Genesis

Day 31

Gravel crunched beneath the heel of her boot as she slid from her truck, the gas dial pointing at the E. It was deadly silent on the gravel road. A mere half mile away was the highway, where cars should be streaking past. But it was dead. Deserted. It was terrifying how silent it was. Holding a hand against her forehead to shield her eyes from the setting sun, she peered out into the forest. The road she was on--Mulbern Lane--led through the woods until it broke free at her old neighborhood--the goal of this journey. But to reach the neighborhood she was in search of, she’d have to pass through close to four miles of heavily forested area. If she were driving her truck, she’d be safe against virtually every danger. Protected from the outside world with the help of the metal skeleton. But her truck was out of gas--she’d coasted on empty for two miles before it gave out--and if she braved the woods alone, she didn’t know what she’d find. She was armed only with a hunting knife and a .45 with two rounds left. She wouldn’t last very long if a group of Virals stumbled upon her.

Heck, she shouldn't even worry about Virals. With the small animal supply dwindling after so many had succumbed to the disease and died, the larger animals had become more rabid. More wild. They were willing to do anything for food anymore, which terrified her to no end. If she ran into a bear or mountain lion out there, she’d be toast. Forget about fending herself against Virals, it was the animals--those primitive beings from before that she had to worry about. Not that humans were much better than animals themselves. She’d decided that when faced with hard times with low supplies for sustenance, humans reverted back to their most primal selves. At least, in most cases. She recalled seeing the riots when the disease was first discovered, back before martial law was established. How the people, the nicest people she’d known, would mix with the meanest she’d ever met. They’d gain a crowd mentality and would flock together; their minds seeming to link together as they performed such awful, awful things. Her mom and she had hid in their little attic above the McGillan’s house, where they’d been staying for a while and paying $15 a month in rent. The McGillan parents had been murdered on the third day of the riots, leaving the nanny to care for the two children, Mark and Madee. But then the house had been broken into and Mark had gotten sick, and that was the last her mom and she had seen of them. They hadn’t come down from the attic for months. Her mom left sometimes to get food; but she’d never left. And then there was that awful day when her mother had come back and she was sick this time, and she’d had to stay by her mom’s side until her pulse stopped and she rose as a Viral. She went downstairs then, and left her Viral mother in the attic. She’d headed toward Washington, abandoning her home state of Oregon, where the doctors were saying they’d found a cure in cannabis. She’d never really believed them. That seemed unlikely to her that they could find a cure in something such as that.

And they hadn’t found a cure. It was all a lie. Turns out the cannabis sped the Virus’ process up, and everyone who had been taking such large amounts had ended up dying faster. Luckily, she hadn’t quite made it into Washington when everything hit.

And now she was here. Standing in front of the forest-swallowed road and wondering whether or not she should go back. She’d waited for so long now, months longer than everyone else had,as the virus hit the West coast pretty hard, so long to find the home she’d once had and maybe stay there again. Maybe she could fortify it. She doubted there were many Virals in the gated community itself, but who knows how many could be in the woods. They could’ve wandered off of the desolate highway, or stumbled out of different neighborhoods. There could be feral animals, waiting for a meal.

She had to decide.

The sun had almost completely disappeared behind the trees by the time she finally began to move forward. Her gun was in one hand, her knife in the other, as she moved. She kept her eyes narrowed; searching; and stayed in a half-crouched position. One could never tell what would spring out from behind.