Through the Eyes of Blue

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I heard the shuffle of boots hitting leaves; the weak murmur of voices in chat; the crackling of campfire far off to my front. Slowing down, I silently stalked towards the source.

A faint smell hit my nose. Rot, and decay. It was a rather disgusting smell, winkling my nose, I changed my heading to investigate.

The trees thinned as I walked towards the smell. If my memory serves me right, I should be coming up to a road soon. Slowing my pace even more to a crawl, I carefully approached the origin of the smell.

I was at the edge of the road. Staring across the two-laned gravel road at a rugged patch of clearing, daisies booming on the uneven ground. In front of it but behind the road, was a hole. I was pretty certain the smell originates from there.

Crossing the road to the side of the hole, I resisted the urge to gag. The scent of decay was starting to become unbearably strong. It was disgusting. Screwing my nose, I peeked down the hole.

With an involuntary shriek, I staggered backwards, my hands flying up to cover my mouth. Stumbling to the edge of the clearing, I hurled all my breakfast onto the green grass. Suddenly, the colours in the clearing don't seem that bright and sharp anymore, everything looked much dimmer and greyer than before. Staggering back onto even footing, I quickly vacated the area, intending to head towards the voices I had heard before. There was a high chance they were responsible for what was in the hole.

It was filled with corpses, all naked and bloated, some on the bottom had turned black, and I think I saw a bone or two lying around. The body on the top, the most recent one, was old enough that her face was bloated beyond recognition, but her hair colour still peaked out behind her head – it would have been a brilliant red if she was alive; there was a great big hole in her forehead, but otherwise, there didn't seem to be any other visible injuries.

Stalking towards the campfire, the disgust simmering in my gut slowly turned into a ball of fury. What sick bastard do what they did? They clearly aren't concerned with their fresh corpses being infected and coming back, or they wouldn't just shot that woman on top in the head – bullets to the head only puts the infected out for a while, after all. No, they would have at least cut off the head, if not burning the bodies. No, those corpses weren't corpses because they were infected; they were corpses because they were murdered. Probably robbed beforehand, given the general nakedness in all the bodies. The body just below the woman on top had his legs torn off to the hip. If whoever piled the bodies there only looted the bodies after they were dead, I don't see any reason they would bother to pull that guy's pants off. It would have been bloodstained and missing a leg. In other words, useless.

Yeah, probably bandits.

Coming up against a small farmstead, with a campfire burning in the gravel between the barn, the house and a sizable paddock, situated in the middle of the field. Carefully picking my steps, I circled around to the back of the barn and slipped in. A black jeep was the first to greet me. It was half-stripped of parts – the front of the jeep was smashed in, totalling the vehicle. It was useless for anything but spare parts. Glancing at the half-deformed bumper, I felt my blood ran cold; I felt that ball of fury suddenly was quenched. Replacing it, was a wave of cold anger.

The number plate was proudly proclaiming a number I was awfully familiar with. Specifically, the number of my jeep, the jeep that Ash and Kailey escaped my house with.

Slipping through the barn, I came across several more similarly wracked cars and trucks. Probably belonging to their previous victims. With a shake of my head, I put the thought to the back of my mind, my focus was solely on finding out a better avenue of attack.