Chapter 3

Pain. Sheer ungodly pain that he could not fathom a man or beast or whatever the world saw him as now could feel. He was supposed to be the big guy! The goddamn heavy! THE muscle bound monster that could not be stopped by anything.

Instead he lay face down, in a puddle of his own bodily fluids, his very life force seeming to ebb away from him. He managed to open an eye, and could see a large snaked trail of his dark crimson earth blood swim away into a stream that mixed with the still flowing rain as thunder danced across the heavens, spiked by lightning punctuating the earth several dozen feet away.

Spike was pissed. Simple as. It would take a while for these wounds to heal but he knew they would be fine. Plus he would have some impressive scars for the ladies, he smiled as he slowly tried to haunch himself up to stop face-planting the concrete. He grunted as the concrete cracked and no it was his back that cracked.

"Shnmmut" he mouthed, words intelligible due to the severe lack of lower jaw issue. He was angry he had finally found someone he could actually talk to, and then bam! Soon after his jaw was removed from his face by an angry army soldier, Spike promptly removed his spine and head and showed it to his comrades, muffling obscenities as he did so as he used it to beat them to death.

He sighed a happy sigh, thinking what a great day that turned out to be, sure he lost the ability to speak, and his jaw which ruined his once handsome profile. But that day he met back up with Sunny and his Hunter female friend Zhay. She was a specimen all right.

He groaned as he heard a whimper nearby, someone or something was close. He tried to move but his massive frame wasn't helping anybody and he hated how he felt like a beached whale as the world just went on by. If that asshole came back he'd be a dead man, infected..tank thing.

Thankfully, it was a fellow infected. But he then heard the hyper chirps and squeals of a Jockey. The bottom class of the infected as most of them seemed to dub them. Small, rodent like and with a horrid attention span they simply "rode" their foes to a certain doom or into other obstacles. They had their uses sure. He had seen many separate a group of survivors while a boomer attack and a well aimed pounce followed by a charger snapping some spines with their ridiculous pounding and punches. He chuckled out loud at the days when he would just obliterate the survivors while the others just watched in awe.

"D-d-d-d-d-d-eead?" a voice, hyper in tone but with an undertone of unease and sorrow mixed together in a rapid assault on the eardrums.

"Y-y-y-y-youuu neeeedd hayulp?" he squawked again "I heyulp!"

Spike hated he couldn't answer, and how he couldn't also stand up and punt him off the bridge. Jockeys had a good time when landing from large falls and Spike particularly loved drop kicking them off rooftops. Hell he loved simply hitting stuff full stop.

He heard the tiny patter of his erratic feet as he chirped, laughed and gargled oddly with an odd burp thrown in for good measure. He could hear him moving away, and then angry grunts and pain as someone whelped as he could then make out someone struggling.

An infected staggered in front of Spike. He then fell to the floor, limp and obviously dead his eyes gouged out and bruises all over his face. The Jockey had ridden him to Spike, but killed him in the process trying to help.

He looked at the now eyeless infected, he looked sad and angry at the same time. His dusty flight suit and greying skin made Spike glad he was different to the common flock of this horde.

The Jockey made his way around Spike again, and started to push and shove him in a futile attempt to get him on his feet. He grunted, squealed and shouted obscenities at the top of his little lungs and somehow, Spike felt himself be picked up and shoved upright.

He saw the Jockey bounce up and down, happy and jubilant and Spike got a good look at him, now that he was sitting up straight, and somehow leaning on a car he could rest properly and maybe take in the beautiful night sky that had now cleared up. He could see it was coming close to early morning and he sighed, his cold breathe leaving a small steamy cloud that drifted away with the soft breeze that flowed through the bridge.

The Jockey walked around to the front of Spike, he was about two and a half feet tall, hunched over of course like all the other little rats. He was wearing the tattered remains of a white suit, with a blue under-shirt and oddly, a gas mask with red lenses which seemed to glow in the night and a baseball cap turned backwards atop his head. Why on earth he was wearing it was a mystery to him, but he didn't really care. He wanted to know how he somehow lifted Spike off his back.

He hiccuped and let out a large belch, staggering drunkenly he whistled loudly twice as if calling someone and ran around on the spot. Almost as if he was chasing some one, or something or his own tail if he had one. His little bare feet were going back and forth like jet engines as he garbled and cackled crazily to catch this invisible being.

In a snap he grasped something, it was a fly. He lifted up his mask, and putting it in his oddly normal white teeth he chewed it down ravenously and belched again, loosening a maniacal cackle that made Spike raise an eyebrow. He simply muffled a laugh and reached out to pat the little creature but his strength was faded and anything except breathing and sitting on his ass would be the only thing he could do.

It was gonna be a long day, and he knew something bad was gonna happen.

"Friend....fwend...Deaded.." his voice hit Spike like a tonne of bricks, well if that would hurt him. He looked again at the Jockey, who hung his head, his small arms held out in front of him limp as he looked like he had just lost his favourite toy.

"T-t-t-t-tall man...deaded..." Spike felt something sink inside him, and a speck of rain bounced off his head, and ran down the back of his neck sending shivers down his spine. He wasn't sure what he meant, but he didn't like what he thought it was.

He managed to glance where the oddly quiet Jockey was pointing with one sad faced hand.

Lying down in a fractured pool of his own blood, Sunny lay disembowelled, his form still and his eyes empty of any life.

"Sowwie...."