Chapter 33.1 The Promised Land
She yawned lazily and saw Sergey sitting by the campfire with a pale face. She blinked and said with a smile, “Good evening, Sergey.”
“Good evening.” Sergey heard his own voice, which was a little vague and not as refreshing as his usual voice. He tried hard to act as usual, but the muscles on his face were uncontrollably stiff. “How did you sleep?”
“Not bad.” Irina said, “It’s your turn to sleep.”
“Just… you don’t feel uncomfortable at all, right?” Sergey whispered.
“Uncomfortable? No.” Irina didn’t feel there was anything wrong with her. She sat up from her backpack, “I’m quite comfortable. You can sleep.”
Sergey could only respond vaguely.
He said he was going to sleep, but how could he fall asleep? He lay flat on the ground, half-squinting his eyes, observing Irina from the corner of his eye as she started to keep vigil. She sat next to the fire for a while, then turned her back to Sergey, and after a while, she seemed to take something out of her backpack. The next moment, Sergey heard the sound that woke him up last night. At this time, he was extremely sure that it was indeed a creepy chewing sound.
It seemed like she was chewing raw meat, and even tore it from time to time. Thinking about the notebook belonging to Irina that he just saw, Sergey suddenly felt horrified. He stared at Irina as if he were staring at a twisted monster, not daring to relax his vigilance for a moment.
Irina was eating throughout the second half of the night, only stopping at daybreak. Sergey wanted to sit up and ask her what it was, but he was a little hesitant in his heart because he was really not sure if this thing was Irina and he didn’t want to have a falling out with it since it might cause more serious consequences.
He couldn’t judge whether Irina was infected or whether she was a completely different person from before.
Amidst the desperate chewing sounds, Sergey finally ushered in the morning. He swore that he had never looked forward to dawn so much.
Irina packed her backpack, returned to her usual lively appearance during the day, and continued on her way with Sergey. However, this time, Sergey deliberately stayed away from her. Fortunately, Irina didn’t notice it. She just lowered her head and followed Sergey’s steps, and was not aware of Sergey’s wary attitude towards her.
The two walked in this depressing atmosphere for three days. When Sergei, who couldn’t sleep, was about to reach his mental limit, he discovered another thing that made him even more devastated… He discovered that Irina’s belly got bigger.
In just a few nights, her relatively flat belly inflated like a balloon. She rubbed her belly habitually, with a mother’s loving smile on her face.
“Irina, are you okay?” Sergey couldn’t remember how many times he asked this question. He repeatedly confirmed with Irina, not so much because he wanted to get an answer from her, but because he wanted to deceive himself.
However, Irina’s answer was no different from before. She smiled, looked at Sergey, and said, “It’s okay. I’m fine. Sergey, you don’t have to worry about me.”
Sergey said: “Your belly… seems to be bigger… a lot…”
Irina didn’t care at all. She smiled: “Didn’t I tell you that I was pregnant? It’s normal for pregnant people to have bigger bellies.” She touched her belly. Her tone was so natural. As natural as Sergey even though he was the one who asked the strange questions.
How could it be normal? Sergey thought numbly, or in other words. In this abnormal world, was the abnormal Irina the normal person? Was it him who had become weird? As soon as this idea came into his mind, he tried hard to restrain it with reason. He knew that this idea was very dangerous. Once he stepped into this logic trap, he might be the next Irina.
Judging from the map, he was not too far away from the river, but he was not sure how long it would take him to reach the river with Irina at such a slow speed, and during the rest of the journey, would there be any other changes in Irina?
Not being able to sleep peacefully for several days caused Sergey’s mental state to decline rapidly, but he still tried hard to persevere and even began to try to use pain to wake himself up. The only good thing was that there seemed to be nothing strange about Irina except her growing belly.
In just a few days, she was already looking eight months pregnant. Her slender limbs and the exaggerated belly formed a strange sense of incongruity. Sergey once saw those victims who died of famine. Most of them had bulging bellies. It was said that they contained indigestible soil.
Irina, in appearance, looked more and more like those people.
