“Hey slowpokes, care to speed up?” The other says at the front, not hiding his annoyance in the slightest.

The other soldier is walking faster than us, looking back all the time, heart racing and cold sweat dripping off his back, unable to hide his nervousness from me with his brutal-man faced, the anxiety making him walk quicker as well as the fact that the one supporting me was taking his time to properly chose where to walk so I would not miss a step; or he was just more careful than his colleague in general I supposed.

But at least I was starting to get the hang of this… communication methods of them, it wasn’t that hard after a while, just some sounds that got easily absorbed in my mind, the troublesome part was finding their meanings separately from the sentence and engraving each words meaning. Memorizing was the easy part, for me at least.

Still it was too soon for me to understand or make the sounds myself, so I could only count in my sharp senses to watch their tones, how they speak and the reaction of their bodies to read their mood, like I usually do while hunting down a prey.

It was quite fun, like a wolf having a day inside a herd of sheep, learning their patterns and how they think up close.

“Tsk, come on Bennett, we have passed through here like, five minutes ago, can’t you speed up a bit?”

“Five minutes is time enough for things to go to shit, plus I can’t force the kid to go quicker.”

“Oh yeah? Tsk, you have always been soft-hearted, that you get you killed one day. And what good does it make to slowly make our way to the other side? Give them more time to find us?”

The one beside me grunted but didn’t say anything back, only looking at my direction and nodding. He seems kind, how he keeps watching over me, and that makes me wonder if that will make his meat taste tender… Though he smells of… average quality, but good for me nonetheless; an average good quality meal is already better than an only average one for sure.

Now that I think of it, I did not get the chance to taste that guy at the building properly before he did this to me, damnit it! It has been so long since I tasted such sweet blood that it almost seemed wasteful to kill him for the meat; but I bet that one nimble of that tender meat would drive me crazy for more.

At that point my stomach growls from hunger, reminding me that I did not taste even deer meat for the past day and a half, making the guy on my side silently look at my direction.

“Wha? Wanna stop for a picnic too? How about that spot over there?” The one at the front says, pointing at a floating wooden tree in the middle of the swamp. “You can serve these monsters as breakfast.”

“Stop being such a jerk Harper.”

“So stop being such a bitch Bennett.” The other says, frowning as he looks back at us while walking, chewing on something.

But out of nowhere he screams, the sound of his voice followed by a splashing sound.

 “Fuck!”

We speed up a bit to have a better look at him, the guy beside me saying while stretching his neck: “Are you ok Harper? What happened?”

“Fuck me, I just missed a step and now I have a soaked sock and boot, just my luck.”

We finally have a good view of the soldier, one foot in the water, knee-deep, as his other hand is gripping the rope and keeping his crooked body balanced so he wouldn’t fall with the rest in the water too.

The one beside me, Bennet, sighs, motioning with his gun a little as he says: “Come on then, let’s get the hell out of here so you can take you warm soaking bath princess.”

“Fuck you man.” They say to each other, sneering, trying to ease the tension away.

But we soon realize that something is off.

Harper gives a good pull of his leg but it doesn’t move like he expected, making he pull it again, using his arm and other leg to support him as he tries to take his foot off, but after three attempts he starts to realize that he got it stuck on something somehow, hard to say how or in what when you can’t see anything after the pool of dark water.

When the soldier realizes the situation he is in he looks at us with widening eyes, and for the first time his cocky demeanor disappears and true fear reflects from his eyes.

He starts pulling with strength and urgency for the first time, but his leg doesn’t move up one bit while we manage to make our way to his side.

“Help me out dude! I got it stuck somehow! Oh no, Fuck, I feel something touching my leg! FUCK!”

Bennett finally lets go of me and goes to his side, helping Harper by giving him his hand and trying to pull him out, not being able to reach his leg without risking falling into the swamp water too.

However instead of working out as they wished, pulling Harper only makes him trip even further into the water, the two forces, pulling from opposite sides, make it harder for him to stand steady.

Watching their struggle unfold I catch a glimpse of skinny fingers reaching out from the murky water, the same color of the muddy soil, long nails slowly coming to view against a grey wrinkled skin.

“Fuck! Fuck there is more! Bennett do something man!” He screams, giving up on trying to free his leg as he starts stabbing the water blindly, the blade giving a blue glint at the edge as I realize that the cutting weapon, too, had a small stone along the metal, embraced by the silver curves.

I watch as chaos unfolds, staring at the murky waters, ears attentive as I sniff the damp air.

And he was right about that; there were far, far more than that one that iswas grabbing him, especially when Harper accidentally hits his own leg in his frenzy attacks and blood pours out into the water, attracting all sharks that had lay low so far.

It was like the water itself had come to life.

As if he had awakened a wave of piranhas, all around the water starts splashing, but if one looked closely they could see a pair of red eyes surrounded by darkness looking out from the murky water as the creatures pushed past the liquid barrier, driven by a mad hungry need.

“AH!” The soldier in the water screams then for the first creature that grabbed his leg finally takes a bite, risking its neck by being so close to the crazy blade, but the hunger numbed it senses of self-preservation against such small foe.

The other soldier, Bennett, takes his gun out and shoots bullets out with the force of blasts, the stone on his gun shinning as such, but the dark water not only made it harder for him to aim as it too takes most of the hit as well, hindering it mostly useless.

“Ahh!! Kill them! Take them out, take them out! I don’t want to die! Ah! I don’t want to die!” He says as he was dragged further in into the water. Well, seems like is just me and Bennett then, one will be enough to get me inside a human camping and I could play the scared boy faced even further after wh…

A splashing sound wakes me from my thoughts as I turn to look over once more, only to see that Bennett had jumped into the water to save the other guy!

Are you stupid?! Do you have a death wish?! I can help you with that! Don’t waste your meat with this lowly ghouls damnit!

I watch him with increasing annoyance as he tries to blast the creatures away with the gun, working only a little against the upcoming threat, but unable to use that to free his colleague for how wide the blast is he ends up putting the gun away, taking out a small sword of his own and stabbing the water, but not as urgent as his friend since he was trying to be careful not to hit him.

Really now, are you that stupid to risk your life to save him? Now what am I to do? I need at least one of you alive to enter the sheep’s herd!

Of course his plan was prone to failure and he realized that when, far from freeing Harper, other hands joined the first one and had started to weight him down into the water, but not only that for they too were taking bites of his legs, filling the once silent swamp with his piercing screams as they start eating him alive.

The already dark water is even thicker now after being washed with his blood, the increasing amount of flesh being consumed making Harper mad with pain, his eyes rolling back as he starts gurgling, hands twisting as his body suffered from extreme agony from being slowly eaten alive, the other one, Bennet, finally gives up on trying to save him and tries to ascend.

Only to have his ankle grabbed as well, stabbing attacks coming far too late as the ghouls make him trip and hit his head on a root, making him faint and lay limp, five seconds away from being dragged underwater to be eaten while still warm.

At that I sigh, fuck me, do I have to do everything around here?!

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