67. The cannibals

The soldiers freeze while they all listen attentively and they hear it again! Something fiddles with the handle of the back door.

Leo wonders: “Could it be the butchery’s owner?”

Joss gives instructions: “Right, Recce and Leo, come with me! Let’s have a look! The rest of you carry out everything and load it on the cabs as quickly as possible. Ben and John, cover the corridor from the entrance should we rush out quickly.”

Joss reaches the back door first followed by Leo and Recce. It is still locked with the key in the lock but someone turns the handle and pushes hard against the door. Joss locks the visor in front of his face, goes down on his hunches, wiggles the key as silently as possible out of the lock and tries to peep through the keyhole. Something is moving in front of the keyhole but he cannot make out what it is. He only hears loud in and out snorts like a predator at the smell of a prey through the keyhole. Then there follows an aggressive growling and hissing like a nest of puff adders that have been agitated. Joss keeps on peeping and suddenly there is a hard blow through the hole and a bloody blob of phlegm lands on his visor blocking his sight and he jumps back alarmed.

Joss turns to Leo and shows him the bloody blob of phlegm: “It seems to me these man-eaters smell and growl like dogs for prey through that keyhole and one of them spat on me like a spitting cobra through that keyhole.”

Joss can almost see nothing and quickly he reaches in one of his front pockets for his disinfectant in a spray can and sprays it over his glass visor and gets out a piece of cloth from another pocket and wipes it off. They have been very well-equipped. He scarcely has put the things away when a mighty bump thunders against the back door. They are severely startled when the door is attacked repeatedly and banged against. Joss gestures that they must get away and get as much distance and they move back to the opposite side of the room up to the corridor that leads to the front of the butchery. Anxiously they wait with their guns ready for the door to finally collapse before the onslaught.

Then suddenly the door bursts open and hits the wall with a loud bang. A middle-aged man stumbles wildly into the room but erects himself while bundles of men follow him. They glare and then insanely charge forward without fear towards the three men. Leo becomes ice cold. It feels as if time has stopped while he tries to make sense of the scenario in front of him. Blood seeps out of the corners of their mouths and eyes and their dirty clothes are covered with fresh and old blood stains. They look desperate and their faces are twisted in rage and blood thirst with the weirdest bloodshot eyes.

Together the R5 guns roars and the bullets tear through the mad attackers in front and merciless jerk holes in them so that their blood splash against the walls, over the tables and their mates. The attack is driven forward by a swirling stream of followers rushing through the backdoor. The baffled soldiers soon realize that these attackers are unstoppable and although the bullets tear through those in front, they advance determinantly forward like lie callous zombies until they land on the floor mutilated and with their last breath still creep forward. New attackers still worm their way into the room and the unrelenting, unstoppable stream pushes the monsters forward over their slain mates. The soldiers now realize no weapon is going to stop this onslaught. They are way too many.

Joss yells instructions: “I shall fire! Move your asses and get away. We must get out now or will be overwhelmed. They are not going to stop advancing.”

Recce and Leo cease fire and hastily run through the corridor while Joss, walking backwards, follows. Quickly he slips another magazine in his gun and is just in time to stop the attackers in front with automatic gun fire so that the corpses pile up in the narrow corridor. A wall of dead bodies now obstructs the attackers for a moment. Joss turns around and rushes out of the corridor and gives Ben and John the opportunity to shoot the first attackers now coming out of the corridor. They all now run out of the butchery and jump in the cabs that one by one set off with screaming tires down the street. The monsters come out streaming behind the soldiers. Some of them try to jump onto the cabs and cling to it but lose their grips eventually. Then all the cabs are gone away from them and they leave them in the street behind.

All the time Hunter has silently sat and waited in his cab. He couldn’t dare to even try to drive away. This could have revealed his presence. He had no choice as to wait for the visitors to depart before he could dare to drive away. They seem like well-trained mercenaries armed much better than himself and he wonders where they got hold of their equipment. It looks like they were prepared for every eventuality. Then he saw how most of them rushed out with the bags he stashed in the cold room and load it onto the cabs just before gunshots were heard and eventually the last five soldiers emerged and ran for their cabs with the insane monsters following close behind them.

Hunter watches the cabs as they race away. He simply had to wait. In the meantime, he observed the strange attackers in the street. Where did they all come from and is this the only group? So many of them came out of the butchery but realizing the cabs are gone, they are now returning to the butchery and go inside. Three of them lie dead still in the street and Hunter see how four of the bloodied monsters take them by their legs and drag them inside. Hunter is flabbergasted by the bizarre movements of these strange monsters. They are increasingly bending over as they walk covering their faces behind their hands while they hasten all the more back inside the butchery.

One man is near Hunter’s cab and aims to go back but it is as if something grabs his attention and he comes crouching with his head hanging nearer to Hunter’s cab. He comes close to Hunter’s window and sniffs all along the seam as if he could smell Hunter. Hunter keeps his pistol ready against the window and leans away from it. The man bends and sniffs like a dog while Hunter watches him closely. Blood trickles out of the corners of his mouth and eyes. It looks as if he is only interested in the smell that he picked up like a predator at the window. He blinks his eyes continually and more frequently as time passes and it seems he has trouble in keeping his eyes open. Eventually, it seems as if the light is too irritating for his eyes and he hides his face behind his arm, turns away and stumbles back to the butchery and disappears in the dark opening.

Slowly things fall in place as Hunter realizes why the streets are so empty. Maybe during the evening there would be quite a lot of movement. These monsters are light-sensitive and the sun and daylight probably chased them back to their dark nests and probably they hid there and waited till it is dark enough outside. Their instinct and senses totally dominate their logical thinking like predators and they were so desperate to catch the visitors that automatic weapons and the sunlight couldn’t deter them. Now that they realize the visitors are gone, the sunlight will chase them back to their dark hide-outs. Maybe the visitors made too much noise or the smell of fresh human blood alerted them and caused the attack.

Hunter decides he will have to install 360 degrees spotlights on his cab and he will have to get a very strong headlight. The sharp lights should keep them away if he is forced to move around during the night. He will have to be extremely cautious when he visits the town again during daytime to avoid dark places and he will have to move stealthily.