"Let's go back, quick!" Carrie grabbed Lillith's wrist and pulled her, quickening her pace.
What she had just done had left her trembling and mentally exhausted. Now, she only craved to return to the safety of the camp, next to Lief.
Only near him did she feel truly safe.
However, the escape was interrupted just a few meters later when Lillith deftly freed herself from the hand holding her and stopped dead, looking at the surroundings with an evident trace of panic on her face.
"Carrie... I think we're lost," she murmured with concern, "We ran too fast a moment ago and I don't recognize the way back...."
!
Carrie's heart skipped a beat upon hearing that and she stopped abruptly, forcing herself to inspect the surroundings with urgency.
The surrounding trees rose taller and closer together. The filtered light was scarce, creating a gloomy atmosphere, and the ground was covered by a thick and deceptive carpet of leaves, erasing any trace or discernible path.
She was right.
They had run blindly and, upon calming down and looking around, they were in a completely unknown place.
"D-Don't worry, nothing's wrong...", said Carrie, striving to inject calm into her voice, although a chill of foreboding was already creeping up the back of her neck, "The camp is next to the creek. We just have to find the water and follow it downstream, and we'll get back."
"But... which side is the creek on?" Lillith tilted her head, her bewilderment seemed genuine.
Meanwhile, Emma, indifferent to the dilemma, dedicated herself to scratching the bark of a tree with the tip of her wooden dagger and Esther, on the other hand, pressed her lips tight, tense, scanning the shadows around her.
"Sigh..."
Carrie closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to get her bearings.
The labyrinth of trees made it difficult to remember the original direction and she tried to disperse her mental energy, searching for the flow of water, but this forest seemed to possess a "something" that made her perception blur after a few meters.
It was like trying to see through a fog.
"We... let's try walking this way," she pointed in a direction based on a hunch.
Lillith nodded with enthusiasm and approached the other two and took the initiative to grab their hands.
"If we hold hands, we won't get separated," she said with a sugary smile.
If Carrie could have read the girl's mind at that moment, she would have been horrified.
Lillith, of course, knew the way. But... why go back? Although the monster in the cabin had been disgusting, the fear she had felt in him was delicious.
And now, she could feel that, in the depths, a banquet of fear even more delicious seemed to be waiting for her.
Thus, under the guidance, intentional or not, of Lillith, the squad moved further and further away from the camp route, gradually entering the vast and unknown wilderness.
Not more than ten minutes of walking had passed when a new wave of sharp sounds loaded with desperation invaded the silence, revealing that on this occasion the screams belonged to multiple people.
A chill ran down Carrie's spine.
'Did someone else run into... into something?'
"Let's go see!" Lillith's eyes lit up and she started running, almost dragging Emma and Esther, in the direction of where the horrible sound was coming from.
"Wait!" Carrie, feeling helpless, had no choice but to follow them hurriedly.
Breaking through a dense barrier of ferns and undergrowth, they came face to face with a scene that made Carrie stop dead in her tracks.
Running toward them, panting like wounded animals, were two young college students. A blonde boy with a torn plaid jacket and an injured arm, and a brunette girl wearing a tank top and a torn T-shirt at her waist.
But what made Carrie stop wasn't them, but what was coming behind them.
Chasing the two college students, emerged two figures that seemed like grotesque mockeries of humanity.
They weren't like the mass of pustules from the cabin. These were... humans, or they had been once.
The first one was short and stocky, dressed in worn-out farmer's overalls. His face was a mask of deformed flesh, with small, wide-set eyes and a crooked jaw, while he dragged an ax.
The second, taller and more muscular, wore a filthy plaid flannel shirt. He had skin stretched tight over his skull, tufts of sparse, greasy hair, and a mouth full of sharp, rotten teeth curled into a stupid smile.
And in his hands he held a bow.
"Help! Oh, my God, help!"
Upon noticing them, Jonesy's gaze lit up with desperation and the blond boy stumbled forward until almost falling at Carrie's feet, clutching the side that wouldn't stop bleeding. Amber, the girl at his side, was hyperventilating, with a look of terror.
"What... what are those things?" whispered Esther, wrinkling her nose.
"They're cannibals! They're damn cannibals!" shouted Jonesy, turning to look back with panic. "Run! They're going to eat us! They caught Elena and Mara... They're dead!"
Cannibals?
Carrie's brain short-circuited. Monsters with boils, and now deformed hillbillies hunting people.
This camp was turning into hell.
"Mmm... what a delicious aroma of fear..." murmured Lillith in a low voice, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. "It is much more... pure than that of that bag of boils from before."
Carrie didn't have time to pay attention to the girl's disturbing behavior.
