Red Wolf

Shaun Elliot. That was his name, and tonight, he was going to die.

He trudged north through the cold winter wind, away from the south, where the infection had already besieged authority’s control.

Its impact on society was desecrating. It was survival of the fittest for who remained, kill or be killed, a world without rules. Scientists, the ones who claimed to understand the infection, failed to find a cure. Most of them were dead by this point, either by starvation, by another man’s hand, or by that of the infection itself, and for the few dozen scientists who were left, scattered across the world in various countries, they fled their labs before even coming close to a cure.

There was no perceivable hope.

As time went on, it became more and more apparent that the infection could wipe out the entire human population, unless something were to change.

Chances of that thus far, were very slim.

To seek refuge, he went elsewhere, somewhere far from the major cities, the high desert of Albuquerque.

He knew that it wouldn’t be easy, but without a doubt, knew also, that it would be safer than the city, if anywhere really was anymore.

Whatever he may face in the desert couldn’t be worse than what had him running there in the beginning. Those were the things that he could not face, the things that he didn’t want to remember, yet were always there, day and night to haunt him.

He just wanted to start over, as if any of this had never happened, but he couldn’t.

It didn’t work that way.

How could he start over, if these occurrences and their sudden intervention with his life have only just begun to take course?

He could only try.

Shaun was not alone as he walked. There were a few with him, strangers who took the same route as he did, upon highway eighty-eight.

They carried their steps down the snowy road in dead silence. The whistle of the wind was the only sound preventing absolute silence. It took a while until somebody did speak.

‘Don’t fall behind. It’s hard to see through the storm’

‘No shit’ another voice said.

‘Does anybody have a light?’

Shaun pulled out a red lighter from his jacket pocket and waved his hand up in the air as he held it.

‘Yeah, over here’

The man in need acknowledged Shaun’s call, and dashed over through night’s cold air, as his matted beard collected snow, and his jacket hoodie hid the rest of his face, except for solemn brown eyes, staring at Shaun with obvious contentment.

‘Thank you’ he said, as he approached, holding his oversized coat tightly around his shoulders.

Shaun gave him the lighter.

The man flicked it on, covering its delicate flame with his hand to light a cigarette that dangled from his mouth. Amazingly, he got it on the first attempt. The wind made it nearly impossible to light a cigarette.

Handing back Shaun’s lighter, the man now seemed relaxed, as he took in a heavy drag of his cigarette.

The tip of it lit orange, like a burning furnace.

‘Hurry up’ a voice shouted, from ahead the road, ‘nobody’s coming back if youse fall behind’

The group was beginning to separate from each other, into twos, which was never safe in these circumstances.

Shaun and the man heard and followed.

‘So what is your name?’

‘Shaun. What’s yours?’

‘Chris’

The whistle of the wind made it difficult for both men to hear each other speak.

As he watched Chris smoke his cigarette, with such enthusiasm, that it was as if it were the last one he was ever going to have, Shaun decided to light one as well. He only had three left, from the ones he could salvage.

‘So are you from around here?’

‘I, um…’ Chris paused, seeming to lose his words.

‘I was only here to visit family’

‘I’m sure it would have been nice to see them’

‘No, not really’

Shaun didn’t answer right away, until something compelled him finally, to ask what Chris had meant.

The way he asked him, was quite dubious.

He then thought maybe it wasn’t right to ask in the first place.

After all, it wasn’t even his business.

In times like this, most didn’t want to talk about their daily lives. To survive, you had to be concerned about what occurred in the present and the present only.

Shaun smoked his cigarette, waiting for an answer. Chris looked back at him, before setting his sights down to the road, the snowy white road, in profound deep thought about something that must have been of great importance to him.

‘Well’ he said, his voice starting to change, his heavy steps slow on the snow beneath him.

‘Before I headed down, I tried to call my parents; I even tried calling my daughter’s mobile after there was no answer on the home phone. She was staying up there with them’

Shaun let Chris continue.

‘When I got here, I found them. They weren’t the same. They were dead, all dead, but not really dead. Still alive’

He said it with a smile, a wretched smile that looked as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying. He even began to laugh to himself.

Shaun stopped in his place, just shocked, processing what he had just heard.

And that smile.

They were infected. They had to have been, according to what Chris was saying about them.

Shaun hadn’t lost anybody yet. He didn’t really have anyone to lose. Even though he’d seen terrible things happen to people, even seen people doing terrible things to other people, none of it was ever involved with anybody he knew.

They were both walking now without speaking, smoking their cigarettes, when something beside them, in the darkness to their left, made a sound.

