Well, not exactly broken, maybe dislocated since the bone isn't coming out, but a broken wing doesn't always have the bone coming out, so...
"Car-car-ááá!!!"
But he's definitely acting like it's broken or like he's about to die, not that he's wrong.
"Car-car-ááá!!!"
"Crac, crac, crac"
"Cará, cará!!"
'Those three sounds definitely didn't come from the Caracara on the ground, did they? 😕'
Looking in the direction where the various zombies were, I saw three figures approaching quickly, all of them seemed quite irritated. The only positive point was that none of them were as big as the one I knocked down, but they weren't much smaller either, only one being the size of a normal Caracara.
'Okay, this is strange, birds of prey don't have a sense of camaraderie like Mammoths, but these ones are definitely irritated.'
Even if that caracara on the ground were a sibling of the three approaching, there would be no reason for them to be so irritated; birds of prey aren't exactly known for fraternal bonds.
'Although this could also be one of the effects of the mana, or is that caracara on the ground a female and those two are her mates or are they trying to become mates?'
Anyway, they'll be here soon. Should I try to fight them or just leave and let them take care of the wounded? But do Caracaras even take care of the wounded? Would they leave me alone for having wounded one of them?
'Well, they'd hardly leave me alone for having killed one of them. Or maybe they would? They generally considered humans stronger threats than themselves... at least before the world became like this.'
I don't have time to talk to myself. If I kill him, I'll gain experience, but I'm almost certain the others will come after me for revenge (again, I don't know if that would really happen, although before the world changed the answer would have been a resounding no). If I don't kill him, maybe they'll stay and take care of the wounded, or they'll still come after me and leave him here (more likely to happen if it were before, now...).
"Anyway, the chances of me getting screwed somehow are pretty high, aren't they..."
So how about...
"Car-car-ááá!!!"
"CRACK!!, CRACK!!!"
Oops, they're almost on top of me, so there's not much time left...
"GET THESE!!!!"
With my obsidian claws, I cut 3 of the blood oranges I took from the [item box] while throwing them in front of the fallen caracara.
If someone had seen this, they might have thought: throwing oranges to birds of prey is just a waste of oranges.
And yes, I would completely agree with that if they were normal birds of prey. Caracaras are unique in their generalist aspect, carnivorous by nature, scavengers by choice, and omnivorous by necessity. Their diet consists first of fresh meat, second: carrion, and third: fruit... and in a distant fourth place they can also be cannibals.
'....Good luck for you.'
I thought, silently praying to the fallen caracara (which was still struggling) and climbing back up the tree to return to my path atop the buildings. With the shadow cloak reactivated.
If they were to attack me it wouldn't help at all. But I left practically two(?) easy food options on the ground, so the chances of them coming after me (even with the food chain being messed up) are lower... right?
...
It turned out I was right (although I never bet on just one option and only complained about every possibility).
The caracaras didn't attack me or the fallen one, well, not exactly. They gave him a few pecks and "kicks" to see if he could still survive, which he did, congratulations.
'I'm almost certain I saw a look of disappointment on one of them…. Yeah nature continues to be brutal….'
Instead of just flying back to the zombies (and passing by me), the four of them circled the oranges and started to peck at them. I was quite surprised by this since I had thrown them more as a desperate distraction than a real option for them to eat.
Caracaras may be omnivorous, but oranges and other pulpy fruits aren't part of their diet, unless they are rich in water for them to hydrate themselves… So yes, an orange could be, but….
'Although these weren't normal oranges either, were they?~ Having been created by a sentient tree, which also acts as a carnivorous plant now. Bearing fruit to attract animals, and killing them with a rain of razor-sharp leaves, or strangling them with its own roots.'
Whether they went after the oranges because they were thirsty, for the fragrance, or like me, for the magical power they hold, I don't know.
'Another item on my ever-growing list of things I'd like to check after my family is safe.'
Fortunately, this "slip-up" didn't last long; from the encounter with the caracara to them "pecking" at the oranges, at most 6 minutes must have passed.
As soon as I jumped onto the roof of one of the houses on the other side of the avenue, it was as if I had passed through some kind of barrier, because the smell of the plumage, which was just a slight annoyance, hit me hard right in the face. It was literally like being punched by the smell, only all over my body.
"Aaarrrrwwwmm, cough, cough... Awwwrrmm.. aappp, ugh... Aaaaawwwwmmm, how did mom and dad put up with that smell for 2 days... Aaahhham aaahhham."
Seriously, it's the worst smell I've ever experienced in my life. It was like stagnant sewage on a summer day, fermenting rotten meat, expired milk, and feces, being dumped onto a pile of old tar. In a word, horrible.
'And there are still 3 blocks to go before we get to the gas station, seriously, how much worse can this smell get!!!!'
...
An answer that's much, much worse.
I had to take one of the t-shirts from the item box to use as a gas mask, extremely bad, by the way.
I could barely stay conscious when I got to the roof of the lofty in front of the gas station. Things here were terrible in every sense of the word. Visually, olfactorily, aurally, and gustatorily (meaning: because the smell was so bad I could almost taste it, and yes, it was like zombie blood... just not as concentrated).
The smell of rotting flesh and liquefied fat from older corpses was by far the worst, even surpassing the constant "uuurrr urrrrr" sound the zombies made, as well as the dragging of their feet and flesh hitting concrete and steel, or the damned taste of rotten meat saturated in the air that insisted on clinging to my tongue!!!!.
The only thing this horrible and deplorable smell helped with was that it also assaulted my eyes, making them water intensely and preventing me from seeing the zombies clearly. But what I could see was already disconcerting enough.
Zombies rotting in real time with a myriad of open wounds of various types from which dark red, almost black, blood oozed. Even with blurred vision, I could still see that in some zombies the blood was only dripping in a few drops, in others it was an almost constant flow.
Unfortunately, what my vision didn't block, my hearing compensated for, along with my imagination. It was possible to hear when an organ broke off from a corpse and was trampled by the other zombies, making agonizing, wet sounds of crushed flesh.
All of this was horrible.
'And mother and father endured this for 2 days?!!!'
My anger towards the people who had started this mess, attracting a horde of monsters, intensified, as did my anger at myself for not being quicker to come and help them.
'Okay, now is not the time to play the victim, how can I get through here and reach them?'
Across the ground? As if!
I went to the trouble of jumping across the rooftops to avoid the problems on the ground, and down here there were only problems. You could barely see the ground, it was so crowded with zombies (and the occasional slime).
When one of them moved, another would appear and almost stick to the one in front of it, or to the ones on either side. Every now and then a part of the ground would show, but I couldn't even see a single paving stone, both because of the tears streaming down my face and the number of trampled bodies on the ground.
I couldn't tell what was what, but I could see some corpses with missing pieces of animals like dogs and even some carcasses that looked like vultures and caracaras.
'Well, at least it seems the zombies don't exclusively attack humans but any living creature... I don't know if that's any consolation, honestly.'
"Ssssgghhh–guuff, Cooof, Cooof coof, why did I take a deep breath here, Cooof coof Cooof, fuck, it's better to take a deep breath with your mouth on a car's exhaust pipe, Cooof coof"
Yeah, I know, I was pretty stupid just now.