Category : Adult

Sub Category : Horror

The morning was cold, a bit colder than it had been in the previous weeks. The summer heat was officially in the past and Fall was settling in nicely in its place. Fresh dew dripped from the thin, pointed needles that dotted the lower branches of the old pine Danny had found herself camping out under the night before. She still lie curled in a tight ball by the doused fire, her supplies tucked under a weathered gray tarp.

One particularly large drop accumulated through dozens of needles before falling onto Danny's lightly freckled face with a Plop. She jerked awake and drew a roughed-up looking knife from under her pillow. (Her pillow of course being a torn sweatshirt that lay atop a pile of the pine needles she had gathered up the night prior.) Her bleary, waking eyes finally came into focus and she saw that she was alone. She wiped the dew from her nose with a quiet groan and flopped back onto the makeshift pillow, pine needles escaping out of their sweatshirt prison and onto the crunchy leaf-covered ground with the force.

The sun was somewhere close to the horizon, but definitely not close enough to warrant her to finish waking up. She was about to give herself another few minutes of rest before a low growl rumbled and set her on edge. Of the two growling sounds that she was used to in this world, the one coming from her stomach at the moment was both a blessing and a curse.

"Breakfast it is..." She mumbled to herself, lazily rubbing her stomach a bit to try to massage the hunger pains away. To her dismay, though not to her surprise, it wasn't successful.

Danny hadn't had a decent meal in nearly two weeks now. Scraps of food, edible plants and old canned goods had been the primary source of food for her after she was separated from the group. She was down to her last can of what she assumed must be Pasta-O's by the scraped and torn label and she had been saving it. She rose from her uncomfortable spot on the forest floor and started putting her things away into her backpack.

She shook out her sweatshirt pillow and folded it up until she could roll it into the bottom of the bag, then put the can of Pasta-O's next to it. There were a few markers already in their pouch inside the bag (for keeping track of where she had been) and a map of the area. Mayfair was the closest town, and that's where she was going to have to go today if she wanted to eat. If she went up north, there would be a river, but there was a road that passed through it on the map, so that's where she would be able to cross. It was a bit out of the way, but she didn't trust the water. One wrong move and she will have survived this whole living dead situation to get killed by something as trivial as the undertow.

After she was sure that her things were put away, she shoved her knife into the makeshift sheath at her hip and grabbed the iron pipe she had leaned against the other side of the tree last night. She slung the hiking pack over her shoulder and looped her arm through the other side. She was ready for the trek, and her stomach was agreeing whole-heartedly.

She walked at a resting pace as she went, keeping her breathing regulated while she went. Every day was another marathon of survival, and she couldn't risk tiring herself out too much or tripping and spraining an ankle. The dead walked slow, but not too slow to catch up to a hobbling mess.

As she walked, Danny pulled her long brown hair from her loose braid and ran her fingers through the greasy strands, doing her best to de-tangle it. It felt disgusting, she hadn't used hair product in nearly three weeks and the last bath had been a freezing cold one-man splash-war in a creek about five days ago. When it felt smooth enough, she slicked back her locks and re-braided it.

The sun had cooked her skin rather nicely through the canopy of leaves and needles above her. The once pallid tone to her skin was a bit darker now, though not quite what someone would describe as a tan. The tops of each shoulder and whatever part of her neck was exposed to the sun were a bit pink, she would have to look for sunscreen on her trip too. People overlooked the need for it when they are worried about being torn apart. But a sunburn means hot skin, dehydration, and the possibility of losing sleep because of pain. Sunburns were dangerous in their own way.

By the time Danny found the road, she felt herself get chills, radiating from her stomach, outward. Too much walking, too little fuel in her tank. She fought the urge to dry heave what she could only assume was stomach acid from her gut, knowing that food was just past the river. There would be a town to scavenge from, and there will be food. Just enough to get her to the next town, that was all she needed.

As she continued pumping herself up for the trip, trying to calm herself and build her confidence, she stopped dead at the bridge.

It's completely broken.

The road dipped into a simple, narrow, one-lane bridge, but by the look of the overturned 18-wheeler in the water, it hadn't been too sturdy when this truck took a turn onto it. Danny studied the truck, hoping it's contents could be salvageable, but was sad to see the back doors flung open and dozens of chairs and tables had been stacked inside. She supposed it would have too lucky to have found a truck full of food or water. But it would have been really nice.

