10 Kilometers From Where the Dire Wolves Attacked, 1 PT, Day 1, 12:00 PM

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“What the fuck…”

Nothing could have prepared him for that sight.

‘Shit, I’m gonna be sick…’

Devin’s stomach immediately started to churn when he saw it. The meager food that he had eaten from before he was transferred to this place started to come up and nothing could stop it. His mind was too focused on the sight in front of him and the contents of his stomach, some fast food and generic breakfast cereal, were coming up too quickly for him to react. Realizing that there was no stopping it, he quickly went to a nearby tree that wasn’t already occupied and started to vomit on the tree.

He didn’t wantsing, it was hard to tell if the body was male or female.

Both lungs were punctured and coll to look at it again, he didn’t want to look at the corpse.

The body, to put it lightly, was brutalized to an extent that it was hard to say if an animal did this or not. From what Devin quickly saw, he saw that there was a lot of blood that was outside of their body. If he could give his best guess, he would think that there was at least a gallon of blood outside of the body, with the most amount of blood outside of the body seemingly stemming from the head.

The first thing that a person would notice about the body was that there was no head. It wasn’t lying around anywhere near, it was just… missing. Parts of flesh dangled precariously from the neck, insinuating that whatever did this had no care for precision when removing the head.

The next thing that someone would see would be that the chest of the body was destroyed beyond comprehension, with there being multiple, erratic, exit wounds that allowed an outside observer to easily look at the body’s chest and stomach cavities. The wounds on the chest were so bad that, with the head misapsed and the heart was nowhere to be seen inside the body, the only real possible answer to where it went was a puddle of blood that had formed in a shrub that was a little ways away from the body. The person’s intestines were, somehow, in an even worse state as it seemed as if they were played around with, with most of the small intestine lying around the corpse.

‘Oh fuck… oh fuck… oh fuck…’

Devin puked and puked, releasing everything that he had onto the tree, until all he could do was dry heave onto the tree. He dare not look down at the contents of his stomach and he definitely dare not look at the body again. It was just too gruesome for him.

The difference between seeing a dead body on the television and seeing one in real life was a drastic difference that he did not, and could not, expect. They never described how strong the smell of iron was from the blood. They never showed how the organs somewhat deflated after death, making the small intestine a macabre hanger line for the truly deranged. So many things that they didn’t tell, so many things Devin could not prepare for.

Once he stopped dry heaving onto the tree, he collapsed to his knees, panting and trying to regain his breath. The others who had also rushed to relieve themselves of the remaining contents of their stomachs were also in the same state. None dared to look at the mutilated body. Even those few who had resisted the instinctual urge to puke looked away, some consoling those who were mentally breaking down and others doing nothing but look away.

‘Fuck… what the fuck… what the fuck happened to them?’

While he wasn’t breaking down as badly as some of the others, his own mind was still trying to reject the reality in front of him.

‘This… this isn’t real right? There’s no way that this can be real… this can’t be…’

As his mind started looping in order to protect itself, he unconsciously curled up into a fetal position and sunk his head into his legs, wanting to reject reality.

‘Oh shit… oh shit… please let me wake up. Please please please. Let this be a bad dream.’

He hoped and hoped for something to happen, a miracle, anything. But nothing came, no help, no salvation, no waking up. Nothing.

‘Fuck… why is this happening?’

As much as he wanted to reject everything that was around him, he couldn’t. His mind was still somewhat grounded to reality, like an anchor that refuses to leave the ocean floor for a reason unknown to the sailor. Yet, it was also this anchoring that forced him to go in circles, instead of sailing away into insanity.

3 Kilometers From the Body, 1 PT, Day 1, 8:30 PM

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The group had moved on from the body around 30 minutes after encountering it, but not before an argument broke out about what to do with the body.

It was almost a repeat of the last argument, as the East Asian businessman took one side…

“Just leave the body, as dreadful as what happened to it, there is nothing that we can do. We must keep going forward!”

And the Middle Eastern man took the other side after muttering a prayer and saying, “Forgive me but I do not know the direction of Mecca.”

“That would be disrespectful to the person who had passed! We must at least cover them with a cloth!”

“What cloth can we cover it with then? We have no extra clothing to cover it with!”

Without a word, the Arab man then took off his thawb, revealing a t-shirt and pants that were also white. Draping the white thawb over the body, the cloth quickly started turning red, but it did not matter to the Arab man, the businessman, or the rest of the group, as they started to move away from the site.

This action also shut the businessman up as they left, as the businessman was not expecting this act of self-sacrifice.

