"Keep running!"
The grown man fiercely shouted at the retreating woman, swinging an axe with passion as he deliberately kept the things at bay.
"Don't look back! Eyes forward or I swear I'll-..."
Cut off mid sentence as the man pants and gasps for air, mind running a thousand hours away from the present moment, the only thing he could think of now is if she has gotten as far away as possible.
"For the love of God, Mary help us"
He whispered, oh so softly, and with a trembling hand raised his axe high, pressing its cold edge against his temple. His mind shattered into a hollow void, and he collapsed onto his knees, a broken offering to the nightmare around him. In an instant, the horde was upon him — snarling, shrieking, a rotting sea of hands and teeth.
Their jagged nails ripped through his clothes, tearing strips of flesh from his bones. Yellowed teeth sunk deep into his arms and sides, tugging and jerking as tendons snapped and blood poured in thick, hot waves onto the broken earth. His screams were choked by the wet, slopping sounds of his own body being devoured. Fingers gouged into his eye sockets, prying and pulling until the world blurred into darkness. Flesh sloughed from his cheeks as mouths latched on, tearing muscle and skin like wolves on a fresh kill.
No second of peace was granted — only endless agony as they gorged themselves, ripping him apart, chunk by chunk, until there was little left but shredded sinew and splintered bone. Still, the swarm feasted, driven mad by the scent of blood and the taste of death.em. Not a moment nor a split second went by that his body was at peace, for the second that he brought his axe unto him, they swarmed and gnawed at his skin.
Cebu burned. Ash blanketed the streets like a funeral shroud, settling on the hollow shells of homes and shattered markets. Where once the air was alive with laughter and barter, now only the raw, broken screams of the dying remained. Vendors fled their stalls, children scattered into the smoke, but there was no refuge — only the slow, inevitable march of death.
No beast nor man was spared. Dogs, cats, even the scuttling rats — all were swept away in the tide of horror. The Queen City of the South, once proud and teeming with life, was now nothing more than a graveyard of ash and blood, caught in the jaws of an endless nightmare.