‘Did you hear that?’ Shaun said, staring at Chris, before looking over towards the direction it came from.

Chris didn’t answer, but stared on into the darkened field.

He could see something that Shaun couldn’t.

What if it was somebody that was infected? Shaun questioned, not speaking aloud, just thinking that to himself.

He couldn’t help but think these things.

It was instinctual, instinctual to be afraid of what was not understood.

Shaun felt like running to the rest of the group ahead, a pack mentality.

Suddenly there was another sound, closer than the last one, a stiff and feral snarl.

Shaun dropped his cigarette and began yanking at Chris’s arm.

‘We need to go’ he urged, again and again, pulling harder at Chris’s arm, and then there was that snarl again.

Shaun was shaking him violently now.

Chris wouldn’t respond. The muscles of his arm felt tense as Shaun held his bicep. He was too entranced to move, too mesmerized to acknowledge anything else that was going on around him.

Shaun’s grip did not faze him, by even a minority.

The snarling… There were several mouths doing it now, overlapping each other, growing more savage.

I can’t wait any longer.

Shaun let go of Chris’s arm and bolted.

Adrenalin surged through him, as he heard the frantic beat of his heart inside his skull, like a loud, thundering drum, drumming over the thump, thump, thump, of his panicked footsteps below.

He was running towards the rest of the group, who still hadn’t noticed what was happening. They were so far away. He was afraid and in desperate need. He began to shout.

Nobody could hear him.

His first shout wasn’t even a word.

For a moment, Shaun was too disoriented to even form words.

He kept on, as his lungs began to struggle. He could feel them pumping, working hard to find oxygen coarsely beneath his rib cage.

He shouted the word ‘Help’, as loud as he could.

This only took more breath away from him. He started to gasp cripplingly.

From afar, they rushed towards him; faint black figures pacing forward, four of them in the distance that couldn’t yet be made out by Shaun with very much detail.

Regardless of that, although he wasn’t yet safe, nowhere even close, he began to settle, after establishing the fact that he wasn’t going to face this alone.

When the group approached, Shaun fell to his knees, gasping for breath with his head hanging down, arms slouched and sunken as if boneless, holding almost no energy left to go on.

He stared at the snowy white road under him, trembling, whilst still breathing heavy.

I should have waited... I could have waited… I didn’t wait...Why didn’t I wait? Coward…Spineless…What was in the dark?

His hands began to shake uncontrollably. Shaun heard one of the men from the group whisper, ‘is he infected?’

‘Hey! What’s wrong?’ another voice shouted. It was being shouted at Shaun.

‘There’s something in the dark. It’s following us’

Shaun’s words were wobbled and unsteady, resisted to even be kept together.

‘What the fuck do you mean?’ one of the men yelled. He began to curse to himself.

Shaun looked up at them.

The angry man was big, easily more than six foot, broad shouldered with a prominent posture, his hair short and dark, carrying also, a thick brow above a pair of sombre blue eyes.

He held a double barrel in his left hand.

‘I was with this other guy, Chris, we were walking. We heard a sound. It was coming from beside the road. We couldn’t see what it was. I panicked and ran. He wouldn’t come with me. I told him to, but he wouldn’t listen. He’s still back there’

These four men who knew each other already by the looks of things, thought amongst themselves for a moment, escaping into their own little thought-bound worlds. They were thinking up all types of menacing possibilities. You could tell by just observing all four of their faces.

‘We have to leave him’ the angry man said.

‘What? Leave who?’ Shaun asked.

‘The guy back there’

‘We can’t’ Shaun retorted, stepping up to his feet, his lungs finally starting to work like they should again.

The angry man stared at Shaun, before proceeding to walk over, holding his double barrel with two hands, as if ready to use it, making it look like a tiny BB gun behind his overwhelming size and lack of effort to even carry it.

He wasn’t a fat man, nor muscly, just big, in quite a literal sense.

He stopped in front of Shaun, towering over him with his massive build, a hulk of a man, glaring sharply without once looking away.

‘Then you go get him’ he said, still glaring at Shaun.

Shaun went to speak, but then became reluctant to even dare oppose this man.

He didn’t say a word.

He couldn’t say a word.

His tongue felt tied like a knot.

Shaun stared down at his own feet, as the angry man’s sharp shadow loomed over him.

He couldn’t even look this man in the face, without having to quickly look down at his own feet again.

