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Michael was walking, walking, walking. Endless walking. It was with far more purpose than he'd had in a long time, at least. Almost three years spent on his own, hiding from survivors and foraging like an animal. So maybe this year would be different. He cinched his backpack more tightly behind himself and checked for the tenth time that nothing had fallen out of it. A quick pat of his pockets and he was confident his knife hadn't taken an impromptu flying lesson to the middle of nowhere. He looked up, noting the highway rising high above him. "I'd hate to have to walk up there, wouldn't you?" he asked, turning to look at his traveling companions, a woman and a dog.
"Right? I mean, it'd be really hot up there! The asphalt gets all heated up...I mean, I guess it is pretty cold this time of year, but it'd still be annoying to go up there." He zipped up and unzipped and zipped his coat for perhaps the twentieth time that day. "You holdin' up alright? Only a couple hundred thousand miles to Baltimore! I never was good at math, so maybe I'm off by a few. Anyway. We'll be there soon enough. Maybe run into a few survivors with a working fireplace..." He rubbed his hands together eagerly. And also to keep warm. Both were good reasons.
Haven tugged on the drawstring of her hoodie, tightening it around her head. She'd let her wild hair down for this rare occasion, allowing it to insulate her head and neck. It was one of the few times she was grateful that she'd always been too sentimental to cut it off.
"I have to doubt that the asphalt would be too hot to walk on if the air is this cold," she said, looking up at the highway. "Not that it matters much, I doubt we could get up there anytime soon." She shrugged. "We've got a few more hours of walking in us, though, huh Bee?"
Hearing her name, the dog beside her looked up expectantly, and Haven smiled, scratching under her chin. "Anyway, it's about seven hundred miles from Baltimore to Atlanta, and I've already traveled most of that. It can't be that far."
"That's the way to think!" he replied cheerfully, keeping his eyes peeled for shamblers trying to sneak up on them. "And when we get to Baltimore, we're getting a nice home cooked meal. I haven't had barbecue in over three years. My god, if I ever got my hands on ribs again..."
Michael licked his lips and immediately regretted it. His lips were already getting chapped from the cold. The cold grass crunched under his feet, and he looked around some more, this time for actual buildings. "So, see any good looking places on the horizon yet? Some place where I can burn their chairs for a fire. We can heat up some of the beans! Warm beans! For the first while after the apocalypse hit, I ate all the beans I could cold. Also the chips. Man, potato chips went fast. If you see a potato, let me know so I can try making some chip!"
His stomach growled dangerously at all the mentions of food, and he put a hand to it in an effort to hush it up.
"What about you? What food do you miss the most? Is it Twinkies? Better not be Snowballs."
Last Edit: Jan 24, 2016 22:38:21 GMT -5 by Deleted
"And we're getting this home-cooked meal from where, exactly?" Haven asked, her tone more amused than anything else. "I mean, I guess supplies in the city won't last forever, eventually any survivor will have to grow their own food..." She trailed off, glancing around, listening for the sound of biters approaching. "I never thought of a day where it was difficult to remember what ramen tasted like. Is it too stereotypical if that's most of what I ate in school? It was fast and cheap, you didn't even have to leave the lab to make it. When my advisor wasn't around I'd sit there and eat while waiting for results."
"I don't necessarily miss it, though. It's funny, now, the whole world of food to eat and I ate salty cardboard noodles all the time. What I wouldn't give for a caesar salad with a side of fries." She smirked to herself, shifting her backpack on her narrow shoulders. "You? You really miss chips the most?"
"Nah. It's just a close second! I miss pizza most of all! And soda too, honestly. God, it's hard finding any cans of the stuff. Forget those two liter bottles, those things were gone in seconds. Hey, if we see the Coca-Cola HQ on the way up, we should stop. They gotta have, like, a mountain of the stuff squirreled away!" he replied excitedly, motor-mouth never stopping. "And yes, it's incredibly stereotypical. When I was in college I ate it too. Plus cheetos. I really miss those little crunchy ones now too. Maybe when we restart society we'll find some food eggheads to make us some more! We could even find some beans and grind our own coffee!"
He mimicked wiping away a single tear of joy. Coffee was a sad thing to let go of, just like soda. All that caffeine made for some serious all nighters. "And obviously we'll get the meal from all the people still left up there! There's gotta be more survivors somewhere. Virginia's mostly dry, though I never went too far from Richmond. Guess all the hillbillies hid themselves away when things got bad, can't find a damn one of 'em. 'Least you can trip over a moonshine still sometimes in case you really just want to go blind."
