User: LegendLuigi91
Date: 20/09/2011
Subject: Mucky Muck Land
It was a rough nights sleep, believe it or not. Ryan was a bit of a sleep-mumbler, except he alternated between languages at random intervals, which made it really hard to follow. Other reasons for a crooked back in the morning included the flimsy layer of polystyrene between myself and the rugged ground beneath me, and the fact that I wasn't entirely comfortable falling asleep only a dozen feet away from the guy who had hit me in the back of the head with a bat, broken my nose in several places and then kicked my cat.
It was safe to say I had a bit of a grudge against him.
His wasn't the only grudge I held. I had a small grudge against Ian for being an absolute evil bastard. And I was tenderly harbouring minor grudges against his group of minions. A couple of the camp members had earned slim particles of trust from me, mainly Ryan, but I was reserving judgement on both Jarvis, the camp leader, whom I couldn't help but feel sorry for, and Hendryk, who had given me an aspirin and taught me some polish swear words.
The aspirin was for the head injury I'd sustained yesterday. It lessened the continuous stabs of pain into a manageable dull throbbing. My nose was a different story, Hendryk wasn't a legitimate doctor, so he didn't posses the knowledge of how to straighten my nose back into place. I'd not yet had the luxury of a mirror, so I could only guess that the uneven nose had weakened my claim of being the most dashing person to survive the zombie uprising. At least my winning smile had survived the ordeal.
But enough about that. I woke up earlier than usual, just after the sun had risen. It took several moments for me to recall what had gone down the day before and remember how I'd ended up sharing somebody's tent. When my head had cleared I noticed that Ryan was missing. I had no doubt that he was being ridiculed by the other camp members or assisting Jarvis in, well, whatever the hell he does, so I did my best to analyse the drastic situation I'd dropped myself into.
Yesterday Ian had wanted to leave me in the middle of the road, which said a lot about his character. I recalled his discussion with the tall dude, Lou, who must have convinced him to bring me back to the camp. I should probably feel grateful, but I had a tough time figuring out which was worse; the outside world, dominated by zombies. Or this camp site, dominated by thugs and convicts.
My talk with Jarvis had convinced me that this wasn't a place I wanted to call home. And at one point I was ready to leave, even if they had rummaged through my kit and claimed everything useful. I'd stepped into an injustice, but I had been willing to walk away from the fact that a band of ex-cons had taken up residency in the local woods. What I couldn't walk away from was the atrocities that had been committed here, the unforgivable invasion of flesh. Two girls had been carried out from the camp, their bodies used, abused and discarded. Not just a violation of the body, but a violation of the identity and spirit. It wasn't horror enough that those girls had to watch the world around them turn to ruin, or witness loved ones killed, eaten and turned into mindless beings. They had suffered through that and survived it, a feat accomplished only by the unlucky few. Jarvis had dangled the thought of a fortified camp in front of them like a carrot on a stick, guaranteed safety from the cold bodies that lurked in the shadows. It had turned into a snare, and they were caught in a web of carnality.
It doesn't say much for the campers that the girls had taken the first chance presented to them to end it for themselves, rather than suffer more time in their company.
If it had stopped there then things, while still tragic, would be much simpler. But then a catalyst by the name of Carolyn had entered the picture. And what a picture it was. Strokes of oppression on a canvas of abuse. She tiptoed around the camp under the watchful, appreciative eyes of the inmates, avoiding direct contact as best as possible. I noticed that her earlier timid disposition had altered somewhat. Perhaps she had only just now been informed that the two friends she'd been locked up with had committed suicide, but she walked with a cold fury that I'd often associated with my former colleague Mo. It was a quiet defiance, and one I hadn't been expecting.
What had I been expecting? A damsel in distress? A pretty, chained up lady-love just waiting to be rescued? This wasn't a fairy tale, and if it was then it was written by some seriously fucked up fairies. I was a little ashamed that I'd assumed Carolyn to be defeated and defenceless. The fact that she'd survived long enough to be taken in by Jarvis was a testimony of her strength, and that strength gave me strength.
I sat outside of my new tent-shaped-house with a cup of tea to warm my hands and watched as she weaved between the myriad of tents, heading towards the water stores – three large units full of bottled water that had been transported on a trailer from the refugee camp, a camp which had been overrun by the Z's just outside of Dorchester. She hefted a cannister over her shoulder and headed back to the central pavilion, ignoring a perverted request from a lingering camper.
