To Kill a Cactus - One of Those Days part 3

One of Those Days part 2: HERE

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It took us a good few hours trying to think of good ways to get into the city preferably without getting killed during the process. We didn't want to hurt anyone either unless it was completely unavoidable. Ash also agreed that I probably shouldn't try to fight anyone, that meant that our only way to get there, was to sneak in without being noticed. We prepared some tools to help us get over the walls and water, everything else was up to pure luck. Ash seemed pretty confident that we could do it, I was unsure, as usual. I wasn't particularly nervous, but a bit of fear was constantly at the back of my mind, especially when I began to think about what I had done and what I was planning to do. I knew that I had to get to the city and so I pushed the fear to the back and concentrated on the plan.

As we neared the city border I could feel my heart starting to beat faster, my palms were sweaty and every cell in my body felt as if they were screaming for me to run in the opposite direction. Ash directed us to an area that was clear of guards, they did a circle around the wall every ten minutes, so we had to be quick.

The wall wasn't particularly high, but it was covered with very sharp poisonous thorns. Ash simply lifted me as high as he could, I grabbed the edge with a hook and checked where to position my hands so that I could pull myself to the top of the brick wall, where I tried to find my footing and watched him swing himself with incredible grace over the wall, with the help of a wooden pole, similar to an ancient sport called pole-vault, I had seen it in our history lessons. Anyway, he got over the wall with no trouble and landed softly on his feet, then he lifted me back down from the wall. I was very thankful for that since I was starting to feel a little dizzy.

We knew we had to move on fast since the guards would get suspicious if they saw the pole Ash had used. The next wall was made of metal bars creating a cage, the metal was also covered with a type of acid, that could burn down to your bone in a matter of seconds, We had protective gloves and shoes, but we had to make sure that we made as little contact with the bars as possible, we had also gathered some Araucaria araucana tree seeds, which helped neutralise the acid. We had made a paste out of them, so we quickly lathered it over the bars as high as we could and we also had it on our clothes, that was the best we could do to protect ourselves. We tried to make our way to the top of the gate and over it as fast as possible. It wasn't an easy task, my hands felt slippery against the bars and I couldn't get a good grip, Ash was pulling himself up a lot faster than me, so when he got to the top, he also helped me, we made our way down and around then we could hear the guards yelling something, they must have found the pole.

The highest wall yet was a smooth stone wall, there were no edges to grab onto and that's also where I previously struggled the most when I was trying to get out, we had created a plan to use the acid from the metal bars to burn a hole into the wall. Alternatively, we would've had to swing a hook high enough to grip it to the edge and help ourselves up that way. Luckily the acid worked, we did manage to get some light burned ourselves in the process, since the protective paste was starting to wear off, I still have a scar right on my left palm, but we made it work and that was worth it, we crawled through the hole and got to the edge of the water that was keeping us away from the city.

Me and Ash looked towards the water behind the metal bars, there were people there, all dead faced, looking towards the walls, they weren't aggressive nor malicious, they all just looked ahead of them, emotionless, but I could see cuts and bruises on their dry thin skin as if something was trying to break itself out from them, some of them had actual thorns and needles coming out from their skin, small specks of blood surrounding them. I looked at Ash, he seemed as shocked as me, when I was still in town, the infected people were taken away, but I guess things had changed. I couldn't see a single soul that wouldn't be cursed by the infection.

I didn't know what to do, the masses of people reached as far back as I could see. This wasn't something we could've planned ahead.

"They're there!" I heard a man's voice coming from behind us and before I could do anything, someone had grabbed me, wrapping his hands so tight that I could barely breathe and lifting me off from the ground. Another three men were trying to take Ash down, but he put up a good fight. I was wiggling around with my feet, trying to get the man to let me go, but he didn't loosen his grip one bit, he started dragging me away, I could see Ash trying to get to me, but one of the men had injured him pretty badly, there was blood gushing out from his head and I saw them dragging him away as he lost consciousness, I used all of my strength and jumped away from the man that was holding me, we landed in the water together, his hands were still holding on to me, I could feel us both sinking towards the bottom of the water. For the first time I saw the person who was attacking me, he had let go of me, in an attempt to pull us back to the top of the water. He had dark hair that was floating around his face and big dark brown, nearly black eyes that looked at me in shock. There were lines across his face, but something about him didn't make him look as old as he must have been. Then it all started to fade, the most beautiful colours were surrounding me, it was bright and warm and soothing, he faded into them like a beautiful angel of death and then there was just darkness.

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To be continued