He paused, thinking for a moment, then added: "You see any settlements yet? People resurfacing? I used to find livin' people a lot, but they're all gone now. Think I saw some of 'em again, trying to take a bite out of me. Shoot, what if we run into some sort of, like, cannibal coven? Like outta those old horror movies! Man, that'd be awesome. Y'know, aside from getting almost eaten by cannibals."
"Nah," Haven mumbled, almost looking downtrodden. "I'm not really much of a people person. I work better with mice. Or dogs." She shrugged. "Truth is I haven't really seen anyone in quite some time. Just... haven't run into anyone. Same as you, right? I mean, not everyone survives this long. Judging by the number of biters we've seen, I'd venture most of them don't. And the number that don't keeps rising every day."
She paused. "...Not to be a total downer or anything."
Last Edit: Jan 24, 2016 23:08:24 GMT -5 by Deleted
"Psh, just means the movie based on our survival will be even cooler. Action heroes win against long odds all the time!" he replied, rolling his eyes. "Now, you call them biters? I get that. I call them shamblers. Because they all got that weird walk. See, now you can tell we're out of things to say when I bring up names for the damn things trying to eat us!"
He shook his head, putting his hands on his hips.
"You think..." he said after a few minutes of silent traveling, as the blustery wind blew around them. "You think some of those cars still work?"
He pointed up at the highway. "I mean, if we could find one that still did, we could get to Baltimore way faster! Unless it's outta gas. Hm. Would make it easier to get where we're going. But the noise might draw shamblers...But then Bee could ride with the window down like dogs love to do. You think it's worth a check at the next on-ramp? It'd need to be a four-wheeler, no way the roads up in D.C. aren't clogged to hell and back!"
The wind blew around them again and hit Michael like a slap to the face. He shivered, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Plus the heaters in them might still work. Or we can keep walking. I mean, it's up to you. I was a guy living in a shed before this. Gas clerk before that."
Haven reflexively glanced up at the highway above them, which was really an entirely futile action as they couldn't see much of anything up there from their position beneath the highway. "I mean, I guess it would be faster. And it would give us some semblance of armor against these things." She said with a shrug. "It's all just wistful thinking, though. Even if there are working cars up there that haven't been scrapped for parts of taken by some other survivor years ago, there isn't going to be any gas left. We were too reliant on cars before this all started, I can't imagine most survivors gave that up easily. Gas was probably the first thing after ammo to get rare. It's not like there's any oil drills left in working condition."
She didn't sound entirely sure about that. Or maybe it was just the sound of hope trying to creep into her tone at the thought of how excited Bee used to get for car rides. "I suppose it couldn't hurt to check, though. There might still be some supplies in some of the cars, too. People packed up and left in a hurry when this all started, it can't have all been picked through already."
Michael nodded, thinking. "Yeah, yeah, at the least there might be some junk food some soccer mom had packed in the back of an SUV! Reminds me, let's check under the cars before we raid them. Saw one guy get grabbed from under it, apparently some dumb fool got hit by the car and kicked it, then crawled under it and waited."
He shivered again, either from the cold or the thought of getting sneakily grabbed by a walker from under a car. Probably both, in all honesty. "Plus we could get a hat for Bee! You know, accessorize. It's the apocalypse, our one chance to steal without feeling bad about it. Dog hats gotta be mostly untouched. So it's settled, we'll hit an on-ramp and check the cars. Maybe stab a few shamblers if they're still stuck in their seatbelts. Y'know."
With a newfound goal, Michael marched onwards, eyes peeled for a way onto the highway. Hopefully it wouldn't be long until they found one. If it got to be night time, he didn't fancy trying to sleep in a burned out wreck of a vehicle. Especially not if there were still bandits roaming the area.
"You ever get hit by bandits?" he asked suddenly, as the thought occurred to him. "See a few groups of them runnin' around. Guess you could say they're just survivors. But hell, gotta call the guys who stick people for a slice of cheese something."
Haven had to admit, Mike at least kept things interesting. Keeping things interesting was a lot more important than she'd have expected before the apocalypse started. Funny how things like that worked.
She grew quiet, however, when he asked her about bandits. "Bandits? Why?" She asked, avoiding looking at him. "What's so interesting about bandits, huh? They're just dirty thieves is what they are, taking what other people have in times of weakness, preying on people when they can't fight back. You know, at least one of those things will be honest with you. I mean yeah they want to eat you but they don't hide it. In my opinion that makes them quite a bit less dangerous than people." she'd gone from speaking to what was essentially ranting, her voice raising in pitch the more she spoke, though thankfully not raising in volume.
"Woah, take it easy, man!" Michael exclaimed, turning to face her and raising his hands in mock surrender. "I didn't say they were good people or anything. I never killed another person, uh, for, you know, their stuff. I keep my kills to the things trying to eat everyone. Lets me sleep at night." He pursed his lips. It was a little obvious she'd had a run-in with bandits. But she probably wouldn't talk about it. Darn.
