Category : Adult

Sub Category : Horror

Danny was started to feel her chest burning as she jogged, and a cramping sensation had started between her ribs and her hip. She slowed to a light jog, then began walking before she noticed she had been running along the side of the road. She grumbled at herself at her stupidity, wishing she had gotten over into the slightly overgrown bike path sooner and off of the very visible road.

She bent over, her head between her knees for a moment as she relaxed her body. She should have stretched before leaving that house, her body already felt tight and tired. Danny checked her immediate surroundings and allowed herself the time to properly stretch once she had ascertained that she was alone. 

Her skin was still turning a light shade of pinkish-tan. There hadn't been any sunscreen in the market, and she hadn't checked the house for any either. Normally, she would have scolded herself for entering a building without picking it clean, but knowing that she had narrowly avoided a hoarde at the park made her feel a bit better. Luck was both on and off of her side on this day, and she couldn't help feeling some sort of Karmic whiplash.

The bike path was only overgrown so far. Luckily the path was only brimming with tall grasses that whipped by her legs during her brisk walk to the gas station, though she was aware that she may incur those irritating tiny grass cuts by taking this route. A pain she would happily endure, a good trade-off for decent shade and low visibility for anyone other than herself. 

A stray corpse could be heard gargling and hissing somewhere through the trees, probably one that had gotten itself stuck on something and couldn't pull free. As far as she was concerned, it may as well be the wind catching the leaves in her ears. As much as she'd like to rid the world of the dead one by one, Danny knew that going out into the trees and killing the loud corpse was a mistake that she couldn't risk. She could trip and break an ankle, or get bitten or scratched while finishing it off, her weapon could break or her bag could get dropped off a ravine... Not all of her worries were completely likely, but had they happened because she went out of her way to do something unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, she would be an idiot.

Danny stopped only briefly to instead her water container from her bag, letting the water slosh around on her tongue for a moment before letting it drip down her throat. She took another short pull from the bottle before putting it back and started a light jog once more. 

Her feet were starting to give the telltale signs of pre-blistering, tiny pinches of pain every once in a while had slowly grew into sharp stings every time her feet landed on the ground. Her shoes were wearing uncomfortably thin, and her socks felt non-existent. She would probably have to re-supply and sleep in a tree again until her feet healed, but the path ahead was unknown to her. She couldn't rest now, not without knowing the midway point's inventory. If she used her supplies up by the time she got there, and it was empty... She would be hungry and dehydrated by the time she made it to the town on the other side. She jogged through the pain, knowing that it was all she could do for now.

Before she made it another 100 feet, she was knocked onto her ass. She screamed out of sheer shock, dropping her pipe to the grass.

Luckily for Danny, the cause for her toppling was a large and very slobbery canine covered in mounds of fluff. By the look of it, the animal wasn't infected, though perhaps a little tired and thirsty. By glance, one would assume the dog was a very dirty sheep, but it was clear after giving it a good once or twice-over that it was a large poodle. A very large poodle.

"I didn't know there were dogs like you that didn't fit into stuffy old lady's purses..." She said, getting up and dusting herself off only to get a big, fat lick on her face. As gross as it seemed, Danny's face probably now looked more clean than it had been in a long while. The large poodle whined lowly and rubbed against her leg, obviously over-encumbered by it's own matted fur. She shook her head, denying its obvious request.

"That big fur of yours is probably the only reason you haven't been eaten alive yet, buddy." She grabbed her pipe and pat the dog on its fluffy head, starting her jog once again. To her displeasure, the dog happily trotted beside her, without a care in the world. It had probably been a long time since this dog had seen anyone alive, which made her feel a bit bad for it. She paused, looking down at the massive puff of mud and fluff.

"I can't feed you now. If you want to follow, you can have scraps if there's any. That's all I can do." She said, knowing the dogs probably only understood the word scraps out of anything she had said. Nevertheless, the dog seemed pleased as punch to continue its trailing behind her. 

