Henry froze, not able to comprehend what has happened in front of him.
Two perfectly well and alive human beings were just ripped apart for no reason at all. Well, no reason that Henry can make sense out of right now.
He repeats everything that he just saw in his mind over and over again.
"Those creatures can not be human anymore? But what are they?" He thought, "That delivery boy who attacked the young guy should have died when he fell off that roof. Why didn't he?"
Henry's mind keeps replaying the sound that the bodies made when they hit the ground. Each body fell in a similar manner, but for some reason, this one particular guy is almost untroubled by what happened.
The latest victim of the attack was only a dozen meters from where Henry stood, and the man wearing the mechanic uniform seemed to be still staring at him as Henry stood there lost in his thoughts.
The sickly sound of the flesh tearing from the latest victim was starting to get to Henry, hearing the tearing as each chunk of meat was taken from the body and put into the mouth of the attacker.
Henry was not sure what was the worst sound, the sound of the tearing flesh or the sound that each person made as they slowly chewed the flesh of the victims into chunks small enough to swallow. Everyone eating from the body seemed to be chewing in slow motion as if they were trying to savour every bite that they took.
Without realising it, Henry's eyes began to roll back into his head. He became very unsteady on his feet, and he began to waiver from front to back and side-to-side.
"I should probably... sit... down..." Henry said as his body has leant too far back and his momentum carried him backwards, and he landed on the ground with a loud bang.
Henry's eyes rolled back, and his head tilted to the side as he passed out.
The sound of Henry falling in the woods did not go unnoticed by any of the people in the surrounding area.
Much of the city was at a standstill with the rampant violence spreading throughout it. With most of the cars not on the road, anyone within half a kilometre could have heard Henry hit the ground. With the high concentration of businesses in the area, there could be upwards of 2,000 people who just heard Henry pass out.
One of the first people to take notice of Henry falling in the woods was the mechanic; who stared into the woods while he ate attempting to find the location of the source of the noise.
The mechanic stood up and took a few steps away from the body. He scanned the woods near that burnt shell of the utility truck.
The mechanic bared his teeth and let out a soft growl.
He began to walk towards the woods slowly.
Henry's eyes began to flutter open as he regained some consciousness. He found he could not focus on much of anything.
The tree branches above him looked hazy and blurred in the sky above. The light filtering through the trees hurt his eyes as he squinted through the pain in his head.
Henry let out a little moan as he tried to move and sit up.
A twig snapped somewhere to his right caught Henry's attention.
Henry tried to remember what happened before he collapsed. "I remember watching those things eat, but why did I faint?" he thought.
A wave of nausea raced over Henry as the mental images of those people eating flew past his vision again.
He slowly sat up. This time he made a conscious effort to hold his breath while he moved to try to make as little noise as possible.
Henry began to scan the immediate area since he had no idea how long he had been laying down and could not be sure if one of those creatures had heard him make any noise when he hit the ground.
His heart began pumping faster as he heard the familiar smacking noise of those people eating, but only this time it sounded as though someone was standing close. Henry tried to focus his eyes, but the bump on his head had a significant impact on his vision.
Henry cautiously raised an arm, trying to use his other one to hold himself upright. His left arm, bearing his entire weight began to wobble under pressure. He slowly tried to rub the fuzziness out of his eye, but the only thing that accomplished was to rub dirt into them instead.
His eyes began to water and tears began to run down Henry's face. If this had been another time, he would have found it funny to see a grown man sitting in the middle of the woods crying about getting some dirt in his face.
Unfortunately for him, it was not another time, and Henry could sense the danger all around him and needed to be able to see if he was going to survive longer than the next five minutes.
The more tears slid down his face, the more dirt that washed out of his eyes. He found it amusing that he could cry now that the town was going crazy, but he could not properly mourn his father.
It had been a few years since his father had passed after a very brief battle with cancer, and even when he was delivering the eulogy on the day of the funeral, he could not bring himself to cry in public. Standing at the altar in the church, spilling out his most cherished memories of his dad, he could not let himself cry in front of his mum. She had been barely keeping herself together while his father had been sick. When they found out about cancer, she had spent the first few days crying and yelling about it, before eventually coming to terms with the inevitable. He was looking at her as he told his stories, reliving his memories as he spoke of the beautiful things that they did together. He was watching the tears roll freely down her face as he finished and took his seat next to her.
She squeezed his hand and said the words that he would always keep close to his heart, "He was always proud of you."
