December 1st The wail

"Either we change tactics or we all die," I knew I wasn't a soldier, but I'd held up relatively well despite the extreme strain of our situation. 

"I'm sure they'll run out eventually if we keep fighting them," the sniper snapped.

"Fine," I grabbed one of the corpses, and started dragging it away from the group, "I'll figure it out on my own."

We'd been disguising the smell of the corpses this whole time, and I was beginning to think it was a waste. I wasn't interested in playing this game anymore, and I wasn't going to sit here, and let this nonsense get me killed. I was stronger then I used to be so I should be able to do something about this nonsense. Three people split off from the group to go with me. We went quite a bit of distance from the other group, and then I steeled myself. 

What I was about to do wouldn't sit well with the others. I pulled out my dagger, and gutted him. He was already dead so I didn't need to worry about it, but that didn't make me any less gut wrenching. They eyed me like I was out of my mind. I disconnected from it all. 

"I'm sorry," I straightened slowly, "I don't like this either, but the more appetizing he looks to the ghouls the more likely the ghouls are to come here."

"How are you able to do something like that?" The girl of the three frowned at me. 

"I call it disconnecting," I cleaned the blood from my hands using a rag I'd made from the zombie cloth fragments, "I don't think I would have been able to kill him myself, but taking him apart once he's already dead is a different problem. I don't see him as anything, but meat. The same as when I'm butchering my rabbits."

The fact that I was capable of butchering rabbit made her face scrunch up. 

"What?" I frowned at her, "I do what I need to survive. You never needed to do that sort of thing. You jumped into the military, and did all the push ups, but you don't know what it is like for no one to want you, and to have to survive like that. I had no support like you. I was left on my own, and told I wasn't good enough for anything from the beginning so it's only logical for me to do the jobs no one else will do."

I practically bit my tongue to cut off the stream of hateful words. I loved my mother, I really did, but she was a narcissist to the core. Any achievement I'd made growing up had been snatched away from me without mercy. I'd forgiven all of it up until I couldn't anymore. The were dozens of times she'd spew the most hurtful lies just to make herself look like a saint for allowing me to stay. 

Then when I would try to tell her how bad she was hurting me she would throw it back in my face with an I could have done better attitude as if I was the one that was causing the problem. Sure I had made many mistakes as a teenager, and more as an adult, but I didn't need to be punished even more on top of how much I was punishing myself. My mind went to the darkest places when I was under stress even though on the outside it was hard to tell just how much I was beating myself up on the inside. These people might have thought I was holding up pretty well under the stress, but the truth was I'd collapsed after the first attack, and was pushing on with the only thing I knew how to do. I didn't know what kind of material my mind was made from after so many years of collapsing under the pressure, but my thoughts never stalled out. 

I felt like I was walking through the ruins of my own mind, and the only way to get out of those ruins was by either rebuilding what was there or moving somewhere new. I could never decide which I wanted to do, but when the pressure came I either found a way to make that pressure go away or I fled mentally speaking. I knew that it wasn't a healthy mindset. I could feel my hands shaking as it started to really get to me, but people didn't notice this about me because I instinctively hid any weaknesses I had. Focusing all my mental energy on the problem in front of me so I didn't have to think about how broken my mind actually was. 

That was why despite the fact that I'd been falling apart for years I'd never missed a day of work. Work took my mind off the fact that I was horribly twisted, and mangled inside. If people could see the damage to my mind as physical damage then they would be horrified. Mainly because most of it would be obviously self inflicted. I shrugged off my hurt feelings, and moved away from the corpse. 

This area was more heavily wooded then the other one so we had more cover. Then there was the scent disguiser stuff. The ghouls wouldn't know we were here. That was the hope. I was really hoping that the ghouls had a better sense of smell then they did hearing. 

Those big open holes on their faces suggested a good sense of smell. The small ears suggested poor hearing. I was really relying on those two clues. If I was wrong then I guess my suffering ends now. Death wasn't the worst thing that could happen to a person. 

I understood why no normal person would even consider a strategy like this. It was unthinkable to mutilate a human corpse to the point it was even considered a crime in itself. I wasn't a normal person. I was a broken twisted soul who didn't know what it was to be completely, and truthfully happy. Every once of good came with just as much bad.