Chapter 2: Chapter One: Open Your Eyes In A New World

Gentle snowdrops are painting the land white, like an artist slowly dancing over the canvas with a brush.

 

Sky covered with white clouds allows only a handful of sun rays to pass through their fluffy formation, thus limiting the light hitting the surface, making the day a little darker.

 

Yet the seemingly never-ending forest made out of the dense formation of trees that resembles pine doesn't seem to care, and all animals have more important things to do than worrying about getting less vitamin D, like finding food to survive the upcoming winter.

 

Of course, while the food is not plenty, there are still enough grass and wild fruits for the herbivores and plenty of grass eaters for the carnivores, but it won't stay like that.

 

Everything is balanced, and nothing unusual.

 

Yet, one thing doesn't fit the forest. A man who almost reached his forties lies on the ground. His consciousness is lost, yet he is alive.

Snow slowly piles above the man while strings of fate and fortune keep any wild animal away from this easy prey.

 

***

 

Cold, I feel a cold I haven't felt for a long time. But when was the last time? Perhaps close to the end of the war, where I got assigned to a squad of mountain commandos.

 

Shit, I never liked fighting in blistering cold and frozen ground, and what is this heavy thing over me. It is uncomfortable, and this ache in my head, god.

 

I waited for a little more and opened my eye. A sky covered in clouds and some snow. Seems not too far from home, but those trees, where the hell I am?

 

"Wait!" I shouted and jumped up, throwing away the pile of snow over me. I was dead! Or I should be. I didn't survive a bomb blast from a point-blank, or did I? Shit, did I drink something.

 

With the shock, I began checking my body. I am sure that the explosion killed me and turned me into a paste, but let alone losing a limb, my clothes were unscratched.

 

"I am alive, but how," I asked myself aloud while still checking myself. "I saw that fuckers, smile, and the moment before the world went dark... And those voices coming from the dark?"

 

I have countless questions in my head. For fucks sake! What is even happening right now.

 

"Agh!" With a sudden bolt of pain, I lost control of my body and hugged the ground. I suppose I am not that unscratched after all. But this amount of pain is tolerable. I dealt with worse.

 

"One, two, three." I pushed myself from the ground and got up, and after some stumbling, I managed to grab a tree nearby as support and prevented myself from falling again. I offer my gratitude to nature for this one.

 

Yet, things are not good. My pulse rate is wild while my eyes are constantly blurring and turning back to normal, and there is an unbearably disgusting and sour taste in my mouth.

 

And suddenly, I jumped from my place with a screech of a bird, something loud as a truck horn. It couldn't be from any bird I know, and it isn't.

 

I looked up and saw the massive beast flying high in the sky. Something that resembles a vulture but on a size of a military transport helicopter. Where the hell I am. The unnaturally large beast caused me to ignore the pain and the other annoyances and carefully inspect the surroundings.

 

Trees are similar, yet greater in size with darker colored bark, and while the ground looks identical at first glance, I don't remember seeing wild plants shaped like the ones here.

 

I sat next to the tree and gave my back to its trunk. Everything is wrong and fake, I want to scream and run away, but I cannot. My body feels heavier and heavier.

 

I feel like my eyeballs are shaking, almost as if they are trying to jump out of their hole, and my limbs are trembling in a way I never see them doing.

 

"I should have died. I died!" I screamed. "Explosion, it killed me, that's it. I died!" 

 

It is almost like my body got over the first shock of the revival, but its after-effects arrived just now, but who I am to talk. I cannot even properly see what is in front of me.

 

I began rapidly breathing, and suddenly my lungs stopped with sharp pain. Without my control, I started puking on the ground. This wicked feeling, I can describe it like this. My body and mind are clashing. One is forcing the other that I am alive while the other is still in the shock of death and doesn't want to accept it.

***

God knows how much time has passed since I opened my eyes, but thankfully I recovered enough to move around without falling, yet my head is still aching, and blurrings of my eyesight, even though decreased, still happen. In the end, I am alive, even though I am inside a forest that I don't know with monsters, fair enough.

 

Suddenly advice told by my grandfather shined in my mind. "Overcome the situation you are in first, then you can think about the next step."

 

Following the advice, I began inspecting my surroundings. I cannot afford to miss the smallest detail that might help me. I must know everything I might use, from the smallest pebble in the ground to the mighties tree in this forest. All things have some value if you find usage for them.

 

But the most important things are willpower and experience, which I have. I smirked and shouted. "So there are monsters in the sky now! Unless they can see my location from kilometers away in the middle of the night and kill me with a single move of their wrist, how dangerous they could be when compared to the war machines of humankind!"

 

After my short motivational speech, I gave a little laugh and finished inspecting the surrounding area. "Good, we have nothing useful, but I think I saw a cave nearby. Now, as I saw what forest offered me, let's see what I can offer to myself." I began pulling out everything I got in my pockets. "A swiss army knife (gift from a now-deceased friend,) a camper style lighter with a magnesium stick and a compass, once again a gift, my notepad, a pencil, and my watch." My phone is missing, but I can live with that.

 

That's all, enough for me. There is equipment for starting a fire or crafting small items which I can use later.

 

Now, my utmost priority is covering my three basic needs, finding shelter, food, and drinkable water. My instincts tell me snow rains are frequent here, so shelter first, and others after.

 

Let's see if what I saw was an actual cave or not.

                                           ***

                                          

Step after countless more and a long wander inside a seemingly never-ending forest with hunger and exhaustion, I finally stopped next to a tree.