"Well, look on the bright side. We don't kill other people for what they got, so if we do kick it, whatever's up there will be a lot happier to see us. Plus bandits don't keep dogs. Their loss. You know what I miss? Cats. You don't see them much anymore. Probably all gone feral, the ones that are left."
He sounded a little sad, his voice growing a little quieter. Poor cats. No humans to dominate anymore, since most people would gut them and eat them for dinner now. "But hey, don't worry about bandits. You can hear them comin' a mile away. Dumb fools. Everyone wants to be the badass who shoots fifty shamblers, but then you got people like us. We're smart, we sneak. Works on humans and shamblers! When we get that car, we'll make it sneaky too! Paint it in camo, rip a real good muffler that hasn't rusted into flaky pieces by now..." He trailed off, then pointed ahead, past a few regular roads and trees.
"Look, do you see that there? Is that an exit? Man. I should have seen an eye doctor before the dead got up again."
Haven glanced down at her feet at the thought of all the poor dogs and cats that had probably become meals for those things. Or worse, for people who should know better. The poor things never had a chance. Bee nudged her hand, resting her nose in her handler's palm, and Haven couldn't help but smile at her. That dog was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
She didn't respond to him for a while, content to let him babble, as he seemed so prone to do. It gave her time to think. Or avoid thinking. Depends on the subject of the thought in question, really. God, did she miss the time when the most difficult thing she had to deal with was picking a thesis topic. The panic of trying to come up with one specific topic to sum up years of research felt so far away. To think, she'd have had a doctorate already if the end of the world hadn't interrupted her schooling. They'd better give her that degree for free once all of this was over. Otherwise it would take her forever to redo all of that lost research.
She was trying to imagine how exactly she would restart her research in a post-apocalyptic society when Mike stopped and said something about an on ramp. And, true to his word, there was an on ramp in the visible distance. That was a good thing, wasn't it?
"Well there we go. Let's just be cautious though, alright? Not that I need to remind you, I'm just stressing that we're at a disadvantage here. We don't know what's up there and we're walking up a hill, so we won't be able to see until we get there. I just hope it's worth it."
"Yeah, yeah, we're both grizzled veterans by now, right? Shoot. I don't know how long its been. I remember at least one winter. This is the third....Three year veterans, bingo. Shoot, the living are more of a problem than the dead. The dead don't keep eating all my god damn chips!" he exclaimed, slipping his knife out of his pocket as he creeped forwards. As they headed onwards, Mike became more quiet, running his tongue over his teeth.
Up ahead was the on-ramp, cars lined up like ducks in a row across the road running by and all the way up the ramp. "Look for anything with 'Jeep' slapped on it. Trucks too," he whispered to the pair. "If you see a monster truck, even better. Then we can take the highway no problem!" He snickered at his own joke. It felt good to laugh. It felt good to not be sitting by himself in his shed.
Felt good to not be eating more beans.
He crept forwards, straining his ears as hard as he could as he felt his pulse rising. Getting a chunk taken out of you wasn't a pretty way to go, he didn't want to ever suffer that fate.
"Hey, just because I'm a girl doesn't mean I don't know anything about cars. I know at least that they have several wheels and the shiny letters are the name of the car."
Haven glanced at Mike, smirking, but then quickly returned to seriousness as they neared the onramp. There were cars along the side of the road, some of them overturned. There must have been panic here. Of course there was, there'd been panic everywhere. What else would happen when the dead started eating people?
Bee nudged her hand away roughly, prompting her to look down at the dog. "Hey, I don't think we're alone," she said to her traveling companion. "Keep an eye out for biters." She glanced down into an SUV that was on its side, and jabbed the pointed end her axe into the skull of a rather tired-looking biter, still strapped in to the passenger seat. "She might have just been reacting to this guy, but if there's one here there's bound to be more."
After glancing over the SUV to make sure that had been the only biter left (and trying not to think about who had driving the car), she started checking it for supplies. Maybe that biter had been enough to deter looters from it.
"Right, right. Biters everywhere. They couldn't have had the decency to stay frozen this time. One of these winters..." he grumbled, sneaking up towards a small sedan that had smashed into a the guard rail on one side of the road. The engine was totally a no-go, but nobody ever thought to check these kinds of cars for supplies. Granted, with how much time had past, anything perishable was useless. So hopefully people were junk food addicts...
He got down onto his stomach and checked under the car. No shambler waiting to crawl out and grab his ankles, which was good. He sidled up to the car and knocked on the rear passenger window, just behind the driver's seat, and waited a few moments. His heart was pounding in his chest, God only knew what things were still inside the car.
