As though that wasn’t enough, the pressure was further piled on with the encroaching threat of crazies just merely around the corner from where they stood, twitching erratically but seemingly keeping their distance from the colossal monstrosity.
Rachel had to think fast, she needed a distraction or she needed to be a distraction, there were no two ways about it. Her eyes darted left and right, up and down, looking for something to distract it with or at least a place to run towards if she was the distraction. She could always try her hand at shooting at it, but as completely inexperienced as she was, she’d sooner shoot herself and draw the attention of every crazy in the vicinity. It would be just her luck to not only injure herself, but draw every crazy motherfucker right to her location.
Texting her grandmother her intentions and clear instructions to make their way down to the lifeboats below where they would find Lori the first opportunity they got to escape, she braced herself for the worst case scenario.
Her grandmother was quick with a reply, demanding she not be so foolhardy and ready to risk her life; that her father had already tried to be a hero.
That reply sank Rachel’s heart like an anvil in the Mariana Trench. What did she mean? Where was her father?
Quizzing her grandmother's abrupt revelation, the reply sent her into a spiral of despair. He was dead, died attempting to save them, died in quite possibly a horrific manner, a subject matter her grandmother refused to disclose, instead focusing her efforts on persuading Rachel to leave the two of them behind.
Blinded by anger infused despair, regret at not being able to rekindle her relationship with her father before hearing this and the stifling fear that he died believing she hated him, Rachel’s sense of fear vanished altogether, replaced by sheer unyielding determination to prevent her grandmother and mother from experiencing the same fate.
No longer contemplating how to merely create a distraction, she did the unthinkable and sprung out from her hiding place.
“Hey, motherfucker! Look here!” She snapped viciously, wiping sorrowful tears from her eyes and standing strong… at least until the colossal catastrophe manifested turned to face her.
CHAPTER 24 - LORI & RACHEL
4:49pm - 10 hours, 2 minutes since outbreak in London.
3 hours, 39 minutes since outbreak aboard MS HotS.
. . .
. . .
Lori, having managed to start the mechanism that would lower the lifeboat, took cover somewhere close by and kept an eye out for crazies lurking nearby, attracted to the area by the racket of the machine.
A few wandered by and found nothing of interest, before provoking each other, or what certainly looked like it, with a series of aggressive undertones. Their mannerisms were odd, communicating with each other at times on a primal level with biting, shoving and grunting, at other times in a more sophisticated way, talking, but not in a way that made sense. Their interactions seemed disjointed, hostile and creepy at best.
Lori could only pray that they left before Rachel returned, but as fate would have it, it was precisely Rachel’s voice coming from overhead that attracted them away from the lifeboat. As they dispersed, Lori stepped out and looked upwards worryingly, who or what was Rachel shouting at and was she okay?
Rachel stood face to face with a horror unlike anything she had ever seen, a grotesquely figured nightmare. She went white with terror and every muscle in her body solidified like stone, unable to move.
Standing before her was the horribly disfigured manifestation of all her worst thoughts come true. A slumped mouth, ginger haired, multiple eyed, multiple armed and legged nightmare of destruction, with bones ejecting from places she could only imagine to come from the unstable minds of a horror movie creator. Its legs had expanded to sustain its tremendous upper body mass and what would only be interpreted as feet, consisted of an entanglement of veins, elongated toes and protruding bone.
In its grasp was that of a dead person it was in the midst of eating, their corpse so horrifically mutilated that it was even impossible to determine whether they were male or female, the gruesome sloshing sound of their guts spilling to the deck beneath it.
Just the look of this thing made her nauseous and that putrid stench emanating from it was more than enough to make her want to incessantly puke. It reeked of death, a smell she wasn’t familiar with before, but was now bestowed with more than her fair share.
The absolute assault on her senses, coupled with her own body stiffening fear, were enough to make her feel light headed, but she couldn’t afford to faint here, too much was riding on this crazy stunt she had committed to.
Her voice, having been silenced, found its zest and confidence again, but not before wading through terror.
“Yes you, you ugly son of a bitch! If you look that hideous I can’t even begin to imagine what the thing that created you looks like, but I bet it's something even the sci-fi channels would refuse to air!”
The monstrosity responded with a deep gurgled groan or growl - it was difficult to distinguish which - and dropped its meal to the deck. As though undergoing something of a metamorphosis, its body began to slowly mould itself into something larger, something even more grotesque right before her very eyes
As it began to slowly approach her, vibrating the deck beneath every heavy footstep, Rachel stepped back, her mouth dry, her palms sweaty, her body as stiff as rigor mortis itself.
She honestly believed she would have to pour every ounce of willpower into every step she took,
