The Mutation Breakdown

by E S Richards

  Her body was now running on the few drops of adrenaline it had left as she moved slowly over to the door and carefully picked the chair up from the top of their makeshift barricade. She positioned it next to the window and looked out again to where Cain had just been. It took her a moment to find him and her mouth dropped open as she realised what he was doing.

  During her absence he’d caught a rabbit, which now hung limply in his right hand. The neck of the animal was twisted and broken from where Cain had obviously killed it. But the more horrifying aspect of the image was the rabbit’s stomach, where it looked like Cain had ripped it open using his bare hands. Blood was matted into his t-shirt and glistened on the sleeves of his leather jacket while he used one hand to hold the rabbit up in the air and the other to dig out the contents of its stomach. Zahyra wretched and looked away as she saw Cain lift his hand to his mouth and begin to eat from the animal. Blood dripping down his chin as he chewed, the contents of the rabbit remaining visible inside his mouth.

  Zahyra peaked out of the window at intermittent intervals after that, not wanting to watch Cain again until he was finished with his… meal. Her stomach growled despite how disgusting she thought it was and she remembered the pot of food the mutants had been cooking outside the hut.

  She knew it was too dangerous to retrieve, so dreamed of food instead. Her mind drifted back once more to the wild dog she and Cain had eaten but then gunshots rang out in her thoughts as she remembered shooting three of them earlier that night. The sound of gunshots brought with them the memories of the mutant she had shot and then the mutant she had fought just afterwards and soon enough she had her eyes pressed tightly closed trying to forget the torrent of death that had been following her ever since her camp had been raided.

  She thought of Asher and forced her eyes to open to watch him peacefully sleeping in the corner, unaware of the horrifying scene Cain was engaged in outside. Watching his chest move slowly up and down calmed Zahyra and she focused her breathing to be in time with her brother’s, slowing her heart rate and relaxing her muscles.

  She pulled her sweater up over her chest once she had calmed down and inspected her ribs. The magnificent colours of bruising now shining even brighter with fresh bruises layering on top of her almost healed ones. She realised the ringing in her ears had subsided at some point and took that as a good sign that there wasn’t any permanent damage to her head. Her arms were bruised too from where the mutant had landed some punches but they were luckily no way near as bad as her ribs.

  With difficulty she tore a strip of fabric away from the chair and wrapped it firmly around her ribcage. She winced while she did this, the pain causing tears to form in her eyes. Once she was done she leant back in the chair, again focusing on Asher’s steady breathing to calm her own.

  Risking a glance from the window she panicked, unable to immediately see where Cain had gone. The rabbit lay desolate on the ground; it’s body appearing to have shrunk in size from the internal organs being removed. Zahyra shuddered at the thought.

  As her eyes darted around the now well-lit forest she searched for traces of Cain. If he had abandoned them in this moment she didn’t know what she would do and was close to opening the door to go and look for him when she spotted his feet sticking out from behind a tree trunk.

  She let out a sigh of relief and stood up to look out from the other side of the window, trying to get a better view of what he was doing. Unfortunately the tree was too large and she knew she wouldn’t be able to see his face unless she physically went outside, something she told herself was not a wise decision just yet.

  Leaning back into the chair she kept her eyes trained on Cain’s feet. They were unmoving aside from the occasional twitch every now and again and the longer she watched the more convinced she became that Cain had eaten and then gone to sleep. Her eyes grew heavy as she watched the almost empty forest in front of her but she fought hard to stay awake, fear and doubt about what Cain was doing still niggling away at the back of her mind.

  Chapter 23

  A tapping on the window startled Zahyra awake. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep for but as the hut had grown darker inside she figured it must be around midday dusk. So she’d slept for at least an hour. Her eyes went first to Asher, who was still sleeping peacefully in the corner, the blanket he’d been using as a pillow now half wrapped around his body. Zahyra then pushed herself up in the chair, feeling a dull ache in her ribs as she did and moved her gaze to the window.

  Cain was stood there, dried blood around his mouth and all over his clothes. He was holding his hands up in the air, palms towards her in a gesture of surrender. Zahyra breathed a deep sigh of relief when she processed that he had snapped out of his mutant rage and calmed down, as she’d predicted he would do after having a rest. She motioned to him to stay outside and began to struggle to move the barricade from the door as quietly as she could. She kept glancing at Asher as she worked, doing her best not to wake him. Once she’d created enough room to squeeze her body out of the door she wriggled free, giving her brother one last look as she stepped outside.

  Cain was struggling to wipe the blood off his face using his jacket sleeve when Zahyra emerged. He quickly dropped his arm when he noticed her and sat back down on the tree stump behind him next to the pot of food that had been knocked over either in Zahyra’s fight or Cain’s outbreak.

  Zahyra sat across from him, taking in his even more dishevelled appearance after his breakdown. Blood all over his face and clothes, his knuckles red raw from punching the trees and his foot – she’d almost forgotten about his foot – mud was now caked over where the injury lay beneath and it looked like he still hadn’t removed his boot.

  “I’m sorry,” Cain blurted out before she could speak, “how’s Asher?”

