BLOODWORTH 2: Darkest Drought by Tai Goodman (chapter books to read to 5 year olds .TXT) 📖

heard an explosion, making them flinch.

“Isn’t nice.”

Phoenix climbed up the rusty steps of the red ladder, and at the top, he picked up the manhole with his fingers. Looking around, the streets in his area were clear. But it was boxed in by shamblers. “Alright, we’re not out of the woods yet. Keep calm, stay with me, and do as I say.” Tyler nodded, extending the knife’s blade. Phoenix stood on the pavement of the street, and then Tyler climbed up. The shamblers then noticed the two. “Alright, how do we get outta here?”

 

“Umm… I might not have thought that through!”

 

Phoenix looked around. Nearly every building was boarded up or blocked by debris. There was a vivid alley, however. The shamblers started closing in, some even started running. Phoenix pointed over there. “RUN! GET IN THE ALLEY!”

The two sprinted into the alley in unison, Tyler even locked the gate behind him. Phoenix stopped for Tyler and said, “Don’t mess with that stuff, come on!”

The shamblers reached through the fence wire and grabbed at Tyler. The pair ventured into the alley, leading to a four way intersection between buildings. “Great. Now where do we go?”

 

Phoenix examined each of the three possible pathways. One was blocked by a dumpster that he could climb over and go back out in the street. The second was blocked by a locked gate, with no shamblers on the other side. The third was littered with corpses. “Front way seems like the best option.” Phoenix and Tyler both headed in that direction, and ran into the gate. “How are we gonna-”

Already on the lock problem, Phoenix was picking the keyhole with a spare hair-pin. “Nevermind.” The gate swung open. The two quietly, and slowly walked onto the street. Then a gun barrel was pushed against Phoenix’s head. “ARE YOU TWO MAD? SHUT THE GATE!”

Tyler closed the gate and locked it behind him.

 

Phoenix was forced to his knees by a Nazi with torn clothing. “Mein Gott… You’re the masked terror. YOU’RE-”

Tyler stabbed him through his throat with the knife. “I think we’re in a militarized zone. We’re safe.” All of a sudden, two Nazi soldiers walked around a corner patrolling the area. Phoenix mumbled something to Tyler in a rushed feeling, making Tyler hide the body under bags of trash. “We’re not safe. *Those* guys, they hate me. So... You hide in the alley, I'll come back-" The dead Nazi stood out of the garbage and bit Phoenix on the arm.

 

"GOD! FUCK! NO NO NO NO!"

 

Tyler aimed his knife at Phoenix. "You're- You're BIT. Stay back!" 

He made a few air-jabs and kept his distance from Phoenix. The two Nazis overheard the conversation. "HEY! Wer ist da unten?" 

Phoenix backed up, as hair grew on his arms. Tyler stopped with the fear, and gazed at Phoenix's metamorphosis into a monster. But it wasn't a shambler. Thick brown fur grew up his arms, and to his neck. His nose extended, eyes bloodshot then turned yellow. His ears spiked up and turned brown with fur. His mask fell off, hitting the ground with a small thud.

 

He was a wolf. "Phoenix?"

Phoenix glared at Tyler and snarled. Tyler aimed his knife at Phoenix again. "Phoenix, I'm your friend! Don't hurt me!" 

"My bones feel... Stronger. Legs feel like pouncing. What am I?"

 

All Phoenix could muster up and tell Tyler was: "STAY. BACK."

 

Phoenix's vision was all yellow. He turned and faced the two Nazis. "WAS IST DAS? ERSCHIESS ES!" one of them screamed, leveling his firearm's barrel with Phoenix. The wolf approached the two Nazis on all fours, ravenously panting and snarling on the way. And once he reached the two...

 

"You're among wolves now. And these.... These are my woods."

 

Phoenix slit one's chest open, whilst inserting his claws. "NEIN!"

The other Nazi unloaded his weapon on Phoenix. Somehow Phoenix's body could withstand the bullets' impact to his skin. Phoenix ripped the man in half that he was holding, facing the next one. Out of pure carnage-filled anger, Phoenix clawed the man in his knees, knocking him over, and with two balled fists combined, he slammed a very devastating and bloody blow on the Nazi's face. Squashed.

Then a Nazi on mechanical stilts stepped through town, approaching the source of the gunfire. 

 

"What in the hell? Nazis performing a fucking circus now?"

 

Phoenix sprinted over to the man with wolf-like reflexes. Energy coursed through his veins, the yellow enlarged fury of a true murderous fiend. And in one pounce, Phoenix soared through the man's body, coating him in bloody paste and guts. The two stilts fell down along with the Nazi's dismembered legs.

Tyler was sitting there, watching all of it, and then a Nazi snatched him by his arms. "YOU! YOU VILL SUFFER ZHE WRATH FOR NOT HELPING ZHE REICH IN BATTLE!"

Tyler attempted to stab the Nazi, and he did, through the man's right hand. "You think un KNIFE will kill me? ZHINK AGAIN!" the Nazi refuted. The Nazi jerked the knife out of the hole in his hand, and then forced Tyler to the ground. "LET US SEE HOW TOUGH YOU ARE NOW VITHOUT YOUR MESSER, VERMIN." 

The blade was dangling over Tyler's head, inching toward his throat by the hands of a Nazi. "PHOENIX!"

 

The wolf slowly turned around, gazing at the Nazi with one eye. "PHOENIX! HELP ME!" 

The wolf didn't respond nor react. But it then got on all fours, and barked at the two fighting each other. 

