Dunwall was in the grip of the plague. It had already claimed many lives, and the City Watch patrolled the streets and enforced curfews to try to keep the survivors safe from weepers- horrid zombies that would sense your presence and lunge straight for you. Many houses were boarded up and the dead lay in the streets in their wrappings. The occasional train or boat would come for them, but mostly their rotting carcasses were left to feed the rats. They walked no longer, therefore they were low on the list of priorities of the City Watch. It was the walkers, the weepers, that meant the centre of the city was death to any who dared tread there.
It was safer on the outskirts, closer to the countryside. The City Watch hadn't been nearly as strict here and mostly the houses were just abandoned, but not boarded up. The homes of the rich were never boarded up. It made it easier to survive for individuals who had escaped the rat plague but had nowhere else to go. Individuals like me.
I didn't travel alone. There was a young man in his early twenties with me; my lover. As we'd both escaped it would have seemed callous to abandon him now, and I have to admit the arrangement had its benefits. We watched out for each other, helped gather food and find water, and if it were necessary, fight. Like I said, the districts closer to the countryside had largely escaped the dead that threatened the city and choked its streets. We only saw the occasional weeper, and they were easy enough to avoid, if they hadn't seen you. We had no guns, besides, guns were loud and would bring unwanted attention down on you, either from more weepers or the wrath of the City Watch trying to keep order in the chaos.
OOO
We were scavenging houses along a wide street, systematically moving along each property and looting anything useful we could find, when I saw weepers approaching from the other end of the street. I was on watch, sitting on the porch roof using a spyglass I'd liberated from some other rich bastard's house, and at first I couldn't tell if they were other survivors from the glare of the bright street. The sun was out for once, but my blood ran cold just as soon as their shambling gait gave them away, and I leapt down off that roof and steered my lover inside the house.
"Check the doors and windows upstairs," I instructed him. "We're waiting this one out."
There was a chill about the house that was disproportionate to the heat outside, and I didn't know whether it was because the whale oil had run out in the house or if it was my shaking body. I double-checked the front door and the windows to reassure myself that nothing was getting in, then perched my weapon on a counter, in easy reach, and hunkered down against the wall.
Soon my lover joined me and told me that the house was secure from upstairs. We didn't speak, listening out for any sounds. Weepers were unpredictable- in the final throes of the plague they retained enough brain and human instinct to look for food sources, shelters and the like, but their bloodlust could be overwhelming.
A breeze blew over us and I complained of the room being draughty, before realisation of what this meant sank in and I froze. There was one door I'd overlooked- the glassroom at the back of the property. My heart started pounding and my throat was dry, I was frozen to the spot with fear but I just had to know if that door was closed. My lover followed me in horror as I ripped back the curtain to the glassroom, and I groaned and cursed as I saw that the door was wide open, and felt like throwing up as I saw a weeper shambling straight towards it.
"Get the door, quick!" I moaned, my legs failing me and rooting me to the spot. My lover lunged for the door and tried to slam it shut, but the weeper was too close and strong, and they danced a tug-o-war each side of the handle as the weeper tried to pull it open, and my lover tried to pull it closed. Adrenaline surged when I saw the weeper might be winning, handing back the reins of muscle control to me. My heart was still pounding but my head was clearer as the weeper's strength overtook my lover's and it wrenched the door open, squealing in triumph at the smell of two pieces of fresh meat.
My lover darted backwards and managed to avoid the raking claws of the weeper as it struggled with the doorstep, giving me a second to grope for the counter, never daring to take my eyes off the thing in front of us. My hand closed around the cold metal of my weapon as the weeper succeeded in stepping over the threshold. I took a deep breath.
"What are you going to d-" my lover shouted, but I think the answer became clear as I wielded the curved farming sickle, rage written all over my face that this vessel of disease would dare threaten us. I swung it as hard as I could, and it sliced cleanly through the weeper's neck, taking its horrible head right off.
"Yes!" I shouted, as the head rolled away and the body dropped, green bile spewing from the neck hole. My lover had turned a similar shade of green, and he was practically hyperventilating as he gabbled, "You've just beheaded a weeper with a farming sickle. Oh shit. You've beheaded a weeper with a farming sickle." He had trouble separating weepers from humans, whereas at their advanced stages of disease, I saw them as ignorant zombies who would kill you or just nibble on you a bit and pass on their plague given half the chance, a fate that was quite frankly worse than death.
I ignored him and kicked all the remains out of the door and finally slammed it shut myself. "Well that's that taken care of," I said calmly, the adrenaline still prevalent in my veins. My legs trembled, reminding me that without it, I'd probably be dead in a heap on the floor right now with a weeper feasting on my flesh. I shuddered and went to find something to clean off the sickle with. I'd be keeping it a lot closer from now on.
OOO