Roughing the Passer

[The Honeless Beard]

((From.))

Rule number two was double tap.

Baxter crouched, forearms resting on his knees, as he took in the corpse of Yaz. He'd been on his way back towards the cabin - before noticing the bullet holes in the wooden walls but after he'd confirmed the wetness on his back, his ass, and his legs was just water - and had doubled back to find her here, sprawled on the forest floor, face disintegrated by a bullet to the dome.

He hoped rule two wasn't followed. Baxter hoped that Yaz had taken it to the face before the bullets that chewed through her legs and torso had arrived. He hoped, too, that the smell of feces that wafted from the corpse was a result of being dead and not dying, because if the shit happened pre-expiration then that meant Yaz went out with a load in her drawers.

Didn't get much worse than that, in his opinion.

Caked bile was drying behind him, a few feet to the left. He hadn't looked at it since he'd produced it. Acknowledging it meant everything else was harder, and he had enough on his plate. With his right hand, he pinched his jersey over his mouth and nose, inhaled the smell of his own sweat over the rusty blood and pungent shit. The knife in his belt dragged his pants down slightly, and he tugged at them, but his position meant that the jeans didn't budge much, just stayed stretched over his thighs.

"What do-" he said, beginning syllables to form some kind of pithy remark, but he had to stop, cover his face again, because he was close to replicating what had happened a few feet to his left. He swallowed, inhaled his own scent again, calmed down.

Bullets in the cabin meant that Daniel wasn't safe, either. For all Baxter knew, Daniel was a corpse in the woods, too.

He rose, peeling off his jersey with the movement, letting it dangle from his fingers. He swung it towards Yaz's obliterated cheekbone, then let it fall back towards him before he shook his head, turned away.

There may be another corpse in the woods somewhere.

He had to find out.

((To.))