The Fear You Know

1. The Outbreak

Members of Outbreak limped up the street in a slow advance of fetid flesh, their feet shuffling in an uncoordinated, shamble as they dragged their diseased bodies through the ankle-deep filth that caked the threshold of Veerus city.

As they walked, they moaned softly, their rotting vocal cords shivering in a cacophonous symphony of labored breath.

The outbreak was not a quiet thing, a fact for which Eli was thankful as he pressed his back against the brittle stone of the desiccated city: slowly losing its battle to a long terminal illness.

Behind his protective barrier of crumbling stone Eli fought to keep his hands from touching the grim, soiled ground beneath his feet.

The outbreak continued their shuffling, staggering way up the street, visible to Eli only through a delicate, hairline crack slowly growing between the stone and mortar of his hiding place, their red decomposing flesh peeling back from rotting bone. A putrid wave of rancid air fogged up the lenses of Eli's glasses with a vile stench that set his stomach churning, the kind of smell that burrowed its way into your sinuses and settled in to pupate larvae.

Eli wiped his glasses silently with a hand, and immediately regretted his ability to see as he watched a pale worm wriggle its way from the rotting folds of tattered flesh, glisten briefly, and then return again to the cavernous place where a nose had once resided.

Eli turned away from the hole pressing his back against the wall and covering his nose and mouth with a hand. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply, an action which he immediately regretted as it allowed the city's miasma of filth to worm its way into the cavernous spaces of his skull.

Their groaning grew distant, only to be replaced by a low whisper emanating from the dark depths of his tattered leather satchel.

"I've seen fresher corpses."

Eli's mouth was watering, a sure sign his breakfast would be making a return visit. He let the saliva drip from his mouth and onto the ground. "They certainly don't invite a cuddle and a kiss on the lips." He said, attempting to chase back the nausea with humor.

The disgust was palpable even through the high tenor of the disembodied voice "Why thank you for painting such an evocative picture, I can almost taste it."

"I live to serve." Eli said, straightening up and passing a sleeve over his lips before casting a nervous glance up the road. "Why anyone would willingly serve Affliction is beyond me." He looked down towards the source of the voice and directly into the gaze of a large, baleful eye, which leered at him from beneath the flap of his satchel.

The Eye blinked wetly once and then twice before "The same could be said about people who willingly visit affliction."

Eli sighed, "You of all people should know that our visit here is hardly willing."

The eye rolled at him, "I doubt we are to find your father in this hell pit, and even if we did, I highly doubt you would recognize him without skin."

Eli's shoulder's stiffened slightly, jaw tightening even as his fingers went white around the strap of his bag, "This isn't just about that and you know it."

"Your Hope," the eye said, his voice a high pitched reedy quaver through the fog "Your little obsession always seems to bring us to the most loathsome cesspits: hiding under rocks or in the bowls of trees."

Eli adjusted his glasses, "This entire world is a Cesspit, Wink. and it isn't hope it's research. Hope is blind without action, research might just be able to help me before ...." Eli trailed off then not entirely willing to voice the concerns that had become so pressing in the proceeding months. Instead, adjusted the shoulder strap of his satchel and stepped down from the crumbling building and onto the street below. He tried not to think about how his feet squished through the filth or how his weight seemed to depress against the soil, as if he was walking across great slabs of meat.