When All is Lost

Chapter 16

I was right about the temperature dropping. A fresh dusting of snow covered the yellow grass and dusty pavement. It floated gently in the air, almost looking like the sparse but heavy flakes were floating as the wind caught them. My cheeks and ears stung from the cold and my nose was developing a near-constant drip. As my sneakers crunched on the thin layer of snow that had built up, I had to keep wiggling my toes to keep them from going numb. The worst of it, however, was the glare. The sun kept some of the chill away but it also created a blaring gleam that reflected off any place the snow built up. Maybe it was because of the way the ground glittered that I got distracted and didn't notice the first body – at least not until I smelled it.

The stench hit me out of nowhere, invading my stuffed nose and saturating it. I felt it at the back of my throat and gagged, not immediately recognizing the cause. "What is that smell?" I asked, covering the lower half of my face with my scarf.

"A warning," Ian stated, pointing at the body at the side of the road.

"Warning?" I wished I could have scoffed at what should have been a hyperbolic statement, but I could see the eyeless face even through the snow. Ian had cautioned me earlier in the morning and had told me that as we got closer to the border of our area, things would be different.

I didn't expect this.

The farther we had ventured, the less the world looked like it was simply on pause. The closer we got to where Chris was last seen, the more lived in everything seemed. Outside the boundary, it was blatantly obvious that there were no strict routines implemented, no system, no order, and no rules or laws.

At first, the signs were subtle. More houses were left with their doors open or windows smashed. There were some smoldering buildings from fires that had long since run their courses. Even still, it was nothing to put us on high alert.

Then, there was an increase in trash and litter scattered about. It should have been easy to ignore, but what was left behind was both telling and more than a little unnerving. Empty cans and potato chip bags were easy to ignore, other things... not so much. A torn backpack. A toy firetruck. A photo album. The signs of things that were recognizably once precious to people, scattered and discarded had me wondering about what these people had gone through.

It was shortly after that that I saw bullet holes riddled throughout the side of a pickup truck. Similar sightings became more and more frequent, along with the husks of cars that had been burned out.

It was a war zone. What I couldn't tell was whether or not battles were still raging. The world seemed quiet and at peace. Even the body seemed to melt into its atmosphere, the worst of it hidden behind the veil of snow.

"It looks like it was placed there," Ian said, readjusting his hold on his knife. "See. Its arms were propped up."

I decided to take his word for it. I looked behind us to check on Ray. He'd stuck close to us but had stayed mostly quiet as we'd walked, seeming to be on edge. The heady mix of grief and fear that wafted off of him throughout the day had made me keep my distance. I needed to keep my focus.

"Have you been here before?" I asked Ray.

"Not here." He held his crowbar to his chest like a shield. "We didn't make it this far south. We got a bit more east before we had to backtrack."

More like chased back.

Evidently, Ray and his sister had been forced into Greendale, too, but had only been there for about a month. He had worked as a distributor while his sister was a runner. He credited her and her job for giving them the insight they needed into the outside world. Unfortunately, that still hadn't been enough to give them the time they needed to grab necessities. He'd said that they had lived just a few miles south of our apartment building and if they hadn't gotten out when they did, then they would have been dead. As I watched him shiver in his hoodie, I felt a twinge of guilt that I had no warmer clothing to offer him.