“This isn’t happening, is it?” I asked in a dead tone. With a plague of the mutated tottering lock step and shoulder to shoulder, I didn’t even have a chance. Mortified, I crouched down with my knees and my arms drawn into my chest awaiting to be wholly gobbled in a bloody hemorrhaging mess. Even now, I couldn’t sob or shed a tear.
I glanced up nervously when a white, hot light exploded and vanished in the air. The throng of the desecrated corpses parted right down in the center. The shimmering tip of a gun caught my eye first.
A second blast sent fleshy fluids soaring into the sky. I inched up and froze where I stood. Canaries gagged, stampeding each other to hook their rotting teeth into the gun toting assailant’s neck. After walking a few paces, someone extended me a hand, and I heard a familiar voice. Pike. Pike!
“Pike! You are back! You came back!”
I pummeled the six-foot crimson-lit man in his hardened broad chest. I stared down at the thick red veins of light streaking down his forearms, and couldn’t wait to feel them wrapped around my body. I eyed Pike’s leather belt that held snug a small rusted-edged hatchet on his right side. He lowered his gun, adopting a stance of calm.
“We’ve got a ways to where Cross is with the ship, and these canaries aren’t going to just step out of our way. I’m worried about Cross. He isn’t going to be able to hold them off long by himself. This fucking planet is infested with them now.”
I let out a breath, said nothing more, and ran at Pike’s side. As we ran, he handed me the hatchet from his waist with a steely-eyed smile. Canaries looked upon us with wet gleaming eyes. Pike lifted up his gun in one motion. A chewed-faced canary bolted, wailing as it forged for us. Pike cocked his gun. The double-click of the forearm was like music to my ears. A volley of rotten skin and desiccated muscle erupted into oblivion.
Pike gripped my hand, as Canaries kept close on our heels, racing to get back to the ship.
I ran as fast as I could, my lungs burned. I ran without looking back, gasping sobs. If branches of trees and shrubs sliced the skin of my hands, and limbs struck at my face, it didn’t matter. It was nothing compared to the suffering I would experience if a canary got a hold of me. Pike and I had to get back to the ship. I jumped a fallen tree and landed in dark mud. My feet lost traction, and I slipped, falling hard onto hands and knees, tearing the thin fabric of my clothing. Bloody scrapes marred the skin of my palms, but I continued on with all the speed I could muster.
Canaries screeched, the high pitched fervor of that god awful teeting threatening to drive me insane. Both Pike and I ignored the fact that more came from all around as we ran. Canaries catapulted themselves in front of us only to be met with a shot from Pike’s gun.
Pike pointed in the direction of where Cross waited with the ship. “There. Run faster!” We both picked up speed seeing several canaries make their way toward Cross. He did his best shooting them as they came, but there were so many.
“Cross,” I called, but my breath was so short it barely made a sound. “Cross!” I tried again.
And then it happened…
I gasped in shock, watching the canary come from Cross’s right while he was reloading his gun. The bulging-eyed monster lunged for Cross, knocking him down to the ground.
“No!” I screamed as I ran as fast as I could behind Pike who was charging full speed toward the canaries and his fallen brother.
The canary hissed, thrashing Cross’s lumbering body along the panels of the ship. I panicked as bits of the man’s torn flesh flicked against the cargo hold.
As if Pike had suddenly possessed a superhuman power, he went charging toward the mass of canaries with bullets blazing. Over and over he shot, killing them all one by one. Still in mid run, he scooped down and picked up Cross’s limp body and ran into the cargo hold with me still running behind him. Within seconds, Pike had the door closed and the ship in the air, while I crouched down by Cross’s bloody body.
“I’m glad you are all right,” Cross said with his arm folded across a gash on his chest, shielding the wound from my prying eyes. His big muscled body now looked so frail and broken.
“Let me see it, Cross.” I looked at the wound, then to Cross’s fluttering eyes, and then back at the wound again. “We’ll get you fixed up. Just let Pike get us out of here,” I said as I watched the blood spurt from his wound with every beat of his heart. So much blood. So much fucking blood!