She made her way over to the broken part of the bridge, seeing that she could easily hop from one broken end to the truck, to the other side. She desperately stared at the spot she chose to jump to on the truck, looking for any moisture that might make her slip and fall into the sharp steel metal bar that was sticking up at an odd angle. How did the truck manage to do that?

With a breath, she picked up a little bit of speed and hopped to the truck. She didn't have any time to panic, hearing the gargled and raspy hisses and growls from inside the cab below her. The guy had died from the crash... That was a shame. Without thinking further about the man in the truck, she leapt onto the other side, using the metal bar as leverage. She started a light jog away from the truck, not wanting to be anywhere near that loud dead man. 

She had seen flocks and herds of the dead before. They heard something loud enough to draw the attention of a dumb animal and wandered toward it, sometimes by the dozens. Waves of foul-smelling, putrid corpses walking and twitching in tandem. They destroyed everything in sight, if only by passing by.

Her jogging made the trip seem shorter, and she found the sign that she had been looking for. A literal sign, it looked hand-carved and detailed, though the paint job was cracked and sun-bleached. She supposed that the people who used to re-paint the sign were either long-dead or busy surviving somewhere out there. She had to really squint to see the town's name, Mayfair, but the little town slogan at the bottom was nigh impossible to read until she got face-to-face with it. "Home since 1892" At least, that's what it looked like it said. The numbers were really warped from time and neglect. 

Danny moved slowly through town, using everything as cover to scope out main street without being spotted. No matter who hung their hat here, living or dead, she didn't feel like making friends. She found a market and looked through the window, dust and grime gaming the inside of the glass. She squeezed tightly to her steel pipe and opened the door as slow as she could manage. 

She froze when the door triggered a tiny bell to dangle back and forth, the tiny brass clacker clinking rather sadly against the lip. A low grumble caught her attention and her eyes flew to the dead woman ambling slowly her way. By her soiled and bloodied outfit, she had once worked at the market, her nametag read "Mabel, and by the look of her bloodied gray hair, she had been in her sixties when she was bitten. She didn't look bitten, but by the stains and muck around her mouth and apron, she had at least killed one person since becoming this.

"Mabel... over here..." Danny led her away from the goods in her store and close to the window she had apparently feasted near before. She cocked back her pipe and swung it with all the strength she could muster down onto the base of the old dead lady's skull, dropping her to the ground. Her head lolled a bit, but it seemed her body was reluctant to move. Danny gave the old woman one more blow in the same spot, and the tiny movement stopped. Please, stay dead. 

Danny quickly checked the rest of the small market for any other dead, but found that Mabel and the gnawed-on skeleton near the window had been the only occupants. The market had been mostly wrecked, but there was a lot of food and supplies here. She hesitated to use the words gold mine, but this felt like a blessing after the last few weeks she had been through. 

She grabbed the can opener from her bag and tossed it aside, replacing it with the packaged one she had found near the old register. She had to tear the blisterpack open with her knife, but the new can opener was a big step up from the squeaking rusted thing she had been using.

The first thing she opened was a pop-up can of tea, then she slowly took a bag of cookies. There were a lot of cookies left here, and crackers. She checked their scent for mold, but they were in decent condition, if not a little stale. She hadn't had something sweet since this whole mess started, and a little stale flavor wasn't going to stop her from taking a bite. The icing dipped ...Zebra?... was popped into her mouth and she started to feel tears well up uncomfortably in her eyes, chewing slowly as her mouth watered unnaturally at the taste. 

Danny felt a wave of nostalgia as the tears burned down her probably very dirty face and created clean rivers down her cheeks. She remembered these silly pink and white animal cookies. She had hated them as a kid, but her dad had loved them. He would bring big bags of them home and crunch down on the little sprinkle-spattered animals while we watched T.V. As a child, Danny would always take a pink animal from the bag and stare at it, trying to figure out why her father loved them so much. She would nibble at it, but his love for the tiny animal cookies was a mystery to her. They made her tongue feel waxy, the sprinkles would get stuck between her little teeth, and the cookie inside the frosting was a simple animal cracker.

This was probably the worst breakfast for her body, bingeing on cookies was never a good idea. She spotted a few cans of tuna in the next aisle and promised herself she would savor a few more cookies and then put some real food into her stomach. She sighed, thinking of her dad as she nibbled at a little white elephant. She had hated these cookies so much, but right now, it was the best thing she had ever eaten.