"Parlami d'amore, Mariù. Tutta la mia vita sei tu. Gli occhi tuoi belli brillano…."
Boots on the feet, heavy jacket, scarf at the neck and woolly gloves to protect your hands. It's the young Mariù, with brown eyes, dark short hair and her grumbling that distinguishes her. She is accompanied by her mother, Elisa, also dressed in heavy clothes and with her usual ponytail. Unlike her daughter, she is more serene, they are going skiing and she has been waiting for this moment for weeks.
They are sitting on the chair of the chairlift, are climbing high in the snowy mountains, with clear sky and next to them have laid skis. A melody resonates in the environment, comes from the pocket of Mom, especially from her mobile phone. It's a song, indeed the song that helped her to find the name for her daughter, now a teenager.
Parlami d'amore Mariù
the snow-covered leaves of the trees sway, moved by the wind that grew in intensity and the young woman, with her arms folded and the annoyance that grows, looks at her feet guided by the wind.
"Mamma (mom), uff, it's the third time you've heard this song"
The puzzled mother says "are you still angry for earlier?"
"nooo, you just seized my phone and took me to the mountains by force." Speaks sarcastically the girl
"well, you can't spend your time in the bedroom chatting with friends, you have to go out sometimes. But then, we are on the Marmolada, many would pay huge sums to be here during the Christmas holidays."
"bah" answers Mariù annoyed, turning her face towards the trees that flowed beside her.
After a while they hear a scream and the unmistakable sound of the sirens of the ambulance coming from the bottom of the valley. The two turn in surprise, with a veiled concern for each other. Mom immediately seeks a logical and rational explanation.
"maybe, someone got hurt skiing"
After this sentence the two are reassured, ignoring the gravity of what is happening.
It's not long before they reach the top of the chairlift. Just before they get off, mother and daughter notice a man. He is facing away, but you can see his wobbling. He has the sleeves of his shirt raised, you can see immediately his arms and hands. The skin is cyanotic, full of bruises and scratches. He shows obvious nervous tics, his hands move compulsively, as if he was trying to grab something and aggressively shook his head, with whole strands of hair missing, making the neck creak, also blue and covered in bruises.
They get out of the chair and immediately curious, but also worried about the man approach him. Elisa immediately exclaims "hey, sir, is everything okay?"
The tics that once dominated the man have now vanished. With a dangling arm and a clumsy, slow gait, he turns to mother and daughter. He makes a roar, hoarse, wheezing as he turns his body and head. Once turned, Elisa and Mariù are frozen. The face of this man is torn, bloody, with glassy eyes staring into space. The cut runs along the face starting from the mouth and passing through the left cheek.
Mom tries to communicate with the person again "can you hear me? I'm calling the emergency room"
At that moment the tic of this unfortunate man resumes, more aggressive, more frequent. He immediately wrinkled his eyebrows, showing a furious look and from what was left of his mouth comes saliva soaked with blood. Mother and daughter take a few steps back seriously concerned.
Mariù, frightened, asks her mother "what's going on? why does she do this?"
The worried mother says "I don't know. But stay behind, not..."
Elisa does not finish the sentence in time, that immediately this strange and bloody individual rushes towards them with an unparalleled aggressiveness. Like an uncontrollable force he invades them, making them fall to the ground. He immediately throws himself at the young woman, trying to bite her face with that cut mouth, which is bleeding and pieces of meat. The girl finds herself with blood on her face in an attempt to repel this person and she screams, screams like she has never done before.
The mother does not waste time to get up and takes one of those skis that are on the chair and hits the guy several times away from the girl. In hitting it manages to break his head, and he immediately collapses on the ground, you can not know if he is dead or passed out.
"Is he dead?" asks the girl in terror
Mom, with a look of fear, while trying to call the police with her cell phone "per la miseria! (for misery!) Here does not take the cell phone, we have to go back on the chairlift and down to valley."
Mariù observes distressed "the chairlift is blocked, it does not move."
"then we will go down on foot, following the first path that we find" answers Elisa visibly tense.
But just as they were walking, other sounds begin to be heard, coming from the forest. The sounds of these people are getting louder and louder, they have heard the commotion, the screams and now they are heading for their terrified mother and daughter. Elisa and Mariù start running, take the first path down which they find and those beings do not delay to come out of the forest to try to attack the two terrified.
