Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2015 0:11:35 GMT -5
Cold. It was so cold. Snow crunched lightly under Vivian Amaranth’s shiny new(ly) acquired winter boots as she made her way into the abandoned city of Boulder, Colorado. She huffed slightly, steam billowing from her chapped lips as she guided her empty Honda Shadow motorcycle down the empty road through layers of thick snow. She was beyond thankful that the turbulent weather had taken a break from peppering her with snow and ice; it had been assaulting her all afternoon, and the dark clouds on the horizon seemed to indicate that more might be on the way.
Almost there, she thought as she neared the square brick gas station positioned on the corner of an intersection in the quilted and silent streets. Yellowed and fading posters and ads of cigarettes and energy drinks were peeling back from the wide open windows, which were stained heavily with dirt and dust, cracked in some places. Vivian paused to study the ground around the building – no footprints. At least, not any fresh, living ones. There were a few telltale trails that halted and wavered which indicated the path of a biter, but those were already beginning to fade from the earlier snowfall. The others had been right in Miami – the cold did make the biters slower. And stupider.
Bringing the bike to the dilapidated steel awning near the gas pumps, Vivian propped the bike on its kickstand and unsheathed her trusty old hunting knife. It had taken a number of… incidents before she had finally drilled it into her head that the chopper could not, in fact, support its own weight without that spindly, hooked piece of metal. The blue-and-white paintjob and the handlebars had plenty of scratches and dents to prove it. But she had learned.
Making her way around back of the building, hugging the wall with her knife raised, Vivian eased open the door with as little sound as she could in the event that the gas station was occupied. No people, but a biter sporting a bloodstained bowling shirt and nametag stood weaving back and forth behind the counter like some horrific reflection of its past career. Vivian’s lip twitched as she thought back on the movie Clerks that her film studies teacher had shown her class as an example of independent filmmaking. “Oy!” she shouted, banging on the door to draw the biter’s attention. The corpse shambled towards the door as Vivian pulled it shut until only a small sliver of the interior could be seen, and the biter slammed headlong into the thick sheet of wood and plastic.
The creature let lose a rattling breath, its ragged, skeletal fingers clawing desperately for her flesh through the crack in the door, and its discolored teeth, white gums revealed by wafer-thin lips, snapped wildly as its eyes rolled. Vivian struggled with the door a moment, making sure her grip was secure before raising her knife and plunging it into the soft skill right above the brow. The biter crumpled soundlessly to the floor and, after waiting for a moment to determine that the employee she had dispatched was the only resident of the gas station, forced the door open and stepped over the biter’s motionless form. “Poor bastard,” she muttered as she leaned down and pulled the knife out with a sickening sound. “I bet you weren’t even supposed to be here today.”
A quick glance around the room revealed the store to be largely empty, as was usual. Shelves had been thrown to the floor, some of their contents strewn about untouched, and a large, black bloodstain trailed from a central location in the center of the floor to the back of the counter where the cash register and cigarettes were. Casting a look back to the biter on the ground, it occurred to her that, by the bloodstain on his chest, he must have been killed when the looting began. Vivian made her way to the scattered shelves, picking through the scattered bags of chips, gum and jerky, grabbing all she could that was unopened and unspoiled. She had come to find that chewing gum between rations of water helped to keep the mouth wet and fended off thirst for a time, besides making her feel like a human again. Shoving the food items into the pockets on her jacket and pants, she proceeded to duck behind the counter to check on the status of the gas pumps. If she was going to make it to Bear Lake, she needed to get her bike back in working order.
“Ugh, God damnit,” she growled, seeing the dead, blank screens reflecting her disheveled face. “Of course the power is out. Of course.” Running her hand through her hair, Vivian looked around the room for some solution to her problem. Come to think of it, it was quite stupid of her to assume that the station would still have power, especially since it had been nearly two years since everything went to hell. Or maybe two months?... Two decades? It was hard to keep track of time now. She wasn’t even quite sure of how old she was now – twenty-five or twenty-six, depending on the month. It didn’t matter though, really. All age was now was a reminder of how long you had to wait to die without making other people who cared about you angry that you took the easy way out.
“Generator,” she said suddenly, her mind jumping back to Miami and the way she and Tala had brought power back to the car dealership with a salvaged generator. She didn’t have one with her (obviously, as a motorcycle’s saddlebags can only hold so much), but the station had to have one, right? A storage closet, something? Vivian glanced over at the biter on the floor – he had to have keys on him. Who would have nabbed something as innocuous as a set of keys? Striding across the room, she cautiously prodded the man with her toe (she could never be too sure), and proceeded to check his pockets. The keys were hooked to his belt loop, and with some prying, she managed to pull them free. The storage closet was behind a small door near the unisex bathroom, and a painfully small generator sat at the bottom, under several shelves of various wires, cans, bottles and other assorted doodads. After a brief struggle hooking the generator up to the power box, Vivian cautiously tested the station’s juice by bringing up the basic functions.
