Adam didn’t see Trent click on the device this time, but the chairs moved dizzyingly fast! Away from the enclosure. Adam lurched forward as if to reach for his parents. He was shocked beyond words though, when the ground seemed to give way beneath his parents’ chairs. The last thing he heard was his parents’ muffled grunts as they disappeared and whatever opened beneath them closed back. The paddock looked on innocently as if it did not just swallow up his parents. “What…?” Bo’s bark as he limped back to Adam, stopped what he was about to say to Trent. There was no time. “Take Bo! Run to the stables!” was all he could say to Yoshi, with the hope that the boy would not freeze up in fear this time. “Idiot” he heard Trent say as he moved forward to hit the first zombie with a customised spike-headed club. The zombie fell back just as Adam saw Yoshi run through the midst of five burly men, just like the one that beat the gong. Just as the stable door closed behind the boy, Adam a
Trent recovered from the shock of the slap soon enough. “You dared to lay your hands on me?! Who the fuck do you think you are, trash?" Trent yelled at Adam’s back as the latter walked towards the entrance of the stables. The men who had paused in their tracks earlier quickly looked away as if they were not gaping with their mouths wide open earlier. Adam saw a young lady looking at him from the interior of the stables. The light in the stables was to her back though and he couldn’t see her face very well. He realised his mistake when she moved out of the way for the men to pass through.She was not looking at him. She was looking at the man they were carrying in. Though he couldn’t see her expression very well, he recognised what he saw. He had seen it on Yoshi’s face earlier. The sheer, paralysing terror of one who had seen too much horror. The thought of Yoshi prompted the main thought in Adam’s mind though. He turned so swiftly that Trent who was striding fast after him,
“You did good, boy” Adam said absentmindedly as he bent down to rub Bo’s shivering body as the dog nudged him over and over. The only sound coming from Bo was a keening sound deep from his throat as he turned his tawny eyes to Adam’s. He nudged him over and over until Adam lifted him off the floor. Bo immediately moved closer to Adam’s face and gave him a lick. “Eew, I didn’t say we are friends now, did I?” Adam said with a hint of a smile as he turned Bo away from the gory sight not far from them. He saw Yoshi still looking away “And you. Never pull such bullshit again,” he said as he approached the boy. “I was…” “Yes, yes. I know. It was all Bo’s fault” he said as he slung his free arm around Yoshi’s neck and steered him towards the stable. The boy was freezing. Bo whined when he heard himself being blamed. Adam only smiled and ignored him as he went towards the entrance. He knew his task was not about to be easier. Accidentally or not, he just killed a Troy. One who had
Adam forgot about the ungratefulness of the people he probably just saved from a tyrant as he followed the girl. “Don’t you need to stitch him up?” Adam asked her as he followed her to the farther end of a hay stall. “I have Ryan watching him. I can’t do much until those two come back from the house with the first-aid box. I can show you this though” She started lifting the bundles of hay from one end of the stall and throwing it behind her. “Here, let me,” Adam said as he stepped beside her and started carrying the heavy hays. Beneath all the metallic smell of blood and the earthy smell of hay, Adam could perceive the smell of sandalwood coming from her. In no time, they had cleared the hay from that end. “Now what?” Adam thought when he saw that there was nothing there but a wall. “Now this,” she said aloud as if she had heard his thought. She immediately bent down and reached behind the single hay still leaning against the wall close to her. Adam saw her turn her hand an
“Let me help” Marriane Smith said when they finally got to the back room where the young lady was bent over the unconscious man.The blood had not stopped and it made the part she wanted to stitch together slippery.Frustration and sweat filled her face but as she looked back and saw Marriane, she said “You have been through enough already. I can do this”Marriane disinfected her hands, then reached for the needle without another word “I heard that you saved us” she said when the lady didn’t let go of the needle. “Let me do this for you. I am a certified nurse”She finally let go of the needle and moved back as she said “I did not do anything. I only showed him the way” Then she nodded at the man on the cot. “I think he is beginning to wake up, he twitched the other time, so I think I can do this before he wakes finally”“You have done a great job already,” Marriane said as she swallowed the lump in her throat when she saw the damage done up close.She started sowing the man’s torn
As life seeped out of him, Adam thought desperately “I don’t want to die” A sudden burst of something he couldn’t describe burned through him. The pain was short and different. When it stopped, Adam thought he had died after all. Before he could mourn the loss of his short life though, he heard a grunt of pain from someone. “What the fuck? Where did that come from?” he heard and he knew who it was. It was one of the men. Adam couldn’t understand what exactly was going on with his body. It was as if he was in a daze yet everything was so clear to him. It was as if he had left his own body and was just a bystander yet he felt a jolt in his hand as one of the men yelled again. Adam’s eyes cleared enough to see a beefy arm jerking on the floor. His surprise was not so much as he felt when he realised that he was standing on his feet. He almost fainted altogether in shock when he saw the Claymore sword in his hand. It was covered in blood. Adam didn’t need to look far to know
“I still do not understand why you are trying to feed him like a kid.” That was the first coherent word that Adam heard, hours after he fainted. It was his father again. Inexplicable anger rose inside Adam toward the man he had respected for most of his life. “Does dad hate me?” he thought drowsily as his eyes finally focused on the person sitting close to his head while she tried to put a straw in his mouth. Sophia. “I swear to God, Caleb... Adam, son, are you awake?” Marriane, who was about to let her husband have it, quickly asked when she saw Adam’s eyes flicker. Adam would have loved to respond to her. He would have loved to erase that pain from her voice. He would have loved to tell her he was just tired and goddamn hungry. Yet all he could do was look at the person with something close to food in her hand. He made a move to talk to her but all he could do was move his head. Yet she understood. She put the straw back into his slightly parted mouth and with a little re
The Troy household was not what Adam expected it to be. Adam had thought he would meet a lot of resistance from the workers when they found out that Trent was dead. He thought he might have to make a scapegoat of a few of them so that the others could fall in line. As it stood, he did not even have to do anything at all. There was no resistance from any angle. Simply because there was nobody there to give it. The fifty staff who were said to be working on maintaining the splendour of Troy’s new home were nowhere to be found. The house was squeaky clean.Scents of detergent and air fresheners still hung thickly in the air but the interior of the house was chaos. It was as if angels of vengeance had descended on the house and turned it apart. Shredded wallpapers. Broken glass tables. Half Yorkshire vases dotted the rooms. The kitchen seemed to have gotten the greatest hit. The dinner table was scarred with marks of soot and knife cuts. There were only a few china plates in t