I'd not yet taken advantage of the abundance of water that these guys had procured. According to Ryan it was mostly filtered lake water, as the original high quality stuff had been squandered within the first few weeks. There were daily runs to replenish the empty bottles, one of the many duties that Jarvis had assigned Ian and his crew. I'd yet to be given any hard labour to do, but I figured it wouldn't be long before they'd make me work to keep this unwelcoming roof over my head.
I passed within five yards of Carolyn as I walked to the water stores. It was the closest I'd been to a woman – that hadn't tried to kill me – since the infection hit. A fact that my brain picked up on, and then wildly suggested that I say something cool and funny to her.
Words rumbled around in my head, I thought of cool words, and funny words (Like kerfuffle) but I couldn't think of any cool and funny words. I settled on 'Hello, I'm Luigi.', it was short, sweet and to the point.
I turned around and muttered the magic words – just as Carolyn's shoe snagged on a stealthy tent peg, sending her flying into the ground.
My gentleman mode activated in an instant, and I launched myself to her rescue. I knew first hand how annoying it was to fly into the ground, and clutching a cannister full of water couldn't have done much to improve the situation. I scooped up the now half-empty cannister in one hand, and with the other made my first mistake of the day. I reached out to offer Carolyn my hand.
Time slowed down as the tip of my finger lightly brushed against her upper arm, then fast-forwarded as she spun around and elbowed me directly in the face.
My jaw crunched out of place, soaking up most of the elbow. On the positive side, she hadn't hit my already demolished nose, which would have probably reduced me to tears. By the time I'd recovered from the assault she was already stomping away, back towards the centre tent. I probed around my face in an attempt to find a spot that wasn't hurting – at least my eye balls hadn't yet been injured, that was something.
When my mind returned to the real world it was introduced to a moderate helping of laughter. Apparently half of the group had witnessed the kerfuffle (That word isn't so funny any more). And to them it was undoubtedly the funniest thing ever. I took note that the loudest of them was the youngster they had nicknamed 'Nutter', for reasons I'm beginning to see. I guess he fancied himself as a bit of an artist, as he'd done a fine job of rearranging my face with his boot yesterday.
Shutting out the laughter and regaining whatever composure I had left, I accomplished my mission of cleaning my face, hoping also to wash away the shame of my first encounter with Carolyn. In hindsight it probably wasn't my finest idea. She knew as little about me as I did about her – and considering she had been forced into the company of escaped convicts, her interests in meeting new people had probably been placed underneath other goals such as, well, surviving the camp of horror.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Feeling slightly cleaner than usual and thoroughly frozen, I decided to follow camp protocol and refill the water container that I'd emptied over myself. I'm good mannered like that. The lake was easy to find since the camp site was placed along its edge. It acted as both a murky source of water and a naturally-made defensive perimeter, at least for one side of the camp. The others had been walled off with a layer of derelict cars and vans, driven here from the refugee camp and then siphoned for fuel. It was messy, but it worked. A bit like my nose.
I found awkward company at the lake. Lou was already there, soaking a spare set of clothes to rid them of the various fluids encrusted in them. I hadn't had a whole lot to do with Lou since he'd driven me to the camp in my own car - a car which I'd not seen since and had probably faded into the scenery like many others. Lou skipped a formal introduction and instead offered a comment on how my face looked like shit. An acutely blunt observation, and one I ignored.
There was a groovy filtering gizmo for the lake water which Lou talked me through - In went the unattractive, gloomy water - and out of the other end the semi-appealing, partially-clear drinkable liquid was pumped. Scrumptious. The chit-chat lulled into a stiff silence. Lou had finished washing his clothes, but still lingered. I had a feeling he had something to tell me, but when I turned away from the lake I was greeted with a delegation of footsteps. The footsteps belonged to boots, whom belonged to the men wearing boots. I recognized only one of them. I didn't know his name, but from the mixture of tattoo's and blood-swaddled bruises covering his face I knew he was the man that Ian had beaten for leaving his hunting knife lying around. I noticed he had a new knife strapped to his belt, which paled in comparison to his other weapon: A fireman's axe, duct-taped to the end of a broom handle for added length. A makeshift pole-axe? I approve.