It was another silent night. Sergey couldn’t help but fall into a short yet deep sleep due to long-term exhaustion. He suddenly woke up, looked around blankly, and found that there was no trace of Irina who was supposed to be sitting next to the campfire.
“Irina? Irina?” Although he felt that she had gone beyond the normal category, Sergey still called her name. He noticed that although Irina was gone, her huge pink backpack was still in place.
Sergey’s eyes stopped on the backpack.
Normally, Irina would guard this backpack very closely and not let him touch it at all, but now she disappeared. This seemed to be the best time for him to reveal the secret. The backpack in front of him was like a Pandora’s box, constantly tempting Sergey’s already fragile nerves.
He licked his lips, but in the end, he couldn’t resist the temptation. He walked slowly to the backpack and gently opened the zipper of the backpack.
With a creak, the zipper was pulled down to the bottom, and the backpack opened a dark gap, revealing the contents inside.
Sergey immediately smelled the blood. He couldn’t see clearly, so he opened the backpack further, trying hard to see the items inside.
With the flickering light of the campfire, his goal was finally achieved. He saw the things in the backpack. The moment he saw the things clearly, Sergey took a few steps back uncontrollably and vomited directly. Tears overflowed as he could not suppress his physiological reaction. It was the corpse of a person. It was unknown how long they had been dead. The bones and flesh on the body had been chewed away, revealing the white bones, but this was not what made Sergey vomit. The face of the corpse was still intact. It was Irina who was by his side during the day.
“Ugh, vomit, vomit.” Sergey’s legs softened and he knelt on the ground, almost vomiting out all the contents of his stomach. For a moment, he couldn’t understand why Irina appeared in the backpack. All logic completely failed at this moment. He felt that his mental state was seriously declining, so much so that when he staggered up from the ground, the scene in front of him was even distorted. Sergey didn’t want to look at the backpack again. He turned around and stumbled into the dark jungle. He didn’t know where he was going. He just wanted to leave this place as quickly as possible and leave that scary pink backpack.
Sergey rushed into the dense forest behind him in a daze. When he realized what he was doing, he was already some distance away from the bonfire. He still wanted to vomit, but nothing could come out. Tears couldn’t stop flowing down his cheeks. He let out tiny sobs, which contained fear, but mainly grief.
There was no doubt that Irina was dead, and the Irina that had been following him these past few days was an unknown monster. Why did the monster eat Irina’s body but not do anything to him? Sergey lay against the tree and thought with his last strength. He silently wiped away the tears that kept flowing and sobbed uncontrollably.
It was unknown how long it took Sergey to reluctantly pull his soul away from this feeling of despair. He wanted to turn around and go back to the bonfire, but when he was walking back, he heard a sound coming from not far away. It was the sound of Irina crying and screaming. Sergey was stunned when he heard the sound. He looked towards the place where the sound came from. It was dark and he couldn’t see anything clearly.
Is it Irina who is crying? Why is she crying? Isn’t she already dead? Sergey was in a daze for a moment. Logically speaking, his best choice now was to quietly return to the campfire and pretend that nothing happened, but the guilt over Irina’s death made him move. His feet slowly moved in the direction of the crying.
The crying was getting closer and closer, and under the dim moonlight, Sergey finally found the source. He saw a woman with a big belly, laying on the ground, holding her belly and crying desperately, as if the child in her belly was about to be born.
“Child, my child…” Irina shouted in a desperate and sad tone. Although Sergey couldn’t see her face clearly, he realized that her face must be full of tears at this time.
“My child, we can definitely go out. We can definitely go out.” She screamed, like a terrifying monster, forcibly trapped in human skin, wailing constantly, “But I’m so hungry, I’m so hungry, I’m so hungry. I want to eat. I want to eat.” The cry gradually deformed and distorted, like a roar, which made Sergey’s hair stand on end.
However, the most terrifying thing had just begun. Sergey heard the sound of cloth being torn amidst her cries. The next moment, he realized what this sound meant.
Irina’s bulging belly was torn open from the inside by a pair of hands, first the wrists, then the elbows, and finally the torso. A head with long hair popped out of Irina’s belly. Struggling hard, as if it was escaping from the mother’s body, it pushed itself up little by little. It was a woman with the same appearance and expression as Irina. The moment she was born, the pregnant Irina stopped crying, as if she had died.