 

"Phoenix. You done killed too many people after that crash out of pure stupidity. Don't add one more." 

 

Phoenix dug deep within himself to head over to the site. "That's more like it." Then Phoenix pounced into the Nazi, having the two crash into the front of a truck. "I VILL NEVER BOW TO YOU! ICH LEHNE AB!" 

The wolf murmurred, "THEN I'LL KILL YOU STANDING."

 

He bonked the man's helmet off of his head, exposing the head. Phoenix clawed the man's skull open, and reached into the wound, pulling out the man's brains. With a balled fist, he crushed the brains within his hand. Phoenix turned around and faced Tyler. The fur and hair all retracted. The snout unextended back into Phoenix's face. Sharp ears rounded, and eyes blanked to white. 

Chapter IV: Dinner Bell

NEU ORLEANS

1 DAY DURING THE OUTBREAK

 

"I don't know how we got outta that," Tyler told Phoenix, lighting the fire on the rooftop. The two remained inside of the militarized zone. "But my real question is, how come you got bit but you didn't turn into one of those freaks?"

 

"I don't even wanna know how."

 

"Are you gonna stay like that for the rest of your life?"

 

"Depends. I'm on the way to the Biological Human Resource Center downtown. But with the people on the streets trying to eat each other, that's gonna be a little slow. Maybe they can find a way to get rid of everything. Ridden with Nazis or not. Speaking of Nazis, you a freedom fighter, son?"

 

"Whaddya mean?"

"You hate Nazis?"

 

"Sure, I guess. Some of my friends were taken by them, never saw them to this day."

 

Phoenix poked the fire with a twig, and put a dead crow on the fire. "Aww... Jeez, we're not eating that, are we?"

"We gotta. Nothing else to eat except for it."

 

The feathers burned in the fire. Tyler looked over to the right and noticed a silenced sniper rifle laid up against the ridge of the building. He walked over to it and picked it up, feeling the weight and wood of the rifle's body. "Don't waste the ammo on that thing." 

"I ain't."

 

Tyler looked through the scope with one eye. The scope was zoomed in a little bit. And then he noticed a man in a hooded outfit on a belltower. He had a sledgehammer in both of his hands, then slammed it into the bell's siding. DIIING! 

 

Phoenix instantly stood up, frightened by that sound. "What the hell was that?"

Tyler pointed in the direction of the belltower. "There's someone up there, just rang that bell." 

 

Phoenix reached his hand out for the sniper rifle, and received it one-handedly. Looking through the magnifying lens, he saw someone sitting on the ledge. Shamblers were surrounding the tower. "Alright. I think that guy just bought us a little time. So listen up. We're gonna leave this asshole of a mess, and we're gonna take a right up *there*, and then go down the road. You'll know what the center is when you see it." 

Tyler nodded as him and Phoenix climbed off of the building. Nazis on stilts were walking around the belltower, popping off a few shamblers with their firearms, drawing attention. "Shit, we gotta go, NOW! They're drawing them away!" 

Phoenix pulled out his motorcycle and said, "Get on!"
Tyler placed his bottom down on the back of the motorcycle, and both sped off through barricades and tanktraps. The motorcycle shifted right through the small fog, and then the two traveled toward a pair of metal doors. 

 

"Shit."

 

Phoenix and Tyler crashed through the doors and out in the middle of the street. Still on the motorcycle, they continued to the right. The stilt Nazi spotted the two riding away. "HALLO! Komm zurück und hilf mir!" 

Phoenix stopped in the middle of his journey for a few seconds. "Gimme the rifle for a second." 

"What? Why?"

 

Phoenix snatched it instead, and with one hand, he aimed it at the Nazi's knee. PEW! The bullet pierced the man's knee. "AAHAHA!" he cried, falling over on his stilts and hitting the ground with a thud. Shamblers then began to encompass his location. "NEIN! NEIN!!!! Geht weg! HILFT MIR JEMAND! BITTE!"

 

Then the screaming was silenced. "That'll shut you up." Phoenix continued before the shamblers could close in on him. He was approaching a dead body on the road, carved up by teeth marks and emptied of all of its internal organs. "Can't stop now, Phoenix." The motorcycle bolted over the head, splashing blood all over the chassis of the choppercycle. "Did you just-"

 

"I can't hear a thing you're saying, Tyler!" 

 

Phoenix was then thrown off of his motorcycle by a pale, skinny being with long claws. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?" 

Tyler and the motorcycle both dropped over and hit the ground. "AGH! MY LEG!"

Phoenix stayed put while under the restraint of the creature. "Wendigo. Heard of this thing before in scary stories. Never knew how right them people were."

 

The wendigo screamed in Phoenix's face, covering his face in saliva and spit. "TYLER!" Phoenix pleaded for help. Tyler held the rifle with both hands, flicking the scope button with his thumb and magnifying the scope. The sight outline alligned with the wendigo's head. "Bullseye!"

POW! From Phoenix's side of the fight, the wendigo's right eyeball flew out of its eye socket in pieces. The light body fell on top of Phoenix, which he removed eventually. Phoenix headed back over to Tyler, who was grasping his leg, bleeding. "This thing's got my leg!"

 

Shamblers were closing in. "I don't think we can ride through. Hold on a second! And only use your gun if you gotta!" Phoenix tugged his meat cleaver out of the loop of his belt.

Phoenix was then grappled by another shambler. It was a woman with veiny, scraped and yellow teeth. With a swing, Phoenix separated the top half of her head from the jawline of her skull. Then another one waltzed over to Phoenix, hacking and coughing. Bloated pimples and boils were