Apparently me and Lou had been assigned our daily jobs. Lou was to accompany Ian on a petrol supply run. I didn't envy him, I had a feeling any time I spent with Ian would take a serious toll on my brain cells. It was for that reason that I counted myself lucky to be placed on Team Inkface. I'd be running with Shawn (The pole-axe swinger), Hendryk (The Polish nurse) and two randomer's whom I hadn't had the pleasure, or displeasure, of meeting yet. They mostly kept to themselves and when they communicated it was only with grunts, glares and swigs of whisky – which led me to assume they were Ian's prison buddies.
Shawn gave me the heads up on what to expect. We were going to drive back to the abandoned refugee camp and start dismantling what was left of the barbed wire fence. It was Jarvis' plan to bring it back to their own camp, piece by piece, to add to the already formidable defences.
I was handed back my bat and my knife. Well, not my knife, but the knife I took from the infected man I'd met on the highway a few days back. I guess it was mine now, he said I could keep it after all. It felt nice to once again grip the blunt force of the baseball bat that had accompanied me half way across the south coast of England. The warm, wooden bat lent me a much needed peace of mind. I no longer felt utterly defenceless.
We were assigned two cars, one of them being my Citroen as it was still carrying a copious quantity of petrol, thanks to my efforts. I was over-joyed to be reunited with the car, it was a brilliant little runner. Hendryk would be my road-buddy, and unlike the other camp members he showed me a thin tendril of trust by tossing me the car keys.
After fumbling the catch and retrieving the keys from the ground, we set off, trailing behind Shawn and his two officers in their hefty pick-up truck.
I admit that at several points during the short trip through the woodlands I considered swerving away from the track and leaving Camp-Kill-Yourself behind.
The sweeping images of Ryan, Jarvis and Carolyn prevented me from doing so. I wouldn't be leaving that camp until I'd convinced them to come with me. Hell, I even felt a strange affinity for Hendryk, who sat silently beside me while humming to himself and periodically cleaning his glasses. Lou also held a tentative spot in my... well, not heart, but maybe a kidney or something. He was among the few campers that hadn't assaulted me, questioned my sexual alignment, insinuated I would soon be fed to the zombies or generally made me feel completely unwelcome. He'd instead taught me how to pump water and commented on the irregular position of my nose. And for that I was determined to reserve judgement.
The solemn sight of the refugee camp greeted us as we curved around the small, placid village of Charminster and began to hurtle along the road. Zombie activity on these streets had increased since yesterday, probably thanks to the abrasively loud backfiring of Nutter's motorcycle, something Jarvis hadn't appreciated. The moped was deemed too dangerous as the sound would no doubt attract attention. Jarvis ordered it to be syphoned for fuel and added to the wall of vehicular debris.
Nutter wasn't a fan of the decision, but relented after several minutes of manic tantrums, which I found pretty damn amusing.
Hendryk ordered me to pull ahead of the other car as we neared the abandoned camp. I did so, and then became suddenly encumbered by the sheer amount of zombies. Whilst these guys were seasoned zombie slayers, I felt a trickle of OH SHIT flavoured sweat roll down my head. I was forced to stop as the cluster of Z's thickened. A couple climbed onto the front of the car to press their half-flayed faces up against the window
I struggled to comprehend how we'd so quickly got into such a mess. The second car should've been right behind us, ready to back us up and take some of the heat away if we needed it. And we most definitely needed it.
A slow realization crept into my mind as I sat there beside Hendryk, watching the armada of dead bodies blend into one unified, rotten mass. Had this been there plan all along? Send the new kid and his polish sympathiser out into the world, surround them with zombies and then leave them there until they starved, ate each other or died from lack of oxygen. It was brutally brilliant, and I hated myself for falling into such a trap.
I took my anger out on the steering wheel, pounding it twice before Hendryk caught my arm and gave me a bespectacled, awkward smile, it stopped me in my tracks, potentially saving the steering wheel from a further beating.
At first I wanted to rip the smile from Hendryk's face, but then an improvised pole-axe embedded itself in the head of the zombie directly behind my car door. The force of the swing carried the axe through its head and crashing into the window, just a few inches from my face.
The glass refused to break, thankfully, and instead sent a spider web of small cracks spreading out from the point of the axe, which removed itself rather quickly and continued to spread decimation amongst the zombies.
Well, thank fuck for that. We weren't the trap after all. Instead we were the willing distraction, letting the Z's crowd around us and smell our lovely, warm-blooded bodies before the reinforcements swept in with hammers, axes and crowbars to pick them off one-by-one. The guys weren't as efficient as I'd expected them to be. Their effective but brutal style held a stark contrast to my former parter, who's nunchuck techniques were cold, calculated and coated in bad-assery.
