C17 After the drowning

When he opened his eyes he saw grey clouds passing by hastily in the sky. Coughing he spat the oily water out and turned onto his side.

A brutal pain was about to make his head explode. Markus groaned in pain, trying to get some air. He forced himself to breathe calmly and evenly, counting to one hundred while doing so. The ground on which he was lying was wet, cold and sandy. He felt water at his feet. Wet as a dog and close to freezing to death, he noticed with an unsteady gaze a lifeless body lying face down a few meters away down by the shore with its legs still in the water.

He knew right away that it was Nadja. He recognized her hairstyle and her clothes, simply everything about her. His backpack with his crossbow strapped on top of it was lying beside the motionless body, halfway in the water. With effort, Markus got to his feet trembling from the cold, and staggered towards the motionless body as fast as possible, got down on his knees and turned the woman onto her back.

Gently he brushed her wet hair from her pale face. Her eyes were wide open and she looked at him with a dead gaze. She was so wet, so cold, simply dead. Markus hardly felt the tears running down his cheeks, and he was shaking his head again and again. Still trembling he looked around, searching for Marie, but could not find her. His gaze became clearer and he looked around at the strange environment. The opposite shore was faintly visible.

All that he could see was a small harbor and some buildings. Groaning he stood up and wrapped his arms around his body. He desperately needed to find a place where he could warm up. And dry clothes, yeah that would be something. The bank was even and overgrown with grass. There was a wooden shed behind some stubborn bushes.

Better than nothing, he thought.

He was about to get moving when he heard a sound behind him. A crack and a crunch or actually both. Markus stopped abruptly and tilted his head, listening. Then a grinding which turned into shuffling. Markus felt ice-cold, colder than ever before because there was nothing behind him except the water and poor, dead Nadja. Sluggishly, he was shaking his head, trying to deny the rising horror.

“This cannot be. Please, dear God, this cannot be!”

A whistling rattle which sounded like a leaking hose confirmed his sad assumption. Markus turned around and Nadja was actually standing directly behind him. Her milky eyes filled with greed were staring at him, her mouth was wide open ready to bite, her swollen tongue lashing like a snake‘s.

He just managed to duck to his side, avoiding her fingers which were bent like claws, he stumbled by doing so and fell heavily to the ground. Filled with panic he continued crawling away on all fours. Just get away from this beast, he thought, but Nadja had other plans. With a loud splash she let herself fall onto the crawling man like a sack, which drove the remaining air out of Markus’s lungs.

Markus pressed himself up with a loud scream, simultaneously turning himself to the side, trying to rid himself of the Polish woman before she could use her teeth. Stars were again exploding in front of Markus’s eyes while still on his side continually driving his elbow back to finally get rid of her. Something cracked but he could not tell if it had been his elbow or Nadja’s ribs. The cold and the fear made him numb.

By now he was only acting on instinct like a cornered, panicked animal. Finally, he was free, crawling away from the furious corpse which was hissing infuriated. After a few meters he came to his feet coughing, gasping for air. With an obscured gaze he could see that Nadja was already staggering towards him clumsily.

Markus did not know what to do. He had no weapon and he was not even sure if he was even capable of using one against a woman. It was a whole different story if you knew the human being.

Instead he decided to flee, running up the bank in the hope of finding something useful in the shed, something he could use to defend himself with. And he was praying that there would not be any other dead waiting for him there. He was lucky.

The little building turned out to be a solid tool shed and its door was standing open. Gasping for air and supported by the rough wooden wall he was moving towards the door, the Nadja-Monster just a few meters behind him.

One thing was for sure; the woman would not give up. He had to kill her if he wanted to survive. Suddenly he was inside the shed, feeling around in the twilight for something he could use to defend himself with. His hands found a rake and let it drop again.

He kept on searching and finally found a stouter shaft, a spade. He took it firmly into his hands right away and turned around. Not one second to soon because the dead woman had reached the entrance as well. She was howling, certain of her victory.

Desperate, he grabbed the rough handle with both hands, lifted it, and rammed it with the sharp metal plate first into her body. He placed all his remaining strength into this one blow. The tool caught her underneath her rips, severed her clothes and entered her body with a tearing sound as if her flesh were made of thick leather.

Markus had not expected this and stumbled forward driven by his own force. He collided heavily with the staggering Polish woman, sweeping her off her feet backwards. The rough wood ripped open Markus’s palms and he was screaming like a wild animal when he hit the floor hard with his knees, the struggling body of the dead woman between his legs.

With a hazy gaze he slapped her hands to the side and withdrew the weapon out of the deep wound with a smacking sound. Screaming out all of his fear he struck out widely. This time he hit her face with the flat side, flailing madly until nothing was recognizable of her face anymore.

Even then he did not stop. He kept smashing her until her head had turned into a meaty red mass interspersed with bone splinters and brain matter, all spread in a wide circle around the battlefield.

Markus whimpered when he realized what he had done. First he threw up beside the corpse until he felt dizzy. Gratefully he accepted the blackness which was spreading in his head. The merciless cold forced him to get back on his feet again, forced him to drag the corpse through the door and to barricade himself inside the shed by wedging a shelf inside the doorframe.

He was lucky to be alive. He was even luckier because there was an oven and even some wood to fire it up with. Ignoring the fact that the dead could be attracted by the fire he took off his wet clothes and hung them over the oven. He wrapped himself up in an oily blanket which had been lying in one of the shelves, cowered close to the oven, pressing a somehow clean cloth to his bleeding head wound, and thought about absolutely nothing, his head was empty, like burned out.

Some puffs from his inhaler, miraculously not lost in the water, gave him air to breathe again. Exhaustion, warmth, and not least despair drove him into an uneasy long lasting sleep.

He had lost them. He had lost them both.