I kicked open the door and quickly scanned the bedroom for anyone, anything. "Harry!" I shouted looking around the room "Harry!" But all I saw were normal abandoned bedroom stuff in the room with no Harry. "Damn." I then turned away from the room and nodded my head to Wane telling him that we were going to search the next room. Wane nodded and we headed to the room on the very left of our side of the duplex. Wane and I were in the left side of the duplex while Casey and Nathan were in the right side of the duplex. We were just coming up to the last unsearched room on our side. Wane then got on the left side of the door like we had planned, if anything happened while I searched the room, he'd help, but he'd have to stay out of the way as I breached the door open. While Wane ran to the wall beside the door, I ran to the front of the door facing it. Wane then nodded telling me that he was ready. I then kicked the door below the doorknob and breached the room as the door flew open creating a loud crash as wood and metal separated from each other. I pointed my MP5 into the room and scanned the room for anything. "Harry!" I shouted as I noticed a black haired female in her mid thirties wearing a dirty and torn white nightgown. She looked at me for a split second before she raised her arms up and ran towards me in a frenzy shouting die at me. Funny how it was that I got used to the common infected shouting stuff like that to me, I didn't know how I could understand them and I didn't really care, they were dead anyway. I shot a three round burst of nine millimeter bullets at her which penetrated her skull and sent out red petals of blood from her head. She quickly fell backwards and died before she hit the floor. I looked at the female as red liquid pooled from her head staining the floor. I then looked up and searched the room again, nothing. I then turned back towards the way we came and walked into the hallway.
"Nothing?" Wane asked following close behind
"Nothing." I answered as I reached the steps to go downstairs. We had searched half of this two story duplex and found nothing on our side, hopefully Casey and Nathan found Harry where they were. Wane and I exited our side of the duplex and headed back to the pickup truck catching the pouring rain on ourselves before we reached the truck. I opened the door and climbed inside telling Wane to leave the door open, like I did with the other houses. We left the door open for Casey and Nathan just in case they needed a quick entrance inside just in case something happened and they needed a quick escape. I climbed into the truck and went to the front passenger seat while Wane went the seat behind me. I gave a loud sigh of frustration. We had been through every house in this neighborhood and still hadn't found Harry. It was a small neighborhood, but still. How long had we been searching for our friend? Two hours? Four? Five? I looked up and saw that the moon was still high and bright beyond the rainstorm that covered it, so it was late night or early morning now. Where are you Harry? I thought as I placed my head down. If there was one thing that changed from the boat to now, it was the stuff we had on the floor of the truck we rode in. On the floor in front of me were plastic bags of food ranging from the normal canned vegetables and soup we were all used to from eating so much of to things like canned berry pie filling and canned tuna. We also found bottles of water too along with ammo that was stored in the homes. Most of them were nine millimeter, but we also found some twelve gauges, we toke the buckshot and left the birdshot in the homes. I looked at the food hungrily knowing that I couldn't eat anything until I was well again, for now, all I was doing was vomiting up the food I ate, wasting it. I lifted my head up not wanting to look at the food that I couldn't eat even though I was hungry. All of a sudden a purple coloured juice box appeared in front of my face.
"Juice box Hunter?" Wane asked holding a grape flavored juice box in front of me. A juice box, one of the pack of nine we found in someone's previous home. I smiled and toke the juice box from Wane before ripping the straw off the box, ripping the plastic seal around the straw off and stuffing the plastic straw into the juice box before drinking the intense flavor of grape flavored liquid out of the box. If there was one thing that I could still do it was drink, thank god for that, otherwise who knows how I'd survive. I drank out of the juice box until there was nothing left inside before giving out a satisfying sigh of pleasure.
"Thanks." I said to Wane before crunching up the juice box in my fist and flinging it onto the floor by my feet
"Anytime." Wane replied puncturing the thin foil on the juice box. I then heard my stomach growl from hunger again. Liquids would help it a bit, but it was no substitute for actual food. I hoped that I healed and could eat soon otherwise something bad might happen, hopefully nothing like that would happen, last time I had a desperate hunger idea, someone got killed. I wasn't going to have that again, nobody should die because of me again, but yet, someone might.
"Goddamn it!" I heard a female's voice shout behind me. I looked behind me and looked to see Casey in the back of the truck beside Wane looking frustrated. I thought I knew why but I asked anyway
"Find him?" I asked. Casey looked up at me and with heavy sarcasm answered
"Oh yeah, we found him all right, he's right beside me, say hi Harry."
"Sorry I asked." I said before hearing a clang to my left indicating that Nathan had shut the driver side door.
