Chapter 49: Headless
1180 Words
Luther didn't see it before, but he realized something. He noticed there were layers of what looked like suction cups on Oliver's palms. If they were on his hands, they would be on his feet too. That was how he jumped so high and climbed up walls.
This was an irregular evolution of human beings. He wasn’t familiar with this kind of mutation.
Oliver hung his flashlight on his waist so he could see through the darkness. When he jumped over the edge, all the others could see was the light flying across the gap.
Suddenly, the light dropped into the darkness.
It didn’t make it across. Did he fall?
"Oliver!"
Elena screamed and rushed to the edge of the rooftop. She reached out to grab the rope to try and pull him up before he hit the ground below.
Luther frowned and watched as the rope continued soaring. He stopped Elena, "Wait!"
"What, why? He fell, we need to pull him back up." Elena was panicked.
"The rope is still in the air. He made it across. Oliver didn’t fall, his flashlight did." Luther explained calmly to Elena.
She looked back over the edge. The light flipped in the air and fell until it hit the ground. She heard a crack and the light turned off.
Oliver’s voice called excitedly from the other side, "See, Luther? I made it!”
He nodded when he heard Oliver’s voice. He knew he was safely across.
"If you tugged on that rope, he might not have made it." Luther told Elena now. Her face turned red and she felt embarrassed. That was so stupid! You should have noticed that just like Luther did. She scolded herself.
Oliver tied down the other end of the rope. Then, Luther took the rock climbing gloves out of their bag of gear and handed them to Elena.
"You go first. Please be careful."
Elena blushed a little. She didn't say anything, she just put on the gloves, grasped the rope, and started to make her way across.
Climbing a rope was not an easy thing to do. 20 meters was neither a far distance nor was it a close one. Most of the adults could generally climb over, not to mention Elena, who graduated from police school and was well-trained.
Elena swung her body across little by little. She was only a few meters away from the other building in just a short while.
Eric went up to Luther and said, "Luther, go in front of me. I’ll go last."
"Is that so?” Just as Luther was about to answer, the sky lit up instantly.
Lightning shot down like a signal.
They heard a knocking sound from the big water tank. The knocking started off slow, then it got faster. Palmprints made their way all over the tank.
Eric took a few steps away. Luther stepped back as well, not sure of what was about to take place.
As the tapping sound got more and more intense, the palmprints began to appear everywhere at once. One set of handprints was larger than the others.
Luther was positive there were monsters on the roof. These palm prints reminded Luther of the Otyugh he had seen in the stairway. Besides the larger handprints, almost all of them were the same size.
A group of Otyugh? Luther thought.
This idea worried Luther.
The lid at the top of the water tank was pushed open, a broken and rotten arm reached out from inside. It was followed by a body and legs.
What was a zombie doing in there?
Luther was puzzled. He squinted his eyes and saw through the rain that the body was missing something.
He saw a headless zombie.
It was completely beyond Luther's understanding. He had never seen a zombie move without its head.
The zombie crawled out of the water tank with its back turned towards Luther. It seemed to sense that something was behind it. It turned around slowly. It raised its arm and waved frantically at Luther. Excited to have found its prey, it leaped at him with its arms wide open to grab him.
Although Luther was shocked, his sword was already in hand.
But just as Luther was about to strike, the zombie disappeared.
Was it a hallucination? Did it turn invisible?
Luther froze for a second. He began to smell something rotten and when he blinked the rain from his eyes, the headless corpse reappeared in front of him.
How did it disappear and come back to the same place?
It was too close for Luther to swing his sword at it. Luther was knocked down to the cement ground. This zombie was surprisingly strong. His entire body was pinned down, and he could not move it off of him.
Luther quickly took out the dagger hung on his waist and stabbed the zombie several times. But it seemed to do nothing the same way it would with other infected people.
A lizard climbed up the back of the zombie.
It opened its mouth. It smiled like it was mocking them. And then its black tongue shot at Luther's neck.
An Otyugh. Luther guessed right.
Just then, Luther grabbed his nail gun and pointed it toward the lizard.
A steel needle shot and penetrated the Otyugh's head right between its eyes.
Its tongue veered off to the right of his shoulder. It stuck to the frozen plate of armor on Luther’s shoulder that he had formed to protect himself. The Otyugh's tongue corroded a hole deep into the crystal. Fortunately, the acid only melted through the ice, but it didn’t reach Luther’s skin.
Phew, that was so close. Luther sighed.
Luther was relieved. He could have died right then. Fortunately, he reacted just in time and remembered his nail gun. He twisted his body and covered his neck and shoulders with a layer of ice crystal armor. He wanted to be ready for another Otyugh attack like that one.
Even Luther was a little afraid when thought about it. If he didn’t have these weapons, he would have been done for.
If that lizard creature was only a scavenger, Luther wouldn’t have been in any danger. However, the headless zombie crawled out and surprised him. It even vanished, leading Luther to his untimely judgment and made his lose his chance to kill it. Luther quickly went over the events in his mind. The Otyugh wasn’t just invisible. It could also control a zombie corpse and even give it the power of invisibility. It used the zombie corpse like a puppet in battle.
If he knew this earlier, he could have prevented being in so much danger.
The Otyugh wasn’t as simple as he thought.
Remembering that there were plenty of Otyugh in the water tank, Luther pushed away from the corpse.
The rain was falling heavily. The battle between Luther and the Otyugh was just as horrifying as the battle between humans and ghosts. Eric was scared and screamed, "Zombies! There’re monsters everywhere. We’re going to die!”
Elena, who was still climbing across the gap, heard the commotion behind her. She turned her head and shouted, "Luther, are you okay?"
"I'm fine! Don't worry about me. Keep going, I’m right behind you!"
Luther stared at Eric now and said coldly, "Stop all the f*****g shouting. You think I don’t know what you did before any of this happened?"
- Writer
