I guess I'll start by how that was even possible. When I woke up in the morning, Kat was still snoozing. John was up, and had been for a few hours. He said he stirred awake in the middle of the night and wasn't able to get back to sleep. I asked if he wanted to go out for a walk while Kat slept. I wanted to fill the canteens, and the Illinois River was only a half mile away. He said sure.
I'm not going to bother telling you what we talked about it. It was all bullshit. Him lying about how he was fine, that he was totally cool with Kat and me. When I got close to the river, I ended up setting my foot in an animal trap. It snapped shut on my right leg taking me down. I think one of the springs popped loose as it closed on me, because my leg isn't broken. It hurts like hell, but again, it's not broken.
The trap did have enough pressure, though, to keep me pinned in one spot. The trap was chained to a tree and it had a spike wedged in between two of the links. John heard the trap go off and came running over to me but when he saw the predicament I was in, he halted. He just stared at me and I asked if he was going to help me. He approached me, crouched down and looked at the trap and then reached over me and yanked my pack off. I asked, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Just as he turned the other direction, I saw an evil grin on his face. He went back towards the hotel, towards Kat. I screamed after him until I tore my vocal cord.
I tried with all my strength to get this trap undone. Even with a broken spring, I couldn't get the proper leverage to open the trap. I started panicking and hyperventilating and had to force myself to regulate my breathing. It wasn't helping much. All I could think of was Johnathan, having gone insane, and wondering what he was going to do - was doing - to Kat. I had to get to her, but I just couldn't. I just couldn't get the fucking trap open!
After what must have been a couple of hours, I began to hear my name called. It was Kat! She was okay! I answered back and she followed the sound of my voice. When she got closer, I saw she wasn't. Her shirt was ripped open along the left side, and she was holding up the flap of fabric so her breast wouldn't fall out. Her right eye was swelling and she had a welt under it as well, split open. She had blood dripping from her chin down her shirt, and I soon learned it was Johnathan's. He had tried to force himself into her mouth and when she wouldn't open, he began to hit her. Finally, she let him in and just when he couldn't get any farther in, she bit down and tore as hard as she could. She spat his severed member out on the floor, and he reeled back howling in pain. Kat tried finding a weapon to go after him with, but he ran back in to his room and out the window. Her leg being wrapped up kept her from chasing him, but she felt with John recently neutered, he wasn't going to pose a threat any longer. She took off to find me.
We tried to get the trap open, but something wasn't right. Maybe the broken spring prevented it from being open, and she started crying. I told her we'd take a break and try again when we got our strength back. I asked what happened with Johnathan and she said he just came barging into the room. She asked where I was and he said, "Sorry, but that zombie trapper got him." He looked sorrowful at first and started to cry, putting on a real act to get Kat's guard down and when she held out her arms to him crying as well, he went in for a hug. That's when he started groping her. She immediately fought him off asking what the hell he was doing, and he said that now that I was dead, he could have her all to himself. He said he didn't want to die a virgin, and he was going to make sure he corrected that because death was getting closer to him every day. He completely went bat shit crazy. This was not the same man that I met nearly a month ago.
Kat almost broke her fingers trying to get the trap open again, and I told her to stop. She collapsed into my chest and started to cry, but I heard rustling of fallen leaves and hushed her. The shuffling was getting louder and I tried to lay as low as I could on the ground, pinning Kat down as well. I thought it was a zombie and if we just laid still, we'd be okay. But it was something we feared was worse. It was the hunter.
The man stood 6 foot 5 inches, as burly as a WWE wrestler with a beard that was roughly trimmed on the sides but grew several inches down his chin. His hair was disheveled, overgrown and covering his ears where it fell just around his shoulders, dark as night. His eyes were massive as if born from a Greek statue come to life. He wore a shirt mottled with blood stains as much as it was patterned by flannel and his greenish pants may have at one point in their lives been grey. He was an extremely intimidating man. He cocked his head to the side, squinting his eyes until the irises were hidden, panning his head back to the other side. He was studying us.
He spoke. "Da hell yous doin wearin dem zombie skins? You tryna get kilt?" I didn't know how to react. I thought this man was going to kill us and then eat us for sure considering what we saw him do yesterday. He told me to take off my hood and I did. He crouched down to me, pulled out a wickedly massive knife and stuck it under a lever in the trap. He then grabbed each side of the trap with his massive hands and pulled back until he heard a click. I pulled by leg out and began to massage it immediately. Kat and I held each other, looking at this man, not sure what to expect next. She asked if he was going to hurt us.