"This was the last house to be searched here," Nathan started explaining starting the truck up. I heard the engine stall twice before it started on the third try. The front lights shot on reviling the road ahead of us. "Looks like Harry's not here, otherwise he's avoiding us." I hoped that Harry wasn't avoiding us, we were out looking for him and he was staying away from us, was I really that bad? I could be because he did leave, but maybe not because the rest of my friends were with me. I wouldn't know on my own.
"Am I really that bad?" I asked as Nathan started driving the truck forwards.
"What?" My friend asked surprised by my sudden question
"Am I really as bad as Harry said I am?" I asked again before waiting for their answer which came faster then I thought
"No." They all said almost at the same time just after I finished asking my question
"Not at all," Casey told me "You're not a dictator and defiantly not a tyrant, you may tell us what to do sometimes, but we follow it because we chose to, otherwise we'd tell you so." Wane and Nathan agreed to that by saying yep and nodding their heads. I didn't feel so bad anymore because of them, but I still felt bad because I was bad enough for Harry to leave, and I still felt sad because Harry did think I was that bad and he did leave, and now we were out looking for him. But we were going to find him and bring him back. I thought of what I was going to say to Harry when we caught up to him as Nathan drove down the highway with the windshield wipers going at full speed making squeaking sounds in front of me. Would I be angry at Harry? Would I punch him? Would I be happy? Would I tell him that we were all worried about him? I wouldn't know. Not until we got him.
"I don't know about the rest of you," I heard Wane say in the back of the truck eating something out of a can "but before the infection, I hated baked beans in maple syrup, but now, I wouldn't say no to it."
"I think that goes for all of us," I heard Casey say "we're now willing to eat things that we wouldn't eat before the infection." Along with all the other things that changed us I thought. Before the infection, all we had to worry about was getting good grades, bullies, and other normal everyday kid stuff, but now, we had to worry about getting killed by the infected and psychopaths, we had to worry about starvation and dehydration. Before the infection we would never kill someone, but now, we had to sometimes kill kids younger then us. Times had changed, we had changed, I thought looking outside into the heavy rain. I placed my hands outside holding the exterior frame of the truck as rain hit my fingers. I pushed those thoughts away as I continued to looked for Harry on the side of the road. I watched the road for something, anyone, anything, hoping that we'd find Harry walking in the rain instead of having to try and find him someplace else. Suddenly the truck stopped moving in the middle of the street.
"What is it?" I asked turning to face Nathan who pointed at the front of the truck. I looked where he was pointing and saw a road block of vehicles. Cars, trucks and vans were blocking all access to the highway, there was no way we'd be able to cross in this truck. Seeing no other option besides going back and abandoning our search for Harry, I opened my door, stepped outside into the pouring rain and said "everyone out." I then pulled the seat and let Wane get out before Casey followed close behind him. They both climbed out of the truck before we toke only what we needed, guns, ammo, melee weapons, some food and some water, as well as some medical supplies. We all placed what we needed into four backpacks which we'd carry one each full of equipment.
"What now?" Wane asked looking around.
"I think the first thing we should do it tape our flashlights to our guns," Nathan answered coming to our side of the truck. We all turned towards him as he was tapping his flash light on the hand guard of the gun and winding it around in front of the rear sights. I knew that that one action was going to decrease his accuracy, but its not like we had perfect accuracy anyway. We then toke turns tapping our flashlights to our primary weapons, Nathan with his HK-33, Wane with his M4, Casey with her AA-12 and me with my MP5 even though I didn't really need it.
"So what's our plan now?" I asked ripping the end of the duct tape off when I was done wrapping the flashlight to my gun.
"Well we could go through the traffic," Nathan suggested "but as you can see, or just barley see because of this rain, it's going to be hard to travel that way because of all the vehicles packed tightly together," I looked at the traffic jam and saw that the only way to travel was to go on top of the vehicles and jump from one car to the other, which would be annoying, and loud. "Or we could take the forest path to the left of the truck," Nathan pointed to the other side of the truck. I could see a clearing in the trees to the left part of the starting traffic jam. "Either way is a possible route that Harry could have taken." I thought of that for a second, Harry was by himself, either way was dangerous, I didn't know which way he'd take.
"Into the forest," I said "raise your hand." And with that, Casey, Wane and I raised our hands to go into the forest. "Sorry Nate," I told Nathan "we're going into the forest." Nathan just shrugged his shoulders like he didn't care
"I was fine either way, it's dangerous either way." Agreed I thought as I pulled back the bolt of my MP5 followed by rapid succession of gun bolts being pulled back by my friends. Their flashlights shone through the darkness and rain, I decided to turn mine on as well, just because. We then walked towards the clearing in the woods which lead to a path into the woods. The trees stopped some of the rain, but not all of it, but at least it was easier to see now.