It worked though, the Z's dropped like flies. And the flies, well, they flew away. Which was nice, because fuck flies. Me and Hendryk exited the car and were quickly tasked with moving the bodies to the side of the road. Because a clean road is a safe road, or something. It was hard, sweaty work, which at least kept me warm on an otherwise chilly morning. Once the bodies were moved and my hands were drenched in unnaturally tepid body fluids, we refocused our attention on assisting Shawn and the others. They had moved along to the front of the camp, where the fence had caved in on itself and created a small breach, which we had taken complete strategic advantage of.
The opening was only a meter wide, enough for two bodies at once. We stood on the outside looking in, whistling softly to get the attention of the closest Z's. They quickly took the bait, as expected, and began to group around the breach. Like I said, they could only come two at a time, so we stood our ground and began taking heads.
A single zombie is only a threat if your caught with your pants down. They can catch you if your distracted, or feeling safe, or if your senses are dulled for whatever reason. They can get the jump on you if your ears aren't opened to their signature sounds, the unsteady shuffle of their feet, the low grumble that begins in the bottom of their throat and ends, rather exultantly, with their teeth biting down on your flesh. If your surroundings are too noisy then you lose that advantage, but you can still rely on your nose, broken or not, to sniff them out. It's not an easy thing to describe, perhaps the smell of a rancid loaf of meat left to bake in the sun and saturate in the rain, and don't forget the presence of maggots and flies – a complete contrast to the rich, bloody smell of recently killed woodland game. Mingle this with the stench of unclenched bowels, emptied and uncensored, spilling their excrement onto the lower torso to add the unforgiving smell of dried zombie-shite.
My general rule is that if I can smell a fetid worm-and-steak sandwich with an accompanying piss-and-feces salad, then I better get ready to break some skulls.
The true danger lies in the horde. Or the swarm – whatever you want to call it. A car may seem unstoppable, it's a box of metal after all, but I've seen a deer get hit head on, then limp away into the wild, leaving a mangled, unresponsive heap of shrapnel behind. Your car has a life line, and throwing it into every zombie you see will wear it out until, like an unsharpened knife, it's rendered useless. And if you throw that car into a genuine zombie roadblock, you'll find yourself stopped dead in your tracks, a few crushed zombies laying broken on the floor, and a dozen others that you didn't stop, ready and willing to surround and impound. And if you're without a car, well, sucks for you.
That being said, we were severing heads at an astonishing rate. Rotating our offensive front line after every couple of swings to keep us fresh and sprightly. It was going swimmingly right until another section of fence collapsed under the pressure of several infuriated Z's, just a few meters to our left.
One of my nameless friends grabbed hold of my arm and dragged me over to help counter this new problem. I reached the first Z and sent my bat rocketing into the side of its head, spraying a waterfall of blood and bone fragments through the air.
As the thwarted zombie fell to the floor, a spurt of sticky blood launched itself from the newly opened wound in its head, hitting me square in the face.
There's no poetic way to describe it. It was icky. Really icky. I scrambled away from the oncoming throng of Z's, wiping the red goop away from my mouth and eyes. In the confusion I backtracked into my partner, sending him tripping over and into the floor.
Before you could say 'Tickle me Elmo,' they were on top of him. Three corpsified bodies suddenly dropped to the floor beside his struggling form, burying their teeth and claws into his flesh.
I was not making a good first impression.
My mind slipped into a murky fog as the gruesome scene unfolded before me. Someone far away in the distance was shouting at me to do something, anything to help their companion, who's blood-soaked, screaming figure attracted more and more Z's, each one eager to join the feast. There was a crunching of sinew and bone as an arm was ripped from its socket, bringing forth another high pitched howl of desperation.
The screams faded to wrenching coughs and finally a slow, bubbly gurgle as his throat flooded with blood. It was only when his sunken eyes rolled back in his head to fix me with a final, accusing death-stare that I regained control of my own body.
It isn't often you see a man eaten alive just a few feet away from you, but somehow I managed to keep my composure and suppress the sickened tremor that jolted through my insides. I've seen things. Horrible things. I've met zombies of every shape and size, with every style of bodily deformity. I've witnessed first hand the painful process of dehumanization that follows a zombie bite, the mental and physical regression. It was something I prayed to whatever deity remained that would never happen to me.
