I Don't Stake My Life
The speakers pounded out a heavy beat, thumping hard enough to rattle the air.
Drawn by the noise, the corpses that had been gathering on the playground peeled away instead, clustering around the walls and streetlamps where the speakers hung. That alone took a solid load of hassle off my plate — but the crow's little assist turned out to be far more effective than I'd expected.
Whether the racket was actually making its eardrums ring or not, the thing clutched its head with a face twisted in agony, grinding its frozen teeth until it finally shook its skull hard.
"Does that actually work? The look of it, the weak points — no matter how you slice it, this feels like something ripped straight out of a movie."
"Grrrrrk..."
Even the song blasting out of the speakers was an OST from the same franchise. I let out a disbelieving laugh and spun the iron bar between both hands.
Whatever the case, letting this chance slip by wasn't an option.
I swung the bar lightly at the temple of that overacting orangutan bastard that didn't even have ears to begin with. Or rather — I made it look like I was.
One hand still clamped over its head, it reached out with the other to snatch my attack. The bar skimmed right past its palm and carved a clean circle through the air.
I told you I was accounting for every variable.
One fake, then the bar completed a full rotation past my head, inertia building, and smashed into its wrist.
Thwack—
The hit sent it reeling, its entire upper body left wide open. Without missing a beat I spun the bar again, carrying the momentum straight through, and drove it into the same spot on its side where it had nailed me up on the rooftop. The impact bounced off like I'd just struck a log.
I didn't fight the rebound — I recovered the bar, stepped one foot back, and pulled my torso clear just as fast.
Whoooosh—
Black claws whistled past the tip of my nose. I tore my gaze away from its face, now contorted with a mess of rage and pain, and looked off to the side instead — baiting it into dropping its guard. But the bar I was swinging calculated the distance on pure instinct, mapping out the space between us from memory.
You can brag about that iron hide all you want. That frozen mouth of yours is a different story.
Crack—
The bar landed square on the jaw of the thing that had been staring at me like it wanted to chew my face off, one foot already lifting for a kick. Even a clean hit like that didn't knock a single tooth loose.
Fine. Then I'd just keep hitting it.
It weathered the impact and still managed to fire off a kick with those burning eyes locked on me. This time, the angle made dodging impossible. The monster's leg drove straight into my solar plexus, and the shock was nothing like the kind it could shrug off so easily.
Ribs shattered like I'd been hit by a dump truck. My lung burst open. My heart, too.
I went tumbling backward across the grass field, then jammed the iron bar into the ground and forced myself upright.
Crrrrrk—
The pressure shredded the artificial turf, sending scraps of it swirling around me on the winter wind. I hauled myself up against the bar, and something indescribable surged up my windpipe.
Puhh—
"Gwaaagh!"
Blood came flooding back up, carrying shredded pieces of lung that spilled out past my lips in a steady stream. I stared down at the lethal volume of blood leaking past my mouth and tongue — injuries that should have killed me long ago.
Hissssss—
As if to prove that the scene I'd glimpsed earlier hadn't been a hallucination, the red blood that hit the grass flash-froze into a blood-colored frost, crystallizing like ruby ice. My hand rose on instinct and wiped across my mouth.
Crack—
Crrrack—
Ice flowers slowly bloomed across the skin of my palm. Come to think of it, I hadn't felt the cold for a while now.
I watched the orangutan for a moment, waiting to see if it would finally drop dead. When it became clear that wasn't happening anytime soon, it started walking toward me. I met its eyes.
"Well, damn."
This is actually fun.
I was done being unsettled by whatever was happening to my body. Time to start enjoying it.
I muttered that under my breath and flashed a crooked grin. Something about it must have registered — the orangutan stopped dead in its tracks. Its expression didn't show much, but I could feel the confusion rolling off it.
How many times had it already killed me? How many times should this prey have been finished? And yet I just wouldn't die. How was it supposed to stay calm about that?
Neck snapped. Guts pulverized. Dropped from a six-story rooftop. Lung ruptured. Heart burst open. Still not dead.
I quietly felt my lung and heart knitting themselves back together inside my chest. Breath returned, slow and steady. The heartbeat started up again — thump, thump.
Huuuuuuh—
"Hooo..."
I took one deep breath to celebrate the lung's revival, then — before saying a word to the orangutan still standing there with no idea what it was looking at — I gripped the iron bar in one hand and drew the kitchen knife with the other.
I set the blade against my own throat and slowly pushed it in.
Blood ran down the edge, over my fingers, down my arm, freezing as it went. I drove the knife in deeper, then switched back to the iron bar. Seasonally appropriate for midwinter — if not in color. I leveled the bar at it, now sheathed in ice made of my own blood, and opened my mouth.
"This is a life-or-death duel. But it's not a life-or-death duel. Keep that in mind."
You're the only one staking a life here. Not me.
