This was not the first time she had woken someplace different, someplace strange and unrecognizable. Where impossible things were possible, and more than that, they were likely. Her heart plummets and her hand flies to her chest. Hand? She froze for a moment and then slowly her gaze dropped to take in the pair of legs covered in worn, faded blue jeans, the torso and arms hiding beneath a plain long-sleeved gray shirt. The shirt felt thick, heavy, and she resented the weight of it when she tried shifting beneath it. Later, though she had no way of knowing this now, she would be grateful for that extra cushion.
For the first time, she thinks to look around, deliberately ignoring the fact that she is suddenly human, and none of it feels nearly as strange as it should. There are two doors peeking out of the dark, one red and sticky and she turns from it immediately with a grimace of disgust twisting at her mouth. The other door is plain and black and, if she’s being honest with herself, it seems to glow a little. Maybe that meant there was light on the other side of it. She didn’t want to consider what that theory would mean for the other door, the red door. With only a second of hesitation, because what other option did she have, her hand reached for the black door, those slender fingers wrapping around the knob and pushing it open.
Thud.
The door hit something solid as it was pushed open and an angry voice spit through the waiting half-dark to greet Malis. Slipping through quickly, the door shut behind her and when Malis turned back in surprise to look at it, she found the knob had locked itself. Or maybe someone else had locked it. Her hand fell from the knob as she remembered the thud and the voice that had followed it. Turning quickly, she spotted two shapes moving in the dark but neither made any move towards Malis. In fact they seemed to have pinned themselves to the far wall as if they didn’t want to be noticed at all. Malis frowned, confused. They seemed scared of her. She took a step forward and her sneakered foot hit something hard that glinted dully red and silver in what little light was able to escape into the small room through one very small broken window placed so very high up on the wall. Her brow furrowed and a frown creased her face as she bent down to reach for what she innately realized to be a long, almost too heavy, knife. But at the same time Malis reached for the weapon, so did one of the strangers against the wall, lunging like her life depended on it. This desperation bled instant suspicion into Malis and with a surge of adrenaline, her fingers wrapped around the blade hilt first, drawing it up in front of her in a way she felt would appear menacing. The person, the girl, fell back in surprise, managing to sprawl herself through the beam of light cast by the evening sun through the small window.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” Malis swore, her face suddenly a mask of rage and venom as she leaned down to point the knife at the girls throat. The girl squeaked and tried to scramble backwards, but her escape was impeded by the small length of the room and the several upended boxes whose items had been scattered and broken everywhere. “No! Wait! Please.” A voice piped up from the shadow, from the other shape huddled against the wall. Malis didn’t even bother to look up, but the look of disgust on her face deepened measurably. “Why am I here,” Malis asked quickly, practically snarling, jabbing the knife ever closer to the soft flesh at the first strangers throat, “you planning on torturing me some more?”
But the shock emanating from both girls was enough to slow Malis, and she felt her grip on the knife soften as it fell to her side. “What are you talking about? No! We’re just trying to get out of here, we’re trying to survive. There is supposed to be a camp nearby where the Zs can’t get in. We’re just tired of running.” The girl said earnestly stepping from the shadows to kneel beside her companion. This time when Malis saw her face, she wasn’t surprised. “I’m Lena, and this is Nerissa.” The girl said again pointing first to herself, then Nerissa who was now climbing to her feet, her face pale and ashen.
Malis is quiet for a moment, a long moment, but her fist tightens painfully around the hilt of the knife. She doesn’t bother to tell them she knows them, how could she explain anyway. ‘I was the plastic toy horse Nerissa tortured and Lena fixed.’ Yeah, that would be super believable. Malis felt her free hand leap to her forehead as she tried to make any sense of this. Even when she had seen Nerissa, sprawled in the light with her blonde curls matted with lord knows what and braided messily at the back of her head, she had known. Years older now, so many years, impossibly so, but still the same. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and a smile Malis had seen before on a snake. Lena was the same too. Still foolish if she actually trusted her companion, which impossibly she did seem to, with her dark brown hair knotted in an unbrushed, greasy ponytail. Her hand dropped from her forehead as she resolved to hide the fact that she knew them. “Okay you said Zs. What the fuck is a Z.” Malis said abruptly, her hand with the knife lifting to gesture emphatically with the other hand perched impatiently on her hip.
Lena and Nerissa looked at each-other for a moment, confused, before returning their focus on Malis. “You know? Zs? Zombies?” Lena tried uncertainly, looking at Malis with all the misplaced sympathy in the world. “What do you have a head injury or something?” Nerissa interrupted hotly, both hands on her hips and a scowl on her dirty face. “And can I have my knife back, you thief?” Nerissa said, apparently a little too loudly because there came a thump at a nearby door and both girls spun to face it, silent as stones. Malis didn’t understand. “Definitely not.” She said, her grip tightening around the knife. Lena spun back quickly, her finger on her lips and her eyes wide. Impossibly, Malis understood what this meant.
