G
GV 002
Guest
kiwifarms.net
THE LUPUS AND ARIES
By Chanbob
I held the dripping limb with both hands, staring.
The still air sang with greasy baritones of blood, suffocating and all too close, like a curtain of hung pigs in an abattoir. The high feminine notes of panic pricked though the bass. I could feel my eyes darting, averting, and correcting once again to focus on the rigid, pale thing in my grip. I knew this was the way things had to be, but something still didn’t feel right. I threw a cautionary sideways glance to my peer and instantly regretted it; he could see my weakness and jumped on it like a starved rat.
“The fuck is your issue?” barked Jawbone, the prominent mandible of his namesake jutting outwards in defiance. I was, after all, being insubordinate.
Strings of raw flesh quivered as they hung from his bottom teeth and over his chin, like hellish seaweed caught on rocks. In any other situation I guess this would have been comical, and as such I had to suppress a bray of laughter; this caused a small surge of dizzying euphoria to crackle through my body, both confusing and delicious. I chalked it up to stress in the end. Yeah, stress. That does some pretty crazy shit to you, so I’d heard.
I swerved my eyes back down to the task at hand, feeling myself shrink under Jawbone’s angry gaze. Mad bastard. I knew he was right, but his enthusiasm was terrifying. It was base. I turned to Blue-Eyes, faintly hoping for some kind of common ground, but only to see her busily tearing sinew from bone, hunger her only priority. She ignored me. I really was alone in my concerns. Defeated, my gaze dropped one last time.
The arm was once that of a stout male, early thirties maybe, in colour pale and only barely warm; thick brown hair lined the fore from knuckles to elbow, matted slightly with dirt and old blood from the struggle. A finer sprinkling of hair dusted the upper arm and thickened at the shoulder, right up to the crude job we’d done of severing the limb from the body. The ball joint protruded, ivory, like some kind of alien egg nestled in a greasy mess of muscle tissue and tubes, cauliflower-like polyps of fat bloomed around the edges like weeds. The vague dark skitterings of a cheap tattoo, sick hieroglyphs unreadable to us, snaked up the length of the limb.
I had to eat this. There was no other option.
“Well?”
I didn’t need to look Jawbone in the eye. I could feel his gaze boring into me, and would continue to do so until I stopped playing with my food.
Screwing my eyes shut, I lunged forward with forced enthusiasm, sinking my teeth into the fore just before the elbow.
I didn’t gag.
**************************
Gradually we have discovered that no time of day or night is strictly safe.
The bastards travel in at least pairs - rarely solitary, usually armed, always aggressive. They seem to favour certain tools over others and, surprisingly, have a penchant for firearms; considering the blank primal slate these wretched souls bear as a state of mind I was surprised that they could figure out something as complex as a gun. Bludgeoning tools, perhaps, yet they hold them in the proper way, eye to sights and cheek to metal. Possibly muscle memory?
Poor sods.
My sympathy only stretches so far, of course. The shambling brutes still insist on fulfilling their primal desire to feed, to gratify, making relentless and ever more impressively strategised assaults on our position. They always seem to be one step ahead of us, forever leaving us on the back foot.
Thankfully, I’m not alone in my struggle. Over time I found others like me - survivors of this new hostile world, unpredictable, clinical as a scorpion in the desert. Without them I would surely be dead, yet at the same time there runs a cold streak of distrust through my mind whenever I consider them, which is a little too often.
We call him ‘Jawbone’ due to his more than prominent chin and mild underbite; of all his features this was the one that always struck us, and the name stuck quickly. He’s a big man, built like a brick shithouse, slow to move but quick to speak. His eyes always seem to be moving, darting here and there, analysing, planning and ever hungry; they swivelled mechanically, two dull ball bearings sunk deep into his well-greased slab of a head. He intimidates me, and as such I try to avoid his calculating, yet somehow vacant stares. My nervousness around him compounds my frustrations at both myself and this miserable situation. I want more.
Blue-Eyes is the female, named after her large and watery blue eyes. She rarely speaks, always looking like she’s about to burst into tears, though she never does. The woman instils a deep discomfort in me nothing like my feelings around Jawbone; she stares. Reptilian, unblinking, unmoving, the look runs you through like an oiled blade. I tend to blame Blue-Eyes for Jawbone’s undisputed dominance over the group; she always has blindly sided with him in every decision he makes, leaving me either back on my own again or obliged to follow. Majority rules, after all.
We never did tell each other our given names, for reasons unspoken. They don’t really seem to have relevance anymore.
**************************
The meal is over now.
I feel both sick and sated, wiping the mess from my mouth with the back of a filthy hand. Eating for the first time in so many days felt so fulfilling; to be guaranteed not to die starving over the immediate days was definitely welcomed. We didn’t eat all of him, there was simply too much for one sitting, so we buried him and resolved to come back later if desperate measures were once again needed. I almost closed his eyes. Almost.
**************************
We didn’t get far before they found us again, the persistent bastards.