But with all that in mind, so far on my travels I hadn't yet witnessed a human being ripped into a dozen small, digestible pieces by the bloodthirsty masses, writhing beneath a pyramid of primitive creatures with what few limbs he had left and watching his intestines being used as dental floss.
I snapped my arms up to let loose with some serious batting action, not realizing that the bat was rolling away from me after I'd discarded it to wipe the congealed blood out of my face. My next best option was the knife tucked into my belt. It quickly became untucked, and I slammed it, dropping to my knees in the process, into the head of the closest Z.
There was no hope of saving our doomed comrade, but I could still wreck some shit up in his honour. Ex-Con or not, nobody deserves to be dissected like that. Well, maybe some people.
The zombie at the end of my knife stiffened, then went limp and slid off the blade. I had to snatch my arm back away from the twisting pile of Z's to avoid the ever persistent threat of the zombie bite, although in their determination to destroy any evidence that our convict buddy ever existed they refused to even acknowledge me, or their suddenly slain friend. There aren't many things I like more than a helpful advantage, so I dived back in to grab a fistful of zombie hair. I pulled back the Z's head and stabbed into its temple, a soft part of the skull only made softer by the rotting flesh. With a short moan of defiance the zombie accepted its free ride into the afterlife, as did another as Shawn stepped in to back me up, dropping an axe into the pile-up and detaching a head or two.
Hendryk and the other companion left their opening to lend us a hand, and soon we had the situation back under control, although with far more spinning heads than I was comfortable with.
All in all we had killed dozens of the things, a fair achievement and something I was proud to be a part of, even if the company left a little to be desired.
The celebration was cut short, however, when the remaining prisoner who's name I hadn't yet learned grabbed hold of my coat and shoved me into the ground.
I made the mistake of using my hands to cushion the fall. One of then hit the ground hard, jarring my arm, whilst the other landed on the recently crushed skull of a zombie. I mentally ticked 'Play with somebodies brain goo' off of my fucked-up-things-to-do list.
A steady stream of swear-tacular insults followed the shove. Hendryk squeezed himself between me and the angry man, who was shaking a hammer in my general direction and raving about how I'd stood by and done nothing while his friend was eaten alive. I kept my mouth shut because, as a small, guilty voice in my head informed me, he was pretty correct. I could've reacted faster, but a half-blinded, baseball batless Luigi is not a helpful Luigi, not that he stopped his shouting long enough to listen for that explanation.
I noticed Shawn lingering in the background, cradling his pole-axe and watching the drama. He was eyeing me up with the barest whisper of a smile on his face. If I had time to feel creeped out I would've, but my attention was mostly focused on not giving the wild-eyed, hammer-shaking dude any more incentive to bludgeon me in the middle of the road.
After a few more minutes of accusations and verbal abuse, Hendryk somehow managed to calm things down, and whilst I don't think anyone thought me entirely innocent, they certainly seemed less inclined to physically maim me.
After putting our shouty voices away and making a shaky truce, we set to carrying out our assigned mission. It was our job to somehow dismantle enough of the refugee camps barbed wire fence to add it to our own camps perimeter, deep in the woodland. All in all, a clever idea, and a good way to piss away my afternoon. It wasn't in my agenda to help these guys get better fortified, especially when I was planning to royally screw up their little escapade when I had the right amount of intel, support and confidence. But, I also needed to stay in Jarvis' good books for the time being, and it wouldn't hurt to earn a little trust and repair some of the damage I'd done by watching Nameless Convict #8 get butchered.
It worked. I was swapping jokes with Hendryk and Shawn in no time. The other guy completely ignored me, which I guess is too bad for him, because I've been told that I'm a good guy to have around on a cold, zombie-filled day of drudgery.
Finally. Finally I had revenge on my old nemesis. The barbed wire fence crumbled beneath my fearsome gaze. Never again would my dreams be haunted by the memories of my hand being riddled with holes thanks to a well secured airport and the serrated barbs that defended it.
It turns out digging up barbed wire fences is mind-numbingly hard work. It's been a while since I slaved away for someone else's benefits, so I was slightly out of practice. The fact that the posts holding up the fence had been cemented into the ground didn't help much either. We resigned to cutting away individual sections of the fence, rolling them up carefully using industrial leather gauntlets, and then securing them in the back of the pick-up truck with grappling lines.
