Echoes.
That's all she hears now. That's all that she's been hearing. It's all she'll ever hear until her dying moment, which comes nearer and nearer with every pained breath.
Echoes, skittering and her own heart attempting to deny death.
It had been so long since she heard humans: The steady rhythm of feet pitter-pattering on the deck, the soft rustle of cloth not made stiff by drying blood, the sweet symphony that was speech.
It had been so long…
She dared not open her eyes. They had been closed all this time, afraid of seeing what she might be sharing the room with. Whether it was torn and mutilated human corpses, or the grotesque things the corpses became, it was probably best she didn't know.
But in the absence of one of her senses, the others overloaded.
The blood in her mouth was a constant, no matter how much she swallowed. The metallic tang was prominent. Her tongue was bleeding from biting down in an attempt to keep from screaming.
Her body ached everywhere. Muscles she hadn't been aware of shrieked. Her side was an epicenter of agony, her shoulder being another. Her ribs were broken, possibly puncturing an organ. Her wrenched shoulder made the use of her left arm unlikely. Both of her legs were shot, too sore for running any distance.
Every single wound, both major and minor, demanded attention. Every exquisite thrum of pain was amplified, multiplied tenfold.
If she had wanted to leave, she doubted she could have.
The pain, the silence, the blood. She had expected them. But out of all that she could sense, it was her sense of smell that baffled her.
She could not smell decay.
Oh yes, she smelled blood. Blood mixed with vomit and excrement. Blood and fear. But she could not smell the unique and revolting stench of rotting flesh. It was as if there were no bodies at all, just the blood.
She knew better.
The bodies were up and moving.
No matter how impossible it should have been, no matter how hard she disbelieved, no matter that everything she had seen, heard, tasted, touched, smelled, and knew had said it could not happen, the bodies of the fallen had risen to make more.
And these weren't zombies like in the horror vids. These things were smart. They moved fast. And they sure as hell didn't want your brain.
They just wanted to rip you apart.
In her less sane moments, she wondered why the things insisted that they were in as many pieces as possible. Wasn't that counter-productive, destroying the body so it was useless to them? It made no sense.
Then again… nothing had made sense since they came to Aegis 7.
She was in limbo between a comatose state and utter insanity. For the first… five hours of being in her current hiding spot, she'd been perfectly still. Both in body and mind. She ceased all thought processes and simply sat, almost like in stasis.
Then for thirty minutes she whispered. Hummed. Even sang a little bit.
The song had been a lullaby, something that was still clinging in her mind even after the horror ripped everything else out. There was no audience that she was aware of, so she didn't care that her voice was hoarse and off-key.
"Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
When the blazing sun is gone,
When the nothing shines upon,
You let out your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle all the night.
Then the traveler in the dark,
Thanks you for your little spark.
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so."
She'd long after fallen back into silence when the occasional skitter outside her hiding spot became full-fledged steps. The feet had stilled at the sound of her voice, but then continued on their way, leaving her to the dark. She remained quiet.
Sleep was coming, but she couldn't rest. She didn't know if she wanted to sleep. Sleep would be a token of surrender. Giving up. But she really wanted to stop. Stop fighting, stop hurting, stop living. She wasn't even fighting, really. Just delaying the inevitable.
A thought stirred in her lethargic mind.
She hadn't finished her song.
"Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star…"
Suddenly, adrenaline rushed through her system. The fog of sleep was gone. She was more alert and awake than she had been for nearly a day by her reckoning.
She heard something new. A rustle.
An inch from her.
She risked opening her eyes, and was rewarded.
All that her traumatized, insane, jumbled mind could think to say was "Why?"
The semi-sentient, mutated moving corpse responded by digging its bladed appendages deep into her torso. It lifted her off of the deck, shaking her and ripping into her at the same time. Shock overruled the pain, and she felt nothing as it began to quickly and viciously rip off chunks of flesh.
She closed her eyes.