He was intimidated, as well as belittled by this man’s threatening presence. He felt insignificant. Shaun knew that this man standing in front of him, who may have once held some shred of humanity in the quieter time we called the past, was now no more than a cunning brute, a now selfish kind of survivor, ready to do whatever it took to keep himself out of jeopardy, and if that meant leaving one or two people behind, according to this man’s ruthless code of self-moral conduct, it would be the right thing to do in order to stay alive, only to live another day, and be willing to do it again.

Everybody stood still. It felt like time did as well. Few of the men were hungry, most also callous with fear towards the unknown threat that faced them.

Somebody finally spoke. ‘We haven’t exactly got time to think about this, so what are we doing?’

The group looked at Shaun, before looking back amongst each other.

‘We leave’

The group began to move, not quite walking, not quite running, just moving fast while still keeping cautious of what they knew faced them.

Shaun followed from a short distance behind.

As he did so, he began to wonder, why didn’t the group just do this from the beginning? Stay together and be aware. Instead we were foolish, choosing to part into small fractions and converse unnecessarily. Have we forgotten what the circumstances were, what brought each of us out here to do this in the first place?

Perhaps we have.

Shaun started to grow nauseous.

He knew what was happening. He was going into shock. His feet suddenly felt heavy, while his legs grew sorer after every struggled step he made forward. He was starting to fall far from the group.

They hadn’t noticed that he was falling behind, so they weren’t waiting.

The pain was restricting his ability to keep going. It felt as if his calf muscles were being violently twisted from the inside. He had to stop and heave. He was about to vomit.

For a moment he stopped, before something… something from behind him…both unseen and unheard on approach, knocked him to the ground.

It all happened so quickly. There was no time for Shaun to even react. He suddenly wasn’t nauseous anymore.

He hit the snowy road with crippling force, such a force that it was as if his bones began to shake on the crude impact.

He lay there gasping, dazed by the pain that he was forced to endure from the fall.

He struggled to get up, managing to reach halfway point, but was pushed back down again, by something short, yet lean and heavy. He landed on his stomach this time, winded, wavering his arms and legs like a fish out of water. I’m a dead man, he thought. I’m a dead man…

Shaun tried to stretch his head backwards to focus on his left arm. He could still feel the solid weight and pressure of an unknown force, keeping his whole body heavily pinned down from that spot of his body.

He was finally able to stretch his head far enough to see what it was that had him. To his fright and confusion, he saw the face of a wolf, a Mexican grey wolf, a breed of deadly lobos, wild and hungry, gritting its bloodstained teeth in a feral grimace, as it leaned over Shaun’s arm. It began to growl ominously, a deep sort of gargle, staring so deep into Shaun’s eyes, that it was as if the beast could see right through him, into another place entirely. This wolf… its eyes were different to any other. They were a maroon red.

The stains of blood over its yellow teeth were stamps of its previous prey. Shaun froze in fear, paralysed, then the thought crossed him, that he might die tonight, right here, right now, staring into the eyes of a wolf.

Die with no pride? He questioned.

I can’t let it happen this way…not like this.

With everything he had in him, he hauled his right arm over his shoulders, towards the wolf’s head. His elbow struck the beast in its wet black snout.

The wolf reacted to the blow. It began to pant from its nostrils, while twitching its head in violent spasms.

Shaun struggled to get his other arm loose while this all went on. He didn’t have long.

As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get free.

‘Shit, c’mon’ he hissed.

Then somehow, after one last miraculous tug from under the wolf’s belly, he was.

Rising to his feet, he couldn’t help but peer at the wolf one last time, the deep tone of brownish-red that was embedded into its thick grey coat of fur.

The wolf was recovered from its infliction, glaring at Shaun again, with those piercing red eyes. The longer Shaun stared into them, the more horrible and unnatural they seemed to manifest and become. He tried to look away from them, but he couldn’t. The beast wanted blood, and it wanted Shaun’s. It began to froth white foam from its mouth, thick lathers that trickled down from the gaps between its fangs and dripped off of its chin. The wolf then made a sound, a sound that was… unearthly, manipulated.

It was vile, disturbed in a way that couldn’t be described.

This wasn’t the sound of a wolf.

It was something else.

‘Get out of the way’ a voice suddenly shouted.

Shaun turned around, to see the man that he spoke to before, peering down his double barrel shotgun with a squinted eye.

He was aiming at the wolf.

Shaun quickly stepped aside, watching as the man clicked back the hammer of his shotgun. He did it in such a way that was military class.

The wolf went to lunge, before the man took a shot. Over the shot, you could hear the scampering of several pairs of feet in the distance.

It was the rest of the wolf pack, fleeing in fear.