Shawn made a total of four trips back to the base throughout the day to offload the fencing. The first time he came back he broke the news that Jarvis and his fellow campers were less than happy with losing a fellow camp member. At least Shawn had apparently done his best to be vague about the circumstances surrounding his death. I appreciated it, but I knew that as soon as the others got back to camp the real story would get out. And when that happened it might quickly become my ass roasting over the camp fire.
After hours of strenuous labour, and an almost unending trickle of zombies that had marched single file towards us to be greeted with a sudden and fatal ending, our work was done. We were going home. Well, they were were going home, I was going with them to some place filled with all sorts of potential danger.
I rode in the truck on the way back with Shawn. I was willing to sit through an uneasy silence for most of the journey, but after a few moments on the road he surprised me with a enthusiastic pat on the shoulder.
'Strong effort, kid.'
Can't help but a agree there. I almost broke a sweat today, what with the rolling, and the stacking, and the killing.
'Just stood there and watched him die. Chilling.'
Huh? I raised an eyebrow at Shawn, who smiled back at me through his bruised and battered face. There was a small moment whilst I considered correcting him on the matter. I didn't stand there and watch him die. Well, not on purpose anyway. The truth was it happened so fast I was genuinely shocked into stillness.
But I stayed silent, not willing to risk losing Shawn's sudden support. After all, Ian had beaten Shawn close to unconsciousness only yesterday, and Ian had the majority of the camp backing him up. If this elderly tattoo enthusiast was against Ian, then that meant we were allies by default. Like the old Chinese proverb said: The enemy of my enemy has a pole-axe, so don't fuck with him. Or something like that.
So I accepted the knowing smiles that Shawn sent my way on the drive back to camp, and I nodded along when he muttered about "Those bastard faced boy scouts" that we were living with.
As expected, my reception upon returning to the camp was cold. Really cold. I was mostly ignored, and partially ridiculed. I took it all on the chin, to bite back at them now would be foolish. One man against many rarely turned out well. So I kept my eyes downcast and assisted in offloading the last rolls of barbed wire fence. Jarvis came out of his hideaway to oversee the process, which was probably why any aggression towards me was kept to a minimum.
I'd gone most of the day without food, so with the fencing packed away and my duties officially over I made my way back to the tent I shared with Ryan, which was stuffed with tinned goods and biscuits.
Ryan himself was sat on a tree stump, warming his tan hands over a small camp fire. Next to him sat Hendryk, who caught my eye and sent me a subtle wave.
I stashed my baseball bat into the tent and kicked off my boots. In my books nothing else could end a day better than toasty feet, slowly acquired from an open fire. I stomped over to Ryan and Hendryk and dropped to the ground, feeling the full strain of a hard days work in my shoulders.
I propped myself up on my elbows and directed my feet at the fire, filling them with a relaxing warmth. And for a while, I was content.
'What've we got here, eh? The polack, the punjab and the prick. What a fuckin' freakshow.'
It was a voice I'd grown uncomfortably familiar with. Nutter stood a few paces away from our fire, looking down at us like we were a speck of shit on the tip of his shoe. His words sent a prickle of anger through my spine and I found my face automatically forming into a frown, and my eyes turning to frost. I looked at Nutter with the most murderous stare I could muster, and he looked straight back at me.
Then he smirked and spat a globule of phlegm onto the ground, and moved on into the night.
The anger lingered with me as I let my toes roast and scooped spoonfuls of warm beans down my throat. Nobody spoke, not even when Shawn joined us at the fire and passed around a bottle of vodka. I took a swig, even though I'm more of a cider man, and passed it to Hendryk, who guzzled down a mouthful or three. Ryan took the bottle next, and in the light of the fire I could make out a yellowish bruise forming beneath his eye. No doubt made by Ian, Nutter or one of the other goons.
My temper didn't get a chance to simmer down. I decided that my feet were suitably warm and wobbled back to the tent to reclaim my hiking boots. It was upon picking up one of my boots that I sensed that something was very, very wrong.
For starters they were wet, although it hadn't rained at all. Then through more exploration I realized they weren't the cold wet of rainfall, they were moist and slightly warm. And they didn't smell of water at all. They smelt like something entirely different. It took five seconds for the explanation to hit me, and it hit me like a freight train.
My boots were drenched in piss.
It was like the chilly snap of a twig, yet at the same time it was similar to the flinch-worthy smashing of a mirror. The anger that had been boiling beneath me suddenly spilled out through every pore of my body, it was released into the brisk night air, taking all my caution and submissiveness with it.
