Aftermath

Chapter 4-An Unexpected Reunion

After refueling the car. Max, Lilly, & Alice are back on the road. They travel to through the snowy road quite easily, around them now are fields instead of woods of dead trees with snowy branches. The grass covered snow looks pretty cool, some area of the fields has it's snow melted.
Could it be that the winter is ending soon? Maybe… but that would be impossible. Just 2 years of this punishment after the past decades we treat the earth with all the worst thing we could've done.
But we learn from our mistakes… hopefully. The Fort is the beginning of rebuilding Humanity, I feel bad fo other nation, this happens because of me. Well, not really because of me, but I'm part of the cause… I wonder what's going on on the other side of the earth.

They enter a forest like or woods area again, they meet a 3 way intersection, go straight or to the left. Max stopped, Alice grab the map from the dashboard.

“Which way?”

“That way” Alice says while pointing to the left

Max follow the instructions. After this there's not really a lot of interesting stuff, it's just sight seeing and waiting for Max to drive them to The Fort. What? Realistically there would be a break every now and then, there's no way an event could keep happening again and again in someone's life.
Anyway, after quite a while of just driving through the dead forest again. Max notice a movement from Lilly in the edge of his eyes, Max quickly glance over. Lilly seems to be asking something to Alice.

“Desmond, can we pull over for a minute?” Alice request

“Wait what? Why?”

“Lilly gotta… Pee”

“She gotta pee??”

“Yeah, why do you look so surprise? This is normal human behavior” Alice said, a little bit surprised

“No it's just… haha, where is this plot going?” Max chuckles, Alice confused by what Max meant by that.

“Ok ok, check the map. See if there's other gas station or other store” Max said pointing at the Map

Alice grab the map and take a good look at it. It seems she found something

“Yeah, not far from here there's another gas sta- Oh there it is!” Alice said, as the gas station was visible near distance

Max slowly turn the car towards the a gas station on the right. He parked it just outside of the parking area. Alice and Lilly get out and go into the bathroom inside. Max waits inside the car.
Pretty boring, for quite some time Max is just tapping the steering wheel. Making some musical noise. But, something caught his eyes.
In the distance, a deer was seen behind bushes in the field on the left side of the road. Max is fascinated, it's not like he never saw a deer before, it's just he is surprised there are animal that still live in this world.

The deer's brown fur shines as it bathe in the sunlight. The branches of huge horn on it's head it magnificent, the door was also quite big, it stand so tall that half of it upped body was seen behind the bush.
The deer notice Max's car, and Max notice the deer noticing Max's car, wow that's a mouthful. Max is sure the deer is gonna run away now. The car is shaking and the engine softly roar.
The deer ran away, it gets out of the bushes. Some leaf and tiny branches fell out as the deer jump to the road. It ran as fast as it can to cross the road, that was a pretty rare sighting Max thought to himself.

Max smile as the deer ran across the road, he's glad nature is still surviving after all of this. But, as the deer ran, halfway across. It drop to the ground, the body slide through the asphalt. But that's not what Max is concern about. It's not moving.
What is this? What's happening? What's wrong with that deer? Is it… dead? Then what caused it? Is it a virus or parasite? Could it be the deer is dead because of a virus? I mean it's quit possible, scientist has not been around lately, so virus and bacteria is ruling the earth technically for the past 2 years. So, a strong mutated virus could exist.
But no, this is NOT gonna turn into some zombie story. Even though it would be interesting, it's too cliche. Ok, then what would be a possible cause other than virus… Hunter? Yeah, hunters! Someone shot the deer, but Max didn't hear any gunshot and if so where is the hunter?