Before the end began, Danny had loved dogs. If it wasn't the end of things, Danny would have fed the dog the entire contents of her pack and taken the canine home. But the end was here. She couldn't give away food to every stranger she came across, strangers died. People, dogs, and so many other things weren't made to survive this world.

Her jogging was really taking a toll, and she started to lose count of the miles she had travelled. She slowed down to a walk to relax her stiff muscles. Her chest felt tight, and there was a pressure in her hip that told her that she was pushing herself. She had to be close now.

"How the hell did you survive this long?" She wondered aloud to herself about the dog who she had reluctantly allowed to become her new companion. It didn't wear a collar, or at least there was no way to see or feel it through that mountain of fur, but it was clear that the dog hadn't been starving to death when it found her. She supposed there were a few reasoning she could think of.

"So... you either just recently lost your old pal to the dead, or you're the most resourceful food-finding pet that there ever was." Danny found herself hoping for the latter, maybe the dog was amazing at finding edible things to keep it going. Or perhaps a very skilled hunter. Poodles could hunt, right? Without a working computer or still-standing library, she supposed she may never truly know the answer to that unless she saw it.

The dog whined behind her and somehow it almost sounded like some sort of warning. She stopped her jogging and looked back at the dog, noting it's fat tail trying to tuck unsuccessfully between it's legs. That was a scared dog, and it was trying to tell her something.

"What'd'ya see?" She crouched down to the dog's level and saw it under the dense overgrowth of the leaves from above. The gas station. She sighed in relief, reminding herself to mark on her map later that yes, it was indeed a gas station after all. The broken neon sign read "Needs and Wants" in big, swirly lettering. What a creepy name for a shop. She kept at a very slow pace now, the dog lagging behind before taking a few tiny steps and stopping again. The dog mustbe smelling one of the dead ones creeping around the building, and Danny'd be damned if she didn't take heed of the small warning she was being given.

She listened more and more intently the closer she got, but she heard no upset gurgling, nor did she hear growls and screeches. Usually the dead were... well, they weren't inherently very stealthy and were usually easy to hear when the world was as silent as it was. As she reached the rusted gas pumps, she tapped the metal nice and hard with her pipe, a dull clack sounding shortly. If there were any dead around, they would make themselves known.

Nothing.

She peeked into the windows, but they were so glossed over with dozens of advertisements for liquor and cigarettes that there was little to no way to fully see inside other than the spot right next to the register. It looked empty, if not a little ransacked and pilfered. There did seem to see bottles of water in the back refigerators, though the absence of flickering light inside suggested that the power had been off for months, if not longer.

Danny opened the door and checked the perimeter, no dead faces... though a sunbleached cardboard standee of some large-chested celebrity holding a can of Bro Light nearly gave her a heart-attack. She avoided eye-contact with Boobila Canderson and snapped the small lock shut behind her, but when testing the door afterwards, it seemed the lock had been broken off and rendered useless. She groaned inwardly at the nuisance and continued her quick survey of the gas station.

There was no one here, aside from the panting at the door and the following whine of the dog that was behind her. She let the door open a tad and the dog hopped inside, tail suddenly wagging once more. The dog parked it by the register, looking out of the free space at the window like a lookout. 

"The front of the store is dead-free. Let's check the back." She nabbed a flashlight off of the counter and clicked it on, the light dim but still useable. The employee lounge/ back room was unlocked, so it pushed open the same as the front door. With an uncomfortably loud squeak, the door opened, revealing what looked like blood, but it had been smeared and cleaned up. Who had tried to wash out the blood?

There was a mop in the corner, but her eyes fixated on the damp end of it, eyes widening at the sight of the unpopped bubbles on the ground. 

Someone had tried to clean up recently.

Before she could turn to leave the building, she was stopped by a loud click and a cold barrel being pressed against the back of her skull, the silence echoing in hear ears around the sound of the hammer being pulled back.

"The sign said closed."