A dim yellow glow flickered into existence both inside and outside near the awning, and the refrigeration units hummed into new life, though their contents had long since gone flat or spoiled. Nodding and smiling, Vivian was prepared to activate the closest pump when a blast of music erupted from speakers set around the store, making her jump from her skin. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck-fuck!” she roared, pawing at the controls behind the counter and glancing out the window. She needed to shut that down before it drew all of the biters in the city on her, or worse. Twisting a volume knob to the left viciously, the sound was muted, and, clenching her jaw and baring her teeth, Vivian tore the dial from its seat and threw it across the room, sending it clattering from a glass door across the tile floor, finally skidding into oblivion under one of the refrigerators. “Stupid whorebag,” she growled as she made her way out the back door, satisfied at her vengeance upon the inanimate object.
The generator wouldn’t keep the station operational for very long, so Vivian rushed to bring her bike to the gas pump, unscrewing the cap of the gas tank as she went. Time was of the essence, and she wanted to enjoy some of the building’s heat before the system shut down for good. Fat flakes of snow were drifting down from the sky, and Vivian gazed up into the heavy slate clouds. Just like home, she thought, kicking up a little flurry from the ground as gas flowed into the chopper. Well, that was a lie. Wisconsin had been much colder in the winter, with the wind coming off the lakes and the artic blasts, but the ankle-high snow surely felt familiar. It was getting dark, and traveling in the night had never appealed to her, especially with the biters presumably alert on account of that stupid whorebag radio. The gas station seemed as good a place as any to bed down for the night, as long as she locked up tight.
Reaching into one of her saddlebags as the motorcycle’s tank filled, Vivian pulled forth a small gas canister (which barely fit into the satchel) and placed the pump to its opening, holding it level to get as much gas as she could. It was all that she could take with her – she had been learning how to travel light again after becoming used to stockpiling supplies with the… the group. She sighed, looking across the roads again as the pungent yet pleasant smell of gasoline filled her nostrils. She was close to the Rocky Mountain park where Bear Lake was located – pilfering a few tourist maps from rest stations at the state’s border had guided her this far – and she was afraid of what she would find when she got there. It had been weeks, possibly months since she had been separated from the group in Texas. It was her fault, being stupid, thinking she could track down Tala, Dakota, Clementine and Mark on her own, sneaking off in the dead of night to do so. It was her own fault for getting into every rough spot over the past week, and for what had happened to…
She shook her head as if clearing water from her ears, returning the gas pump to its resting place and screwing the cap back on the canister. Don’t think about it, don’t… Don’t think about it. It had to be done. Pushing the motorcycle back towards the door she had been using, she wheeled it inside to rest against the large glass front doors. She had discovered that this was useful in two ways – the first in that it was less easy to steal a vehicle when it wasn’t in easy reach, and the second being that if biters decided to show up, the noise of the falling ‘cycle would wake her from even the heaviest sleep. Walking to the back door, Vivian hooked both hands under the biter’s arms, grimacing slightly, and hauled it outside before returning to her domicile and locking the door behind her. After dragging a trash can to the center of the floor, lid discarded, she returned to the counter, grabbing a carton of stale cigarettes and a lighter, and proceeded to light one of the crumbling “cancer sticks.” Taking a slow drag from it, like Nick had shown her in Miami on their way back to the mansion, she let the smoke and nicotine fill her lungs and exhaled through her nose, like a dragon, she thought. Dropping the cigarette into the trash can and letting it burn through the paper and plastic inside, Vivian sat on the floor and lit another one, this time intending to work through the whole stick.
It was odd, thinking that within a day or so, she might be reunited with the group. There was no telling what would happen – if there would be angry words, or nothing at all from the others. Maybe they hadn’t even made it to the encampment. Vivian stared into the flames rising from the trash can, enduring the smell as the light warmed her. It was entirely possible that they had all died on the journey – that they had turned and were even now on their way to greet her in their own way… No, she snapped at herself, flicking a trail of ash from the tip of her light. Don’t think that way. You know how you get when you think that way. She missed them so much, though, even the McAllisters, in their own strange way. Time on the road tended to make one realize how valuable human contact was. If only she could have brought the girls with her… If only she could have brought the others…
Frowning, Vivian placed the end of the cigarette to her arm, her eyebrow twitching as the hot embers seared a small hole in her skin as they flickered out and died, tossing the butt across the room. “Get some sleep,” she murmured, lowering herself to the ground with her back to the fire. “Long ride tomorrow, and an even longer road ahead.”
