I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see anything, everything was pitch black. I could barely move my limbs because every part of me throbbed and ached as if I had been struck down by a train made of claws and fire, and then I remembered that I had been in war against those ugly creatures that tore through our town.
I was slipping away, inch by inch, into a fading nothingness that might be death, and it burned to think that even in death, I would still be that weak twenty years old man, the one who couldn't raise a proper blow, the one who would die a weakling.
"Wake up, Hajidan!" a voice was yelling at me. Who was it? Who owns that voice?
I forced my eyes open and was greeted by the blue spread of sky above, so achingly beautiful that I forgot my pain for a second, because somehow, impossibly, I was still alive, and at least I had this moment to see the sky again, the white clouds drifting across its surface pulled me back to those rare childhood days when my parents would pack up everything just to drive us away from the noise into the wilderness where we could lay on the grass and watch the daylight clouds drift and the night stars twinkle across the heavens. Is this the kind of flashing memory they say comes before death?
"You've got to stay with me!" the voice cried again and I turned my head slowly, dragging the muscle of my neck to my right, and there he was. It was Ginta, he was still alive.
"Where is the rest..." I tried to speak but my throat rebelled, and I coughed until the pain stabbed through my chest, but I pushed anyway, "Where is Miraza? Is she okay?" I uttered, cracking as I struggled to sit upright.
"You're bleeding inside," Ginta yelled at me as he pushed me back down so hard I thought I'd pass out from the jolt of pain that rushed through my side like fire, "don't move or you'll die right here, Hajidan!"
"I'm already halfway to death and you know it, Ginta! Just tell me, where is the crew, where are the others?" I uttered, and I watched him freeze, his eyes widened in a way that people do when they don't want to say what they have to say, his lips quivering as if the words might tear him apart, and his fingers shaking like leaves caught in a wind too heavy for trees to carry. I was scared because my instinct had already guessed what might come out from his lips.
"They're all gone!" he finally screamed, with a cracking voice as he slammed his fist into the lamp beside him, "they didn't survive the bite of those monsters, they....they're mutated now, Hajidan, all of the people we know are gone. I didn't save them, Hajidan. They depended on me and I didn't even save them. But I managed to save you, so don't die on my watch! Miraza risked her life to save you as well, so don't trade her sacrifice for your crave of death, you hear me? Hold on tight and live for her," he screamed, clutching the sand beneath him.
I had believed I was the one making the sacrifice when I threw myself into the pit of those ravenous, mutated humans, I thought I was the distraction that gave them time to escape, I thought I had played the hero in my own heroic game, but in the end, I was the one who got dragged to safety like a feeble worm.
"I'm a lame, weak idiot," I cried out as I sat up. Ouch! All my nerves felt like I had a thousand noodles on fresh wounds.
I was beaten very badly, but yet, I was normal. I'm not a mutant?
"I know what's going on in your head, Hajidan. I was also surprised you didn't mutate. It's surprisingly beyond my expectations. Somehow Miraza knew. She often told me countless times that you were kind of special," Ginta said, unrolling a bandage and wrapping it tight around my torso.
"Special?" I gasped out loud. I have heard that somewhere, but from a different person that I couldn't get a clear picture of in my head. I could only hear the conviction in his voice, but could not remember the image of this very person, what is going on with my memory lately?
Special in what sense, in being lame or... weak? Could it be a positive kind of special?
I was confused, even I found that word a bit strange. But the weird thing is that I still got my arms and legs. I thought they were ripped out of my body by those vicious beasts. I could have sworn that I could picture the image of the incident. Maybe it was a dream, or a terrifying illusion.
It started one night when a fire-burning rock fell from the sky and crashed into the remote forest of Jonakvi City.
People who were at the 24th celebration of the Moondain Festival experienced that firsthand. I experienced that firsthand. I saw how magical it looked and mistook it to be a fallen star, but it was worse than what I feared.
The forest it fell into was a hundred miles from my reach. The forest was so scary that no one dared to go there. They thought it was just a normal meteorite, but it was worse. It was the thing that was trying to end humanity.
It happened fourteen days ago, and at the very least, that's when the whole problem began.
All over the news, it was reported that some creatures somehow found their way into people's homes, crawling underneath people's skin, and after the next twenty-four hours, they transformed into mutated beasts. And the worst-case scenario was the mutated humans injecting their parasite egg into a person after biting the living hell out of that person.
It was said that the rock made a big hole in the ground, preventing the moonlight from shining its rays on the surface and wherever it is, it still creating more monsters.
"What about my parents, and my little sister?" I asked, searching his eyes for answers.
"I have no information about them, so I wouldn't presume they are dead or alive. But by the looks of things, the city would be nothing but a place cluttered with bleeding and running beasts."
"I can't believe I've been unconscious for nine days, without stitches or recovering medicine. But anyways I want to know what those things are, I want to know if people are still out there needing our help!"
"Hajidan! Please listen, a looser like you can't do anything at this moment, you're not skill enough to tackle two of those beasts yourself! You're lying helplessly like a wounded mouse, are you out of your mind? Those creatures were clearly beyond our current brain capacity, even the scientists who decided to go investigate the chaos didn't even make it out of the forest alive."
Ginta brought out a map from his bag and gave me a curt nod that signaled he was about to leave.
"Where is this place?" I asked, scanning the whole area.
"It's anywhere that is not the city. I don't even know the name of this place either. And to be precise with you, we might be the only survivors in this region!" he replied.