They run, run and run, but their running is useless, those beings are fast and do not even seem to give a hint of fatigue. On the trail there are too many people and they decide to go into the woods. The sounds, the sounds resound in the air, bouncing between one pine tree and another. On their heads the vegetation is dense, the rays of the sun hardly pass. Beneath their feet is snow and tree roots, which make it difficult to move
in that environment. The temperature is also starting to be a problem, it's getting lower and our two protagonists are starting to feel cold. Their noses blush, mucus starts to drip and they have no safe place to hide from those things. Mariù cleans her nose with her hand, covered in the woolly glove, while she runs. Elisa, as she moves, looks for a new path, a road, a reference point to escape from that place.
Immediately the tail of Elisa is pulled, some of those beings have reached them. The mother tries to resist, but they start to be too many. The girl tries to help, but immediately the older one opposes
"Run, you must run!"
the desperate girl "I can help you, you don't have to..."
But immediately Mariù is interrupted by her mother almost in tears "go! Run and don't look back."
After half a second, the woman with a broken voice concludes "ti voglio bene. (i love you)"
Mariù hesitates for a moment and then starts running. She runs, runs and with tears on her face, does not look back. He can't look back, it's too painful to see his mother slaughtered by those things. The sound of his breath and footsteps are overshadowed by the sounds of his mother and those beings as they struggle with each other. After about ten minutes of walking among the trees, the girl no longer hears all those noises that once dominated the scene. Tired and disoriented, she decides to sit by a tree.
Her hands are shaking, she is hungry for air and her heart is beating like crazy. Panic is taking over and she won't stop crying. He keeps his arms closed because of the cold and his face is covered with blood. Not only is she sad that she may have lost her mother, but she's also traumatized. He saw beings drooling, bleeding, hanging guts, untenable stench and have glassy eyes. Any person would be dead, but these beings are still standing and attacking other people. After what he saw though, the term beings starts to get tight. Those are nothing but monsters, lacking in empathy, with a huge and insatiable hunger for meat.
All of a sudden the sounds dominate the scene. They follow one after another, but with a rhythm far from cadenced. Puffs and drips move the air, creating cold wind gusts. Mariù barely regains control of herself, following the noises she turns and sees him, he is behind the tree, it's a deer. He moves slowly, clumsily, smells so much, his head dangles in the air as if it is maintaining a precarious balance and his body is wrapped by this single ray of sun, which passes through the bush. The girl had never seen a deer so close up before and it remains magnetized. She naively decides to approach him, the temptation to touch his wet face is strong, but then the animal notes her and turns his face towards her. She stops suddenly worried and the beast begins to move towards her. Mariù is shocked, the eyes of this deer are glassy and on one side of the torso, which was previously hidden from his view, you can see the protruding ribs, the flesh torn.
And here is the face to face between the two. a couple of seconds and a puff that covers the girl's face, moving her hair. The beast opens slightly his mouth, emanates a foul, revolting odor and a trickle of blood slowly descends from his lip to the ground. The deer raises its head, turning its face towards the sky and uttering a loud cry.
"oh cazzo! (oh fuck!)" exclaims Mariù stunned
That bellowing is like a loud alarm. the wood begins to rumble, with birdsong and beeping and hoarse sounds of monsters. She gets scared and backs off. The fear comes back, stronger than before and so she gets up, starts running. The heart is beating like a bat and the breath becomes more and more fluttering. The scene is filled with noises, from the full-throttled footsteps of monsters to the sounds of animals. She feels surrounded, doomed.
He runs, runs and runs again, but the sounds are closer and closer, in fact the monsters are closer and closer. And here it is, after all that running, among the trees of this forest, a cabin appears. All logs, brown, small, but it is perhaps the only safe place where Mariù can hide. So she without thinking too much, runs frantically towards the door. Thank god it's open. inside is dark, but she doesn't care. must be saved from the outside world and so enters. Closes the door, but not enough to feel safe. She looks at the side of the entrance, a large cabinet, slightly low. So she moves it in front of the door to block it. It's hard to move, it's heavy, especially for a teenager. Mariù, however, puts all the strength that has in his body, the steps, the sounds are getting closer and closer. It also slides when trying to move the furniture, but this does not stop it and after a few seconds of tension it manages to block the entrance.
Sounds, steps and noises of all kinds surround the cabin. Mariù is alone, terrified and does not know what to do, she does not know where her mother has gone, she does not know how to defend herself. She is petrified in front of the entrance, her eyes wide open and her hands trembling. She's afraid of monsters coming in, she's afraid of being taken, she's afraid of dying.