She looked at the two deformed ones approaching laughing, and then looked at the weapons in their hands. She couldn't let them kill anyone.
"Listen to me!" Carrie grabbed Jonesy by the shoulder and pushed him toward the path they had come from, stepping between them and the cannibals. "Get out of here! Run right now! I'll distract them!"
?
Jonesy and Amber stood stunned.
They didn't expect a thin teenager to volunteer so they could escape.
"What? You're crazy! They'll kill you!" shouted Amber, pulling on Jonesy's arm.
"I said run!" bellowed Carrie with an authority that admitted no arguments.
".."
Their survival instincts won. Jonesy nodded, grabbed Amber's hand and both ran past Carrie, fleeing into the thick of the forest without looking back.
The tall cannibal, seeing that his meals were escaping, raised the bow, pulled an arrow from his back and drew the string, aiming directly at Amber's exposed back.
"No!" Carrie's pupils contracted.
Swish
The arrow shot out, cutting the air with a lethal whistle, seeking the center of the girl's spine.
But just at that moment, Carrie extended her right hand forward, causing the arrow's trajectory to deviate just a few centimeters.
Rip
But it was enough.
Instead of piercing Amber's back, the arrow passed by tearing the fabric of her sleeve and opening a superficial cut on her arm, before embedding itself deeply in the bark of a nearby oak with a dry sound.
"Ah!" screamed Amber from the pain of the cut, stumbling.
But she was alive and Jonesy grabbed her by the other arm, pulled her hard so she wouldn't fall, and both disappeared among the trees.
Seeing that his perfect shot had failed inexplicably, the cannibal tilted his head, confused, and immediately his eyes swept over Carrie and the three girls..
"Heh, heh, heh..." With eyes shining with greed, the other cannibal advanced a step toward them without ever relaxing the firm grip he maintained on his ax.
"But they stink," murmured Lillith, wrinkling her nose and covering her mouth with her sleeve.
Emma, unfazed by the smell, took a step forward, studying the unique anatomy of these cannibals.
"That cranial deformity..." she whispered, "Do you think their bone structure is dense enough to resist a cut to the jugular? It would be good to check."
The comment made Carrie's hair stand on end.
"Emma, shut up," she hissed, taking a deep breath.
She didn't want to kill.
The sensation of crushing that monster still turned her stomach. But as she watched the ax cannibal tense his muscles to charge, she knew she had no choice.
If they took one more step, she would destroy them.
But just as Carrie was raising her hand to attack, a powerful voice broke the silence from the thicket.
"Hey! Freaks of nature!"
Everyone turned their heads to the right.
Stepping out from behind a tree, a man appeared.
He was about fifty years old, with gray hair cut close in a military style and a square, tense jaw. He wore worn camouflage pants and a tight black T-shirt that revealed muscular arms covered in tattoos.
And in his right hand he wielded a long-bladed Ka-Bar combat knife.
It was Dale Murphy. The ex-Marine and the host of the reality show.
He had just dispatched one of these freaks up the mountain and, upon hearing the screams, had run down.
And seeing what was happening, his blood boiled.
"Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" he bellowed, hitting the handle of his knife against his own leg to get their attention, "Come here, you sons of bitches!"
The two cannibals looked at each other and let out a growl of excitement. In their primitive brains, that man represented something much more interesting than the girls.
They forgot Carrie instantly and the tall cannibal nocked another arrow while the short one raised the ax, and both launched themselves toward the retired military man.
"Listen to me well!" shouted Dale without looking at the girls, his eyes fixed on the monsters charging at him, "Get out of here right now! Run to the east! There is an old abandoned paper factory! Hide there!"
Swish
The cannibal tried to disembowel him with a horizontal ax blow, but Dale responded by pivoting on his heel to let the edge pass and using the inertia of the movement to twist his wrist into a thrust, opening a deep cut in the bicep that ripped out a howl of pain and rage.
Simultaneously, the other released the bowstring and Dale, anticipating the shot, threw himself to the ground, dodging the arrow that embedded itself in a trunk behind him, and jumped to his feet, ready for what was coming.
Seeing the brutality of the fight, Carrie's hair stood on end.
"Come on! You heard the man!" she shouted grabbing Esther and Emma by the shoulders, pushing them in the direction Murphy had indicated, "We have to go, now!"
She pulled them, expecting Lillith to follow her.
But the girl didn't move.
Planted in the middle and with her arms crossed, she observed the exchange of blows, blood and growls with shining eyes.
"Lillith, LET'S GO!" Carrie insisted, desperate.
But she tilted her head, and a disturbing smile curved her lips, totally incongruous with the mortal danger that surrounded them.
"Why? No way," she said with a tone of a capricious tantrum, "Just now that it's getting fun. I want to see who wins."
________
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