With a shaking hand, Lena reached into the holster strapped to her hip and pulled out a small handled piece of hollow metal. A gun, Malis knew. With her other hand she passed Nerissa an extra knife, the blade long and a little rusted and stained with red. And then quickly, so quickly Malis didn’t have time to think, Nerissa threw the door open and Lena leveled the gun, a shot ringing out as the creature lurched forward, one more right behind it. Malis lifted her knife reflexively, but she was so distracted by the stench and sight of it that she didn’t, couldn’t move her feet. The two creatures looked like humans, in the looser sense, except they had a menagerie of wounds, bullet holes and slashes, teeth marks where entire holes had been ripped out to reveal the red and purple of organs inside as they tipped precariously over the edges and threatened to spill out. The mouths were perhaps the most horrifying, torn wide to reveal teeth stained with blood and gore, teeth broken from chewing on bone again and again. Tendrils of flesh hung like strips, and honestly she couldn’t tell if it was their flesh or someone else’s, but suddenly she understood the reason for the knives and the gun. Another shot rang out and the furthest Z dropped to the floor, but the first was only a foot away, slowed slightly by what looked to be a broken leg with a foot that had been chewed away to leave only bone like a sick, twisted stilt. Oh god, how she hoped their souls died when their bodies did.
The Z fell on her in a snarl of spittle and blood and decaying gore, and she threw herself backwards, the knife flashing as she slashed it across the face. But this did nothing to slow it down, it didn’t even seem to notice, could notice nothing but the urge to hunt, to feed, to devour. There was movement to her left and before the zombie had a chance to sink that putrid mouth into her skin, the wet sound of a knife cutting through skin was followed by the thuck of decayed skull giving way to the blade.
“What the hell is wrong with you,” Nerissa hissed shrilly, though she managed to stay quiet despite the wrathful red of her purpling face. “Everyone knows you have to hit the brain, you’re going to get us all killed.” Nerissa turned away again, heading over to where Lena stood at the opened door, her gun still raised in a hand that seemed to be shaking significantly more. “And you know you’re useless with that Lena, give me the gun and you take the knife.” Lena didn’t argue as they quickly traded and, glancing out on either side of the door, ran into the street. Without a sound, Malis tightened her grip on the knife in her own hand and followed them out.
It was clearly evening as the sun dipped dangerously beneath the tops of the taller buildings nearby, and Malis felt her heart thump anxiously in her chest. This didn’t seem like a world you wanted to get lost in when night fell. That meant her only option was to follow Nerissa and Lena as they made their way to the camp. Looking around quickly, she saw the two girls disappear as they hurtled around an overgrown street corner littered with glass and rubble and decaying bodies. Without hesitating, she launched herself after them. As she passed an alley she had only a second to register the gurgling moan and scuff of sound as a zombie threw itself at her. Half of its scalp has been peeled away, or maybe eaten away, and gore dripped down its rotting face. Bracing herself, she caught the Z as they collided and used one hand to push him back, desperate to keep those teeth from closing on her neck. With the other hand she lifted her knife and, soundlessly, plunged it into the back of his skull. Like a stone, the zombie dropped. With shaking hands she stared at it for a moment, and then remembering herself, leapt over the body to resume her chase of Lena and Nerissa.
As she came around the corner, the scene unfolded like a nightmare. Only a few yards away and with their backs turned to Malis, Lena had her knife brandished like a sword and Nerissa had her gun extended outwards. A horde of about twelve undead were loping unevenly toward the girls on broken legs and with loudening snarls. Malis felt her stomach drop as she wondered why the two refused to run, why they stood in the street against what looked like impossible odds. And then she saw it, the door, and she knew it immediately by the strange and familiar glow that emanated from it. A way out. She pulled back quickly around the corner, checking quickly to make sure no Zs had come up behind her. None had. Her brow furrowed and her hand flew to her chest again as her heart thumped erratically in her chest. But this time, when her hand touched the fabric of her shirt, she felt something hard and narrow beneath it. Reaching into the neck of the shirt, she pulled out a brass key sitting on a leather string. A key. Her hand closed around it knowingly. And then, and she hated herself for caring about either of the other girls, she realized they would never get in without her.
But as she came around the corner, a new scene was unfolding, and Nerissa had turned to point her gun at Lena’s stomach. “Make sure you scream real loud Lena, I’ll tell everyone I did everything I could to save you, poor thing.” And there it was that smile, like snake, ruining Nerissa’s face. Before Malis even realized what she was doing, her arm had lifted and recoiled, and then the knife was sailing through the air right until the moment where it buried itself in the small of Nerissa’s back. She dropped immediately, stunned, not even able to scream for the way shock and disbelief quieted her. And then she did, scream that is, and the sound tore through Malis more so than any knife ever could. She had done this. She had killed. And Nerissa had made her this way; like herself.
But there was no time to dwell and suddenly Malis was running for Lena whose face was smudged with dirt and tears and seemed unable to use her legs. Malis slapped her. It was enough to pull Lena from her shock because suddenly both girls were running for the door. Most of the zombie horde had run to Nerissa where she lay screaming in the street. The screaming became suddenly wet, suddenly garbled as teeth tore through her throat. Malis looked back, she couldn’t help herself. Ten Zs crouched over her, peeling the flesh from her face, from her arms and her legs, pulling organs from her torn open stomach even as the gore dripped from their faces. Only two stumbled after Lena and Malis. Fumbling for the key around her neck, she plunged it into the lock, opened the door, and lunged through it, pulling Lena after her.
MALIS
makai x oksana