Almost there, she thought as she neared the square brick gas station positioned on the corner of an intersection in the quilted and silent streets. Yellowed and fading posters and ads of cigarettes and energy drinks were peeling back from the wide open windows, which were stained heavily with dirt and dust, cracked in some places. Vivian paused to study the ground around the building – no footprints. At least, not any fresh, living ones. There were a few telltale trails that halted and wavered which indicated the path of a biter, but those were already beginning to fade from the earlier snowfall. The others had been right in Miami – the cold did make the biters slower. And stupider.
Bringing the bike to the dilapidated steel awning near the gas pumps, Vivian propped the bike on its kickstand and unsheathed her trusty old hunting knife. It had taken a number of… incidents before she had finally drilled it into her head that the chopper could not, in fact, support its own weight without that spindly, hooked piece of metal. The blue-and-white paintjob and the handlebars had plenty of scratches and dents to prove it. But she had learned.
Making her way around back of the building, hugging the wall with her knife raised, Vivian eased open the door with as little sound as she could in the event that the gas station was occupied. No people, but a biter sporting a bloodstained bowling shirt and nametag stood weaving back and forth behind the counter like some horrific reflection of its past career. Vivian’s lip twitched as she thought back on the movie Clerks that her film studies teacher had shown her class as an example of independent filmmaking. “Oy!” she shouted, banging on the door to draw the biter’s attention. The corpse shambled towards the door as Vivian pulled it shut until only a small sliver of the interior could be seen, and the biter slammed headlong into the thick sheet of wood and plastic.
The creature let lose a rattling breath, its ragged, skeletal fingers clawing desperately for her flesh through the crack in the door, and its discolored teeth, white gums revealed by wafer-thin lips, snapped wildly as its eyes rolled. Vivian struggled with the door a moment, making sure her grip was secure before raising her knife and plunging it into the soft skill right above the brow. The biter crumpled soundlessly to the floor and, after waiting for a moment to determine that the employee she had dispatched was the only resident of the gas station, forced the door open and stepped over the biter’s motionless form. “Poor bastard,” she muttered as she leaned down and pulled the knife out with a sickening sound. “I bet you weren’t even supposed to be here today.”
A quick glance around the room revealed the store to be largely empty, as was usual. Shelves had been thrown to the floor, some of their contents strewn about untouched, and a large, black bloodstain trailed from a central location in the center of the floor to the back of the counter where the cash register and cigarettes were. Casting a look back to the biter on the ground, it occurred to her that, by the bloodstain on his chest, he must have been killed when the looting began. Vivian made her way to the scattered shelves, picking through the scattered bags of chips, gum and jerky, grabbing all she could that was unopened and unspoiled. She had come to find that chewing gum between rations of water helped to keep the mouth wet and fended off thirst for a time, besides making her feel like a human again. Shoving the food items into the pockets on her jacket and pants, she proceeded to duck behind the counter to check on the status of the gas pumps. If she was going to make it to Bear Lake, she needed to get her bike back in working order.
“Ugh, God damnit,” she growled, seeing the dead, blank screens reflecting her disheveled face. “Of course the power is out. Of course.” Running her hand through her hair, Vivian looked around the room for some solution to her problem. Come to think of it, it was quite stupid of her to assume that the station would still have power, especially since it had been nearly two years since everything went to hell. Or maybe two months?... Two decades? It was hard to keep track of time now. She wasn’t even quite sure of how old she was now – twenty-five or twenty-six, depending on the month. It didn’t matter though, really. All age was now was a reminder of how long you had to wait to die without making other people who cared about you angry that you took the easy way out.
“Generator,” she said suddenly, her mind jumping back to Miami and the way she and Tala had brought power back to the car dealership with a salvaged generator. She didn’t have one with her (obviously, as a motorcycle’s saddlebags can only hold so much), but the station had to have one, right? A storage closet, something? Vivian glanced over at the biter on the floor – he had to have keys on him. Who would have nabbed something as innocuous as a set of keys? Striding across the room, she cautiously prodded the man with her toe (she could never be too sure), and proceeded to check his pockets. The keys were hooked to his belt loop, and with some prying, she managed to pull them free. The storage closet was behind a small door near the unisex bathroom, and a painfully small generator sat at the bottom, under several shelves of various wires, cans, bottles and other assorted doodads. After a brief struggle hooking the generator up to the power box, Vivian cautiously tested the station’s juice by bringing up the basic functions.