The wolf that remained was wounded, its chest ripped and torn viciously by buck shell. It lay face down, not moving, bleeding out.

It was a clean hit.

‘Is it dead?’ Shaun asked the man.

Without speaking, the man shot the wolf again, this time in the head. As the shell made impact, a dash of flesh and gore sprayed Shaun across the face.

He could taste it, the pungent copper taste of blood.

The man was suddenly laughing.

Shaun began to pitilessly slag.

This made the man cackle even harder.

Something else was in his mouth as well, something solid.

He spat whatever it was, out onto the road.

It was only small, pale in colour. It didn’t matter to him, what it was.

Shaun glared at the man with a filthy look.

His nerves felt chaotic.

The taste in his mouth was still there. Shaun felt like striking this sick man in the head, taking a swing at his deranged smile.

What a degenerate, he thought, watching as the man wiped tears from his face, recovering from his laughter with no evident care to be had.

No respect for the animal, the dead, anything.

They walked for another hour, before coming to a stop near a cave.

It was a miracle that nobody else had already claimed it by now.

It was the perfect spot to try and manage. Hidden and secluded.

For the first time in a long time, Shaun felt secure.

The only thing that came between him and total solace was who he was forced to travel with.

They were strangers with no apparent intrigue, void also, of any legitimate concern for one another.

None of them had even mentioned Chris, whose whereabouts were still unknown.

They all looked the same as well, no sense of diversity in character between any of them.

They were all about the same height, tall and stocky, rough-skinned, with dark hair, wearing thick winter coats and steel toed boots. They were each carrying a weapon, as well as traveller backpacks. They looked like soldiers, soldiers who were ready for this place, this place that the world has become.

Shaun knew nothing else about these men, and he didn’t care to, either.

After a brief, but thorough search of the area, they made up a camp inside the cave, as well as a fire to keep warm; using Shaun’s lighter to get it lit. Starting a fire inside the cave was easy, due to their being no draft inside to even touch it.

The cave was still.

Shaun chose not to speak to anybody for the rest of the evening.

He didn’t even have any form of bedding.

All of the others happened to have sleeping bags.

How am I going to keep warm when the fire dies? He thought.

Shaun didn’t feel like asking any of the others for a spare one.

He watched them around the fire, murmuring about something that Shaun couldn’t hear from where he sat.

He sat near the cave’s entrance.

He was now peering out of it, wondering if Chris was alive, and if by some odd chance, he would suddenly appear.

He didn’t know Chris for long, but he knew him long enough to wonder about where he was, wonder if the wolves had got him.

‘Hey, aren’t you cold over there?’

Shaun turned his head towards the voice.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Are you cold?’

Shaun didn’t respond.

‘You must be. Come by the fire’

Although reluctant, the man’s encouragement led Shaun to do so.

When he approached, the rest of the men didn’t really establish his presence, even the one who killed the wolf. The only one who was really paying attention to him was the one who spoke.

Before Shaun sat down, he could already feel as he stepped closer, the flame’s pleasant warmth touch his skin.

The night was beginning to get even colder, which meant that the flame was becoming more and more dependable by the hour, sacred almost.

‘Go ahead, sit down’

Shaun did, and when he did, the other men then looked at him.

Cold stares.

Shaun had nothing to say. He raised his hands up above the fire.

‘I’m Tony’ the man said, watching him.

‘Shaun’

Both men were stubborn to continue the conversation.

‘Not very talkative, huh?’

‘Not tonight’ Shaun said.

As Shaun kept his hands warm, he stared at the wolf killer.

‘So what happened back there?’ Tony finally asked.

He seemed to have noticed Shaun’s gaze.

‘Because I didn’t see a thing, nothing. I only heard the shot’

He was exchanging his sights between Shaun and the wolf killer as he spoke.

‘Killed a wolf’

‘And what, that’s it, Dwight?’

The wolf killer nodded agreeably, sharpening a bowie knife on a rock beside him. His name was Dwight. Shaun knew that now.

‘You’re both forgetting about something’ Shaun then said, pausing before he continued.

‘There’s still someone out there’

‘Yeah? And they’re probably dead by now. I don’t like his chances with a pack of fucking wolves’ Dwight said.

‘Did you see a body?’ Tony asked.

‘No, and I’m not looking for one either’

Dwight was still sharpening his bowie knife.

Chris’s whereabouts seemed to be a thing of the past to him.

‘I’m taking a piss’ one of the other men said.

The other man got up and followed him as well.