It always starts with a hysterical screaming, and piercing sounds like audio suicide, a death sound. The metallic smell of blood, cordite and adrenaline gets right up your nose, forcibly taking hold of your flight response and wrestling it violently to the dust. The senses are clear, and there’s no resistance. Fight always wins over flight.
I can’t stop myself.
Yelling as loud as I can, I throw myself at the closest hostile, longing for the satisfying pound of a connecting blow. I am not disappointed. One. Then two. I push forward with all my strength, all my weight, hammering the fucker with my body, my weapon. That curtain of carcasses is back down, hanging down over me, around me, its sweet rank odour intoxicating and wrong.
right.
It bends and it flows now, my heart pumping it’s sweetness around my body as fast as I can take it in. Fast like coke and fine like wine, I can feel my teeth grinding. Grinding. Oiled and sprung.
Snap.
Something’s wrong.
The ammonia stench of piss and panic washes through the saccharine adrenaline like dirty water out of a broken washing machine; acrid, a weight of dread growing in my stomach. I can smell vomit, no doubt mine, close, wet and choking.
…just a sharp scratch…
A cold, swimming sensation slips through me, my ears full of it, submerged. Freezing and spreading. Through the syrup I can hear sounds, commotion. I wait for release, surely this must be the transition.
Slipping.
**************************
FROM: 05367895 Lt. E Staveley
TO: 05389974 Cpt. C Crest
INFO: Rogue Group Hotel Alpha 3
PRECEDENCE: Priority
SITUATION: Apologies for delay in response following recent movements of Rogue Group Hotel Alpha 3. Had to re-route lines of communications due to crash of freight train Uniforce 672 along route 45B. Sabotage suspected, unconfirmed. Alternative route arranged, confirmed in correspondence to follow, as well of details of cargo. 1st recent raid on RG-HA3 a failure. 1 dead, 2 injured. Regroup successful. 2nd raid successful to a point; 2 dead, 2 injured, yet managed incapacitation of younger male later confirmed to be beta male HA3-M ‘Mouser’. HA3-M has been successfully contained, isolated and vaccinated. After 5 days, despite initial confusion previously shown in other victims, HA3-M displays positive vital signs. 7 days later, HA3-M can take solid food. After 10 days, HA3-M shown to recognise and remember faces. Aggression now only occasional issue, result of disorientation. HA3-M has high probability of survival and re-integration. With permission, re-education program to follow shortly. Pursuit of remainder of RG-HA3 underway, request 1 extra case of vaccine to deal appropriately. Deepest congratulations on great successes your end. May this terrible plague be over soon, now we have proper means. Good luck.
By Chanbob
I held the dripping limb with both hands, staring.
The still air sang with greasy baritones of blood, suffocating and all too close, like a curtain of hung pigs in an abattoir. The high feminine notes of panic pricked though the bass. I could feel my eyes darting, averting, and correcting once again to focus on the rigid, pale thing in my grip. I knew this was the way things had to be, but something still didn’t feel right. I threw a cautionary sideways glance to my peer and instantly regretted it; he could see my weakness and jumped on it like a starved rat.
“The fuck is your issue?” barked Jawbone, the prominent mandible of his namesake jutting outwards in defiance. I was, after all, being insubordinate.
Strings of raw flesh quivered as they hung from his bottom teeth and over his chin, like hellish seaweed caught on rocks. In any other situation I guess this would have been comical, and as such I had to suppress a bray of laughter; this caused a small surge of dizzying euphoria to crackle through my body, both confusing and delicious. I chalked it up to stress in the end. Yeah, stress. That does some pretty crazy shit to you, so I’d heard.
I swerved my eyes back down to the task at hand, feeling myself shrink under Jawbone’s angry gaze. Mad bastard. I knew he was right, but his enthusiasm was terrifying. It was base. I turned to Blue-Eyes, faintly hoping for some kind of common ground, but only to see her busily tearing sinew from bone, hunger her only priority. She ignored me. I really was alone in my concerns. Defeated, my gaze dropped one last time.
The arm was once that of a stout male, early thirties maybe, in colour pale and only barely warm; thick brown hair lined the fore from knuckles to elbow, matted slightly with dirt and old blood from the struggle. A finer sprinkling of hair dusted the upper arm and thickened at the shoulder, right up to the crude job we’d done of severing the limb from the body. The ball joint protruded, ivory, like some kind of alien egg nestled in a greasy mess of muscle tissue and tubes, cauliflower-like polyps of fat bloomed around the edges like weeds. The vague dark skitterings of a cheap tattoo, sick hieroglyphs unreadable to us, snaked up the length of the limb.
I had to eat this. There was no other option.
“Well?”
I didn’t need to look Jawbone in the eye. I could feel his gaze boring into me, and would continue to do so until I stopped playing with my food.
Screwing my eyes shut, I lunged forward with forced enthusiasm, sinking my teeth into the fore just before the elbow.
I didn’t gag.
**************************
Gradually we have discovered that no time of day or night is strictly safe.
