Arrow

Chapter One: Coby

It was hard to actually believe in a world so advanced, in a world so technological that things like this could occur, things as uncontrollable and frightening as the end of the world, well, per say.

I knew there were others like me, somewhere, someplace far away, but it was hard to accept that I could walk for miles and miles at days on ends, and I wouldn't come across another single soul like me.

Birds above squawked wildly, their wings soaring as they searched for a liable food source while I walked along route 86. I had never driven down a road as long, as wide and yet as abandoned as route 86, which seemed to go on forever.
I'd been walking continuously for about fourteen hours, I was hungry, I was tired, but those things didn't matter, not any more, I was alive, that was all I cared about, all that anyone in 2023 cared about.

My boots were hard against the cracked tar, pieces of rubble crunching beneath my feet as I continued forward, the sun slowly beginning to set under the motionless array of buildings ahead of me in the near distance.
At times like these, my surroundings were truly beautiful, something that most people would stop to stare at, normal people may even have stopped to photograph the beauty, entering the shot into a contest, but those contests didn't exist anymore, neither did normal activities.

I sighed as I continued to walk, my neck aching as I pulled at my head to stretch the muscles out on either side. It was when I felt my neck crack that my vigilant brown eyes began to survey the widening road. I was like a criminal on the run, everywhere I went, I kept a strong look out for my capturers, a weak area where I would be spotted and restrained.

A slight breeze blew through the air, pushing my long brown waves sideways where they pulled constricted by my hair tie, these kinds of breezes were common, the more the shadows of civilization decayed around me, the more the air blew freely amongst a once bustling city. I took another step forward before stopping completely in between two cars, rusted and heavily dented by unknown forces. My ears pricked up like a wild animal in the jungle, I could hear movement, I could feel my skin coat in goose-bumps, something was near, I could feel it as my eyes darted back and forth from the road and the close city of Eralin in front of me.

Slowly, I pulled my arm back I was getting ready to attack when the sound of feet along tar began to creep closer. My eyes were wide, my hands were quick and before the threat could appear my arms were outstretched ready with my bow in hand. I gripped the dark wood with one hand and pulled the thick strong white string with my other hand, my muscles flexing as I closed one eye and aimed towards the noise.

I controlled my breathing, I hushed my heart, I couldn't allow a single distraction to pull me away from what could potentially be my last step.
I watched, waiting as I began to witness slow movements of a shadow beneath a blue spoilt Corolla. I took one last immense breathe inwards before the shadow peeked out from the front bonnet of the car, my fingers twitched and my breath blew out when I quickly began to identify the shapes, the curves and the motions of a human in the distance.
I leaned forward, my elbows pushed against a vehicles end as the person moved closer, its noise growing louder when I caught sight of a head of hair above the Corolla's shattered passenger window.

I knew what the cause of this creature was, I knew that the moment I had sight of its skull, I would shoot and send its lifeless body plummeting to the ground, something I had done at least a thousand times already in the past three years of my life.

It was then as my eyes lifted my heart unwillingly stopped, I could feel my breathing hitch and my body twitch at the reaction I was having. Unlike expecting to see a creature of the undead, I saw a hand, an unscathed, clean hand lift from the inside of the window, a small pocket knife in between its scrawny pale fingers. It was human, a real human with real insides. The last time I had seen a hand as such, had been six months ago, and that hadn't ended as well as any survivor of the plague could have wished.