The night was cold, but that did not bother Vig, he actually sweated as they kept walking. Tara, and the rest, complained about how freezing it was, frequently slapping their arms together to get the blood flowing.
Vig did none of those things, especially since his arms and legs felt rather stiff, making any such motion too difficult, not that he felt the need to anyway.
As the night drew on he found it more difficult to focus, he started thinking about something and then found his mind drifting away.
“Must be a fever. Need to get a jacket. Will get one from Tara or that other woman, steal it if I have to. Just as soon as morning comes,” he thought.
Vig tried to remember the woman’s name, but hard as he tried he could not, knowing that he knew her well, and then his mind drifted away again.
They managed to stay on their feet until morning, and when the sun climbed above the horizon they looked back in unison. Behind them, no more than 500 meters away, they saw the rest of the clan, and for a moment they were surprised and happy to see how many had survived, until they heard the moans and saw the missing limbs. They were being followed not by their people, but by a clan of the dead.
“Dear mother goddess...,” exclaimed Tara.
Vig just watched without moving, fascinated by the crowd approaching him. He did not feel scared like had done before, he felt something else, almost some connection with the possessed, and an urge to answer their call.
“We have to GO,” shouted Tara, and managed to turn Vig around and get him going. The mother and her son had never stopped, so they were now a bit ahead of them.
All except Vig felt tired, needed to rest, even so they walked as fast as they could, and seemed to put some extra distance between them and the dead who were following in their wake.
When the morning had passed they could go on no more, so they sat down facing the direction they had come from. The walking dead, as Tara now called them, had disappeared down a recess, creating the illusion that they were further behind them then they actually were.
Sitting there catching their breaths, eating snow to try and quench their desperate thirst, only getting colder and more thirsty in the process. They had lost all their utensils for melting water, so they needed to get to the ancient ones fast or they would die of thirst, it was as simple as that.
Vig was not really bothered with all this, even sitting down without a jacket he was still sweating, and he felt pretty good in a slow kind of way. He looked down on the scratch Tara had given him during the night, it had formed an oozing surface with some black thick liquid draining down his arm.
With his hand he pushed into the wound and felt nothing, no pain whatsoever. Normally that should have scared him, and he would go looking for someone to blame, but now he just did not worry, it seemed such a petty thing to worry about.
They had sat down for no more than 10 minutes when the living dead appeared out of the recess, now a mere 200 meter away. Tara directly stood up whereas Vig just sat there looking at them with an absent-minded expression on his face.
“Lets move,” she said, and then she screamed it at him when he did not move.
At that point he stiffly got up and tried to reply something, but he only managed a hoarse crackling. Meanwhile the boy was trying to get his mother to stand up, but she just shook her head and stared down into the ground, refusing to move.
“What is the matter with you Vig, WE HAVE TO GO,” Tara screamed again, now trying to pull him with her, but he did not move.
All the time the living dead came closer, moaning louder as they approached some fresh warm meat. In the lead was a small girl no more than four years old with a big gash on her throat, her arm had been chewed on and someone had ripped off one of her cheeks. She did not seem to be in pain or even mind, she was totally focused on Tara, and that scared her more than any of the others. Only yesterday Tara had fed her food, comforted her as she was scared and tired, and now the only thing that little girl wanted to do was to sink her teeth in Taras flesh and eat her alive.
The dead were now only 150 meters away, maybe less, and Tara could not get Vig moving. The small boy tried the same with his mother, or at least to get her to stand up, pleading with her as he cried.
100 meters away, the possessed kept getting closer, moving slowly but relentlessly, some dragging legs half torn off, held to the rest of the body by a single strand of muscle or tendon.
Tara started to slap Vigs face over and again, repeating, “Snap out of it.”
It took five hard slaps before Vig left the hypnotic state he had retreated into, grabbing her hand before the sixth slap, “What the hell are you doing?”
She just pointed at the dead crowd, now only 75 meters away, and that got Vig going.
“What the hell are we waiting for, lets get go!”
He walked over to the boy struggling with his mother, and with some stiff effort lifted her up, saying, “Get walking or I kill your boy!”
Even if she would give up, she could not be responsible for her sons death, so she started walking hand in hand with her son. Tara made sure to stay close to Vig, making sure he wouldn't space out again without her noticing it. She let the boy and mother walk first, for the same reason, to make sure they did not just give up.
Some minutes into their walk Vig remembered that he had left his spear behind, mumbling that he would go back for it
Tara shook her head, “Forget it, the creatures are already there, you would never get to it.”
Vig looked back and saw that she was right, the first of the dead crowd were already trampling down his spear into the snow.
He almost got lost looking at them, but Tara made sure he turned around and focused on walking.
Vig was still sweating some, but he did not feel great any more, he did not really feel anything. Everything was dull and remote, he tried to press his finger into the black oozing wound, and he pressed so hard that in normal circumstances he would have passed out, but now he did not feel anything. Every part of his body felt like a piece of wood, stiff and inflexible, without any sensation.
Tara meanwhile kept an eye on them all, but most of all she kept an eye behind them, making sure the creatures would not catch up, and to spot if they ever lost interest. The day wore on and their fatigue grew with it, which meant their speed went down to a slow stagger, not unlike the living dead.
They had managed to put some extra distance between them and the dead, but they had never managed to grow it beyond 300-400 meters. Their endurance had almost reached its limit, to little sleep with lack of water and food now took its toll, the distance between them and the possessed started to shrink.
