Category : Adult

Sub Category : Horror

After a few hours of sulking and pondering the world and its many injustices, Danny decided that it was time for her to leave this town and its memories behind. Though, it was just the singular memory of a little jean skirt and a sunshine tee that she wanted to expel from her mind. Such a short life, and Danny had seen littke to none of it. Just knowing that she had only known this little girl for less than an hour and her heart still felt like it was being crushed into her stomach made her much more wary about finding living people. She could not do this again. She shoved Val's sweet dimpled face far into the corner of her mind with her other ghosts and trudged downstairs.

Filling her bottled waters with the warm tap, she hydrated herself once more. She was sure she had cried every bit of moisture out of her body in that market, and now felt too similar to the crackling stem of a dried leaf.

Danny made her way to the dinner table and moved aside the place settings to make way for her map. She unfolded it and uncapped a marker, eyes easily scanning the town. From Mayfair, the closest town was south, the town she had come from quite a while prior. The second closest town was nearly 25 miles away to the northeast, but there seemed to be a gas station about mid-way between the two. At least, it looked like a gas station from the little symbol on the page. The creases in the map were getting a bit thin by now and some things were harder to make out. 

Danny did the process in her head and adjusted for possible traffic(traffic of course being possible dead flocks passing through), counting her supplies in her head. As much as she'd like to bring another backpack or a duffel of supplies, it would mean less maneuverability, she would need to take more breaks, and she will have made herself the ideal mark for raiders. What she had would last, but she knew how to survive off the land as best she could. She had eaten a hand-caught hare before when she had run out of supplies, but the trapping process required one to stay put. She had decided it was best to hunt on the go. 

After tracking the path to the possible gas station and putting a checkbox near it and the next town, she folded her map and put it back into the zip lock bag she kept it in. She breathed in a long steeling breath and opened the door, pipe in hand. She walked down main street toward the small park and to the east, knowing the exit out of town to the northeast was going to be through the park and it's bridge.

Danny made a mental note not to glance at the Market and walked on, feeling that cold pit in her stomach return for an uncomfortable comeback. The frosted cookies in her backpack felt a bit heavier than they did before, but she continued her path, focusing on the bits of green further down the road.

The park was lovely, though the grass was getting a little too high. Grass and bramblebushes had overtaken every woodchip-lined playplace, swings and merry-o-round alike had been overgrown to the point of becoming stationary. Not a faint creak or groan from the metal could be heard as the stray greenery twisted and grew around it. Inanimate objects were much quieter than the living when they were devoured. For that, Danny was grateful.

Just as she made it to the rusted cyclone fence's gate, she stopped and flung herself into the nearest bramblebush, fighting the painful hiss that threatened to leave her lips as the feel of scratches formed on her flesh. Half a dozen dead were shuffling just past the gate, and had started to claw at the fencing. The hands that scraped through the diamond pattern signalled that she had been spotted and she climbed out of the brush. She readied her pipe, but knew it would be safer to jog out and around the park. There were too many here to risk a fight, one wrong move and she could lose sight of one. 

"Shit." She grumbled and started her light jog up through the junglegym area, not liking what she was hearing ahead. She slowed to a walk and peered through the gates in the front, only to be stopped completely by what she saw. 

An entire group of them, raspy hissing growing in size as they bumped into one another, funneling through the north tunnel and into the town. They must had been blocked off until now... maybe their shambling corpses were just strong enough as a group to push the blockade out of their way. Danny felt her stomach tighten and her chest fill to bursting with fear, she fought the panic in her body and slowly walked back to the park gate she had refused to pass through before. 

Six...
There were six here and all stopped by the cyclone fence. She walked up to them and pulled her knife free, checking the perimeter before getting close to the metal. The corpse closest to the gate wore a red t-shirt, the gaping wound in it's neck telling a tale of pain and woe. She quickly ran her blade through his temple, seeing as he was unable to look at her head-on with his injury.

Another gnawed against the fence, her lips and nose pressing uncomfortably against the metal, she chewed uncaringly on the links as her lips and nose were scraped and torn off by the sharp exposed nuts and bolts facing her side. Blood dripped down her chin like the remnants of very old, pulp-filled orange juice sloshing off of a grimy truck-stop diner table. Danny dug her knife into her groaning mouth, twisting fast to make sure she was really dead.

As the dead woman flopped to the ground, it seemed to a pool the others, one of their hands lifting to grab at the fence. The latchflipped open and the dead limped in.

Four...

Four more until she could get the hekk out of this doomed town. That hoarse of corpses was heading her way and she needed to put as much distance between her and them as she could. If they continued south, she'd be okay on her trip, but they were going to come right through the park first.

Danny made a quick switch of her weapons, holding her pipe in both hands, but also gripped the knife the opposite way on the back. Danny once had a rigged slot for her knife to sit into, but it had broken after a particularly tough fight a few months prior.

As the Hawaiian shirt-clad grandpa clawed the air in front of her, she swung her pipe at his jaw, the blow catching him off guard. The corpse didn't seem to mind the strike, only turning his head to face her yet again, blood and bile slipping past his graying mustachioed lips and staining his Hawaiian button-up. 

The sounds of popping and crackling could be heard from the group now, showing their age. They must have turned weeks ago, but didn't look as starved as she assumed they would. Perhaps they had found the odd animals to feast upon near the park, and she immediately wished she had kept herself from thinking about their survival instincts. She winced, seeing the hand of Hawaiian shirt-clad Grandpa. He was holding desperately tight to a red striped leash. The end looked like it had been chewed clean off, but somehow, she knew the chewing hadn't been done by any dog.

Danny cracked the dead man across the face again and finished him off with a back-stab to the throat with her weapon. She heard the crunch of bone, and saw the definite disconnect in his eyes when the spinal cord was severed. 

Her victory was short lived, as she turned to ready herself for another attack, there was a corpse grasping her pipe and dragging her closer. She lowered herself a bit before kicking a leg out, planting her foot on it's shredded, empty chest. With a bit more effort than she cared to admit, she shoved it away with her shoe, it's crackling elder body landed onto one of the overgrown benches and seemed to struggle against the wood for a short time.

Before she could try her luck on more fighting, the sound of a car alarm sobered her adrenaline high. It was coming from the south side of town, most likely the truck that had taken a dunk in the river by the sound of it. The dead all seemed to find it interesting enough, and started their slow journey to find the sound. No doubt the tunnel creatures would follow the noise as well, the sad-sounding off-key whine from the truck's cab making her escape easy.

She jogged past the Hawaiian shirt grandpa's lingering body and had to force the gate closed behind her after kicking off one of the dead from clutching it's wrinkled, bloodied hands on the metal. Though it was dead(and now brain-dead), it still had a tight grasp of the fencing. If any of them later decided that she looked tastier than the already dead man that was trapped in the blaring cab, she wanted to feel assured that they were going to follow without some sort of effort on their part. 

She heaved a hearty breath into her lungs, doing her best to pay little mind to the sounds of the dozens if not a hundred dead that slowly rampaged and tarnished the already dilapitated streets of Mayfair as they stumbled through. They would probably destroy what was left of the calm beauty in the park just by walking through, though Danny reminded herself that this was simply the norm now.

The dead walked. Nothing pretty survives a world where the living die and the dead return.

As Danny jogged to the roadside, a pair of dark eyes watchjng her movements from the underbrush. Her journey was about to get much more dangerous.