Have you ever wondered what death tasted like? Well, it tastes like the soup on the bottom off a dumpster under the ruthless Georgia sun. A heavy swing of her shovel caught the creature square in the jaw. There was a wet, pressurized pop, and a spray of dark ichor caught her mid-gasp.
It hit her tongue like a heavy, oil-slicked sludge. The flavor hit her violently, a rancid, metallic bitterness that tasted less like blood and more like copper pipes left to rust in a sewer. Unlike the warm, clean saltiness of her sweat dripping from her brow, this was cloyingly sweet and sour all at once, carrying the unmistakable reek of death.
She tried to spit, but the grit of it clung to the roof of her mouth. Her stomach heaved, a physical rejection of the rot, but there was no time to gag. She had to swallow the bile and the filth together just to draw enough breath for the next swing.
A tall one is advancing mindlessly toward the only living person in sight. The bodies of its kind do not discourage the being from attacking. She put all her remaining strength in her swing and hit it straight in the head. It goes down, but it still moved, trying to rise. She gives it no chance and, with a heavy swing, crashes its head.
The adrenaline that had sustained her began to ebb, leaving a hollow, bone-deep ache in its place. Every breath felt like inhaling wet wool, her lungs burning from the exertion and the lingering, nauseating scent of the spray still coating her lips.
She wiped her mouth with the back of a shaking hand, but it only smeared the gritty filth further across her skin. The taste was a permanent fixture now—a vile, fermented bitterness that sat heavy on the back of her tongue, making every swallow a battle against her gag reflex. Her muscles felt like they were turning to lead; the simple act of holding her weapon was becoming a task of sheer will.
Panic, muted by exhaustion, began to flicker as she looked around the darkening street. The camp, once familiar, had transformed into a trap of dead ends. Every shadow looked like a crouching figure; every groan of the shifting wind sounded like a footstep.
She needed to find a place to rest, but her mind was too clouded by fatigue to weigh the risks. The basement of the pharmacy looked sturdy, but it could be a tomb with no exit. The fire escape across the alley offered height, but she didn't know if her trembling legs could make the climb. She stood paralyzed in the center of the debris, a small, tired target, clutching her chest as she scanned the horizon for something that didn't feel like a trap.
The silence of the camp was more haunting than the screaming had been. Just hours ago, this had been a safe place, a cluster of olive-drab tents fenced in by the military's heavy chain-link and the false promise of safety of high-caliber rifles. Now, the perimeter lights flickered over a graveyard of shattered supply crates and sprawled, motionless shapes.
It had started in the dark, a single muffled, choked sound from the medical tent that no one questioned until the first wet tear of flesh echoed through the camp. The military's discipline had shattered in seconds; you can't hold a line when the person sleeping three inches away becomes the front line.
She leaned her back against the cold metal of a storage shed, her chest heaving in shallow, jagged hitches. Her hands were slick, stained with a mixture of grease and the dark, vinegar-sharp sludge she'd been forced to swallow during the scramble for the gate. The taste was a nightmare that wouldn't end, clotted and smelling of death. It coated her teeth, a constant reminder that the people she'd shared rations with at dinner time were now nothing more than vessels for that bitter rot.
The soldiers were gone. The survivors she'd huddled with for warmth were now the very things that tried to eat her. She looked at the gaps in the fence, then back at the dark mouth of the woods.
Her legs felt like they were made of water. She was a ghost walking through a slaughterhouse, her mind spinning in useless circles. If she stayed here, the smell of the dead would bring the rest of them. If she ran, she was heading into a night that had no borders and no more safe zones. The uncertainty was a physical weight, heavier than the weapon in her hand, pinning her to the blood-stained dirt as she waited for a sign of life that didn't end in a snarl.
The silence of the camp was thick with the smell of smoke and copper, but all she could taste was the rancid, oily grit of Mrs. Gable's blood.
When she had first stumbled into the perimeter, shivering and stripped of everything but her skin, it was Mrs. Gable who had stepped forward. The military had eyed her like a biohazard, but the old woman had treated her like a granddaughter. She remembered the soft, calloused touch of the woman's hands as she draped a thick, oversized flannel shirt over her shoulders.
"It's a bit large, dear," Mrs. Gable had whispered with a wink, "but it smells like lavender and home. You keep it. You're going to need it when we walk out of here."
For three days, that shirt was her armor. Mrs. Gable had been the camp's heartbeat, sharing her meager rations and telling stories of her garden to drown out the sound of the wind against the fences. She had been the one to hold her hand when the night felt too dark, leaning in to whisper, "Don't you dare lose hope, girl. You fight for yourself. You're worth the struggle."
But hope had died at 2:00 AM.
The transformation had been silent. Mrs. Gable hadn't screamed; she had simply ceased to be. The first sign was the weight of a body lunging through the tent flap. When she scrambled back, she found herself staring into eyes that were no longer cloudy with age, but milky with a predatory glint.
The woman who had given her the shirt on her back was now trying to tear the throat out from under it.
The struggle had been a blurred nightmare of fabric and teeth. The girl's fingers had tangled in the familiar soft flannel as she fought to keep the snapping jaws away. When she finally drove the sharpened tent stake home, it didn't feel like a victory. It felt like a betrayal. The spray of bitter, viscous ichor had coated her face, seeping into her mouth. A final, foul communion with the only person who had been kind to her.
She stood now in the center of the ruined camp, looking down at the small, crumpled shape. The flannel shirt was stained dark, the smell of lavender completely replaced by the metallic tang of rot.
Her heart felt like it had undergone a sudden, violent tempering. The softness she had arrived with was gone, burned away by the act of killing the only light she had left. She wiped the black, vinegar-tasting sludge from her lips with the sleeve Mrs. Gable had given her, her jaw setting into a hard, jagged line.
She wasn't crying anymore. She couldn't afford to. She felt the weight of the old woman's words settle into her bones like lead. Fight for yourself.
She tightened her grip on her makeshift weapon, turned her back on the graveyard of the camp, and stepped into the trees. She was alone, she was exhausted, and she tasted of death, but she was moving.