbank, neither of us in much of a mood for conversation, and the townsfolk had no reason to worry quite yet. Soon though, we would find ourselves in the town hall to tell our tale, that is if the mayor was not already aware of what was happening in the countryside.

It’s unnaturally cold this year I think to myself as I gaze up at the bright silver ball in the sky, thinking of the warm spring breeze that greeted us each morning. Soon these streets would be muddy wet messes instead of frozen ice glazed hazards. Soon then after we could hope for supplies, food and water, wood and steel, maybe if luck was in our favor a truck back home even.

The town center came into view as we rounded a corner, the streets had no names here, not ones we were ever told at least. Seeing the bright lights and warm fire as we did every night the eeriness of the outer city was not lost to me, deep shadows one’s eyes could not pierce, and the stillness that felt quiet but lacked that serene mind soothing quality. Now we were on a concrete road, the buildings more uniform, and a few more windows casting their light out to greet us on our way. This street felt warmer than the reset, untouched by the shells and bodies, if you did not look behind you it was as if you were back home.

As I remember back home being, I had not received a letter in over a year, to my knowledge nobody even knows where to send one. To my knowledge my home may be a ashy smear across the land along with the rest of the small town.

Those thoughts would do me no good now, I need to survive long enough to leave this place and find Lana. Niko looks as lost in thought as I, nearing our destination I speak slowly and quietly.

“What will you do when the trucks come?” I question.

“I suppose I will get on one” he answered after a moment of consideration.

“And go where?” I ask him.

“Wherever it takes me” he said.