Vengeance Upturned

Vengeance Upturned - Chapter 3

With her arrow nocked and drawn, Henrietta surveyed the front yard, mindful of any motion. When no one could be seen, she stalked closer to one of the distorted lumps. Steps slowing, she drew nearer and noted a large naked body, pale with a grey tinge, bruised, and hairless. Henrietta kicked it over with her foot.

“Son of a fickle fate!” she exclaimed, and took an instinctive step back.

The front of the creature was just as grey, dirty and hairless, with a gaping wound across its throat drenched in black blood. Its limbs were elongated, thin and wiry. A set of sharp teeth protruded from its maw, and its claws were drenched with crimson liquid. Henrietta remembered though, from what she had been told that its most deadly weapon was the tongue. It could snap forward six feet, hitting its victim or coiling around a person’s neck for a strangling choke. Until it came close. With the victim incapacitated, most of the times, it would then use its dirty, sharp claws to dig a hole in a person’s chest so it could feed on the heart.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Henrietta paced in front of the body. “Fecking crawlers!”

The crawlers hadn’t been seen in her lifetime, and people thought they had successfully forced them back underground.  Named for the way they moved, crawling on all fours, with only its hands and feet touching the ground, and the torso hovering barely inches above, they were vicious and bloodthirsty, but unintelligent creatures, led only by hunger and the chaos in their heads.

A pitiful sob had Henrietta snapping her head to her right, snapping her bow up and drawing the arrow. One of the other bodies twitched, a head moved. This one had clothes on, a human.

Sneaking over, Henrietta discerned a man resting on his back, chest heaving with strained breath, clawed bloody but not torn open. A lifeless crawler, dagger stuck hilt deep into its eye, laid sprawled at the feet of the injured man. That one wouldn’t crawl ever again.

The man croaked for help.

“Shhh… shhh… you’ll draw them here,” Henrietta said as she crouched beside the man, appraising his wounds. “I’ll get you to safety.”

The man’s head snapped toward the sound of her voice, eyes brimming with tears, and his features relaxed slightly once he focused on Henrietta’s face.

“They… They’re gone…” He coughed. “I think.”

Henrietta found it odd that the man wasn’t pressing onto his wounds, stopping the blood from trickling out, and by the puddle around him and the paleness in his face, she knew he barely clung to life.

“Still not safe, they could return… We need to halt your bleeding and get you to safety.”

Before Henrietta could put her hands on his bloody chest the man croaked, “Nay…there’s nil help for me.”

“But…  You can still survive. We just need to stop the bleeding, and you said yourself, those creatures are gone. So let me—”

“No… Listen to me. That’s all bloody great news,” he chuckled humorlessly, “but… I can’t move.”

Henrietta frowned. “I’ll move you, I know I don’t look much but I’m strong enough.”

“No, silly girl…” he said, and coughed again. “I can’t move at all. Can’t feel me legs, or even me arms. Can only move the head. There’s no helping me. That vile creature broke something in me neck just as I stuck the dagger in its eye.”

“Oh…” Henrietta’s frown of confusion altered to one of anger so she kicked the crawler for good measure. She turned to the man again. “Is there naught I can do for you? Is your family alive? Do you want me to fetch them for you?”