The Crowed Warrior

She drew her handgun and crouched behind the rubble of what used to be a car. Her hover bike was safely hidden a quarter of a mile away. She could not risk its noise alerting the things that lived near the water that she was nearby. A patrol of the gibbering creatures had just passed her by, and she listened to make sure that they were gone before she stepped out from behind her hiding place. She was not afraid to face them. She had killed many of their number, but they were hard to look at. Just seeing them made it hard to think and ate away a small piece of her soul. Maybe even her mind too. It was hard to tell anymore. She recognized that sometimes she would have to face them, but if she had a choice she would look away until they were gone every time.

Once, her world had been beautiful, but that time seemed like a dream and no longer felt real. Everything before the big change felt false in her memory. She was a different person then. She even thought that she might have smiled and been happy. Now her life was a rotation between pain, fear, and thirst. She struggled, what was it about thirst? Ah, she needed water. The things by the water had left. She would see if she could get enough water to last her for days. Days? Yes, days was the right term. It was hard to remember. Sometimes all she could see were those things faces, and the way that they called for her to join them.

She had come here for another reason; it was before she realized that she needed water. Something had drawn her out to this place populated by the monsters devouring her world. Something, something, something. She could not remember. What was more important than water or food? There was nothing that she could imagine; survival took precedence over all else. Slowly she edged her way to the small pond that still held fresh water. She filled four canteens before she heard a shuffling noise.

Quickly, the filth stained girl put her canteens around her waist. She wore only a bikini bottom and thick leather boots that crept up to her knees. She kept low, and looked downward as she slowly made her way back to her hiding place. She hoped that she could slip away unnoticed, but doubted that her luck would hold for much longer. The shuffling had stopped, and she had no idea of where the noise had been coming from. She froze in place, straining to hear something that would clue her in on the direction she needed to avoid. Thankfully the tall yellowed weeds around the water hole would hide her until she made it to a place where she could run easily. The tall grass here was like razors, and her barely covered body would be slashed in a hundred locations before she made her way clear. The grass also rustled and crunched as if it had been dry for months in spite of being near the water. There was a small path that was clear of the plants that she followed, but she still could not move without disturbing the local flora a little.

Whatever was out there knew she was nearby and was also playing a waiting game. Unfortunately for the girl she could not afford to remain in place. Sooner or later the monsters would come back, and they would kill her. She could not face three at the same time. She would lose her mind before they ever got to her. Reluctantly, she crept forward once more crouched like cat on the prowl, trying desperately to keep as quiet as possible.

She heard the sound again. It was close. She decided that she had no choice but to run. If she moved surely and swiftly the things would never be able to catch her. They were lumbering and slow, but tough and strong. Running always beat fighting. Hiding generally beat running, but she had no cover here and it was a fight or flight option. She moved into a runners stance without realizing what she was doing. Lately she existed on an instinctive level. Higher thought hurt and was difficult. She could still operate a hover bike or load a gun, but simple concepts such as humor, love, and joy were beyond her at the moment. They might have been stripped away permanently.

The noise came again, behind her and to the left, and the girl bolted like a cat with its tail on fire. She ran, taking in great gulping breaths of air, and pumping her legs like a receiver trying to get to location the ball was going to be. She could hear it coming after her and she lost her focus.

She tripped just as she exited the dying grass, and slid forward, just managing to catch herself with her hands before she struck the jagged stones on the ground. In an instant she was up and on her feet. She swiveled around to face whatever was coming and pulled a .45 Magnum from behind her back. She had already drawn the hammer back and was squeezing the trigger so that she could shoot whatever was after her.

A split second later she was looking at the reason she had come to the water hole in the first place. The reason she could barely remember with her mind being so clouded lately. The thing that she sought more than life sustaining water; it was her friend, Mace. Mace, who had gone missing days ago, only to be standing beside her now. Mace, whom she recognized by his blue slacks that hung from his waist like a loin cloth, having been torn and shredded long ago. Mace, who was mutating before her eyes, becoming one of those . . . things. She knew he was not all the way gone, because even though her head hurt when she looked at him her mind did not go all slanty into oblique non-Euclidian angles. Not that she would even know what a Euclidian angle was anymore. That kind of knowledge was buried under writhing nightmares and unspoken whispers of doom and damnation.

She did realize that she could fire, but he was struggling with the transformation from man into monster, and she realized that he was going to be slow. Slow enough that she could run from him and make it to her bike. The bike where she had left her bandoleers with her extra cartridges. If she fired now she would only draw the attention of the others to herself, and she did not have enough bullets to stop Mace and the three others that she knew of, hell there might even be more of them. So the girl fled as fast as she could after she had eased the hammer back on her weapon and took her finger from the trigger. She did not want to shoot herself any more than she did her former friend. She ran back into the broken wasteland and hoped that there were no surprises waiting for her.