Between Rage and Blood

Nathan had just left work. He was in his beautiful car of the year, a RAV4 black Cromer 2013. This car was a gift he had received from his wife. On the way, he thought of his condition of life. Barely 48 years old, he had been married for 25 years. He had betrothed his wife Maëlle at the age of 22 years. She had given him two beautiful children. The first being Damien, now 24 years old. A university student, a future surgeon, he had always been a studious pupil and an exemplary adolescent. The blond hair descending to the shoulders, and the blue eyes, he had inherited the build of his father.

Thereafter, they had a daughter, Amelie, aged 20 years. She was in the process of finishing CEGEP in nature science. She had been accepted at the university in criminology. She looked very much like her mother, the same eyes, the same smile. She, too, had fair hair, but longer than her brother. Her two children had inherited the blond hair of their mother. As for Maëlle, she had brown eyes. Nathan had fallen in love with her at first glance. She always had a smile on her face. A housewife since the birth of her children, she had always done her best to please her family.

As for himself, Nathan was a highly reputed lawyer, and he had never lost a case in which he had been used. Maelle had fallen under her spell, for he had strong black hair and blue eyes, almost royal. For some years, a metallic gray had begun to cover the black of her hair, on each side of her head.

Lost in his thoughts, he did not see the storm begin outside, a frightful roar was heard and the road became slippery by the rain falling in abundance. Above all, he did not see the car stop before him. The driver of the car began to weigh on the screaming, to wake up Nathan. Surprised, he tried to get around the car, but slipped and found himself in the ditch, the vehicle upside down, unconscious.

When he finally opened his eyes, he wondered where he was. Lying in a fine sand, he could feel a cold water coming touching his feet. Looking around, he realized he was on a beach. On one side there was water as far as the eye could see. The sun reflected its rays in this water which made it transparent. One could see that it was deep. And then, when he turned to the other side, he saw an immensely dense and mysterious forest, for he had never seen so many trees in the town where he lived, especially at that majestic pace.

He did not understand how it had happened, what had happened to him. The last thing he remembered was getting out of the way trying to avoid the other car at all costs.

Suddenly he heard a scream from the forest.

Nathan was not sure if he wanted to go into the forest. It was an almost inhuman cry. He had had goose bumps. Were there wild or carnivorous animals in this forest? What was certain was that it was not the sound of the waves that he had heard.

He decided, after a fifteen-minute hesitation, to advance cautiously into the forest. He remembered that he had no defense, so he looked for a tree branch thick enough to make a weapon. Then he took a fairly thin and flat rock to sharpen one side of the branch.

He walked quietly into the wood, trying to make as little noise as possible. He smelled the smell before he could see it through trees. It was a thick black smoke. Even though Nathan was still far from it, he did not suspect that it was a huge fire. As if the earth had read in his thoughts, it began to rain, tiny drops, but in great quantities.

He began to think of his family. Where was she? Did she know where he was? How long had he gone from home?

Nathan continued to advance in the rain, for he was trying to reach the smoke, while at the same time he sought shelter while the rain was coming.

A roasted pig smell rose in his nostrils as he approached. Especially as the wind began to blow in addition to the rain that continued to fall. What he discovered, he froze on the spot.

He could feel his heart beating at full speed so he was frightened. The smoke he had seen before was actually a small village that had been set on fire.

The houses, or what remained of them, were blackened, totally burned. Most of them had collapsed because of their weight and dry wood. At first sight, for all that remained, the houses looked the same, the same structures, made of wood and of the same size, containing a family of at least five persons. On the houses which still stood, the windows had broken open. Nathan decided to go to one of them. The furniture was all burned. He discovered in one of the rooms of the house a dead dog, surely dying on account of the fire. The smell that emanated from the room made him vomit. He decided that he had seen enough and left the house. Rendered outside, he noticed something strange.

"But where is everyone?" Are they all gone? Was he able to do it all?

He walked between the houses to find victims of the fire or the survivors, if possible. Everywhere he walked, the grass was dead, burnt, but no trace of dead bodies.

The village was surrounded by the forest and smaller than a village that Nathan had seen so far. There was just enough house for about three hundred people.

The horror on his face took shape at the exit of the village, just before arriving in the forest. There must have been more than two hundred corpses piled on top of each other. Men and women. A tear sank on his cheek when he discovered that there were also children and even infants among them. One could still see some flames here and there that continued to leather the bodies.

"But who could have done that?" They must be several. But a minute. These are bites!

Indeed, Nathan had approached the corpses to try to find survivors, but by the same fact, he discovered bites on several victims. Not only bites, there were pieces of flesh missing. But what disturbed him even more was that the bites, the dentition of these, resembled enormously that of human beings.