Chapter Text
You're a bad dog, you always have been. You have lived life with your lip curled and teeth bared at the world. If you have ever trusted anyone else it was one person too many. Those who have attempted to get close to you only live to regret it. There is no break in the bars that surround you and fortify you in a cold steel cage. And it's for the best, in that you wholeheartedly believe, because you do bite. Even if sometimes you feign your snarl for a smile, it’s only the fault of those who believe such a lie.
This isolated world that you created for yourself came in handy though. When you were deployed on long missions, there was no one to miss, and no one to be missed by. Both good things, of that you constantly assured yourself of. Especially good when you laid alone in your bed at home with nothing but the sound of the old clock on the wall ticking away at the seconds. Yes, it was good. This came even more in handy when one day, suddenly, the world as you knew it (or more so society because the world itself is still in good shape) had reached its end.
It took nothing for the streets to become chaos, for the blaring alarm on the TV to become real, for you to come face to face with your new reality of a zombie infested world. But, there was something about that chaos that made the ache in your bones feel soothed. Somehow that loneliness that you had forced upon yourself was no longer forced, it was warranted, it came without saying. If there was ever a time for the guarded persona you had created it was then. It was instinct the way your hands wrapped around the familiar weight of a pistol. It took nothing for your finger to find the trigger and make out of the cold concave a new home, a new cage.
It’s that same pistol that now presses against your side, tucked under the waistband of your cargos. Like a familiar lover, you have held on tight to it from the start, despite the scratches and build up of unremovable grime. It might very well be the best cared for weapon in the whole apocalypse. At the moment though it is nearing on being useless. You can feel its unreliable lightness dragging your pants down ever so slightly reminding you of the nuisance of the empty magazine.
In your right hand you grip a large blade as you walk through a seemingly empty town. You’re somewhere in Kansas, that is if you haven’t crossed any of the borders. You’ve noticed that the air around here is less bitter, does not burn your nostrils with the smell of rot. Still, you don’t let your guard down, you make sure that despite the slick handle of your knife that it is held securely in your palm. There might not be any zombies but you can’t say the same for people.
You find a corner store, the windows long since shattered and the store half empty. No luck on finding ammo, only empty shell casings. You do however find some medical supplies: tampons, rubbing alcohol, over the counter painkillers. Stuff that people didn’t think to take when all hell broke loose. It’s kind of difficult to think about your period starting next week as a walking corpse tries to naw your face off. Not much of anything else though, all food having been ransacked prior to your arrival. Carefully, you trudge your way over the broken glass hoping to not attract any unnecessary attention.
There are a couple of houses lining the street and you decide that it’s at least worth a shot to check them. Looking up and down the road you make your way across to the first house right in front of the corner store. It has a nice wrap around porch with two rocking chairs sitting side by side next to the front door. Leaves coat the seat and what looks to have once been white painted wood is now an off putting dark brown with only slim streaks left of paint. Still the closeness of them makes it easy to imagine a couple sitting there, or a mother and her child. When a breeze causes them to sway you snap your heads towards them in full alert, rolling your eyes when you realize it’s nothing. Some image of a past life is captured there in the deteriorating rocking chairs. You pay it no more than a glance.
The front door whines from being pushed open for the first time in what has likely been years. You’re quick to slip in through the gap guiding the door shut behind you. First thing you do when you step inside is pull closed the thin curtains coated in dust. They don’t do much, the mid morning light spills through the sheer material, you do it more so out of habit. You walk through the house casually but your footsteps remain light, not causing a single floorboard to creak beneath you. Your head peaks into the living room and you find an inhabitant in the form of a decaying corpse, a hundred percent dead you can tell after noticing the bashed in skull. You raise your hand up silently as if apologizing to the corpse for intruding.
Checking the rest of the house goes swiftly, you don’t find much except a paperback copy of Frankenstein that catches your eye. You remember reading it back in highschool forever ago and perhaps this is what leads to you slipping it into your bag. After all, the road can get a bit boring at times (not lonely, never lonely).
In the kitchen you find a couple of cans of food, mainly dog food but nowadays that’s like finding gold; plenty of protein in them. So, you stuff most of them into your bag and keep two in hand. You sigh walking into the living room where the corpse is. The way he sits there – body slumped and legs spread open – almost makes it seem like he’s about to ask you for a beer. “Mind if I sit here?” You ask and your question is answered with silence.
