❝the world we knew was dead, and something else had risen in its place.❞
✖ ✖ ✖
#1 in #nickclark 8/22/22
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#1 in #survivalhorror 1/24/23
fear the walking dead season 1
started: 1/15/2021
published:...
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DAY 08
Winter in Vermont was a vicious thing for those that knew it well.
For those that visited on a weekend, or winter holiday, it was a reprieve from their busy schedules.
Marketed, packaged and repackaged, gentrified so that every bit of wildness was scraped from the surface — made palatable, a commodity for the seasonal tourists.
Past the ski lifts and hotels, the famous maple syrup and ice cream shoppes, and picture perfect streets in their historic districts, lay bare the state's true nature.
The landscape itself was alive — a savage, cruel beast that cared nothing for the livelihoods of its inhabitants.
As for the inhabitants — they were the coyotes ripping at carrion by the side of the highway; wildness at the edges of civilization, an unsightly reminder of a more savage time that refused to die.
The tourists would ignore it, of course, their eyes sliding away to the GPS or radio, flipping through to find something, anything to distract from the horrifying sight.
They would not take photos of the roadkill they saw, nor would they tell their friends of the mobile home by the side of the wetlands, half-sunken into the earth, and the child outside, one hand bare as they hauled wood.
They would not discuss it because they wouldn't want to acknowledge it. They would not acknowledge it, because then they could forget it.
It's easy to forget something when you make no mention of its existence.
It was not nearly as easy for the residents to forget the winter.
Winter brought the kind of cold that seeped into your bones and stayed, through the spring thaw and the summer heat, and only grew with each passing year.
Once you learned what cold was, you never truly forgot it.
➸ ➸ ➸
"They forgot about us, you know."
Toes curled and uncurled, feeling long since lost as the last embers of the wood stove continued their steady decline, puffing and sputtering their way to a cold grave.
If Katie's next check didn't clear so they could get more wood, they would meet the same fate.
No one was listening. The only other two people in the house were long lost to the throes of sleep, and they wouldn't understand even if awake.
![[ original episode ]](https://img.wattpad.com/01f2885d0d99c7a2abd9d78d6cadb434715c2f7f/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f4a5558494b33575a3073376531413d3d2d313131323633323833392e313734316636366630326565306239393837303031333938333033392e676966?s=fit&w=720&h=720)