Behind the thing, the afternoon sky was starting to fill with dark clouds. Looked like the first snow of the season might be coming down any minute.
The music that had been pouring out nonstop cut off at some point. Whether the power had run dry or the crow was just hunting for the next track, I didn't know and didn't care.
I gripped the frozen iron bar in both hands and blocked its swinging arms from every angle. The power gap was so extreme that, honestly, blocking barely did anything — but the one taking the real losses was the orangutan.
My arms would buckle under its strikes, or its thrashing claws would open me up and leave me bleeding freely. A few blinks later, everything was back to normal. Meanwhile, the frost coating the bar seemed to grate on it something fierce. Every time its arms connected with the metal in a rage-fueled swing, I saw it flinch. Looking closer, those supposedly rock-solid black arms were getting scraped by nothing more than frost, slowly freezing over in patches.
Now I get why the crow said this thing was vulnerable to it.
Comparing it to when I'd doused the bastard in oil and set it on fire made the picture even clearer. Heat resistance? Sure. Cold resistance? None.
Most zombies were weak to fire and tough against the cold. That was the standard. For whatever reason, this one ran the complete opposite way.
Soon enough, one of its arms hit its limit — the swing speed dropped off a cliff.
"G-grrk... grrk..."
Matching the change, the thing finally got sick of the situation and started backing up.
"Le...t...go....I...ll...le...t...go..."
"What are you even saying?"
I pressed my clawed-up arm against the bar, refilling the blood, and stared it down.
You'll let me go? Who? Me? Or yourself? Who the hell do you think you are, deciding who gets to walk?
The godawful height difference meant I'd been taking hits from below the whole time, and my upper body was screaming. I rolled my shoulders loose and closed the distance. That seemed to jolt its pride back online — it shook its head hard, twisted its face up again, and bared its claws.
With that ruined arm? What exactly are you planning to do?
I swung the bar straight at its throat. It tried to block on reflex with its arm, but the lag cost it the timing, and it jerked its torso back in a desperate dodge.
Which left its lower body wide open.
Bipedal locomotion had a fundamental flaw — step backward and your center of gravity has nowhere to go but off-balance. Once that balance wavered, a perfect opening bloomed.
I swung the bar as low as I could, like throwing a low kick, and smashed it into the gap between its shin and ankle. The power behind it didn't vanish — it didn't go down, but it staggered back with a weak lurch.
That was enough.
I set the bar like a pole vaulter I'd once seen on TV, then drove the tip into the wall behind it the way you'd plant a flag — and shoved every ounce of force I had straight into its neck.
"Ggk-gegegek!"
Lost balance, frozen vocal cords, and a crumpled ego — the three-hit combo landed clean, and the thing let out a grotesque scream. I didn't give a damn about its situation. I followed up immediately.
THWAAACK!
The thick end of the lightweight bar, loaded with full-swing weight, split the air and crashed into its jaw. Shock stacked on shock until, finally, teeth went flying in a spray.
"Ggaaaaaagh!!!"
The pain must have been something else — it thrashed with everything it had left, lunged at me, and started swinging its claws wild. At zero range, those nails shredded my hoodie and carved me open like a sword cut. The wounds regenerated in an instant, same as always.
It stared blankly at my body, then dropped its gaze to its own trembling hands. A horrific cold was seeping inward through the red-frozen claws. Faced with this absurd unfairness, the orangutan finally ran out of words.
"Looks like the match is pretty much decided. Right?"
Thwack—
I smashed its already-wrecked jaw one more time and dropped it onto the grass.
CRAAACK—
I brought the bar down on its head for the finish, and it lashed out one last time, kicking my shin hard enough to snap the bone. I set the bar down, lifted the broken leg, and waited. Once the regen finished, I picked the bar back up — and this time aimed for both knees instead of the head.
Crunch—
As a bonus, I wrecked the joints in both arms too. No more thrashing after that.
"Grrrk... ghk..."
The orangutan was so thoroughly destroyed that the first impression I'd formed of it just a few hours ago was impossible to recall. I spoke to the thing writhing its broken limbs like a crushed insect, voice low, almost a whisper.
"You can't regenerate, huh? What kind of monster can't even do that?"
Even a mere human like me can manage it. Well — whether I still count as human is another question.
I watched it mumble something with a voice that no longer worked, and delivered one last line.
"Still. That was fun. Seriously."
In a world where every scrap of entertainment had evaporated, this had been the most enjoyable moment since the end began. Almost a shame to finish it like this.
Whether it understood my farewell or not, I ignored the thing still mouthing silently and raised the iron bar overhead.
"...on...s...t..."
Thwack—
"M...on...st..."
THWAAACK—
CRAAAAASH!
Ah, for fuck's sake.
A people-eating monster bastard, and it keeps trying to drag someone else into it. Disgusting.
Crack—
I brought the bar down another five or six times after that. Finally its skull split open.
And just like that, the sparring match that had been so much fun came to an end.