  Zahyra was taken aback for a moment at Cain’s concern for her little brother, but then reminded herself how he had cared for her after he had saved her life. She also recalled how concerned he had been about both her injuries and her emotional health, even though it had taken him a few days to formulate the words to ask her properly.

  “He’s okay,” Zahyra replied, “he’s sleeping.”

  Cain nodded, understanding that Zahyra didn’t want to speak much further about how her brother was doing. Admittedly she didn’t know much more than that but she wanted to keep her worries about Asher to herself for the time being.

  “And, are you okay?” Cain continued as he remembered the fight Zahyra had been locked in before he’d spiralled out of control. “You did great before.”

  Cain tried to smile and offer this as some sort of praise but Zahyra was unable to take any pride in her fight with the mutant, the fresh memory of it still causing her a lot of trouble.

  “Yeah I’m fine,” she quickly brushed over the matter, “you? How’s your foot?”

  “Hurts a lot, as expected.” Cain replied with another smile, “I was wondering if you’d help me have a look at it?”

  Zahyra was a little surprised at how quickly Cain had moved on from the topic of his breakdown. However she quickly realised it was a part of himself that he hated and having already had the discussion with her once before he didn’t really need to repeat himself. She nodded as Cain began to slowly tease his boot off and then stopped as the wound became visible, his sock ripped to the side from the initial bite.

  The sight was gruesome. His entire foot was covered in blood and there were two puncture holes from where the wild dog’s teeth had latched on. One of them looked like something that would heal easily enough with time, but the second cut went down to the bone and Zahyra had to look away as she saw the white marrow within Cain’s foot.

  “Pretty bad, huh?” Cain said with a frown as he gently pressed on the skin around his foot. “Do you have any water? So I can wash it out a bit?”

  Zahyra reached around herself for her water bottle but it wasn’t in her back pocket where she normally kept it. She looked back out into the forest then notice
d it on the floor just a few metres away from her: it must have fallen out during her fight.

  “Let me go get a rag,” she said handing the bottle to Cain, and then edged back through the doorway into the scout hut again.

  Asher was still asleep she noted gratefully as she quickly moved over to the chair and ripped off another strip of fabric. Cain had peeled off his sock by the time she got back outside and was unscrewing the lid of her water bottle.

  “Soak this,” she said handing him the rag as well, “you won’t waste as much water that way.”

  Cain accepted the fabric from Zahyra and smiled up at her. She returned his look although still didn’t feel as comfortable as she normally did in his presence. Perhaps it was because Asher was sleeping nearby, or because Cain had just had another breakdown when he’d previously told Zahyra they didn’t happen that often. Whatever it was, there was tension in the air between them and Zahyra knew that Cain could feel it too.

  With the fabric from the chair now dripping wet Cain handed the water bottle back to Zahyra and gritted his teeth. He slowly put the fabric against his foot then applied a bit of pressure against the wound. The water that ran off from his foot was crimson red with his blood and Cain was forced to bite his lip to stop from crying out. He pulled the fabric away after just a couple of seconds, his breathing heavy and his skin pale.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” he muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Zahyra to hear.

  She looked up from his foot and met his eyes, compassion suddenly flowing through her as she noticed how weak Cain had become. Rising from her tree stump she stepped across the fire pit and knelt down beside him. She took the rag from his hand and then looked him in the eyes, he nodded and gritted his teeth once more.

  Zahyra carefully began to wipe the blood from Cain’s foot and apply water to the injured areas. The bone that was visible in Cain’s foot made her feel squeamish but she held herself together and did the best that she could. Cain whimpered above her head as she brushed over the puncture wounds, attempting to remove all the dirt and dried blood that had gathered around them.

  Normally doing something like this would have disgusted Zahyra. She didn’t like dealing with blood to begin with, and cleaning it off someone’s foot was pretty far down the bottom of her list of things she wanted to achieve in life. However, as she leant over Cain and felt his trust in her to do the job properly she found all her previous qualms float away.

  It took the whole bottle of water to clean Cain’s foot until it started to run away clear rather than stained with blood. Once it was clean however the injury looked a lot worse and the bruising around the wounds became obvious. Like Zahyra had suspected one of them was a minor injury and were it the only hole in Cain’s foot he would probably be able to walk almost normally. However, the second hole was bad even by Zahyra’s poor medical expertise and she didn’t expect Cain would be able to make it very far very fast.

  She returned inside again and tore even more fabric from the chair, leaving it looking pitiful and dejected. After Cain had taken a deep breath she wrapped this fabric around his foot forming a makeshift bandage and then tied it off around his ankle. The bleeding, thankfully, had stopped meaning the bandage held in place, but Zahyra knew Cain would need medicine of some description to help with the healing process.

  She didn’t know very much about what else she could do. Healing classes in her camp had always bored her and she’d vowed to just not get sick or injured in order to avoid needing to know what plants could be boiled to cure this sickness, or what type of flowers were useful for something else.

  “How does it feel?” She asked Cain after double-checking that the bandage was in place, “Do you think you should put your boot back on?”

  Cain sighed; “Thank you. It’s alright considering,” managing to force a small smile across his lips. “Probably leave the boot for now, until we have to get walking again at least.”