He answered with a question of his own: were we zombies? We shook our heads, so he said no. He told us he doesn't like fresh meat anymore, said he developed a taste for rotten meat. He considered it a delicacy. His name was Rampert. He hunted leathers and ate them. We asked why, and he said he believed it was a way of gaining power, similar to some ancient Indian customs about cannibalizing their enemies. He then asked us again why we were wearing zombie skin. I told him it was to mask our scent and then he laughed a bellowing laugh, something like you would hear from a lumberjack.
Rampert told him they don't hunt by simple body odor. They hunt by smelling fear. The reason why the suits were working was because we believed they were and thus weren't giving off the fear hormone. I told him I didn't believe that, and he told me, "Don't no zombie come lookin for me. I be lookin for dem." He brought up parallels to apex predators, how we were still supposed to be the apex predators, but we were so spoiled and softened by modern conveniences that we, as he put it, became "pussified". He asked if we saw the tree with his trophies and we nodded. The trophy tree was to let the zombies know there was someone out there more dangerous than them. The leathers are deadly predators, but Rampert's killed them by the hundreds, entirely by himself. He believes zombies don't just respect him; they fear him.
A part of me thought this man was insane. A part of me was certain he was insane but regardless, he helped us. He asked me, "What happen to you little ladyfriend?" I was going to speak for her, but she immediately told him and then Rampert squinted his eyes again. He was like he was trying to pull great distances in the horizon with his gaze so he could view the details as if scanning them with a magnifying glass. It was the iconic look of a serious, and deadly, hunter. "Rampert will take care uh dis," he let it trail on the S like a hiss, "Johnathan. Maybe I have some fresh meat again, no?" and then uttered another hearty laugh.
He helped walk me back to the hotel, Kat by my side the entire time. As we approached the Days Inn, we saw Johnathan's bike on the ground, about 100 feet from the front door. The seat was covered in blood; he was obviously in too much pain to ride the bike. I didn't need Rampert's adept hunting skills to know Johnathan was bleeding out. I told Rampert if he still wanted fresh meat, he'd better hurry, because he was going to turn. Rampert bowed his head to me and gestured tipping his imaginary hat and was off.
There wasn't anyway I was going to travel today. My leg was swollen and even though it wasn't broken, I wanted to rest it at least for the remainder of the day. Kat's eye was puffing up and I wished I had an ice pack, but I did have some antiseptic wipes, so I used one to clean up her cut. She didn't even so much as wince. I used the rest of the wipe to clean her face of Johnathan's blood, cringing at the thought of what she had to do. To think of fighting off a man like that. The courage it must have taken.
And then I realized it was all my fault. I should have told her about that look he gave me the other day. She should have known about that, because then maybe she would have felt like we needed to handle Johnathan right away. I decided to tell her, and then she smacked me hard. Twice more, each time harder than the last. She demanded to read my journal and I let her read it. Everything. If she slapped me harder this time, I wouldn't know because my face was becoming numb.
She was so furious after yelling at me for breaking my promise of not holding anymore secrets, she didn't even cry. Her face just radiated red like embers from a campfire. She barked at me to get out of the room, to go sleep somewhere else. I was so defeated, so disappointed in myself that I had no energy to respond. Just before I walked out the door, she told me to take my tablet with me, as she threw it at my head but missed. It hit the wall and fell, leaving a diagonal crack across the screen. The tablet still works, but every time I see a sentence I'm typing cross the crack, I'm reminded of Kat's anger at me for letting her down. She didn't speak to me for the rest of the day.
I ended up taking the room Johnathan had next to us. I just laid back on the bed trying to gaze at the stars through the ceiling, tears rolling down my eyes and being soaked up by the pillow like a sponge. I'm allowing myself this moment of wallowing. I've been trying too hard to stay so strong in order to survive. To be honest, being around people weakened me. Having to look out for others, I started caring for them. Staying strong all the time is exhaustive. I'm actually wanting a drink right now, but I heard a distant scream off in the night somewhere. I want to say it sounded like Johnathan, and then I let the rage back in. I let the anger burn away the desire of ever wanting alcohol. I wasn't going to let myself get in that bad habit again.
I'm hoping Kat and I can talk tomorrow. I'm also hoping my leg will feel good enough to get back on the road again. As much as what just happened to us today, we still need to keep the goal of getting to Rhinelnder in front of us. We just lost a day today. I'm turning in early.
Until tomorrow.
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