It was now just Tony, Dwight, and Shaun, together inside the cave.

‘Here’ Tony said, digging into his traveller backpack.

He pulled out a pillow and wool blanket.

‘Take these. I don’t need them’

He showed them to Shaun.

Shaun didn’t really respond to the gesture.

‘You’ve got nothing. You’ll freeze, otherwise’

‘Stop pampering this asshole. We hardly know him’ Dwight cursed.

Tony ignored him.

Dwight rolled his eyes, still sharpening that bowie knife.

Whenever Shaun looked at the tip of it, he felt uneasy.

‘So here. Take them’

Shaun stared at Tony for a moment, thinking to himself that he was wrong about this group, or at least a majority of its members. These people weren’t all bad.

He took the pillow and blanket off of Tony’s hands.

‘Thanks’ he said.

‘Thank you, actually. That blanket puts weight on my back. The sleeping bag is heavy enough to carry on its own’

Shaun stood up to arrange his blanket.

Suddenly, there was the sound of fast moving footsteps. They were coming from the end of the cave.

It was one of the men who had gone out before. He had his gun drawn, but why?

‘What’s wrong?’ Tony asked.

‘I lost John’

Nobody said anything for a moment.

‘Lost him?’ Shaun then asked, putting down the blanket.

‘Something pulled him down into the canyon’

‘What, another wolf?’ Dwight said, sounding somewhat sarcastic.

‘It wasn’t a wolf’

‘Then what was it?’

The man looked over everybody hesitantly, as if they were judges and he was a man on trial.

‘I didn’t see what it was’

‘Then how do you know that there was anything at all?’

Dwight rose to his feet, spinning the bowie knife in one hand.

‘He could have just fell’

‘He didn’t fucking fall’ the man screamed. His trigger finger looked itchy.

‘He was pulled down’

‘Calm down’ Tony pleaded.

‘I believe what you’re saying. I think we should go look’

‘Brilliant idea’ Dwight said, mocking Tony.

‘Well what do you suggest, then?’ Shaun said.

‘I don’t have a suggestion’

‘Well then it’s final. We go look’ Tony concluded.

Dwight glared at Shaun. Shaun just glared back. Tony knelled down to the ground to pick up his rifle, and then got up to say something to the other man.

‘Dylan’

He swayed his head towards Shaun while speaking.

‘Give him your spare gun’

The man raised his jacket to reveal an automatic pistol buried in the side of his pants.

He pulled it out and threw it to Shaun.

‘I hope you know how to use it’ Dylan said as Shaun caught it.

‘I’ll manage’

Everybody began to move towards the outside.

They were nearing the entrance, when a coughing spasm suddenly came over Shaun. He had to stop and slouch down for a moment.

‘Hey, are you alright?’ Tony said.

Shaun couldn’t answer. The spasm wouldn’t let up. Tears ran down his now red face.

Without meaning to, he dropped the gun to the ground.

Shaun wrapped his hands around his throat, trying to find relief. The cough was sharp and painful, the type of cough that even made your muscles ache.

‘Are you choking?’

Shaun waved his hand at Tony to say that he wasn’t.

The rest of the men looked at each other, unsure what to do.

‘Dwight and I will go look. You stay here’ Tony said to Dylan. As the two of them left, Shaun crept up next to the fire, his head feeling weightless, still coughing.

When he quickly shoved his blanket under his head and lay, the spasm started to ease.

But although the coughing was starting to subside, his vision was spinning.

The roof of the cave was doing laps. It felt like he was drunk.

He then noticed that he couldn’t feel the warmth of the flame anymore, nothing, as if the flame wasn’t even there. He was only a meter away, not even, and yet he couldn’t feel the flame against him?

Something was wrong.

Shaun looked up at Dylan, pacing back and forth like a yoyo, still holding his rifle like before.

His thoughts were clearly in another place. He began to mumble to himself. Shaun couldn’t make out the words.

‘Hey. What are you saying over there?’

Dylan ignored him, only to continue pacing, mumbling what seemed to be incoherent speech.

Dylan then paused, peering over at the cave entrance for a few seconds, before staring down at his rifle.

Shaun watched in horror, as Dylan stuck the barrel in his own mouth.

‘Wait? Don’t!’

It was too late.

Dylan had already pulled the trigger, shooting himself through the back of the head, dead before even hitting the ground. The shot made Shaun’s ears pop, and then ring. As he stared at Dylan’s body, focusing mainly on the nerves that still twitched in the left foot, his mind felt frenzied, no idea what to think, what to feel, watching that twitching foot. Shaun’s psyche was not ready for this.

