It's the crack. The scuffling across the battlefield, the tearing open of body armour and flight suits, the snuffling around the torsos and even the sound of their proboscides puncturing days-old dead flesh are all disgusting enough, but it's easy to force your mind to not recognise those.
It's the sound of the cracking which goes through me every time. When filthy pincers at the end of sinewy limbs lock around some poor sap's ribcage then pull briskly outward, exposing everything they're about to... to eat. The snap and splinter of bone, barely muffled by the congealing mass of blood and skin, a mess that's already begun to decompose. Maybe they leave them this long in the way that a pheasant is hung in a cellar until maggots start to appear?
Even that slurping, chewing noise which follows the cracks, accompanied by excited clicking and a dog-whistle whine - that's easier to discount. Somehow. The battlefield is huge and the sheer number of bodies must act as some sort of baffle, yet at ground level I can hear every single one. It doesn't even sound like they're spitting out any shrapnel.
And through all of this, I'm still here. Do they know I'm alive? Leg too broken for me to move, too scared to try anyway? I've been waiting for them to finish up, to either move on or to finish me off and add me to the menu. But none of them have even been close, they're too busy... feeding. Feeding on the others.
I haven't heard a human voice for two days. Well two rotations, at least. Comms went down almost immediately. I can't remember how long the days are here. But light or dark, they're there. The scuttling, the clicking, the tearing. The cracking. I smell like I've been laying in my own filth for two days of course, but so do all the dead ones. They don't care about that. They haven't come near me, they must know. If they're waiting, there's plenty to keep them busy in the meanwhile. I don't know if that's a good thing. I can't have long left. If the infection doesn't get me, dehydration certainly will.
Why aren't they off at the next checkpoint, tearing through another battalion? Maybe they're there, too. We were hopelessly outnumbered here, overtaken by the swarm. Incapacitate, move on, repeat. Feed later. We were never going to win and it was stupid to even try. No chance of rescue, only a moron would wade back into this.
Too late for analysing now, though.
This is where we are.
Where I am.
Meat.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• Short stories © WorldOfBlackout.co.uk, all entries are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Y'know, mostly.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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