The Art of Death Vol I

Chapter 5

"What time is it?" Elias inquired. I examined the sun and sky.

"About 3 or 4," I guessed. My guesses were always at least an hour ahead or behind, so giving an idea of what time it is within the hour is the best we have.

"Let's assume its four, so we have at least 45 minutes, which would run at 4:45, giving us an hour to find shelter, it would be about 5:45, with it starting to be dark at 6;30, we would have 45 minutes to spare."

"Can we find food?"

"If there is any, we would have 30 minutes to spare, if not, we will have to go without."

"Without?"

"Deal with it, if you had food back at the cabin, you wouldn't be hungry." That's right, I haven't eaten in a day at least. Actually, thats why we left yesterday, before I had to run back, to find food.

"If not we will find some tomorrow, I need to eat too," Elias admitted. I guess if you're a survivalist, food should be a big priority, but it's apparently not in this case. Which I can understand. Because it will be dark in a few hours, and we are not even there yet. We literally had two miles left. We didn't run fast because of the Beasts, at least I didn't. I think the sound of footsteps alert them. Even though there isn't any around now, they can literally come out of nowhere. It's happened on several different occurrences, just to me alone. I did wonder if it happened to Elias.

"Elias?" I spoke up to him.

"Yes?" He replied to me.

"Have The Beasts ever come out of nowhere? Like hordes of them?" I inquired.

"Yes, several times, why?" He wondered.

"It happened to me quite a few times on missions in the group I was in," I explained.

"Yes, they are attracted to the smell of blood, loud noise, basically a human's scent," He articulated. I knew about the blood, but wasn't sure of the latter two.

"I knew about the blood, but not the other two," I admitted.

"I'm sure theres more," he told me, then continued, "I think they are attracted to meat, not just human meat, but any kind."

"What else?" I asked.

"Maybe more people- which is why you shouldn't travel with more than three people at a time, that, and it starts bringing the group down," He articulated.

"Anything else?" I pressed.

"Not sure about this one, but water, I noticed more Beasts around larger bodies of water, like hordes on a beach, for example," He said. Wow, this guy must have watched their behavior closely. I watched as we walked through the abandoned highway, seeing so many abandoned cars, trucks, and such.

"Hey look, Oliver a police car!" Elias yelled, running towards a car. I caught up to him, he already broke the window.

"Nothing in here, let's see the trunk," He excitedly said, like a kid on Christmas morning.  The trunk opened, and we both looked inside. We found a container of fifty handgun bullets. I now had 45 bullets total. We split them, so he had 35 bullets. We also found two shotguns, one was a slightly different shape, and longer. Both of them were black, and thick. We found the longer gun had five bullets in it already. The other one had four. He let me have the longer one. We continued walking, since most of the cars were in bad shape anyways, so we didn't think about bothering trying to start the cars here, or look for engines.  Not that trying to start it would work. Funny enough, there were no dead corpses in any cars, nor were there Beasts. The cars were just abandoned it seemed like. Though it has been 75 years, so I get it, most of them have left to different places, most likely San Fransisco, and a few on the outskirts and the woods.

"Elias?" I spoke to him.

"What?" He responded.

"How long have you been traveling alone?"

"At least a few months- was scoping out for survivors to go to Canada with me, but I wouldn't take more than three or four with me," He told me. I shook my head and stayed silent. He was obviously looking for company. Something we both needed.

"How far are we from San Fransisco?" I asked.

"Mile and a half- I can see some towers now!" He replied, then added, "Look up!" I looked up and was shocked. Many towers haven't even fallen yet. I assumed they were built to last for many years. Mother nature has done her work with it. The highway started forming into a small moss covered desert. We came up to another sign. Elias wiped it off with his hand and it said: San Francisco, 1 mile. We saw a bridge dead ahead of us.

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