The bastards travel in at least pairs - rarely solitary, usually armed, always aggressive. They seem to favour certain tools over others and, surprisingly, have a penchant for firearms; considering the blank primal slate these wretched souls bear as a state of mind I was surprised that they could figure out something as complex as a gun. Bludgeoning tools, perhaps, yet they hold them in the proper way, eye to sights and cheek to metal. Possibly muscle memory?
Poor sods.
My sympathy only stretches so far, of course. The shambling brutes still insist on fulfilling their primal desire to feed, to gratify, making relentless and ever more impressively strategised assaults on our position. They always seem to be one step ahead of us, forever leaving us on the back foot.
Thankfully, I’m not alone in my struggle. Over time I found others like me - survivors of this new hostile world, unpredictable, clinical as a scorpion in the desert. Without them I would surely be dead, yet at the same time there runs a cold streak of distrust through my mind whenever I consider them, which is a little too often.
We call him ‘Jawbone’ due to his more than prominent chin and mild underbite; of all his features this was the one that always struck us, and the name stuck quickly. He’s a big man, built like a brick shithouse, slow to move but quick to speak. His eyes always seem to be moving, darting here and there, analysing, planning and ever hungry; they swivelled mechanically, two dull ball bearings sunk deep into his well-greased slab of a head. He intimidates me, and as such I try to avoid his calculating, yet somehow vacant stares. My nervousness around him compounds my frustrations at both myself and this miserable situation. I want more.
Blue-Eyes is the female, named after her large and watery blue eyes. She rarely speaks, always looking like she’s about to burst into tears, though she never does. The woman instils a deep discomfort in me nothing like my feelings around Jawbone; she stares. Reptilian, unblinking, unmoving, the look runs you through like an oiled blade. I tend to blame Blue-Eyes for Jawbone’s undisputed dominance over the group; she always has blindly sided with him in every decision he makes, leaving me either back on my own again or obliged to follow. Majority rules, after all.
We never did tell each other our given names, for reasons unspoken. They don’t really seem to have relevance anymore.
**************************
The meal is over now.
I feel both sick and sated, wiping the mess from my mouth with the back of a filthy hand. Eating for the first time in so many days felt so fulfilling; to be guaranteed not to die starving over the immediate days was definitely welcomed. We didn’t eat all of him, there was simply too much for one sitting, so we buried him and resolved to come back later if desperate measures were once again needed. I almost closed his eyes. Almost.
**************************
We didn’t get far before they found us again, the persistent bastards.
It always starts with a hysterical screaming, and piercing sounds like audio suicide, a death sound. The metallic smell of blood, cordite and adrenaline gets right up your nose, forcibly taking hold of your flight response and wrestling it violently to the dust. The senses are clear, and there’s no resistance. Fight always wins over flight.
I can’t stop myself.
Yelling as loud as I can, I throw myself at the closest hostile, longing for the satisfying pound of a connecting blow. I am not disappointed. One. Then two. I push forward with all my strength, all my weight, hammering the fucker with my body, my weapon. That curtain of carcasses is back down, hanging down over me, around me, its sweet rank odour intoxicating and wrong.
right.
It bends and it flows now, my heart pumping it’s sweetness around my body as fast as I can take it in. Fast like coke and fine like wine, I can feel my teeth grinding. Grinding. Oiled and sprung.
Snap.
Something’s wrong.
The ammonia stench of piss and panic washes through the saccharine adrenaline like dirty water out of a broken washing machine; acrid, a weight of dread growing in my stomach. I can smell vomit, no doubt mine, close, wet and choking.
…just a sharp scratch…
A cold, swimming sensation slips through me, my ears full of it, submerged. Freezing and spreading. Through the syrup I can hear sounds, commotion. I wait for release, surely this must be the transition.
Slipping.
**************************
FROM: 05367895 Lt. E Staveley
TO: 05389974 Cpt. C Crest
INFO: Rogue Group Hotel Alpha 3
PRECEDENCE: Priority
SITUATION: Apologies for delay in response following recent movements of Rogue Group Hotel Alpha 3. Had to re-route lines of communications due to crash of freight train Uniforce 672 along route 45B. Sabotage suspected, unconfirmed. Alternative route arranged, confirmed in correspondence to follow, as well of details of cargo. 1st recent raid on RG-HA3 a failure. 1 dead, 2 injured. Regroup successful. 2nd raid successful to a point; 2 dead, 2 injured, yet managed incapacitation of younger male later confirmed to be beta male HA3-M ‘Mouser’. HA3-M has been successfully contained, isolated and vaccinated. After 5 days, despite initial confusion previously shown in other victims, HA3-M displays positive vital signs. 7 days later, HA3-M can take solid food. After 10 days, HA3-M shown to recognise and remember faces. Aggression now only occasional issue, result of disorientation. HA3-M has high probability of survival and re-integration. With permission, re-education program to follow shortly. Pursuit of remainder of RG-HA3 underway, request 1 extra case of vaccine to deal appropriately. Deepest congratulations on great successes your end. May this terrible plague be over soon, now we have proper means. Good luck.