"Let's just follow the path." Nathan advised. I wasn't going to argue with him, it was easy to get separated and lost in a forest, even with a flashlight. We stayed close to each other while navigating the woods killing the common infected that shot out of the woods trying to kill us. When we had traveled for a while we all decided to take a rest.
"At last," Wane said with relief as I leaned my back against a large tree "I've been holding in my piss for a while."
"I'm beginning to think that you've been drinking all the juice boxes." Casey commented as Wane headed into the bushes disappearing from our sight
"There's also been lots of liquid in the canned vegetables if you haven't noticed!" Wane's voice shouted from a short distance away.
"Just make it quick!" I shouted to him "I don't want you to be alone if a special infected comes for you!"
"I'll go as fast as I can!" Wane voice more distant away shouted back. After hearing twigs and leaves snapping for a few moments later I then heard Wane reliving himself.
"Go further back!" I shouted to him "I can hear you!"
"How can you hear him?" Casey asked me with surprise in her voice "I can't hear anything over the rain and he's a good distance away." I couldn't hear Wane perfectly, but just enough.
"I'm like two hundred feet way!" Wane shouted "I think that's far enough!" Two hundred feet away? Why could I still hear him then?
"I think Hunter's getting paranoid!" Nathan shouted to all of us rather then just Wane
"Well that kind of explains it!" Wane shouted back to us. Was I getting paranoid so much that I was imagining things? Maybe. But did paranoia make you forget things? Did paranoia make you jump better? Maybe. Who knows?
"You know Hunter," Casey said walking up to me "we can take care of ourselves," she said trying to assure me of something that I already knew "you don't need to keep worrying about us."
"I know that," I smiled at her as she looked down at me through her clear ballistic goggles "I know that you guys can take care of yourselves, to a point."
"Yeah," Casey sighed knowing what I was talking about "yeah." Without each other, I thought, we'd either be dead, or out of control like those psychopaths we have to put down. There was silence then, and all I could hear was the rain hitting the trees and the ground while hearing Wane's heavy footsteps come back to us. Wait, I thought. Heavy foot steps? Wane wasn't heavy, he was almost the same weight as Casey, come to think of it he might be lighter, but that didn't matter, there were foot steps that weren't his coming towards us.
"You guys hear that?" I asked shooting up looking in the direction of where the sound was coming from.
"Hear what?" Casey asked looking where I was looking, obviously seeing nothing and hearing nothing "are you really sure you don't have-" then she was interrupted by the loud bellow of a charger. I leveled my MP5 to point it in the direction of the charger but then I heard a sequel behind me. I turned back to see a long, dark pink tongue wrapped around Casey's chest and neck as she was being pulled into the woods.
"Casey!" I shouted pointing my gun where the smoker tongue was coming from only to feel myself being hit from behind by a brick wall. The wind got knocked out of me as the charger wrapped his giant fingers around my body and squeezed me tight as it ran into the woods away from my friends.
"You're coming with me!" I growled at me as it ran.
"Fuck you!" I shouted at it before attempting to get free from it, not that I could do anything, my arms were trapped between it's hands and my legs couldn't reach his body, and even if they could I doubt that it'd even do anything to him. I then did the one thing I could do, I bit into his hand. I bit into his right index finger so deeply that blood started to pour out of it. I could hear the charger slightly grunt from it like it was a mere nuisance then painful. I continued to bite down into his finger hoping that he'd let me go so I could kill him. I ripped a piece of flesh off his finger with my teeth before biting into another section of the same finger thinking that he's have to let go either in pain or because he'd have no hand left to hold me with. I bit into his index finger several times more seeing the bones inside his finger before he finally threw me into a tree. I saw the tree for a split second before I lied on the ground on my back moaning in pain.
"This better be worth it!" The charger shouted to who knows where. I didn't see where he was yelling at, I was more focused on my own pain. My whole body hurt all over, including my chest which hurt the most. I looked at chest to see if it was bleeding, and it wasn't. But knowing that I just got out of surgery, I wouldn't be surprised if I had internal bleeding.
"For you," A very familiar voice said from above "no, but for him, very much." I turned my head to where the voice came from and saw that sitting up on a high branch of one of the many trees around me was the hunter in the dark blue hoodie, the one that ran away from Wane, the one that killed that jockey, the one that I fought, the one that said I was changing. But this time he wasn't alone, on the tree to his right was a hunter that also looked familiar, it was the hunter in a torn yellow and red hoddie. It was the veteran Hunter that carried away that witch called Hanna near the sewer safe house.