  Zahyra frowned at his suggestion of moving and opened her mouth to object before Cain spoke again.

  “They’ll be rotating the watch at nightfall I imagine, we’ll need to be gone by then.”

  Zahyra groaned inwardly at this piece of information. It hadn’t occurred to her that more mutants would come out to the scout hut but as she realised between her and Cain they’d killed four scouts in just a few days she wasn’t overly surprised. That meant they only had a few more hours until they had to move on, wanting to leave before they absolutely had to in case either of the new scouts decided to search the forest for them.

  “I’m gunna try find some food then,” Zahyra muttered and sidled off into the trees leaving Cain propped up on his tree trunk. Her feelings for him were changing so rapidly at the moment. She really did care about his foot and wanted him to be okay, but she also couldn’t get rid of that little feeling in her head telling her she was annoyed at him. She thought back to the two kisses they had shared and attributed that as the reason why, the romantic musings between them firmly put on hold by their situation.

  Zahyra returned to the scout hut about thirty minutes later triumphantly holding two small birds in her hand. It wasn’t much, but a bird each would certainly keep Asher’s and her own hunger at bay for a little longer. Cain had already eaten; she shuddered, so she assumed he wouldn’t be too hungry. Besides, she had thrown her knife at about fifteen birds and only managed to kill two, so that was going to have to do whether it was enough or not.

  Thankfully Cain had succeeded in starting a fire during her absence and Zahyra smiled at him in gratitude for that.

  “I only managed to get two,” she started to say in way of an apology, not wanting to be the one to bring up that Cain had already eaten.

  “It’s alright,” he replied quickly with a shake of his head, “I’m not really hungry.”

  Zahyra smiled at his avoidance of the details of his earlier meal and put the birds down beside the fire before poking her head around the door of the scout hut to check on Asher. He was still sleeping soundly so she decided to prepare and cook the birds before she woke him, wanting him to get as much rest as possible. She also wanted to eat immediately because she knew she would be able to catch a couple hours of rest herself afterwards and even hunting for such a short period of time had exhausted her in the humidity of the forest.

  Zahyra and Cain worked in silence, each carefully plucking the feathers off a bird before removing the inners and roasting them over the fire on a stick. Zahyra handed her stick to Cain just as the bird was finishing cooking and moved inside to wake her little brother.

  She watched him for a moment before putting a hand on his shoulder and whispering his name by his ear. Asher’s eyes snapped open in response and he looked confused as he registered Zahyra’s face and the hut where he was sleeping. After a second the memories of what had happened came back to him and he smiled at her before reaching up and giving her a hug.

  “Hey bud,” Zahyra smiled at her little brother, he was already looking better even after just a few hours sleep. “You hungry?”

  Asher nodded enthusiastically in response and scrambled to his feet. It had been a while since he had eaten and even then the meals at the camp hadn’t been the most satisfying. His eyes gleamed in delight when he saw Cain holding out a roast bird to him outside the hut, although he paused warily in front of him remembering what Zahyra had said about Cain before he’d fallen asleep.

  “It’s alright Ash,” Zahyra spoke behind him, “tuck in.”

  Asher didn’t need to be told twice and grabbed the bird from Cain, sinking his teeth into the skin and letting out a quiet moan as he tasted the meat. Zahyra took the other bird from Cain and sat gingerly on the tree stump next to him, trying to eat her meal with a little more decorum than her brother was. After several mouthfuls Asher looked up from his meal.

  “You not eating?” He asked Cain, his mouth still full of meat and his lips wet with saliva. Zahyra kept her eyes trained on her food as he replied.

&nbs
p; “Not hungry. Thought you deserved it more little man,” Cain grinned at her brother.

  Asher shrugged in response and went back to his food, not stopping until he had stripped the bird down to the bone. Zahyra finished hers quickly too and flicked the bones into the fire, accidentally letting out a burp as she did and then looking down at the floor in embarrassment. Asher let out a laugh and then leaned backwards slightly, propping himself up with his arms behind him.

  “Thanks Zar, that was great.”

  “No problem bud, it was good wasn’t it?” She paused, smiling at her brother and relishing the time she was able to spend with him. A yawn then escaped her mouth and she looked at the forest around her. There wasn’t much of midday dusk left before the sun came out again and she knew they’d have to leave the scout hut as soon as it got dark to avoid bumping into the new mutants coming to take over the post.

  “Reckon we can get a few hours sleep now before dark?” She asked out loud, although not to either of her companions in particular. There was a pause until Cain replied.

  “Yeah we should sleep through the sunlight, then head off as soon as we can,” Cain replied.

  Asher looked up from where he was sucking on a bone from his meal. “We’re leaving already?”

  “Have to bud,” Zahyra replied, “this isn’t our place to stay.”

  Asher looked confused by her statement but nodded in response. Then the three of them put out the fire and made their way into the hut. Cain looked at the barricades against the window and still half against the door but said nothing as he closed the door slowly behind them. Asher dragged his feet back over to his blanket on the floor and curled up again, the weight of the meal in his stomach already making him feel tired.