With the innate paranoia that whatever destroyed that person’s body was still somewhere nearby, the group quickly took off. Those that were most impacted were practically dragged away by the others in order to bring the group to a place with some semblance of safety. This severely affected the group’s speed.

Devin wasn’t one of the people who had to be dragged away, but he was still heavily impacted by the sight.

However, as the group was leaving he could still see parts of the lower intestine peeking out from under the now bloodied thawb, causing him to reflexively gag and turn his head away.

‘I’m not going to get used to that sight anytime soon.’

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The sun had almost set

As time went on, he noticed that there were still some people that were broken by the sight. One was still shaking in fear and another had cried their eyes dry, making their eyes very bloodshot.

They didn’t get very far before stopping though, as everyone in the group was now thirsty, not having drank anything since getting transported to this place.

Where there was a steady march, there was now a slow crawl.

Of course, with the poor conditions that the group was in, discontent started to grow.

“How much longer do we need to walk? We’ve walked so far already!”

Devin didn’t see who spoke out as he was focused on himself, but it was a new voice, and they sounded tired.

“Yeah, we’ve gone far enough, we should rest for the night.”

As more and more people sounded their agreement to rest for the night, the construction worker, who was near the front of the group, stopped and turned around, causing the whole group to come to a halt.

“Now all of you listen up!”

It was the first time that he had talked, and while his voice didn’t demand authority like the businessman, his voice was deep enough and spoke with enough sway to shut everyone’s whining up to listen to what he had to say.

“I understand that you all want to just sit down and rest right now, hell I want to too!”

“But I also know that I could use some water right now. Now, I don’t know about you but I would rather get a good drink in before resting for the night.”

The group started to look around at each other. They were definitely tired, but they were also thirsty, hungry, and scared.

For Devin, it became a matter of which pain to alleviate first.

‘If we stop now, we can rest for tomorrow and maybe my sore muscles will finally go away…’

‘But if we stop now, who knows when we’ll find water, if we’ll find water at all for that matter!’

He couldn’t consciously choose what to do as both options sounded more than appealing.

The rest of the group seemed more resolute on what to do though.

No one sat on the ground and just kept staring at the construction worker, silently giving their answer.

“Well alright then…” the construction worker looked around, acknowledged the silent answer of the group, and turned around to keep the group moving.

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Luckily for the group, with how big the forest was, it wasn’t long before they came across a small pond.

‘Water!’

Once they laid eyes upon the pond, most of the group rushed to the edge and got on their knees, greedily swallowing as much water as they could.

While some of the people cupped water into their hands to drink in that manner, others plunged their heads right into the water.

Devin was one of those other people.

*Splash*

‘Oh it’s so cold… and so good!’

The water, untainted and unpolluted by man, was as refreshing as it could ever be.

‘So good… I need more though.’

Dunking his head into the water again, he drank as much as his lungs could hold oxygen.

*GASP*

Pulling his head out of the water again, somewhat satiated by the amount of water that he drank, he took a quick look at the others.

Unsurprisingly, the rest of the group was doing the same thing as Devin, gorging themselves on water.

The mute, hair and face wet, was now cupping more water with her hands and swallowing it as fast as she could.

There was also the college student who,somewhat satisfied with the amount of water she drank, now washed the messed up mascara off her face.

‘Hey, she isn’t a total fashion disaster anymore!’

There was also the businessman, who, despite being as parched as the rest of the group, didn’t plunge his head in the water and was still cupping water with his hands, the rest of his body dry.

The rest of the group was doing similar things too, all of them focused on satiating themselves as much as possible.

Once the group finished drinking though, a tidal wave of tiredness swept the group.

‘Oh, wow, I need to lie down.’

Devin’s eyes started to sag, and a yawn passed through him.

‘That tree looks like it has some nice shade. Maybe I’ll lie down over there.’

Moving over to the tree, he sits down and leans his back up against the bark.

‘Fuck, I’ve never moved this much in my entire life.’

It felt like everything ached and the only reprieve was rest.

‘I think I’m going to close my eyes for a bit, I need it.’

Moving himself so that he is fully laying on the grass, he closes his eyes, and not long after, falls asleep.

Unaware to Devin, the rest of the group had the same idea.

They moved themselves to areas close to where Devin was, but didn’t get close enough to touch him.

They had all just met earlier that day and none of them trusted one of the other people enough to sleep next to them.

Thus, within a few minutes of each other, the whole fell asleep under the new night sky and the white-leaved trees.

However, in their rush to drink water from the pond and then fall asleep afterwards, they all failed to notice the slight tinge of red on some of the trees’ leaves.