Free Diary of the Displaced by Glynn James Page B

That would never get me home.
    “Yes. I can’t stay here forever.”
    “Understood. Well you need to be wary of someone in the place. Someone dangerous.”
    “More dangerous than gargants and zombies?”
    (Laughter)
    “Yes. Much more. He is called CutterJack, at least that’s how I know him.”
    “Odd name.”
    “Yes. You asked about who it was that killed me, and I was wary about voicing my thoughts about it at the time, but I believe it is he who killed me down by the river. I’ve only ever seen him once and that was a long time ago. I was in the city ruins fighting the zombies there, whilst scavenging. It was before I met Adler and at the time I was relieved to see someone else, but he came at me brandishing knives, long, sharp ones. The same ones I’d seen him killing zombies with. I ran. But he was too fast, and caught me up, cornering me in one of the ruins, cursing and ranting, spitting at me.”
    “And he killed you?”
    “No, at least not that time. That was our first encounter and it was the maw that saved me then. They came out of the shadows and chased him off. There were many of them, a dozen even. I haven’t seen that many maw since then.”
    “Sounds like a nasty bit of work.”
    “He is. I call him he. I don’t know. It may be a creature.”
    “How did you know its name?”
    “Adler. Oddly enough. I mentioned him to the professor once and he sang me a song about a character called CutterJack. I’ve no idea where the song came from, but the name stuck. Just be wary and hope your maw sticks with you. I think it was CutterJack that caught me down by the river, when I was alone.”
    “Oh, I see.”
    “Well I’d not seen him for years after that. But every now and then when I was wandering, scavenging and stuff, I’d come across a zombie that had been slaughtered. So CutterJack was still around somewhere.”
    New things to note:
    Swamp pods do taste like potatoes, if a bit mustardy.
    DogThing and his friends don’t like pod.
    The other maw look different to DogThing. Each has its own distinct look. I’ve named one of them Mo. She has a tuft of hair, a little like a Mohawk, running along her back. It’s bright green. Very odd. She has brighter eyes. I don’t know if she is a she, but she looks somehow more feminine than the others.
    The hole has gone.
    Day 23
    I’d been hanging around the shack since I arrived. This morning I decided it was time to have a look around nearby so I grabbed the lantern and my makeshift rucksack. I swapped a few things around and chucked a few tools and some water bottles into the rucksack, and then headed out, but not down towards the swamp and the gargants. That would have been stupid. Instead I wandered up into the rocks, and the hill behind the shack, hoping to find some trace of Adler’s camp.
    I could only get a few hundred feet further up the rock, behind the shack, before it became too steep to climb. I was about to give up searching for the outcrop of rock that Rudy had mentioned, the professor’s camp, when I noticed the rope hanging down twenty or so feet from me.
    It was dangling there, hanging in the darkness. I climbed over the rocks towards it and looked up. In the gloom above I could barely make out what might be the outcrop of rock. It didn’t look very big, and there was at least a fifty foot climb upwards. Without the rope I would never have been able to get that high, not without some seriously hard work. It took me twenty minutes to pull myself up.
    There was a cave about thirty feet deep cutting into the rock, ending in loose rubble, and it was there that I found some of the remains of Professor Adler’s camp. There wasn’t a lot left, just a mattress and a blackened fire pit that was long abandoned. How the hell had Adler got a mattress up here? I had struggled to get up there by myself, and from Rudy’s description, Adler had been a lot older than I. I doubt he would have been able to put the rope up there, so it had to be there