A simple supply hunt for a source of water in the middle of Atlanta turns sour quickly for Erin as she come fist to face with a fuming, handless Merle Dixon.
Alone in the middle of the apocalypse with only a racist guy who doesn't know the differen...
"People do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can't live with what they've done." - Adam Johnson (Author of 'The Orphan Master's Son')
--)->
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Supply hunts used to be a lot more fun when Erin wasn't alone.
Nowadays, instead of the familiar laughter of her brother echoing down the corridors of each building, it was only the sound of her nimble footsteps. Each one resurfaced memories she didn't want to unearth. She'd scavenged this same building with Todd barely two months ago, so every room brought back painful reminders as if they were rigged to a slingshot inside each doorway.
She didn't exactly expect to find much else in any of the offices - they'd been pretty thorough - but now she was on her own, fending for herself, anything she could scrounge up was a key to her survival. For the past few days, she'd been living on berries in the woodland around her camp; they were fairly nutritious but she knew she wouldn't last long with such a minimal diet. She needed decent food more than anything.
It was strange to think that only three months back she was barely an average shooter. Now, here she was with a Mossberg 590 shotgun strapped across her back, a Colt M1911 pistol shoved in her back pocket and countless knives fastened to the inside of her jacket along with the battered baseball bat which swung absently in her right hand.
The apocalypse had changed a lot of people and she didn't just mean the strays; it took a certain mental and physical tolerance to see the state the world was in and still keep going and hoping.
Ignoring the hungry groans from outside the smashed windows at the far end of the block, she began rooting through the draws and cabinets which still contained most of the workers' belongings, abandoned in the mad rush to leave the city. Every so often she'd strike it lucky and find a protein bar only a few weeks out of date or a ball of rubber bands which could always come in handy for anything, but most of it was just junk. Old pens, notepads, paperwork - the things no one had really needed then and especially didn't need now.
To her surprise and utter amazement, she even managed to find a bag of crisps that somehow hadn't perished and, resisting the urge to devour them on the spot, dropped them into her rucksack along the other bits and bobs. She never seemed to find much of any great use in her hunts, but there was usually enough to keep her up and moving until the next one. That was probably the best way to live with strays constantly threatening your existence - one day at a time...
Her usual hunting grounds were the forests to the north and east of the city, packed full of squirrels and rabbits - almost enough to feed a hundred, so there were more than plenty for just her. She felt alive in the woodland, using knives and snares while Todd opted for his trusty crossbow, but there wasn't much else to scavenge from nature. Sometimes it was necessary to get some man-made supplies.
As she nudged open the door to the next room with the tip of her bat, a muffled grunt followed by a shuffling of feet from behind it stopped her in her tracks. It grew louder and she knew the stray had already seen her so turning back wasn't an option. If she shot it, the sound would attract others. If she left it alone, its groans would also attract others. This was a situation she had been hoping wouldn't arise.
Knowing she only had a matter of about a minute before it reached the door, she made a quick decision and reached for one of the knives inside her jacket - a wooden handled bowie knife with a blade the length of her forearm. Each knife she owned had a story behind it to some degree, this one in particular had been looted from a weapons store back in Macon whose owner had sadly had his cerebral cortex pinned to the wall behind him by Todd's crossbow bolt. Weirdly enough, even as a stray, he still seemed to have a passion for selling guns.
The blade was still slightly red with blood from her last scavenge when she'd fought off a stray cleaning lady, but it was still the nicest knife in her ever growing collection. With a blade that size it was the perfect weapon to take off the heads of these creatures.
Swiftly, she pushed the door open and the blade glinted in the light that flooded through it, ecstatic to meet its next victim. The stray's eyes fell on Erin lazily, the left one not quite keeping up with the right as she swung her armed hand back. She fought back a gag at the stench from the creatures gaping facial wounds. In one swift slice, the knife put a stop to its irritating groaning and its head slid away from its neck, a clean cut separating the two as it tumbled to the ground with a sickening splat.
"Don't lose your head..." Erin muttered under her breath, anticipating laughter from behind her before remembering she was on her own.
The jokes and snarky comments seemed to have lost their humour now that Todd wasn't around to laugh at them...
---------
"Hey? Why the long face?"
Erin burst into laughter, forgetting where they were for a moment as Todd poked fun at the stray across the room from them. Its jaw seemed to have come unhinged from the rest of its face at some point during its death, causing the skin covering it to stretch downward in a bloody mess - hence her brother's cringe-worthy pun.
The stray groaned, dripping blood over the floor as it stumbled, disorientated, towards them. It had entered the building alone by the looks of it so she wasn't really worried about it outsmarting them - at the moment, it was too confused by the laughter erupting from the siblings' mouths.
"Todd..." she shook her head at him as he made the creature follow the glint of his metal axe, "Don't tease it, put it out of its misery."
"Ugh, fine..." he sighed, mimicking the grunts of the stray before shrugging and planting the axe in its head. The creature let out a breath of half anger, half relief before falling to its knees and collapsing on the ground as Todd yanked his weapon out of its brain and wiped it on the edge of his flannel shirt. He smirked and flicked a bit of brain at his sister, chuckling as she flinched and singing, "How do you like your brains in the morning?"
Erin folded her arms across her chest and looked at him in disgust, though there was a hint of a smile playing on her lips, "You're so not funny... Come on, I don't trust Rachael too much with my truck..."
-----------
She sighed as the memory collided with her like a truck, leaving her like roadkill in its wake. Loss wasn't something she'd really considered too much before she lost him but now she saw why grief could hit so hard. It could send you over the edge and leave you hanging onto your own life by the tips of your fingers, hanging by a single thread of strength which seemed to get thinner every day...
Hers was barely the width of a hair by this point; the only shred of sanity that was balancing her on the right side of a lifetime in a straight jacket was the will to find more humans in this wasteland. A will that seemed hopeless but it was this or a life as the creature she'd just decapitated...
Not much of a choice, but Erin knew which side she stood on and that was enough to keep her going... just enough...
