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I just wish it had been something else attacking these farmers. Bandits would’ve been much easier. They’d feel pain, they could be bribed or intimidated, and they might run. This kind of Ridden only knew hunger, which left me only one way to deal with them.
Striding forward, I gripped my heaviest knife by the blade and threw it, aiming for the stalker’s nape. The only way to stop a Ridden was to sever its spine or destroy its head. A high spine shot should disable it long enough so I could deal with the other three. Ridden, when whatever possessed them seized the body, gained tremendous healing and the ability to function through extreme trauma.
Luckilyfor me, that made them hard to kill.Fun, fun.
My knife flew true as I threw it, and the stalker collapsed as I double-drew and leaped toward the largest of the three on the screaming man. The hit knocked the dominant Ridden away, though it clawed me as it staggered. Once human, it was all muscle now. Claws tipped its fingers, its mouth was crammed with triangular saw-edged teeth, and no thought at all lay behind its eyes.
Since they only wore torn shreds of clothes, I could tell that this one had been a man, the other a woman, the third another female, probably a teen given its size. My focus narrowed to my foe, who’d turned its focus onto me. The other two should continue attacking their prey while I ended their pack leader, then I could focus back on the others.
I just hope these innocent people could survive that long.
It charged me faster than I was prepared for, its arms spread wide as it attempted to bearhug me. But I had enough experience to recover fast enough, even though it only managed to miss me by a hair as I dodged at the last possible second. Swinging behind it, I thrust my knives into the back of its neck on opposite sides of its spine and used a scissor motion to sever it. A move I’d had way too many opportunities to perfect.
Blood sprayed. The Ridden dropped.Success!
A pistol cracked behind me. I pivoted, kicking the head far from its body. The desperate man on the ground had finally managed to get the right angle and shoot the larger of the two Ridden still on him, going for a center mass shot. Which would do nothing against the creature. But it was probably a decision made due to inexperience or panic, understandable emotions since they were chewing on him.
At least the shot had dislodged the larger of the two from their buffet. The gut wound was already healing as I feinted. Behind me, I heard a child’s scream. But if I looked to see what was happening, we’d all be dead. Instead, I pretended to drop my guard, and it charged, grappling with me.
Very few humans are stronger than a Ridden. Luckily for me, I was one of them. The asshole surprised me by biting my shoulder when I didn’t react fast enough to keep him away, and I dropped the knife in that hand, shocked by the pain. But I recovered fast enough to jam the other knife through its throat, at an angle to catch the spot where the spine joined the brain on the other side.
The creature hit the ground.
Another shot cracked. I glanced back in surprise. Though bleeding out, the man on the ground succeeded in a headshot on the last mobile Ridden. It fell to the man’s side, unmoving, and then the man lay still beside it, the gun still clenched in his hand. Which left one more Ridden to deal with. The pitchfork-wielding defender had managed to pin it against a tree. It scrabbled and shoved, but leverage won out, and the damn thing was trapped.
But being trapped wasn’t good enough.
I scooped up an ax lying on the ground where someone had been splitting wood, even though my hand was slick with the blood running from my shoulder wound. The axe would work much better to take a head off than one of my knives. I raced to the tree and took a deep breath as my muscles tensed, ready for what I had to do next. My shoulder ached as I swung the axe, slicing off the creature’s head in one swing, splattering both my blood and its across the trunk of the tree.
The head rolled, and I dropped the ax as the girl gasped, wiping blood from her face, giving me a look that I couldn’t read, and then running to where the man on the ground lay. I stayed, staring down at the Ridden’s body. It was strange, fighting Ridden was never satisfying. With each kill, I reminded myself that the Ridden were once people. Someone’s mother or father or son or daughter. It was sad to kill them, but I also felt deep down that I was bringing the people peace.
No one would ever want their body to be used for such awful things.
The smaller children ran to the downed man, sobbing as I finished the last two Ridden tossed about the yard. With the danger handled, it was time to go into medic mode. Burying the fallen could wait. I was by no means good at tending wounds, but luckily, I had the technology to do what I couldn’t on my own. Silver always insisted I carry a medkit, even though I didn’t really need one. I hated it when he was right, but this time I was thankful for it too.
Pulling the rectangular medkit out of my dropped bag, I ran to where the man lay. The oldest daughter was applying pressure to the largest wound on his thigh. The Ridden had bitten a good chunk out of his thigh and upper arm. But he didn’t seem aware of it. His skin was drained of all color, and his eyes were staring, unseeing, up at the sky. My stomach sank, it didn’t look good, but if anything could help him, the medkit could.
“I have a medkit,” I told the girl, holding it up awkwardly. Killing things I was good at. People? Not so much.
Her voice was shaking when she asked, “What do we do? I’ve never used one before.”
“I’ll show you, but I want to remind you that there’s no guarantee,” I said, even though I was sure she already knew the man was close to death. His color wasn’t good, and he’d lost a lot of blood. In my experience, these things weren’t a death sentence, but they certainly weren’t a good sign. So, I affixed the medkit over the big artery in his thigh and waited for it to do its work.
The tech was as much magic to me as the normal kind. I didn’t understand how either worked exactly, but I did know that the box had a readout screen that indicated information about the person’s health, not that I understood what most of it meant. What was more important, it assessed exactly what the patient needed and gave them whatever medicine was necessary to try to keep them alive. It also cleaned wounds and closed them up, although some things were beyond its ability.
Suddenly, the two little children were leaning closer, and I was able to focus on them. One was a little girl with long dark hair tied back, and a gray, stained dress that looked to be a size or two too small. The other was a boy, who was in desperate need of a haircut, with pants that had more patches in them than I’d ever seen. Both kids seemed to have a hard life, judging by the tears in their eyes, and their twin expressions of pain, today was just another shitty thing.
“Is he going to be okay?” The little girl asked with tears in her eyes, but she was looking at the older girl, not me.
“I hope so,” the older girl said, and the two children huddled closer to her. The little ones snuck scared glances at me, and I tried my best to avoid catching them looking; I didn’t want to scare them more. Most of the time when I ran into kids this far outside the city, they didn’t come across a lot of strangers, so they were already wary of me. But given the fact that my shoulder had a chunk out of it, and blood had stained my entire sleeve and rolled down my hand, I was probably justifiably a littlemorethan scary to them right now.
The medkit chimed as the indicator flashed green.
“He’s stable!” I failed to keep the surprise from my voice. I saw a lot of wounds from Ridden in my life, and usually one this bad ended in death.
The children and the teen all burst into tears at the good news. The kids burrowed into her arms as she stared from them to me, tears rolling down her cheeks. I smiled awkwardly. The only person I ever managed to comfort properly was Dimitri. Everyone else was a bit of a mystery to me. But either way, I was glad this guy looked like he was going to pull through. His family needed him.
I saw the children shiver and remembered how cold it was. Looking around, I realized it was getting late and that these kids probably shouldn’t be out standing in the cold, surrounded by dead bodies, with their injured dad.