I picked up one of my boots, ignoring the squelching sound it made and the droplets of urine that trickled down my fingers.
With it, I marched towards the main camp fire, just as everybody around it burst out in laughter and turned to look in my direction. Nutter had just finished telling them the hilarious story of how he had unzipped his jeans and covered the new guys boots in piss. The triumphant grin on his face as he turned to look at me sent my temper into overdrive. I could think of only one thing to do.
So I threw my piss-soaked boot at his face.
Before it had even hit the ground I'd already curled my fingers into a fist, located a suitable part of Nutter's face introduce it too, and thought up a couple of worthy one-liners to say out loud after I'd knocked him out.
But then I found my arm freeze in mid-air. I was suddenly unwilling to commit to the brutal beating that I wished upon Nutter. The humanity lover inside me was screaming at me to stop, that attacking another human being was undoubtedly wrong in every way. I felt my fist soften and my anger subside slightly. The laughter had faded also, leaving behind a shocked silence and also-
CRUNCH. Nutter sent his forehead into my jaw, cutting off whatever stupid thought had stopped me from giving this cretin the thrashing he deserved. It also reminded me that my jaw had already taken a small beating this morning, when Carolyn had elbowed me in the face.
My anger returned in full as a fist swung into my ribs. It was then I knew that I'd entered into my first fist fight, something I'd been careful to avoid so far in life.
The next time Nutter sent a fist my way I had the good sense to avoid it, letting it skim past my cheek and into the nothingness behind me. I found my arms answering his attack for me, dashing out to punch him once in the side of the neck, and then again with my other fist, curving around to hook him in the cheek.
He fell back, but a ring of humans had formed around us and somebody caught him, shoving him back towards me. He used the momentum to send another swing at me, but it was uncontrolled and off balance, easily avoidable.
I did one better and used what little ninjistics I had to catch his fist in my own hand, clamping it shut like a vice. I think the awesome display of reactions shocked us both, I stood for a second without fully knowing what I should do next. He recovered quicker then I did, and with his free hand me punched me directly in the forehead.
The thing about foreheads is that they're made to withstand punishment, the skull is thick for a reason, so I was pleasantly rewarded with the sound of breaking bones as his fist connected with the hard part of my head, I counted at least two of his fingers snapping. Sure, it left me with a slight headache, but its far harder to fight with a broken finger, I can assure you. The advantage was mine for the taking, and I threw everything I had into my next punch, which hammered into Nutter's nose. As did the second, and the third.
The fourth and fifth met only air, because Nutter's knee's had given way, dropping him to the floor. I guess that made me a winner, but as I stood there with an aching head, a still-throbbing nose and most of the skin missing from my knuckles, I didn't feel like I'd won anything.
The anger was gone in an instant. I guess I'd achieved whatever goal it had tasked me with. Without even acknowledging the surrounding crowd I picked up my dripping boot and stomped away, pushing through Shawn and Hendryk, who watched me leave with wide eyes and gaping mouths.
There were a few whistles, some jeering and a shed load of muttering as I walked back to my tent. I made out Ian grumbling a few orders, clearly displeased with Nutter's performance. I didn't care, all I wanted was to crawl inside my sleeping bag and fall asleep for a year.
It wasn't easy. As soon as my face hit the ground I was overcome with unexpected tremors as my jumbled mind struggled to piece together what had just happened.
As soon as my hands stopped shaking I grabbed my phone, switched it on, made sure I had a suitable amount of battery power and then began typing.
It helped, It really did. I felt the whole day come back to me as I relived it, as I did every day, by typing it into my last true companion, my phone. The tremors subsided, and eventually Ryan joined me in the tent. He didn't speak a word, but I'm almost certain I felt some kind of empathy from him, or perhaps approval, as he slid into his own sleeping bag and began his slumber.
And now I think I'll go to sleep. The uncharacteristic brutality I'd shown my fellow man (If you can consider him a fellow man) would either earn me the respect of the campers, or condemn me to a redoubled attempt to break me. So if tomorrow I'm stripped naked and beaten until my lungs stop working then so be it. At least I sent that little shit face first into the dirt.
Maybe next time he'll think twice about who's boots he pisses on. That's assuming he has the brain capacity to think twice about anything.
Beaten, bruised, but not broken. Luigi out.