He could feel the flood of emotions coming back over him again. The memories of his father, coupled with the thoughts of what he had witnessed already today brought, even more, tears.
On the verge of hysterics, a soft rustle of leaves brought Henry back from the memories of his father.
To Henry, the noise sounded like it came from not too far ahead of him.
He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut as hard as he could. Just like when he was a child and trying not to see something.
He slowly opened his eyes and instantly knew his day was going to get worse quickly.
Standing a few feet away from Henry was the mechanic. Before going crazy and eating people, the mechanic looked to be taller than most people Henry dealt with in his daily life, probably close to six and a half feet tall. He was wearing his coveralls from Mike's Engine Repair, located on the other end of Water Street, close to the school. According to the label, the mechanic's name was Trevor.
Still slowly chewing the last piece of warm flesh from the young man he attacked, Trevor was standing as still as he could with his eyes darting around looking for any movement that would give away the location of the noise which he heard.
Henry began to have a mild panic attack.
Henry started to devise a plan in his head, "I cannot crawl out of here, if I do then the noise will certainly attract his attention. I don't know if my legs are going to hold me if I try to run."
Concentrating on the mechanic in front of him, Henry had almost forgotten about the noise to his right until a body came crashing through the underbrush.
The man dressed in a t-shirt from an 80s rock band and torn jeans caught sight of Henry sitting on the ground. He moaned as he started coming for the fallen man.
Henry tried to scramble to his feet but his legs were still a little shaky from his tumble, and he immediately fell into the leaves and sticks.
The new threat was moving much slower than he had expected. Henry had expected this man to be on top of him when he fell. As he was getting to his feet again, he looked over his shoulder and saw that the man was missing its foot and with the other caught in a bear-trap.
Henry, finally stood on his feet, began to run away from the carnage that was happening on Water Street and go deeper into the woods. The ground had lots of upturned roots and fallen trees from the last tropical storm that rolled through the area a couple of years
ago.
He had spent enough time in this section of the woods to know where most of the dangers were and managed to narrowly avoid a large branch that was sticking up into the air. Henry had dashed around it.
He glanced over his shoulder to see both Trevor and the rocker together in a slow and steady pursuit of him.
Henry was not looking where he was going and managed to get his feet tangled on a loose branch and fell again.
As he was falling, Henry began to turn to his left to try and catch himself before he hit the ground.
Henry pulled his head backwards in surprise as a long slender branch narrowly missed piercing Henry's cheek and ending his life.
He fell to the ground and managed to absorb most of the shock of the fall in his arms.
Instinctively he rolled onto his back, ready to defend himself from his attackers who he knew was right behind him.
Henry used his feet to push himself backwards, trying to get as much room between himself and the men as he could before they were close enough to attack him.
Henry did not have much time to prepare himself as the man dressed as a rock star got to him first.
He could see the hatred and determination in the face of the man as he dragged the big bear trap behind him. Henry could hear the snarl that the man was making and could see the drool forming on his lips as he began to salivate for his next meal.
The rocker was unable to lift the trap high enough over a tree branch, and he fell. The man was so focused on reaching for Henry that he did not use his arms to catch or brace himself for the fall.
Henry closed his eyes and braced himself for a quick death by the hands of these monsters.
The next sound that Henry heard was a sickening smack and a small pop.
Henry opened his eyes to see the man impaled by the stick that narrowly missed his face when he fell. The stick had entered the man's head under his jaw and was sticking out through the top of his skull. The body began to slowly slide down the sick, leaving a wet sticky mess behind that contained a few chunks that Henry could only think was brain matter.
As the body slide towards the bottom of the Henry could see Trevor pausing in an attempt to figure out how to get to Henry now that his companion had died.
That slight pause was the only thing Henry had needed as he got to his feet and sprinted off into the woods.
With a fresh set of tears streaming down his face, Henry ran through the forest crying. Happy to be alive, and in shock that he had managed to come out of that situation.
Henry ran towards the only thing that he could think of where he could be safe for a little while until he came up with a plan of action. He ran back deeper into the woods.
If he had taken one final look over his shoulder when he first started running, he would have seen a small smile creep across the face of the mechanic.
It had only been a few hours since he became a monster, but Trevor was already showing signs of his new life. Large portions of his teeth had chipped off and were now missing, the teeth that were left were pointed and covered in black as if he had spent his entire life not brushing his teeth or going to the dentist.
Trevor took a few shambling steps towards the last place he had seen his meal go.
The smile on his lips getting just a little bigger.