Vig only felt bad for a short time before his mind again started to enter a state where nothing mattered, getting close to dive beneath that blackness that ones it grab hold would never let go. All those feelings of anger, fright, panic just faded away and with it his survival instinct. At that moment his mind cleared enough for him to know what was happening, he was turning into one of them.
The creature he had tipped over in the night, and whose head had slid down his arm, the arm where Tara had cut him, had transferred the possession to him.
He looked back, and for the first time he really realise what was happening to him, and that gave him a short burst of the old him. Wondering whose fault it was, who he should blame, which one should he sacrifice, but it was in the end only a reflex, nothing more.
“Tara, I'm infected.”
“I know, you have been slipping all day.”
“Your fault,” he continued, saying it without any real anger behind the words.
Vig tried to think but it was pointless, he was doomed no matter what he tried to do. As he spent his last moment of clarity a single image kept appearing before him, the boy Jig being eaten alive, and he felt bad, a feeling he had only felt for himself before. Maybe he felt it now because he feared what the mother goddess would do to him in the afterlife, if there was such a thing. Maybe his fate was walking forever on this plain together with the rest of the clan, forever a deposed leader, following now only some basic instinct.
“Turning...,” he croaked out to Tara.
She looked at him, gave a small tired nod, and then looked forward. She had managed to keep a spear, something that Vig had not managed to do, and now she raised it in a ready position.
They walked in silence, all the time the living dead kept getting closer, 200 meters, then a 100 meters. They were slow, but they never gave up, they just kept going, wearing down any prey no matter how quick that prey was. Sooner or later everybody needed to rest, but the possessed never seemed to need that.
Now that they were close, the constant moanings started to erode the will to keep walking. It would not be long before they would catch up.
The mother walking in front of them suddenly staggered, first to the left and then to the right before finally falling down, dragging the boy named Kushim with her.
There was no time to try and get the mother going, the living dead were to close for that, so Tara screamed to the boy, “Save yourself!”
The boy shook his head and buried it in his mothers cloths, giving up the pointless act of trying to escape.
Vig reached out and put his hand on Taras arm, “Give spear...,” and then he made a slapping motion against his face.
“What do you mean,” she replied without letting her spear go.
“It...hard to think, mother goddess...punish...penance.”
She could hear that Vig was loosing his mind, but what did he want to do with the spear? Looking back she now saw the living dead only 75 meters away, maybe even less.
“Pleaseeeee.....,” he implored her.
The possessed clan was now no more than 50 meters away, their moaning growls were deafening, stripping away the livings will to resit.
Tara did not know what to do, giving up her spear would leave her defenceless, but keeping it would make little difference, so she finally handed it to the turning Vig.
He took the spear with hands that did not seem to know how to hold it, and then she slapped him hard across the face five times, each time harder than the time before.
As before it seemed that the pain pull his mind back from what ever depths it was drowning in. It brought him back to a reality where he could feel how stiff his joints were, how hard it was to grip the spear, but at least he could think.
“The pain belongs to the living, the rest belongs to the dead,” he thought.
“Now go, take the boy with you, I will keep them busy for as long as I can.”
Hesitatingly he added, “Do you think the mother goddess will forgive me?”
“Who knows what the mother goddess will do,” replied Tara as she left him.
Vig forced his fingers into a tight grip, hearing his joints crack in protest, then he turned around and faced his clan, a mere 25 meters away.
Tara walked as fast as she could, reached the boy and pulled him up, without arguing she lead, dragged him along with her, behind them the growls reached a crescendo.
Vig did not wait for the living dead to reach him, he was afraid he would fall down into the muted darkness if he waited to long, so he hobbled towards them growling just as high as they did, with his spear in a upward angle.
The first possessed he meet was the young girl with her teeth bared in anticipation of flesh, a demand Vig meet with his spear tip. He pushed it in where her eye should have been, deep into her brain, and to his surprise she fell limp to the ground.
Had he seen a grateful look on her face as she fell, he did not know, but for his own sake he decided he had seen it.
The rest of the dead crowded in, so close that he did not have time to get his spear up, but to his surprise they ignored him.
He felt himself falling back into the dead stupor, it would be so good to let go and just walk with them. His mouth started to chew as he imagined fresh flesh, the texture, the...and then he forced his mind back to the still living part.
Staggering after the dead who had passed him, Vig swung his spear, tripping them up, making a few others stumble and fall on their laying comrades.
Reaching the frontrunner of the dead, he tried to raise his spear against its head but failed. The spear went in just below the neck, and then he and who had been Tirak fell to the ground. When Vig got up on stiff legs he did not retrieve his spear, instead he let out a whining moan, and followed the rest of the dead in their quest for the living.
When Tara had managed to get the boy walking she dared a quick backwards look and saw that Vig had bought some extra meters for them.
“Hope the mother goddess forgive him,” she thought, but knew that she hadn't, as Vig was now one among the rest of the dead.
She did not look when the boys mother was killed, she would not have seen much if she had. The mother never screamed, and the living dead crouched in so thickly around her that she was hidden under a twisting snarling heap of mouths and blood.
Tara made sure that Kushim did not look back either, and when he tried to she firmly turned his head forward, “Just keep walking, there is nothing for us back there.”
The living dead had been held up, first by Vig before he turned, then by the meal of a mother, so Tara and Kushim were safe for now, but again they were being chased, a race they could not possibly win.