The thick mist cleared, and a small settlement emerged from the darkness.The three men and single woman tried their best to walk quietly, relying on the not-so-visible moon to provide illumination.
A branch crackled, and all of them froze for a minute, then they continued to creep up to what they could evidently see was just three tents.
They were nailed to the ground by large wooden shrapnel, and their green color matched the color of the surrounding brush.
“What are we going to do?” The woman whispered.
The man leading the line, however, motioned with his index finger to his lips, and then he continued creeping forward to the tents, leaving his colleagues to watch.
He slowly leaned over the first tent, pushing back the drapes and repeating the process with the other three tents.
“There’s nobody here,” he said loudly, breathing a sigh of relief and dropping to his knees.
“I’m glad the place is abandoned,” said one of the other men, moving forward towards his colleague.
“Let me take a leak,” said the third man, instantly disappearing into the surrounding brush.
“We can’t just stay here, Harris,” said the woman, approaching the man who was leading the line. “Don’t you think so, Vince?”
Both men shrugged almost simultaneously as though the thought had not crossed their minds.
Then Harris said. “We need to rest, at least.”
“Until we’re out of this territory, I don’t think it’s safe,” said the woman.
“Well Rachel,” chipped in Vince, “we’re really far from the prison and all those guards. It will take them at least twenty-four hours to get here. All we need is a couple of hours rest.”
“I understand your concerns, Rachel,” said Harris, “Let’s just rest for a few hours, put something in our stomachs and then be on our way.”
Rachel raised her hands in the air, exasperated and set off into the darkness, muttering something to herself.
Harris had intended to search for some wood and set up a fire, but he was too exhausted to get up on his feet. The same seemed to be the case for Harris.
Both men had spent very little time thinking about their fortune in finding an abandoned camp, but any notion of relaxation as immediately jarred from their exhausted thoughts when a loud scream brought them to their feet.
“What was that?” Vince asked. His eyes were wider than saucers.
They heard the scream again, coming through the darkness from the shrubs right in front of them. Without hesitation, they set off towards what was inevitably Rachel’s screams.
When they got to her, she was kneeling down on the dusty ground, her face buried in her hands. Despite the poor visibility, both Vince and Harris could see that she was sobbing uncontrollably.
“What’s the matter?” Harris leaned down towards her, clutching her shoulder. “Are you okay, Rachel?”
He turned to look at Vince, but he noticed that he had a frightened look on his face. He as staring dead ahead.
Harris turned his focus to what was in front of them, and he noticed for the first time that their other colleague had been strung up a bush of thorns by his neck and limbs. His head hang twistedly on the side of his head, and thorns had been pierced into his face to give it a strange, ghoulish grin.
Blood was dripping slowly and steadily from his mouth, and the horrifying expression on his face was like a coded message from the underworld.
“I told you we need to get out of here,” Rachel was crying.
When Harris turned to ask Vince what they should do, he was surprised to see nothing but darkness in the spot that Vince once stood only a few seconds ago.
“Vince, Vince?” Harris got to his feet, baffled.
He looked around the shrub, but Vince seemed to have just disappeared.
“We need to get out of here,” Harris said, turning around and grabbing Rachel’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Rachel jerked her hand away from Harris’ grip.
“I’m not leaving Danny here alone,” she said.
“He’s dead,” Harris said slowly, almost a whisper.
Rachel did not seem like she was going to budge, and so Harris decided to make a run for it on his own.
He had been carrying a small pack that he had left by the tents, he ran towards them and stumbled on the rocky terrain. He looked on the spot where he had been lying on the ground moments ago, but he could not see anything.
When he turned around, he was surprised to see his two colleagues right behind him.
“Rachel, Vince.”
Both of them were holding blunt daggers in their hands, and their faces had ghostly expressions.
“What is the meaning of this?” Harris asked.
“Vince told me everything about you when we escaped,” said Rachel, sneering and slowly ambling towards Harris.
“Told you what?” Harris asked, cautiously taking a step backwards. Fear was splashed on his face. His eyes moved frantically between the two.
“Why would you stage all of this?” Rachel asked, taking another menacing step forward. “I should have known?”
Seat was now breaking on Harris’ face. “Can you please tell me what you’re trying to say? Vince?”
Vince seemed to have a dark and satisfied smile on his face. He was just behind Rachel, and she did not get to see the cold expression that he as returning to Harris.
“You’re trying to kill us,” said Rachel, “why didn’t you just kill us off at the camp? Why bring us out here, this far?”
“I-I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, Rachel,” said Harris.
“You’re a prison warden are you not?” Asked Rachel, “A German?”
“What?” Harris could not contain his surprise.
“You’ve come with us all this way just to kill us?” Rachel asked.
As Harris attempted to answer, there suddenly was a loud bang and Harris face as instantly splattered with lots of blood.
“You Jews thinking that you can escape,” Vince said in a calm voice, “only death awaits you.”
Up in the sky, the full moon finally started to emerge from the dense clouds.
The End
Dennis is a passionate writer who has been writing since his school days, his main aim to scare his readers and get them to have a sense of perspective of things they do not know about. Visit Amazon and check out his novel, Antarctica Conspiracy.