Corpse Eaters

She lay in the snowbank, lifeless and still, but not peaceful. Heavy snowflakes stuck to the alabaster skin that wrapped around her contorted horror stricken body, a small red hole above her left breast. I could not feel the weight of the heavy dark coat wrapped around my body nor the sting of the cold steel lantern my fingers wrapped around. My mind reeling, attempting to make sense of what I had just witnessed.

Niko’s heavy boots thudded against the frozen earth as he took a few slow steps forward before bending a knee to take a better look at the women. Her eyes were dark, not just in color, an unnatural dark, one I had not seen since the camps, those awful camps that turned man and women into smoke and ash.

She had not been bothered by the temperature, half naked running through the snow and ice, her skin blackening in spots. Like a wild animal she huffed and grunted, occasionally slipping and making her way on all fours, we had watched her for a hundred yards before confirming what she was and taking the shot. I had not been this close until now, a few in the city square before a burning, one or two flashing through the brush on a moonlit night, no I have never been close enough to reach out and run my hand across that frozen corrupt skin.

“Snap out of it boy, this isn’t the one” Niko whispered out in his heavy accent.

“Were looking for a man” I responded, shaking the darkness out of my head.

“I believe so… this one was nearly dead anyway” He responded, pulling himself up to his feet and turning back to the truck.

A clunk and a shuffle sounded loudly in the cold, dark night as my large friend produced a small red, dented fuel can and a dirty rag. My hand found its way into a breast pocket, my could fingers struggling around each other for a moment before finding purchase on a half used book of matches. The body would burn before cooking and smoldering away for hours, even in this war ravaged land we gave the dead peace, as much as we could afford at least.

Many rumors had passed through the dry cracked lips of the poor folk who inhabited the small villages that dotted the land, or at least what was left of them. The fighting in Berlin had ceased and there was talk of a trial, one to bring the engineers of this massacre to account for what they had done. These things stayed away from the fighting, the large cities, they found home scavenging around in the night, eating corpses or birds, and rumor had it babies out of their cradles. no doubt a thousand reports had been sent to every corner of Europe, and quite possibly back to our allies in the states, but they disappeared in the flood of millions.

“I would not like to linger any longer” Niko stated from beside me, picking up the beat up rifle he had deposited on the ground while inspecting the girl.

“Aye, neither would I” I responded before turning to join him in the truck.

The mighty engine cranked just long enough to make a man worry, that slow groan as the battery drained of life, a moment before diesel filled the air and dark smoke barked out of the broken exhaust. The clutch was eased out carefully as I placed my boot into the throttle guiding the ruck forward, down into the ruts that passed as a road now. It would only take us six minutes to arrive back in Yarmin. It was eight last night, and eleven the night before that, whether they were growing bolder or more desperate did not matter much to us, only that they were finding themselves ever closer.