Nothing happened.
"Think this one might have had actual people walk away from it!" he whispered.
He moved up to the driver's seat and glanced in through the window, but it was difficult to see inside. He tried the handle.
Klunk!
The door swung open and released a foul stench, making Mike gag. Where the driver should have been, there was a half-rotted away corpse. It wasn't a shambler. The airbag seemed to have failed to deploy, and the poor guy's skull had been smashed in when he hit the rail.
"Scratch that, poor guy bought it on day zero."
His stomach churning, Mike quietly took his knife and sank it into the weakest looking part of the skull a few times, then cleaned it on the dead fellow's shirt before starting to look for the trunk latch.
"Poor bastard, but I guess he's better off than the ones that turned." Haven turned back toward Mike with a sigh. "This is going to take a while, you know that?"
She glanced over at Mike as she started toward the next car that wasn't completely burned out. Bee remained glued to her side as she checked under the car, remembering Mike's advice about grabby ones. The car was empty. So was the trunk, its paint chipped like it had been broken open. A thorough search of the car failed to reveal the keys, but when she checked the engine she realized that wouldn't matter anyway. She didn't know much about engines, but it wasn't hard to see that the car had been stripped for parts. Frustrated, she sighed.
Mike finally found the switch, pressing it down opened the trunk with a Ka-chunk! sound. Michael froze for a few moments, straining his ears for the tell-tale shufflestep noise of a shambler approaching. When it appeared nothing had been disturbed, he back out of the car and shut the door quietly, cutting the smell off from the rest of the world. "We'll know in a moment, but odds are it'll take quite a few cars before we get something. Most of these exterior ones have been stripped. The ones towards the interior..."
He shuddered, shaking his head as he looked towards Haven.
"You thought cities were bad? Imagine being stuck in the middle of one where all the walkers are within arm's reach of you, held back by cheap leather straps. No one goes into the heavy traffic without being ready for hell."
He ambled over to the trunk and raised it up. He blinked a few times, then reached in and pulled out...
A single can of dog food.
"Well, lucky day for Bee?" he said, turning to Haven and holding the can up.
Haven actually grinned when she saw the can of dog food. Every bit of food she had stocked up for Bee felt like another night she could sleep okay. Or more okay, at least.
They headed onto the highway, canvassing cars at a relatively slow pace. There wasn't much to find, it seemed like a lot of these cars had already been stripped of useful parts and supplies. In one minivan she counted herself lucky to find a fleece blanket that wasn't bloodied or taken over by insects, and she shook it out and tucked it into her backpack. A spare blanket was always useful.
A few miles in, Haven saw what Mike had been talking about. There were cars lined up along the highway, like they were still, years after the collapse of all infrastructure, stuck in traffic.
"There are two things that are certain," she muttered. "Death, and traffic. And I'm not so sure about death anymore."
"Psssssh, you stole that quote by changing one of the words," Michael scoffed playfully. Still, the image of miles of cars stuck on a road unnerved him. All those drivers killed in wrecks or eaten in their own seats. There'd be lots of dead just waiting for them to slip up.
"You sure you want to go through here? It'd be difficult to get a car here off the road. We'd have to just try ones on the sides and not in the middle. And also find a weak spot in the guard rails, that would help too."
The thought of getting to drive again was a fun one though. He hoped they found something that by some miracle could be salvaged. He didn't know the first thing about mechanics, though. Just their look that most of the ones that could have helped them were trying to eat them right now.
He headed towards a nearby truck, hoping something wouldn't leap out of its bed to try and eat him...
"I don't see much other choice, do you? We're here now, we've got to get through there to keep going. As long as we stay on our toes we should be fine, they're probably all trapped in their cars." Haven tightened her grip on her axe as the cars started to get closer together, forcing them closer to the cars in turn.
Bee nudged her elbow, and she looked back at Mike and nodded. Oh yes, there were biters about. Bee always knew.
Haven ignored the burned-out cars, choosing to start with a four-door sedan that was a little dented up, but otherwise seemed to be in good shape. Unfortunately, other than the biter strapped in to the driver's seat, it was empty of anything useful.
"I wonder why so many of them are still strapped in. If I was wearing my seatbelt and something was coming up and trying to eat me, I'd unbelt and run."
Shauna Kelly: That helped, thank you
Oct 4, 2021 14:40:44 GMT -5
Ayita Hunt: dang, January was my last post.. Jeez it's been a hot minute. o7 guys, sorry for the complete disappearance, life got.. a little interesting this year.
Oct 18, 2021 22:34:19 GMT -5