The exit wound was a mess. The rim of it was bordered by cracked skull, as the centre held nothing but shredded brain matter.

Shaun had to look away.

His eyes grew heavy as he stared at the roof again. They then grew heavier. Heavier now…

Shaun opened his eyes as Tony and Dwight returned. His sight was not twenty-twenty however. Tony and Dwight noticed the body upon approach.

They then looked over at Shaun.

‘What happened here?’ Tony exclaimed, shocked and in a panic.

Shaun tried to respond.

Tony was turning his head back and forth, between the body and Shaun who still lay beside the fire.

‘Did you do it?’

Shaun shook his head.

He coughed and cleared his throat, and then spoke.

‘He did it to himself’

Tony stepped forward, and then stopped again. His eyes suddenly widened. He was trying to reach for something in his back. He let go of his rifle. Something was happening, something damaging and brutal.

Shaun’s vision was poor, hindering him from seeing what exactly.

He tried to focus, able to make out a figure behind him that was causing some sort of disaster. It was Dwight.

He was doing something to Tony, and he proceeded with it. Blood streamed out the sides of Tony’s mouth, before Dwight was done with whatever he was doing.

He let Tony drop beside the other body, revealing a bloodied bowie knife in his hand, the one that he was sharpening earlier, bloodied down to the handle.

Dwight used his sleeve to wipe away the blood.

‘You see, most people would usually stab right through the body, making the end of the knife come straight out the other side. I prefer to go in at an upward angle. Catch all the guts’

‘Tony was a softie, only knew him for about five weeks. I stuck with him because there was a group. Group’s gone now. So it’s time for me to move on’

After putting away his knife, he began to gather the other men’s bags that sat around the other side of the fire.

‘All mine for the keep’ Dwight remarked.

‘It’s a shame you know? If you didn’t drag us all down, back on the road, we’d probably all still be here. You’d still be able to be here a little while longer as well. I doubt that you have long left, the way you’re going. You look like shit’ Dwight said.

Shaun reached for the pistol that was concealed under him.

‘I suppose I’ll be leaving now’

As soon as Dwight turned his back, with a small ounce of strength left, Shaun sat up, aimed the pistol, and pulled the trigger, clicking, clicking, but no bang. The pistol wasn’t working.

Dwight heard the clicking and quickly turned back around. He ceased Shaun’s hand against the ground with his foot, pushing down harder until Shaun let go of the pistol.

‘If you were smart enough to pull back the hammer when you had to, you would have got me’

He crouched down and snatched the pistol away from Shaun, and then aimed it at him.

‘Should I do it, just end it all for you, right here, right now?’

He pulled back the hammer.

‘No I won’t. But I will make things harder’

He aimed down and shot, burying a 9mm slug into Shaun’s thigh.

Shaun shrieked and grabbed hold of the fresh wound. He could feel the slug, sitting between torn flesh. An intense pain raced through his entire limb, aching, stinging, everything, pure agony.

Dwight watched, laughing. He holstered the pistol into his pants and left the cave, leaving Shaun behind with nothing except a blanket.

Shaun watched the hole in his leg flow red.

‘I’ll tear out your fucking heart’ Shaun screamed.

‘Good luck with that’

And then, Dwight was gone.

Shaun closed his eyes, attempting to block out the pain, but he couldn’t. He knew that it was impossible.

He stared at his bloodstained hands sitting over the wound, when something unlikely started to occur.

The pain in his leg was fading.

There was something shifting inside of Shaun. He could feel it, a strange swaying nausea inside of his chest. He began to feel numb all over, but not in an alarming sense. It was a pleasant numbness.

The pain was almost totally gone from his leg now, none remaining but a faint pinch.

Although there was almost no pain left by this point, he was still bleeding out, yet he didn’t physically feel that anything was wrong.

‘What’s happening to me?’

Shaun inched his way up to his feet. His leg felt stiff, like pins and needles, but then after a short time, the feeling went away. He peered into the fire, mesmerized, swept by the way it danced. His body became euphoric.

Shaun smiled and clenched his fists, succumbing to whatever had taken hold of him.

He travelled through his thoughts as if on an electrode highway, remembering the day, the night, the city and how it became hell. He then remembered the wolf. He thought about its eyes, its red eyes.

Shaun swallowed its blood. He still remembered the taste.

He looked away from the fire and spotted a broken mirror on the ground. Perhaps it was left behind by Dwight unintentionally.

