Revenence (Novella): Dead Red

Revenence (Novella): Dead Red by M.E. Betts Page A

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Authors: M.E. Betts
Tags: Zombies
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said a young man.  "He left us."
         "Yeah," agreed an older male.  "He doesn't want us to lead her to him."
         "So what now?" the younger man asked. 
         A burly female shrugged.  "There's still a lot of those shitheads to kill back by the building."
         As a few of them started south, Daphne reached into her bag and pulled out three sticks.  She hopped from one branch to the next and then into the neighboring tree, which was beside the road, to facilitate a better view of her targets.  When they came within her range, she was ready.  The first stick left her fingertips, lodging into the side of the large, stout woman's skull.  She cried out, grasping at the stick and yanking it free.  Because of the way Daphne sharpened her sticks, the wound in the woman's skull was worsened upon removal of the implement, enlarging the hole and pulling a small amount of brain matter out with it as she dropped, alive but incapacitated, to the ground.
         Daphne ignored her for the moment and moved on to the next one, a male in a dirty denim vest.  Having spotted Daphne, he aimed a Beretta up at her, his mouth open wide in a roaring battle cry.  Daphne focused on the space between his parted lips, letting her stick fly toward him and into his gaping orifice.  The stick exited through the back of his neck, leaving him alive but in a great deal of pain.  Daphne saw one of his fellow sadists come in for a mercy kill, resting the barrel of his .38 on the man's temple and pulling the trigger, relieving him of his agony.
         Daphne turned toward the last of the three, a young man, and unleashed another sharpened length of wood in his direction.  It entered through the chest, knocking the slight man off his feet.  He landed to the right on the asphalt, his eyes open wide and his body lifeless.
         Having taken care of the two men, Daphne turned back to the last of the three left alive, the female writhing on the ground with the trauma of her severe head wound.  Dropping from the branch upon which her feet had rested, Daphne grabbed onto a lower branch to slow her fall and lessen the sound of the thud produced as her bare feet made contact with the ground.
         She bent her knees sharply and stalked toward the convulsing woman in sneak mode, knife in hand.  Additional enemies were headed her way, twenty-five feet down the road, but they seemed to be unaware of her location.  She finished the female sadist lying in the road, yanking the wooden stick free and plunging the stainless steel knife briefly into its place.  The woman's body went limp, her mask of fear frozen onto her face.
         "She's right there!" yelled one of the advancing sadists.  A spray of gunfire erupted in the road, and Daphne darted past the shoulder and into the treeline.  From there, she sprang into the nearest tall tree, scaling its length in seconds.  Surrounded by evergreen boughs, she was quickly lost to the sadists' line of sight.
         On the opposite side of the tree in which she was standing, Daphne felt, saw and heard a substantial chunk of limb and foliage being blasted away by a large caliber rifle round.  As she moved into a neighboring tree, the offensive continued, with assault and shotgun rounds raining into the wood and leaves behind her.
         She moved down a few trees further, then slid down a trunk until her feet rested on the soft earth.  She was shrouded by a cloak of pine needles twenty-five feet in diameter.  She felt herself detach even more from her usual cognitive state, spiraling further into her psychedelic experience.  The colors around her were even richer than before, and every sound in the woods reached Daphne's ears as a single primitive yet melodic musical piece.
         As a handful of sadists approached Daphne's vicinity, she waited within the cover of pine needles, preparing to pounce on the most convenient target.  She peered out through the tiny spaces

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