A dim yellow glow flickered into existence both inside and outside near the awning, and the refrigeration units hummed into new life, though their contents had long since gone flat or spoiled. Nodding and smiling, Vivian was prepared to activate the closest pump when a blast of music erupted from speakers set around the store, making her jump from her skin. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck-fuck!” she roared, pawing at the controls behind the counter and glancing out the window. She needed to shut that down before it drew all of the biters in the city on her, or worse. Twisting a volume knob to the left viciously, the sound was muted, and, clenching her jaw and baring her teeth, Vivian tore the dial from its seat and threw it across the room, sending it clattering from a glass door across the tile floor, finally skidding into oblivion under one of the refrigerators. “Stupid whorebag,” she growled as she made her way out the back door, satisfied at her vengeance upon the inanimate object.
The generator wouldn’t keep the station operational for very long, so Vivian rushed to bring her bike to the gas pump, unscrewing the cap of the gas tank as she went. Time was of the essence, and she wanted to enjoy some of the building’s heat before the system shut down for good. Fat flakes of snow were drifting down from the sky, and Vivian gazed up into the heavy slate clouds. Just like home, she thought, kicking up a little flurry from the ground as gas flowed into the chopper. Well, that was a lie. Wisconsin had been much colder in the winter, with the wind coming off the lakes and the artic blasts, but the ankle-high snow surely felt familiar. It was getting dark, and traveling in the night had never appealed to her, especially with the biters presumably alert on account of that stupid whorebag radio. The gas station seemed as good a place as any to bed down for the night, as long as she locked up tight.
Reaching into one of her saddlebags as the motorcycle’s tank filled, Vivian pulled forth a small gas canister (which barely fit into the satchel) and placed the pump to its opening, holding it level to get as much gas as she could. It was all that she could take with her – she had been learning how to travel light again after becoming used to stockpiling supplies with the… the group. She sighed, looking across the roads again as the pungent yet pleasant smell of gasoline filled her nostrils. She was close to the Rocky Mountain park where Bear Lake was located – pilfering a few tourist maps from rest stations at the state’s border had guided her this far – and she was afraid of what she would find when she got there. It had been weeks, possibly months since she had been separated from the group in Texas. It was her fault, being stupid, thinking she could track down Tala, Dakota, Clementine and Mark on her own, sneaking off in the dead of night to do so. It was her own fault for getting into every rough spot over the past week, and for what had happened to…
She shook her head as if clearing water from her ears, returning the gas pump to its resting place and screwing the cap back on the canister. Don’t think about it, don’t… Don’t think about it. It had to be done. Pushing the motorcycle back towards the door she had been using, she wheeled it inside to rest against the large glass front doors. She had discovered that this was useful in two ways – the first in that it was less easy to steal a vehicle when it wasn’t in easy reach, and the second being that if biters decided to show up, the noise of the falling ‘cycle would wake her from even the heaviest sleep. Walking to the back door, Vivian hooked both hands under the biter’s arms, grimacing slightly, and hauled it outside before returning to her domicile and locking the door behind her. After dragging a trash can to the center of the floor, lid discarded, she returned to the counter, grabbing a carton of stale cigarettes and a lighter, and proceeded to light one of the crumbling “cancer sticks.” Taking a slow drag from it, like Nick had shown her in Miami on their way back to the mansion, she let the smoke and nicotine fill her lungs and exhaled through her nose, like a dragon, she thought. Dropping the cigarette into the trash can and letting it burn through the paper and plastic inside, Vivian sat on the floor and lit another one, this time intending to work through the whole stick.
It was odd, thinking that within a day or so, she might be reunited with the group. There was no telling what would happen – if there would be angry words, or nothing at all from the others. Maybe they hadn’t even made it to the encampment. Vivian stared into the flames rising from the trash can, enduring the smell as the light warmed her. It was entirely possible that they had all died on the journey – that they had turned and were even now on their way to greet her in their own way… No, she snapped at herself, flicking a trail of ash from the tip of her light. Don’t think that way. You know how you get when you think that way. She missed them so much, though, even the McAllisters, in their own strange way. Time on the road tended to make one realize how valuable human contact was. If only she could have brought the girls with her… If only she could have brought the others…
Frowning, Vivian placed the end of the cigarette to her arm, her eyebrow twitching as the hot embers seared a small hole in her skin as they flickered out and died, tossing the butt across the room. “Get some sleep,” she murmured, lowering herself to the ground with her back to the fire. “Long ride tomorrow, and an even longer road ahead.”