Shaun picked it up. He looked into it to see his reflection, hidden and distorted beneath its many cracks. It had been so long since he looked into a mirror last, that he began to forget his own face.

This moment for him was exceptional, meant more to him than it did to most.

But then suddenly, he saw something that made him forget about all of that. It was on the mirror, in his reflection.

His eyes, cast red like the wolves.

Shaun’s stomach dropped, like an anchor had been thrown down into it.

Am I dreaming?

He hoped that he was, although he knew deep down that he wasn’t. He saw no point to dwell in denial. He rolled up his jacket sleeves and raised his wrists above the fire, watching his skin char away and swelter, turn black and raw, layer by layer until the fire had reached close to the bone. The flame’s heat and infliction were both absent.

Shaun could feel it happening, everything, could even smell himself cooking, but all without the sensation of heat or pain.

I have awoken to become what I tried to escape.

He moved away from the fire and looked down at his burnt wrists. They were beginning to scab and boil over almost instantly. He then discarded his jacket. He didn’t need it anymore. Climate was obsolete to Shaun now.

He felt nothing but his own life and consciousness, yet it was different. His senses felt heightened. He could hear the whistle of his blood coursing through his veins, yet no heartbeat. He was changing. He had already changed, but the process was far from over.

Shaun could feel every strand of his hair sitting beside the next; he could feel his skeleton whole, sitting against flesh and tissue. Shaun’s perception of his own existence was enhanced. Like how you feel a piece of clothing sitting against your skin, Shaun was experiencing that through his entire biological property. If it was there, it could be felt. The only exception was his brain. He felt nothing inside of his head where the brain would remain. It felt hollow, but in the strangest sense, was giving him balance, amidst all of this change.

Shaun left the cave, with his mind set on one single objective. He wanted Dwight.

He couldn’t have gotten very far. It had only been a short time since he left.

Shaun walked along the cliff of a deep canyon, beside the cave by a few meters.

Its end couldn’t be seen.

He was on the edge of it, with no hesitation, no ounce of fear.

After passing the canyon, he came to the highway that the group had entered from. He looked down at the snowy road. He could see faint footsteps, almost swept away by the wind.

Shaun followed them.

You’re close. I know you’re close.

As he kept going, it was becoming so dark, that it felt like he wasn’t moving. Everything outside of his vision was obscure, blackened to absolution, motionless.

It remained that way until a light in the distance suddenly appeared.

It was faint, shimmering over the horizon.

He raced towards it. As he moved forward, the light moved as well, but Shaun was slowly gaining on it.

After several more steps, he began to see where it was coming from. Somebody was holding a lantern.

Shaun just stared and smiled.

Dwight… you should have killed me when you had the chance.

He screamed as loud as he could across the open desert.

‘Dwight!’

Dwight established Shaun’s call. He could be seen turning looking over his shoulder.

Shaun engaged, sprinting towards him.

Dwight stopped, dropping the lantern and all of the bags that he carried, to the ground.

Shaun was close to him now, within one hundred meters.

Dwight swung his double-barrel from off of his back and aimed it at Shaun.

‘Stay the fuck back. I mean it’

He pumped the double-barrel.

Shaun didn’t stop right away. He took his time doing it, gradually slowing down instead of being abrupt, lurking around the rim of the lanterns yellow light.

He then stopped.

‘Pull the trigger. You already did once’

He began to step forward again.

‘I’ll shoot you dead this time’

Dwight was unsteady as he held the double-barrel, peering down its rails at Shaun, who was still only faintly seen.

‘Try’ Shaun said, as he came into the range of the lantern’s light. Dwight could see his face now.

‘Look into my eyes’

Dwight looked down at Shaun’s leg, then back up at his face.

‘You’re infected’

Shaun charged at him. Dwight shot, but missed.

They were both yanking at the gun now. Dwight managed to pump it and tried to shoot again. Shaun forced the shotgun’s two barrels towards the sky before Dwight could aim. The shot ringed out, almost deafening both men. The gun was empty now.

The struggle went on, before Dwight used his weight to force Shaun to the ground. He merged down on top of him, laying down the hardest blows he could, into Shaun’s head.

‘Die, you fucker’

He kept going. Shaun could feel bits of his face breaking as the beating went on. His left eye socket had cracked after the third thumping it received, and then his front teeth shattered, as Dwight’s hits to the mouth kept on. For the most part however, Shaun allowed all of this to go on for this long.

He found it amusing, knowing that Dwight was under the illusion that his beating was causing any sort of pain.

Dwight finally stopped, exhausted, flexing his aching bloodied fists, as he looked down at the mess he had created. Shaun spat up blood and small shrapnel of his teeth, and then spoke.