"Bone-saw's revenge huh," the charger growled "fine, I'll be going now." And with that, I heard the charger leave us before his foot steps disappeared into the woods and was replaced by the sound of rain. I slowly got up and looked up to the two hunters, one normal, one veteran, which one was Bone-saw? I hoped it wasn't the veteran, if it was, I didn't stand a change by myself, but if it was the normal hunter, why didn't he kill me already? Odds were that it was the veteran. Shit.
"You killed my mate," the yellow and red hooded hunter snarled angrily at me. I could feel his rage towards me in his voice. "You and your pack kills friends."
"I didn't kill Hanna!" I shouted to the veteran hunter
"But you!" The veteran Hunter shouted angrily at me "the pack leader! Commanded it!" The veteran then looked at the normal hunter and asked "that pack leader?" I then looked at the normal hunter who smiled at both of us
"Yes, Bone-saw, that pack leader." Then without warning, before I could react, I saw the veteran hunter fly down towards me with his claws open. I dive rolled to the right just in time for the veteran hunter to claw the air mere millimeters from me.
"Die!" I heard the veteran hunter Bone-saw snarl at me as he hit the ground near me. I rolled to my feet and instantly saw Bone-saw's body leap towards me. Before I could even put my heads up to defend myself, Bone-saw was on me and the momentum of his body pushed me to the ground before my back crashed onto the hard, wet ground. I yelled in pain before Bone-saw snarled and quickly raised his right blood covered hand at lightning speed. And before I knew it, his hand had dug into my flesh, I felt burning pain as he stabbed me right in the middle of my left rib cage and started to move his claws inside of my skin. I yelled in pain as I felt fire build up inside me. I looked up and saw Bone-saw smile evilly down at me reveling his blood stained teeth. "Pathetic." Bone-saw laughed as his fingers twisted inside my ribs and made my body burn in pain. But then, I felt something kick inside me as I raised my right hand and punched Bone-saw in the face and grabbed his hand with my left and yanked it out of my body. Red blood flew out of the hole in my body as Bone-saw's hand came out, I then snarled at him before I punched him in the face again sending him backwards a tiny bit before I slammed two fists simultaneously into his face and he lifted off me, not by a lot, but enough for me to pull back my right foot and kick him in the face. I kicked as hard as I could before he stumbled backwards a few steps. Then in one fluid motion, I jumped to my feet, growled, and jumped towards him before we collided with each other and we started rolling backwards on the wet ground. I hit my head on the ground several times before Bone-saw stopped our rolling and was on top of me snarly angrily as he raised his claws up to slash me. I grabbed his arms before he could attack me and I twisted his arms around before reaching in with my face and biting him in the neck. He just snarled at me again before he also bit into the left side of my neck. I then ripped out a piece of his neck before I quickly grabbed his jaws and slowly pried them open. It was hard work but as soon as I got his jaws open he started to claw at my body. I bucked up and rolled him over so that I was the in the dominating position. We rolled together but then Bone-saw also started to roll me trying to get in the dominating position. We then started rolling uncontrollably hitting small twigs and rocks that cut into my skin until we hit a tree on my right side. The good was that we stopped rolling, the bad was that I was staring up into Bone-saw's slashed face that bore on eyes. He snarled at me, I then snarled back. Then we let a frenzy of brutal attacks go wild on each other as I punched, kicked, rolled, bit and even clawed at Bone-saw while he clawed, rolled, and bitted. And all I saw was red. Was it mine or was it his? It didn't matter, all that mattered was the he died. Suddenly I rolled on top of him and started to rip at his chest with my nails, cutting into his flesh and sending chunks of flesh flying into the air before moving below his skin and tearing out his muscles. Then when his muscles were torn out I started working on his bones. Bone-saw clawed at my body, but I didn't care, I was going to kill him and he was going to stop hurting me. Blood was covering my hands as I snapped his rib cages apart hearing sickening crunches of bones separating while hearing Bone-saw shouting in pain. I shoved my hands below his broken ribcages and ripped out the last of his flesh while pulling out his insides, his liver, kidney, intestines, heart, everything inside him, I pulled out of his exposed body before I felt him weakening. I gave him a growl before he gave out one last, weakened growl at me before whispering with his dying breath "Hanna." Then just like that, everything in him stopped, he was dead. I then just laid there panting heavily from our fight. Bone-saw was strong, a great fighter. Miracle I survived I think. As I panted heavily laying on Bone-saw's body, I thought of his actions like my own, he wanted revenge on the person that killed the person he loved, just like me, just like how I wanted revenge on the psychopath that killed Kelly, we were the same in a way, Bone-saw and I.
