Chapter 157: Chapter 157 - Tragedy In The Quiet Village

Martha made her way back toward the village entrance where the Elder was sitting on a wooden chair, waiting.

Every step she took felt like she was treading on broken glass. How couldn’t it? She was nervous. She was about to speak with the man who killed her only son in cold blood.

Her heart was filled with grief and fury, but she would not cry. She kept her head low and her movements relatively quick as she made her way to him.

When he was in sight, she noticed he looked remarkably serene, his hands resting on his knees as he watched the dirt road. When he spotted Martha, he offered a smile that was neighbourly-warm and yet utterly chilling.

"Martha," he greeted her. "A tragic day, isn’t it? I trust you’ve found some peace in your prayers."

Martha felt a scream clawing at the back of her throat. This man who had butchered her son not even thirty minutes ago, now he spoke to her as if they were discussing the weather over tea.

She forced her hands to stop shaking by clutching her shawl tightly.

"Elder," her voice sounded raspy when she spoke.

The Elder’s smile didn’t falter, but his eyes sharpened. "About Liam... it was a necessary mercy, Martha. He had grown sick. Not in the body, perhaps, but in the mind. He was becoming a danger to the cause. I hope you can find it in your heart to understand. It was for the good of the village."

"I... I understand, Elder. I only wish to serve. Which is why I came to you."

"Oh? How can I help you?"

"While I was tending the wheat... I heard things," she said, leaning in as if sharing a dangerous secret. "I would have called for the men, but they are all away on the road. I didn’t know who else to turn to."

The Elder leaned slightly forward as his interest piqued. "What kind of noises? Perhaps you’re just overwrought from the excitement, Martha. Old ears can play tricks. Trust me. I would know, haha."

"T-They weren’t tricks. It sounded close. Like whispers. Not voices I recognised. Whispers coming from the center of the stalks, near the old irrigation ditch."

"Are you sure that it isn’t the children playing?"

"No. I’ve long forbidden them from playing in the crops. Please Elder, I’m worried."

"... I see. Well then," the Elder slowly got up with the support of his cane. "Lead the way."

"T-Thank you, Elder!"

They walked together in silence. Martha matched the Elder’s slow pace with an exaggerated patience that made her skin crawl.

When they reached the clearing where Kurt, Isabel, and Gracie had been hiding, the space was empty. The Elder stopped and huffed as he scanned the area.

There were no suspicious persons. Instead, three small red foxes were huddled together, gnawing on a discarded crust of bread. At the sight of the Elder, they yipped and vanished into the wheat with a flash of orange fur.

"Foxes, Martha? You brought me out here for–"

He turned to look at her, but the space where the old woman had been standing was vacant. Martha had vanished into the stalks as if she had never been there at all.

The Elder froze as the wind died down. The only sound was the dry hiss of wheat brushing against wheat.

That was all, until–

SNIKT!

Before he could even process the shift in the air, a black blade whistled through the air. It was a stroke of deadly precision. The Elder’s head was lobbed from his shoulders. A look of mild surprise still etched onto his wrinkled face as it tumbled into the dirt.

After Kurt, Isabel and Gracie followed, emerging from their cover.

*Ptooey* Gracie spat. "Burn in hell, you old fucking freak."

"Is... is it over? Is he dead?" Isabel asked.

"Maybe. Or maybe not. I’m guessing not." Gracie answered. "If he’s anything like the monsters I fought then he’ll probably wake up as a monster any second now."

Kurt didn’t need to be told twice. He stepped over the corpse and with four sickeningly clean strikes, he dismembered the Elder’s limbs from his body.

For good measure, he drove the point of his sword straight through the ribcage, pinning the torso to the earth through the heart.

He yanked the blade free and swung it in a wide arc to clear the blood. To his disgust, the spray wasn’t red; it was a viscous green, smelling of stagnant water and rot.

"Isabel," Kurt looked at her. "Bury him far and deep."

Isabel nodded and slammed her palms into the dirt.

Thick, thorny vines erupted from the soil, wrapping around each limb and the torso like hungry serpents. They dragged the pieces of the Elder deep into the earth, burying them in separate pits, yards apart.

"""..."""

For a moment, there was silence. Isabel let out a breath of relief. "It didn’t revive. We did it."

"Hm! Wait, someone’s coming." Kurt warned, readying his blade again.

Martha emerged from the wheat; her face streaked with tears. "Is it... is it done?"

"Martha, what are you doing here?" Kurt asked as he drew his sword back. "Didn’t we tell you to wait somewhere safe? It’s dangerous here."

"But... I heard you. I heard you calling to me. You told me to come out... telling me that it was finished."

Kurt’s blood ran cold. "Martha, run! NOW!"

The old woman flinched, turning to look back toward the village, but the ground beneath her feet suddenly didn’t exist.

With a muffled scream, the earth collapsed into a perfect, circular hole, swallowing Martha whole.

"NO!"

"Isabel, wait–!" Kurt caught her by the waist just as she lunged towards the hole, his strength the only thing keeping her from falling in after her. "Don’t! She’s gone! Look!"

The hole began to ripple and swirl.

Then, the entire wheat field began to tremble and buckle as if something massive was breathing beneath the soil. It was a coordinated collapse.

"Dammit! Isabel, run!" Kurt roared.

He scooped the injured Gracie up over his shoulder and grabbed Isabel by the arm, dragging them toward the village road.

As they burst out of the wheat field, the scene that met them was a living nightmare. The village square was a sea of screaming people. But they weren’t running from the earthquake – they were being harvested. The ground beneath the cottages, the tavern, and the well was all sinking.

Kurt watched in frozen horror as a mother, clutching her screaming child, was pulled waist-deep into the dirt in a matter of seconds. The child reached out a tiny hand before both were sucked down into the darkness with a wet, slurping sound.

Isabel collapsed to her knees, sobbing as she watched a group of children disappear into the chasm. "Why?! Why is this happening?!"

Then, as quickly as it had begun, the earthquake stopped. The village was a ghost town of empty clothes and half-sunken ruins. The silence that followed was heavier than the noise.

Then came the screech.

SKREEEEE!!!

It was a high-pitched, metallic grinding that tore through the air, vibrating in their very bones.

BOOM!

The ground in the center of the village square exploded upward in a fountain of stone and dirt.

Rising from the depths was a monster that defied logic. It was a centipede monster, and its size was massive – standing at ten stories high. Hundreds of serrated legs churned the air, and its head was a nightmare of clicking mandibles and a dozen milky, lidless eyes.

Gracie, perched on Kurt’s shoulder, let out a shaky breath. "Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. This thing makes the ones in the forest look like house pets."

The monster reared up, its shadow looming over them, and let out another bone-shattering–

SKREEEEEE!!!

.

..

...

Deep in the humid, rotting heart of the swamp, the atmosphere shifted.

The wooden house, normally a hive of low moans and aimless shuffling, suddenly went dead silent.

The dozens of infected people wandering the clearing stopped in their tracks. As if pulled by a single invisible string, they all turned their heads in unison toward the direction of the village.

Their bloodshot eyes glowed with a faint, sickly green light.

Then, they began to scream. A collective screech that echoed through the gnarled trees. Without a word of command, the entire horde turned and began to run. They sprinted on all fours with an animalistic, terrifying speed. Their limbs cracked as they pushed themselves toward the village.

Beneath them, the swamp mud began to churn as the rest of the centipede monsters slithered out from the dark. Their segmented bodies rippled as they dived into the earth and surged out again like dolphins in a black ocean.

The hive had been summoned. Every infected soul and every hatched horror was converging on a single point: the three survivors standing in the ruins of a now destroyed village.