THE LAST SURVIVORS
Episode 26
As soon as they got to the road side where their colleague lay dead on the ground, they stood still, watching his lifeless body speechlessly. One of them, he must be their leader, said in anger. “Behead the two men! After all what Lord Michael want’s is their heads. Behead them!”
The two men who held Austin and Etim pushed them down on the ground and the fourth one amongst them who was carrying a sack lowered it and removed a machete from it which glittered in the night. He stood over Austin and quickly raised the machete, before he could lower it; a heavy stone crashed into his skull and sent him to the ground. The others turned to see where that came from; Osoba who was racing out of the bush savagely kicked his boot into their leaders g—n. The man shouted so loud that his shout confused the other two who were on their feet. Verah who had raced out of the bush with Osoba went for the man who had the machete, when she reached him, she picked up the machete the man had dropped when the stone hit his head and swung it breathlessly into the man’s shoulder. The man’s head flew into the air and his body which was trying to stand to its feet staggered around as blood spurted from the stump which served as the last vestige of the man’s head and neck. The sight of the man’s headless body and squirting blood shook very down to her marrow, she dropped the machete and began to cry like a little child. The machete fell close to Austin; he grabbed it and sprang to his feet. He only had to swipe it twice at the two men who were trying to hypnotize Osoba. In a flash the men’s head were on the ground and their mouths gasping; even though Austin had killed them, he kept stabbing their bodies and shouting. Etim was on the ground and didn’t move while the brief fight took place. The hypnosis they had performed on them in the bush was still heavy on him. Austin had beaten the hypnosis by praying under his breath while the men performed it. Perhaps the two men Austin beheaded had thought Osoba was their only problem; that could have been the reason they ignored the machete when Verah dropped it. They must not have known that Austin was not under their hypnosis.
Verah continued to cry as Austin and Osoba stared down at the three headless bodies on the ground. Osoba was not sure the man he kicked was dead so he took the machete from Austin and stabbed it into the man’s thigh.
The man cried in pain. While Austin and Osoba paid attention to the leader of the pack he had just stabbed on the thigh, the crying Verah, who had turned on her phone torch light again, saw the same s£nsat!on on the bodies of the three dead men. Shapes of giant scorpion were moving under their skin. Amid her cry she said, “Look at this”. Osoba and Austin turned and saw shapes of scorpion moving under the skin of the dead men. “Austin we saw the same thing when Verah killed the one lying over there”. Osoba turned on his torch light to point at the body and there was nothing there; the body had somehow vanished. “These things are not humans! I didn’t kill any human being!
Burn their bodies! We need to burn their bodies!”
Verah who was crying moments earlier, took courage by what she had seen and began to search the sack the men had left on the ground for any thing they could use to burn the bodies. Inside the sack she found a one litre bottle of gin and raised it to the others, “See what I found”. Austin ran around looking for stones to ignite fire. Osoba held the machete menacingly over the only living one amongst the men and packed the bodies of the men together. Verah took the pile of clothes found next to the body of the man whose dead body had disappeared and dropped them on the piles of bodies they intended to burn.
Osoba asked for the bottle of gin, Verah handed it to him, he smell it and knocked off the cork with the machete in his hand and offered it to Austin. Austin poured the grin on the bodied and tried to ignite fire with the stones. He couldn’t get the fire burning, Osoba asked him to keep the stones close to the bodies, Austin did and Osoba smacked the machete with force against the stones and the bodies caught fire. To help the fire burn well, Austin poured more gin into the fire…..
To be continued