 

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The cave I saw wasn't a cave, just some trees and piles of rock looking like one from far, how funny nature but the good thing, I saw something like a hill from far and decided to try my chance again and in the middle of the way, my body decided to accept I am not dead. That also meant I started to feel exhausted and hungry, how nice, but in the end, my efforts weren't for nothing.

 

A few meters in front of me, there is a cave, it's a little deep, and while I can't see it's inside from here, it looks warm, and there seem to be no animals living nearby.

 

But I picked up my swiss knife for the worst like if there is a hibernating bear still sleeping inside, not like this small toy will help me anyway, still better than nothing.

 

With each step, my heart beats faster and faster. It had been a long time since I found myself in a life-threatening situation. It is a weird but familiar feeling that I sinisterly enjoy. Staying at the edge, live or die, is not everyone's preference, but I like it.

 

I gave my back to the wall next to the cave's entrance and peeked inside. "Good, nothing there." I began moving deeper into the cave.

 

Inside here, it is large enough to call it a single-room house, perhaps even a little bigger, but that is not my concern. I found myself a shelter and a nice one.

 

I let my body fall, and before I noticed, I dived into realms of dreams.

 

                                                                                                                                      ***

Stars and galaxies in the sky proudly display their magnificence to the eyes watching them at night. I remember this scenery, one of my favorites, but it doesn't have a good story behind it.

 

"Captain." A man shouted. "We must do something. The enemy is advancing!"

 

I got up and gave a look around. If I didn't have my night vision equipment, I wouldn't be able to see anything in this pitch-black environment. 

 

Still, even with night vision, only certain things are clear while the rest is, for some reason, blurry. Almost like they are not meant to be there and only placed as a filler, just like a memory.

 

Suddenly several bullets flew above me, and their whistle followed them right after. These are clearly not targetting us. Better explained, we are the targets, but I don't think whoever fired those rounds didn't know the exact location and just tested his luck, a rooky mistake.

 

I shook my head. It is no time to think about other things. "Everyone take cover. They know our locations and doing suppressive fire." I commanded the soldiers around me.

 

With my command, soldiers around me began taking cover behind anything bulletproof and large enough.

 

Only I was standing, yet not for no reason. I looked at my rifle and closed its safety. "Our enemy doesn't seem to have night vision, and if they head thermal, we all been dead by now. Boys cut the light and spread it to the land. We hunt tonight."

 

One of the soldiers rushed to the building behind us and closed the generator inside. With the cut of power whole fort went dark.

 

                                                                                                                               *****

I jumped up from my sleep to the sound of a branch snapping. My view was blurry but cleared the moment I rubbed my eyes. Good, that means my body finished adapting. It is almost night, perhaps one or two hours before complete darkness fall over the sky, but I can clearly see the silhouette walking towards the cave. Something resembles a human, with a tool I cannot completely put my hands on hanging on its hip.

 

Good or bad, perhaps it is someone searching for me, I don't know, but safety comes first. I pulled out my swiss knife, but it won't hurt to try talking to it.

 

I began approaching the silhouette with a friendly voice. "Friend, I am glad I finally saw another human in this place, I don't know how I came here, but it seems like I found myself in a bad series of events and ended up here. Do you have a phone? It appears that I lost mine."

 

But the thing didn't answer. It is still moving but a little faster now.

 

"Well, it is a little rude, but can you stop at least."

 

The thing didn't answer but reached for the thing hanging on his hip, and for a second, I clearly saw what the silhouette was under the moonlight.

 

And with a shock, I threw myself back and moved far as I could from the monster standing in front of me, but no, that's not the thing on the person's hip. It is the person itself.

 

"It has to be a joke. Right? Does it have to be God damn joke? Right!" I shouted. But my reactions are not unnecessary. A skeleton, a moving fucking skeleton with no internal organs or anything. It is standing in front of me and slowly closing the distance.

 

Before I managed to shake away the shock, the skeleton finally closed the distance and raised its weapon, a mace. This monster, standing in front of me, is ready to strike me, but no matter how shocking it is, it cannot beat my instincts for survival.

 

My voice got cracked and shaky. There was a mix of fear and wrath in it too. "What sort of sick joke is that? Did you find this funny little bony boy?" I grabbed the skeleton from its weapon-holding arm and skull and slammed the monster to the closest wall.

 

I wasn't religious in my life, but I am not an atheist either. I believe in life, and the afterlife, perhaps a little too much to find myself into this bullshit.

 

I released the skeleton's skull, then grabbed it from its ribs, and slammed the monster to the ground.

 

Without internal organs and other biological mass, the human skeleton doesn't weigh much, yet this one was still a little heavier than I expected.

 

"Ground is too soft to crack the bones, so we are back to walls then." I grabbed the skeleton from the skull, slammed it towards a wall, and began repeatedly smashing its head towards a sharp edge. And while I was doing that, the skeleton managed to lift its weapon to strike me. How pitiful. "Is that best you got?" I glared at it and forcefully pulled the mace away from its hand.

 

"Thank you for this." I pushed the mace into the skeleton's skull and used it as leverage to separate its jaw from its head, then slammed the monster to the ground and began hitting it.

 

I began grumbling with a wrathful yet sad voice. "I hate it, I hate every second of it, and I hate I enjoyed it! And just as I left all behind, this comes back to me." I screamed as the weight of the blood of thousands began hitting me.

 

I stopped talking and kept hitting the skeleton's skull until it turned into a pile of dust, then allowed my body to fall to the ground, but this time, I didn't close my eyes and just looked at the dark roof of the cave.

 

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