With a nod to yourself you take a seat next to him. The couch heaves a puff of dust and dirt as it takes on your weight. The dead body next to you is long past decomposed. He is more bone than flesh and the smell of him has long since diminished into a wispy scent of death. The hair on his head is intact though and so is the mechanic uniform that he wears. Sure a few holes ripped through by bugs and the now red rusted splatter of what must have been his blood, but for the most part the blue cloth of the uniform is pristine. You can even make out the name tag that hangs on his sagged chest that reads ‘Greg’.
You rest one of the cans on the coffee table in front of you and hold the other one in your hand. Bringing up the end of your knife you draw the edge of your blade against the top of the can, easily slicing the tin with the sharp edge. “Long day huh?” You pop the top off setting your knife down on your knee, wary to never place your weapons far from reach. With a glance over at him you reiterate “Or long four years?” and you say this because he must have been turned and killed at the start of the outbreak. If the uniform didn’t give it away then the way his skull was broken did; broken with hesitation, not hit with the precision of anyone who's been dealing with undead freaks for almost half a decade. Probably killed by someone he knew, maybe someone who loved him and despite his snarls saw him as the person he had been. Hard to kill a monster with a familiar face.
You lean back into the couch and draw the can to your lips slurping up the dog food with utmost pleasure. Your eyes scan over the TV and land on the window behind it. It faces out towards the corner shop and you imagine that once this must have been a nice place to live at. “Wonder what you’ve seen Greg.” The curtains sit stiff against the window, and the thought is genuine in your mind. You envision all the people who, like you, have come across him in death. All the people who have seen him and who he has seen in return. You shake your head loose of all these nonsensical thoughts; the apocalypse has given you too much time to think.
Halfway through your can of slushed up meat, your ears perk up at the sound of a muffled voice and static. You’re certainly not the only one who hears it though and what had been a quiet town begins to rumble with a low and hungry growl. Your eyes stay focused on the window in front of you where the main road runs down, your brows drawing together in confusion. The voice only grows closer and with it comes the thunderous whirl of a car engine. You realize now from the clear distortion to the voice that it’s some sort of speaker with an announcement running on repeat and the volume on full blast to ensure no one misses the news.
Your head snaps towards a window behind you as a mix of sluggish limp footsteps echo on the back porch. “Shit,” You mutter to yourself, grabbing a hold of your knife and bag and swiftly making a break for the nearest hiding place. Running out the living room your eyes land on the pantry closet which although empty you noted it as being very spacious. Your maneuver is rushed but stealthy as you pull open the door and thank your lucky stars that it doesn’t creak. You have just enough time to shut the door right as a zombie breaks in through one of the kitchen windows.
With a steady breath you look through the ridges of the closet door. Heavy growls emit from the kitchen and you see a blur of rotting walking flesh pass you by, then another and one more. Each stumbling in after the other. They toss themselves around aimlessly, their bodies twitch, latching on only to the sound of the booming speakers. One of them is freshly turned by the looks of it; shoulder pads and knee pads still on, a gun hooked to its hip. You wonder if it has ammo inside. You barely have time to wonder though as the car emitting the broadcast finally reaches your end of the street and garners all attention. The zombies rush past and you hear the sound of another window breaking as they crawl out after the sound.
You sit in the pantry for a long while past the blare of the repeating broadcast. After it passes by a cluster of zombies can be heard chasing after it in the street. You can’t imagine the distance that car has traveled and how many of those freaks it has attracted. All that just to announce something about a shooting competition. Damn Midwesterners, outright ruined your half pleasant morning. When the streets finally grow quite enough for your liking you step out of the pantry. Making your way over to the broken window you take a look outside and are satisfied to see only a few stragglers that got left behind. What you find curious however are the pieces of what seem like paper thrown about the asphalt.
You open the door leading towards the main street, knowing this time how to open it just enough so you can fit through but so that it doesn’t make noise. Slipping outside, still too quiet to be spotted, your feet are immediately met with a crinkly texture. The whole front porch is covered with paper just like the street, which you realize as you bend down to grab one are flyers. Taking the flyer that you stepped on and now holds a perfect imprint of the sole of your shoe, you read over the sloppy handwritten words: Shoot’n Competition in West Fields gas station! Prizes for runner ups ranging from canned foods to meds. First place winner wins a box of 9mm ammo.
The word stands out to you in bold glittering letters, ‘ammo’, you can smell the gunpowder already. You look over the flyer a couple more times. You aren't one to trust these sort of survivalist meetups but, you can't ignore the empty weight of your cold pistol pressed to your skin. You grunt and slip the flyer into your back pocket. After all, when in Kansas.