Along the Shadows of Death Valley - ON HOLD

From the Gallows of Downtown

I couldn't believe what I saw at the CVS was five months ago.

We thought about leaving Ryan after that a few times. We would have to carry him because he wouldn't move, for days. He was almost lifeless, the only sign of him being alive being the occasional blinking he would do. There was nothing we could really do.

It wasn't like we had the luxury of getting a diagnostic test to know what was wrong with him. We had to motivate, more like force, Ryan to get up and move ourselves. At first, it was hopeless. He was too depressed in the state he was in, especially when the truck was surrounded by croakers. But eventually, and gradually, he was able to get around without our help.

It took a long few months. Five months of us begging, encouraging, and torturing at some points, the hell out of him. Eric would get too rough sometimes, and I would have to intervene to calm him down. I learned the hard way that Eric wasn't really the patient type, and was used to having things go his way.

I felt bad for Ryan. He lost his friends, and his brother. On top of that, he was a long way away from his other friend, and girlfriend. He had to live with the guilt of leaving Amy and Jason by themselves, as he had said before. With the way he comprehended things so slowly, far less than what we knew he was capable of, he was known by Eric as more of a liability than an ally, and I was considering that possibility too.

This made tensions in our threesome great. If we ever went to explore a new area, Eric made me leave Ryan behind because he wasn't "in stable condition". I couldn't argue with him, he was right after all. If there was a way to prove him wrong, I would have used it already, given the right opportunity. Ryan deserved a second chance, he really did, but Eric thought a near-death experience was more than he could handle.

I walk along the streets of downtown, carrying my shotgun close, my knife in my back pocket and backpack on my back. Flicking my eyes constantly, I was wearily checking to see if I wasn't alone. It was dusty out here, the dust rising to my nose and tightening my lungs. The sun was covered by clouds, the wind howling in my ears and blowing my dark brown hair in my face. My eyes strained against the wind, watering at the dirt kicking up from the gutters of the street.

This part of the city had cleared out a little from the cold, which is why I decided to come. We only had a few days worth of food left, and I was getting desperate for any cans or water. We've been getting food from a 7-Eleven for the past few weeks, but the time has taken its toll on the supplies.

I told Eric to stay and guard our "residence" while I was gone. He was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed that he had to do it. I took the shotgun as my choice of weapon, because I could carry it and it worked better than a pistol. In addition, I couldn't really handle anything else, as I wasn't properly trained.

I remember glancing at Ryan when Eric turned away. He looked at me with an emotion I couldn't put a name on, although his eyes seemed like they would pierce into my soul. I couldn't help by feel they had a purpose other than trying to creep me out.

The fact that Ryan was in a mental state gave me the opportunity to scavenge things by myself, without Eric yapping around me every passing minute. It also gave Eric the time to get to know Ryan, other than just mocking him within that period. I thought though that Eric would have learned to accept Ryan as he was by now, but apparently that wasn't going to happen, yet.

I looked around the ghost town of giant buildings and skyscrapers, wondering how in the hell I was going to get food here. For all I knew, people might have scraped clean what little resources this place had left. But even if I had to look everywhere, I couldn't stay for long. I had to move quickly if I wanted to find anything that could be salvageable. I knew from past experience that staying too long could cause your death when the croakers realized that you were in their territory.