However, the woman laughed happily. She had been wearing the same clothes as Irina since she was born. No, they were almost the same person. She looked at the lifeless corpse under her body that was exactly the same as hers, and laughed in surprise. She said: “It’s great, there’s something to eat. It’s great, there’s something to eat.” She lowered her head, touched her belly gently, and murmured softly, “Dear child, we don’t have to die, we will be fine, I will give birth to you well, we have a lot of food… …”
After watching all this, Sergey was frozen in place like a statue. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move at all.
After an unknown amount of time, Irina, who was lying on the ground and eating her own body, was finally satisfied. She showed excitement and started her next move. Sergey watched from the side, not daring to speak or move. He saw Irina bending down, dragging the broken body up, and then she began to move towards the bonfire. The body should have been heavy, but she dragged it very easily, with a satisfied smile on her face, and dragged her body to the side of the bonfire bit by bit.
Irina naturally noticed that Sergey, who was supposed to be sleeping next to the campfire, was nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t care. She opened her pink backpack and folded her body in an incredible posture. The corpse was stuffed into the backpack. Her face was extremely clear under the firelight, with a look of satisfaction on it. However, at this time, this smile formed a weird contrast with everything she did, and it was extremely terrifying.
Irina added some more firewood to the bonfire to make the bonfire burn brighter. The look of satisfaction never faded from her face for a moment. All the weirdness finally ended there.
Sergey reached out and wiped his face heavily, forcing himself to stay awake, but his whole body was shivering involuntarily. When he started walking, he even found that his body shook uncontrollably.
The night returned to calm, and Irina was still the same beautiful young girl. She no longer complained about hunger, and her stomach did not bulge, like before, but Sergey could no longer deceive himself.
He walked out of the bushes, picked up the shotgun, and loaded it.
“Sergey?” Irina saw him, the smile on her face did not change.
Sergey whispered her name: “Irina.”
“What’s wrong?” Irina tilted her head, looking innocent, “Why are you looking like this?”
“No, you’re not Irina, what on earth are you?” Sergey raised his gun and shouted like a madman, “Tell me!! What on earth are you??!!”
“I’m Irina.” Irina stood up and looked at Sergey in horror.
The look of fear on her face was so vivid that no one would think that she was not human. If Sergey hadn’t just witnessed everything with his own eyes, he wouldn’t think so either.
“You are not Irina.” Sergey said numbly, “Irina is dead.”
After the words fell, there was a piercing gunshot. With an expression of disbelief, Irina lowered her head and looked at her chest. There was a huge hole there, but no blood flowed out. The black liquid made a shrill cry. Screams continued to pour out as her body began to melt like a candle. In just a blink of an eye, it turned into a puddle of black mud and merged into the ground beneath Sergei’s feet.
From the moment she was shot until she disappeared, Irina’s expression gradually returned to peace, and her eyes had a sad glint. Sergey thought she would say something, but until she disappeared, she said nothing.
Sergey’s hand softened and the shotgun in his hand fell to the ground. He fell to his knees and howled like a beast, as if he wanted to drain away all the tears in his life.
By the time he stopped crying, it was already dawn and the bonfire was out, as if everything that happened last night was just a terrible dream.
Sergey stood up from the ground and unzipped the pink backpack again. Inside, he saw Irina’s body.
A corpse with a peaceful expression. Sergey wiped his eyes, used the shotgun in his hand as a tool, and dug a small grave for Irina in the soft soil nearby. Then, he carefully buried Irina in it, and then marked her name on it. He still had to go forward, and he may die soon due to some strange reasons, but if he still had the chance to return here, he would definitely take Irina back. Even if she had rotten into withered bones by then, he would definitely take her away from this place.
Sergey finished everything and was on the road again. It wasn’t until dusk that he heard the sound of rushing water. The sound of water relieved his spirit, which was about to collapse. He ran, as fast as he had ever run in his life.
Translator’s comments:
Hi guys. Sorry that the chapter was late. I was so exhausted yesterday that I couldn’t do anything but sleep when I got home form work.
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