And Then There Was Nothing

Chapter 2: Confrontation

*So I edited this part because I had gotten a couple pointers, but they weren't drastic changes.*

The next morning I had gotten up before Anders to check my traps, Bandit got up with me and decided to trail behind me while I did so. He was trying to play it cute, but I caught onto his tricks pretty quickly, doesn't mean that I didn't give in almost immediately and tossed him all the meat scraps he wanted. I ended up getting two rabbits and a squirrel which was a good haul for me, hopefully it would be enough for all three of us until we made camp again that night. I quickly snapped their necks so they wouldn't suffer, Bandit and I then started to take our time getting back to camp. I just talked at the pup about my life before all of this, I knew he wasn't going to talk back to me, but it's still nice to get things out sometimes. When we finally got back Anders was just getting up and I've never seen a man so akin to his roots before, and I mean caveman roots. Anders was a real ball of sunshine in the morning too, all grunts and no words made for great conversation as I skinned and cooked the meat. I didn't actually attempt to speak to him though, I knew better than to talk to a grump first thing in the morning.

"We should be headed out now," Anders grumbled as he began packing up his supplies and bed roll. I followed suit and put up the now cooked meat into one of those grocery bag thingies that keeps things cool for a while, I stole it from the local grocer like years before the bombs were even a thought. Like I said, I was never really a good person, at least that made for shaping the skills that I now use everyday. I literally only stole it just because I could, I mean what need did I have for it before this?

We headed out and I immediately felt the soreness in my legs, I'm not even out of shape but I guess compared to this beast of a man I was. Bandit followed closely to his owner's side, but wandered every now and then to sniff at things along the road. Everytime he wandered I noticed Anders watched him like a hawk, that man loved his dog more than anything in the world and that wasn't even new information to me. I knew that he would do anything for that pup and I found myself thinking the same thing, Bandit was seemingly the last innocent thing in this world and I would do anything to keep that innocence alive.

"Where you from originally?" I asked trying to spark up some kind of conversation with Anders, hoping to alleviate his furrowed brow.

"Gatlinburg, you?" Anders grunted while taking a sip of his canteen and tipping out a little dribble for Bandit to snap at.

"Collierville, the hell spawn capital of the U.S." I said and chuckled at my own joke, "Also, can I ask a favor?"

"Hell, I thought that was Hollywood." Anders said with a side smirk, chuckling, "Shoot,"

"Well we're in New Mexico, and I had family here," I said tentatively, "I'm not going to say I hope they'll be alive, but can we make a slight detour so I can check their homes? I want to keep something of my family's history alive, ya know? I mean I always planned to do this, but it would be nice to not have to seperate just yet."

Anders simply nodded to my request and we kept walking, I could get used to this. The constant warmth at my side to tell me that I had someone, even if he was a grumpy bear-man. That thought made me smile as we trekked farther into New Mexico's desolate landscape, here's where things are gonna get dangerous. The next few hundred miles are going to be through wide open land, we needed to be on even higher alert if we hoped to get through it alive.

***

It was a fairly uneventful day, by sundown we had reached one of those ghost towns, turned tourist trap, turned wasteland. We found a shelled out building that looked like it had held reenactment equipment at one time or another, we set up our beds for the night and started a fire in a part of the floor that had worn away to expose the dirt underneath it.