Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

The General was shouting instructions to them, but nobody listened. Everybody knew better. Everybody could see only the most immediate threat and react to it accordingly, whether it was fighting, running away, or both. Their formation, if there had been any, was ruined.

Blood and madness. That was what surrounded Homewrecker. It was like a flashback of the nightmare he had experienced the week before, only there were no drugs to dull his senses.

A creature with the innocent face of a fifteen-year-old girl was sinking its teeth into the face of a soldier, and the distance between her jaws was quickly shortening from four inches, to three, and then—in one quick snap—to none.

Another one—a thing with the visage of a frail old man—was slowly pushing its claws into some poor soldier’s abdomen. Its hands went in up to the middle of the forearms, but the creature wouldn’t stop, even though its claw had already pierced through the skin on the man’s shoulders and were now looking like two growing spikes.

All around Homewrecker, soldiers were dying, soiling themselves, trying to shoot the enemy and hitting each other instead, throwing their weapons away and kneeling before the attackers, trying to plea for their lives and setting up themselves for a clean shot to the head. They were being butchered, and it didn’t matter whether they were grown-ups or boys.

The creatures were taking heavy losses, too, but considering how each of them could soak in a full clip of ammo at a close range before going down, Homewrecker almost felt like they could afford it. Their limbs fell away, their ravaged flesh sloughed off, and yet they persevered. They ignored all reason and logic of life with heretical tenacity, and where their enemies were falling from a single strike, they could endure twenty.

Homewrecker was weaving between the soldiers left and right, like a needle going in and out of cloth, constantly on the lookout for an outstretched hand with a monstrous claw. He knew that stopping meant dying, that his only chance of survival was leaving the fighting to someone else and hoping that they would succeed. Hoping that he wouldn’t catch a stray shot in his face. A selfish position, but so far it worked. He could see Corpse Eater doing the same. The gun seemed heavy at that moment, but even though he had no intention of fighting he still kept it on him. Just in case.

As he was looking out for more threats, his eyes rolling in their orbits trying to calculate the best trajectory for him which would put the most bodies between him and the attackers, he suddenly noticed something from the corner of his eye. Something that, even with everything weird going on around him, was too bizarre not to notice.

A female figure.

Her small, lean silhouette was a sharp contrast to the asymmetric shapes of the monsters or the soldiers’ bodies, and it didn’t fit into the picture inside the boy’s head. He couldn’t grasp how she could be there or where she had come from. He was sure that the soldiers hadn’t brought any trophy wives from the village—not that the girl looked scared or shaken by what was happening around her.

She turned her head, and Homewrecker felt like he had been seared by the ferocity her gaze radiated.

But also, he was shaken because he recognized that face. He remembered where he had seen her before. Her screams of desperation had been echoing around his head for the last week.

He had seen her in the previous nightmare. She was the girl whom the General had shot and violated.

And she wasn’t a victim anymore.

Her small build was giving her an advantage—nobody paid much attention to her until it was too late. Even though she lacked the blades or limbs retrofitted for better killing, she was just as deadly as the rest of the creatures. Homewrecker shuddered when her tiny fist went into some soldier’s chest up to the wrist, breaking through his ribcage and stretching his skin, and when another one nearby noticed her presence she pushed his head backward until his neck broke.

Looking up at the General on the platform, she took a deep breath and then shouted his name.

“General Malaria!”

Homewrecker instantly connected the dots: it was her voice he had heard before. It was her voice that had been powerful enough to dwarf the sounds of rain outside, and the sound of it rivaled the burst of a grenade. It certainly had a similar effect on everyone standing nearby, with a few of the nearest soldiers missing their shots completely. The boy wasn’t sure if it was due to the loudness or something else, but her voice made him feel dizzy.

Even from a distance, Homewrecker could see that the General was shocked to see her. Their eyes locked, and despite the carnage happening around them, neither of them looked away.

Some soldier used that opportunity and opened fire on the priestess from behind. The bullets hit her in the back, sending her stumbling forward, but Homewrecker was shocked to realize that even though a few shots went clean through, they did nothing to her. Turning around, she jumped at the man who raised his weapon in defense and, in one move, twisted his head around—seemingly just as easily as if he was a chicken.

Another shot flew in her direction, blowing a piece of flesh out of her shoulder, yet it did nothing but anger her. She seemed different from the creatures around her—more alive, in a human sense of the word, and her body sustained wounds just like any other body. Yet some unseen force was warding death away from her, holding her tired and exhausted tissues together. It didn’t make any sense that she could be alive when the boy could see her entrails—and yet that was the case.

She screamed again, and her shout was so loud that it ceased to be a sound wave—it became a blast. Homewrecker could feel the air around his face tremble as the woman’s vocal chords commanded it.

The remaining glass in the windows shattered under her assault. Many of the soldiers let go of their weapons to cover their ears, and Homewrecker was one of them. The priestess’ roar of fury was too much for them to endure. It didn’t just strike fear into everyone around her—it physically incapacitated them. Even the beasts lowered their heads in submission.

When Homewrecker raised his head again, he could see the woman going in his direction. She was heading for the General—but the boy suddenly received an image in his head that she would walk right through him on her way to her goal, even if he were to drop to the ground. As if to confirm his thoughts, she stomped on the head of one of the soldiers rolling on the floor, making his eyes pop out of the sockets that became too narrow to house them.

Oh no, was all the boy could think. This is how I die . An absurd, ridiculous in its simplicity, almost funny thought. He had always imagined his last moments to be more dramatic.

Would anyone mourn him?

His ears could barely register new noises, so he almost didn’t hear the shot, but he could see its results. The priestess’ throat suddenly ruptured and exploded, and she reached for it to cover it.

Another shot fired a few seconds after that, hitting in the same area and blowing her fingers to bits. Then, a second later, another one came.

Someone was firing at her—methodically, with great precision. Someone who seemed to be unaffected by her sound blast. Someone who saved him.

Homewrecker took a look. It was Tsetse.

The boy was the only one standing. With everyone around them on the floor, shell-shocked, he had a perfectly clear view of his target—and he didn’t lose that opportunity. Homewrecker could see with his own eyes why their captain was so feared. Every bullet in his gun counted. Every shot would hit where it hurt the most.

The priestess lowered her hands, and Homewrecker could see that her entire throat—along with the jugular veins and everything else—was gone. The only things that remained were the neck muscles with which she was miraculously keeping her head upright, white bones protruding out of her spinal cord… and something else.