Night 1<\/p>\n
The sun sank low and the horizon glowed like a burning page as I jogged toward the hill looming in the distance. The forest around me was quiet, as if it was waiting for a whisper. I ducked one way and another, avoiding branches and tufts of tall grass, and finally came out at the edge of the hill.<\/p>\n
Where was the orange object that I had spied and what had it been? Such colors are rare here, but where I had come from\u2026 maybe they had meant something else. I shielded my eyes from the sun\u2019s glare and caught a glimpse of color up on the hill. For the first time all day, a flicker of a smile started on my face. I raced up the hillside, tumbling over dirt and rocks, and stumbled right onto it. Well, onto them. I had tumbled into a patch of pumpkins.<\/p>\n
I sighed and kicked one of the gourds. It sat there uselessly, mocking me. \u201cI should carve you up\u201d I mumbled.<\/p>\n
The sun had almost completely set by then, so I gathered some twigs and logs from the oak trees at the bottom of the hill, nestled myself in a nook on the hillside, and tried to light a fire. That was when the noises started.<\/p>\n
First, something swished in the grass below. I thought nothing of it, focused as I was on starting a fire. Then came the moan. It was like an exhalation of breath from an old man who had slept for a thousand years. My face and hands froze. I put down the rocks I was trying to spark together and listened as the darkness settled around me.<\/p>\n
My heart was thudding in my chest but I forced myself to my feet and steadied myself with my walking stick. There could be someone out there. \u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n
A low, gurgling growl was the reply. I stood to brace myself, expecting a wolf or a jungle-cat, and all the while my instincts were telling me to run. I knew better, though. Run from a predator and you\u2019re dead. Stand your ground and at least you have a chance. Then I saw it lurch from the shadows: a rotting shell of a man, flesh barely clinging to its bones. My heart seemed to stop and the rest of the world went silent. Even the moon appeared still as it watched from overhead.<\/p>\n
The thing was down the hill from me, but I could smell the putrid green flesh from where I stood. It was like rotting eggs. I grabbed a piece of wood and brandished it like a sword. I don\u2019t know how, but I quieted the voice inside my head telling me to run and entered a state of\u2026 zen? Mania? Insanity? I\u2019m not sure, but some some reason I had to destroy it.<\/p>\n
I rushed down the hill, swinging at the monster as hard as I could. Wood connected with flesh. It recoiled. A crooked smile came to my lips, but the creature lunged and latched onto my arm, its blackened nails biting into my flesh. I swung with my left arm, over and over and over again, knocking meat loose from the rattling bones and beating the creature back until it collapsed on the ground.<\/p>\n
I stumbled away, breathing heavily, bleeding, clutching my stick to my side, and then I heard more noises. More moans. More growls. What was going on? Had the dead risen to replace the living, or had I gone mad? I glanced side to side and saw other visages in the dark, some with red eyes, some with dark empty sockets. That was when I ran, straight back up the hill, into the smallest alcove I could find. It was little more than a crevice in the rock in the hillside, but with rocks piled in front it was enough to hide me. For the rest of the night I lay in the dark, unable to sleep, but listening. Listening for the dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Night 1 The sun sank low and the horizon glowed like a burning page as I jogged toward the hill looming in the distance. The forest around me was quiet, as if it was waiting for a whisper. I ducked one way and another, avoiding branches and tufts of tall\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":133,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-190","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ryanwalraven.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ryanwalraven.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ryanwalraven.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryanwalraven.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryanwalraven.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryanwalraven.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryanwalraven.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/190\/revisions\/191"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ryanwalraven.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ryanwalraven.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}