‘You… really gave it all you had just then, didn’t you?’

Dwight looked up and down at Shaun. He couldn’t believe that Shaun was still conscious.

As he gazed in bewilderment, Shaun went for the bowie knife, which sat inside of the brown leather holster around Dwight’s waist.

Shaun held it in his left hand. It was still stained with Tony’s blood. He dug it into Dwight’s side, as deep as it could go. He began to twist it back and forth, and then he pulled it out and stabbed him again. Dwight was suffering, groaning as the bowie knife sat wedged in his side, right near his liver. Shaun pulled it out and stood to his feet.

Dwight was on his knees, weak, pale, bleeding out from both of the wounds.

Shaun kicked him in the chest, sending him soaring onto his back.

He was struggling to breath for a moment.

Shaun just peered down at him, crowing in a sick kind of way.

‘Who’s laughing now?’ he said.

Dwight was looking up at the sky, his expression still, like some sort of collapsed statue in despair.

Shaun crouched down with the bowie knife.

He held it near his mouth, smirking. He stuck his tongue out through the shards of his destroyed teeth that remained, and licked it.

Dwight flipped onto his stomach and tried to crawl away.

Shaun followed him, so slowly that it was almost a mockery of Dwight’s attempt.

‘I’m amazed you’d even bother’

He ran the bowie knife under Dwight’s boot.

But then, a sound that managed to freeze both men in their tracks, the howl of a wolf... All of a sudden there were many, overlapping and ringing out over each other, sounds of the now harsh and pitiless wild, sitting by both men’s ears.

Shaun stood with the bowie knife drawn.

He watched into the darkness, waiting for what came next.

And then, the howling stopped.

Everything was black in his vision, when a pair of eyes, infected eyes began to illuminate from the dark. Suddenly there were a dozen gathered around him in a circle, eyes that were plagued, eyes that did not appear human.

He wasn’t afraid. Shaun rotated his steps with the bowie knife still drawn.

‘Put the knife down, Shaun’

Shaun was in shock when he heard somebody speak. He knew that voice.

He watched as whomever it was, stepped into the lamplight.

When Shaun saw the man’s face, he didn’t know what else to do, besides to say their name.

‘Chris’

Chris looked untouched. His eyes showed red just like Shaun’s own from beneath the jacket hood and beard.

‘What happened to you?’

Shaun began to lower the knife.

‘Same thing that happened to you’

Chris began to approach, slow and calm. The red eyes from the dark were still there, looming from over his shoulders.

‘You’re wondering how?’ he said.

Chris pointed over towards the eyes. They then moved closer, as if under his command.

To no surprise, it was the wolves.

Shaun threw down the knife, no longer seeing use for it.

He listened to Chris as he kept speaking.

‘They tore away my skin, skinned me to the bone. I died with the taste of blood in my mouth. I died… felt myself leave this Earth, staring at a black sky’

Taste of blood...

‘How did you survive?’ Shaun asked.

Chris started to smile, shrugging favorably.

‘I woke up’

Shaun began to think of the cave where he stayed at with the group, more in particular, the moment he passed out beside the fire.

I died in that cave.

‘I woke up alone, looking like a carcass, but it was like I woke up into a dream. I didn’t really feel like I existed. I followed the same road that we met on, when I came to a cave’

It all began to make sense now.

‘I waited until somebody walked out of there. I don’t know why I did; I just knew that I had to. He stood by the canyon. I climbed up onto the side of it, and then when I knew that the moment was right, I dragged him down with me’

Chris’s words were spiralling into Shaun’s head.

‘He was still alive after the fall. His breathing rattled like an empty spray can. He was trying to scream, but he couldn’t. I sat in the dark, down in that canyon, and I ate him whole’

Shaun peered over at Dwight, still on the ground, struggling to keep his eyes open.

‘He’s nearly dead’ Chris said.

‘I know’

‘You have to eat him. He won’t be fresh for long’

Shaun frowned, contemplating what Chris was implying.

‘What happens if I don’t?’

Chris came closer; his face now only inches away from Shaun’s.

‘You’ll rot’

Shaun looked over at the bowie knife. Chris’s eyes followed.

‘This is survival, Shaun, and you and I both know it’

Shaun picked it up.

The night grew colder as the lantern dimmed. Chris cackled and the wolves howled.

Through everything that was happening, Shaun ate… The wolves finished the rest. Shaun and Chris decided that they would return to the city with their pack, where there were people, prey… flesh.