Wildblood

Chapter 8

8

Everything stank like shit. His vision was blurry, muffled sobs and desolate keens filtering through his awareness. Traces of manure smeared the floor at his boots. Splintering boards dug into his back, the coarsely woven fabric of his shirt damp with sweat. His skin itched furiously, but he couldn’t find the strength to tear the damn tweed from his torso.

Someone bumped his shoulder, then coughed—too close. He flinched away and grimaced, shoving the invader from his personal space. His hand looked different—smaller, more calloused than usual. Swollen knuckles, a crooked ring finger; the bone hadn’t been set right. He stretched his aching legs—hadn’t they been longer?

Slowly, the murk thinned, and his vision sharpened. Wooden walls and ceiling. A car of some kind. Cattle train? It sure as hell smelled like it. His gaze wandered. Bodies everywhere. Some were prone, unmoving. Others sat slumped like him, the light stolen from their eyes. Children wailed with fever and reeked of sickness.

Everything reeked of sickness.

He glanced down, evaluating his clothes. A uniform. A mossy shade of green caked in grime. A body that didn’t belong to him. Emaciated. Weak.

Panic suffused him.

He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He was trapped in another’s flesh. Trapped on a train with people packed together like pickled fish in a jar. They were putrefying—rotting from illness and hunger. He couldn’t move or speak—only observe.

But he didn’t want to observe.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Finally, a voice that sounded like his own cleaved through the cacophony. It was inside his head, but it was something.

He had to get out of this husk. Get out of this car. Get off this train. He willed the body to move, straining against the weight of this alien skin on his soul. He was an interloper, but he didn’t care. He’d get out.

Finally, movement. A knee bent. A hand braced against the floor, grains of mud and shit biting into his palm. He pushed and pushed until the car tipped, and he found his feet. Searing pain shot through his back, and he limped forward, nudging through bodies that gave way like ragdolls. Some were catatonic, nothing but meat.

Light bordered the slats of a door on the opposite side of the car. A way out. He waded through the limbs—so many limbs—and reached for the metal lever. He pulled, and the door slid open.

Darkness awaited.

When Kai stepped through, he was at his full height. The muscle had woven back over his bones; he’d returned to his own body, but his relief dampened as his attention shifted to his surroundings.

He was where he’d started on the opposite side of the car. At his feet sat the man he’d been one with, his head bowed, his shoulders slumped. Dark, unkempt hair brushed his shoulders. He still wore the uniform, and Kai realized he was a soldier. Then, the man raised his head. His face was gaunt and pallid, shadows collecting in every crevice, but his brown eyes sparked with fire, a red gleam that promised a fight. Those eyes, somehow still burning, flickered to Kai. The soldier’s mouth thinned as he stared at the intruder who’d puppeteered him moments earlier. Then, his gaze drifted down the car.

Kai rotated in place, and the cabin chirred. The door at the end of the wagon shrank as the panels stretched and tilted. Meat hooks sprouted on the walls—black iron coated in something sticky. Blood. The train shook, the fragile light guttering. Murmurs rose like a wave, the scent of fear snaking between the passengers, coalescing in the space behind Kai’s ribs. Then, the train screeched. The floor pitched forward, forcing Kai to a knee as he fought for balance. Darkness descended, bathing the wagon in a sightless pall.

Kai’s heavy breaths thundered in his ears—the sole sound in the deathly train. Saliva filled his mouth as a sour stench washed over him, and the light from outside blinked through the slats.

Human bodies drained of blood hung on the meat hooks like carcasses. Sharp metal lanced their flesh, their necks bent at deviant angles. Broken marionettes. They twitched and squelched with the car’s every jostle, and their unblinking, peeled-open eyes bore into nothingness.

Kai had never been squeamish. He’d seen his share of carnage, endured terrors that had no right existing. What lay before him was no more gruesome, but there was a harrowing familiarity—a creeping dread about the train, about the people hanging from its walls—that soaked through his skin and settled in the marrow of his bones.

Maybe he truly was broken.

Kai spun in search of the soldier. He was still there, knees drawn to his chest, eyes fixed on Kai. The train groaned, the wheels shrieking, but the two men remained locked on one another, tethered by an invisible cord.

Finally, Kai permitted himself a breath and asked, “Who are you?”

The man’s eyes, dark and red like burnt clay, flashed with recognition, but he didn’t speak. He reached into his jacket, the lapels stained crimson, and retrieved a weathered piece of card.

He held it out to Kai, beckoning him to approach.