"Just like me." I whispered to him, but mostly just to me as I thought of the feelings that he must have been feeling, hatred towards me, hatred towards Casey.
"Wonderful," I heard the other hunter laugh with glee "wonderful, you exceeded beyond my expectations." I turned my head towards the hunter in the dark blue hoodie and growled at him
"I wasn't the one that killed his mate," I growled angrily at him "why'd you have him try to kill me?"
"I don't know," the hunter said looking down at me from a high tree branch "I wanted to see if you're still with rejecting who your are."
"I know who I am!" I half shouted half snarled at him "Hunter the hunter! Not Hunter of the hunter!"
"So you say," the hunter laughed "but you understand Wrath, Bone-saw, and I perfectly, do you not?" I growled with frustration. It was true, I could understand the infected like they were talking normally, no longer was there the static in their voices, they came crystal clear along with the common infected. "And do you not have our abilities?" Again I growled with frustration. I had their power, I think, I could fight a veteran hunter one on one, but did I really have their abilities? I then heard a thud behind me, I turned around and saw the dark blue hoodie wearing hunter on the ground crawling to me on all fours. "Face it, you can't escape who you are now, leave those friends of yours and come with me, I'll show you who you really are." I growled at him again before snarling
"I know who I am." Then I leaped off Bone-saw's body and flew towards him. My hands were out to grab him but he jumped out of the way and I landed harmlessly away from him before he started to hop the tree lines. "Bastard!" I shouted at him as I saw him jumping from branch to branch "get back here!" I shouted before slashing my into tree bark leaving scratch marks on the tree. I then shouted in frustration as pain began to come back towards me. I then started to shout in pain as I fell face first into the wet ground before pushing myself painfully back up. I felt the waves come over me like a giant wave crashing over me. I pulled my backpack off my back and placed it on the ground beside me as I groaned loudly in pain. I unzipped the backpack and looked for the medical supplies. I felt around feeling for the bottle of disinfectant while also feeling around for bandages and some adrenaline. I felt a syringe of either adrenaline or morphine as I dug through the backpack and pulled it out with my right hand. I saw that it was a syringe of adrenaline, perfect. As I looked at my hand, I saw just how much damage Bone-saw had done to me, he had stained my hand red with both my blood and his, and I had claw marks all over my arms. As my vision blurred I ripped the plastic off before removing the plastic cap off the needle before plunging the needle into my arm and pushing the top down. I didn't bother to try and find the vain, too much work right now. I then ripped the syringe out of my arm and threw the syringe away into the woods before I started to feel my body go into overdrive. Pain disappeared as I felt a rush of energy flow into my body. My vision became clear again. I then quickly moved through the backpack and quickly found the bottle of disinfectant and pulled it out of the backpack before twisting the cap off and pouring the liquid onto wounds. I poured the disinfectant on my hands, arms, shoulders, chest and legs before closing my eyes to splash some on my face. It hurt my skin a bit but I didn't want to die from an infection. I then pulled out a roll of bandages and toke my clothes off before wrapping them around my body tightly to stop the blood flow. I then put my clothes back on and hoped that my friends didn't notice it too much. I knew they could see what happened to my hands and face but there were only some tears in my clothes reveling some of the bandages. My machete was still with me but my MP5 was gone. I then saw it a few feet away from me to my left. How lucky. I walked over to it and picked it up and pulled the bolt back before realizing it was jammed with small twigs. There were twigs in the chamber of my gun and who knows where else. I then gave a frustrated sigh as I placed the gun in its holster before drawing my machete. I'd clean my gun later. "Guys!" I shouted hoping to hear my friends "Are any of you there!" I heard nothing but the pouring rain. Should I wait or should I go look for them? If I stayed it would be easier for them to locate me, but if I walked around, I could cover more ground, but I then might be moving away from them, but if I stayed they could be moving away from me to. After a moment of thought I decided to go look for them. I gathered my backpack, zipped it up, and prepared to walk the woods.
A/N: Hmmm, wonder how well I did on this. But more importantly, this story is going to be changing from rated T to rated M in a couple of chapters, just word of warning.
To: Dusk raider: I don't know, Hunter doesn't seem to want to accept that he's not really normal anymore.
To: Kindra D: You know, at first I was just going to make Elisa and Wane friends, but as you can see, that kind of changed. As for the blood shed chapter, it's not this chapter, or the one after this, its most likely going to be the one after the next chapter. So, in like, two chapters or something. When it changes from rated T to rated M, you'll know the blood shed chapter is up.