Feral

Chapter Two

If there were any regrets in Paige, leaving her sunglasses after her arrest made the top five. Relief from scorching sunshine was gifted by occasional gusts of dust hampered wind. Scheming companions grit and sticky air never let her be, waiting for opportunities to leap up, hurl chunks of dirt or flecks of sand into her eyes, her hair, streaking her burnt skin light brown from the dust rash she'd accumulated. Don't even get her started on the once white, now heavily sweat stained tank top.

Shading her face with her hand, Paige attempted to spare her seared corneas from the suns deadly glare. Temperatures reached ninety five by noon, and blazing heat radiated off the train tracks in waves that obscured the never ending plains stretching out before her. Looking at the steel rails, all those cartoons of people cooking eggs on sidewalks started to make sense. Paige wondered if it would sizzle like her mother's eggs on Sunday mornings, the way they always did after she put butter in the pan. The thought unleashed a familiar stomach growl coupled with a deep longing, six years and going strong.

"My name's Paige." Murmured to herself, then stronger since it was for no one's ears but her own. "Paige Emry, pleased to make your acquaintance... Salutations! Nope. No. Way  too formal." Her pastime of late, saying thoughts out loud rather than thinking them. At the start she told herself she was merely testing her voice, making sure it still worked since there wasn't another living soul around for hundreds of miles to talk too. The idea of marching into the Facility and announcing herself with a voice crack was too unbearable to consider the question to her sanity.

A non-living soul, sure. She came across plenty of those. Not really ones for conversation though.

Six years in and some people still referred to them 'Zombies', a term that both amused and irritated Paige. Zombies stumbled, had the running capacity of her middle school gym teacher who took too much of a liking to stuffing extra jelly packs into her donuts. Feral's... Wild eyes. A blood thirst that couldn't be quenched. Those things ran faster than anything, human or not, Paige had ever seen.

Infected versus reanimated was another argument altogether. She'd had a lot of time to perfect hers on the walk.

A rotted plank tripped her up as she stepped off of the tracks. Whatever lord was still listening, Paige thanked them for these tracks, knowing she could as far west as she wanted down the decaying planks without fear of a train passing through the desolate area of northern Kansas she'd found herself in. If the kids in convoy were still alive they'd have called her nuts and headed south, see if there was a life outside of the U.S, outside the walls. The Sandbox was her end, a place where she knew she could find Military assistance to help her get home. Going back to D.C. was a waste of time, she'd tried to get their attention and wound up with a get into jail free card.

Dust and grit let her be for a moment, enough for a small town ahead to her left to break from the unending waste, silhouetted and shimmering, an oasis in mirage. A wide edged kitchen knife wedged through the belt loops in her jeans, scrounged from an abandoned tramcar diner, offered comfort as she surveyed the town, sorted through her options. She'd been using the train tracks to travel at night, avoid running into anyone, anything, and the worst of the Kansas heat. Didn't need to see where she was going if the way was literally bolted to the ground for her. At least until she woke up at sunset the day before, picked up her pack and decided it was too light, her canteen too dry, to go on without making a daytrip in search of some more food.

The chance of seeking out supplies, early enough in the day that if the town proved safe she could catch enough sleep to keep her night pace, had her heart racing. But the risk of possibly running into her first survivors in weeks kept her pace steady.

Any kind of settlement or town she avoided. If smoke rose on the horizon she'd double back to make sure she wouldn't run into anyone, then to avoid the chance of being followed she' head south west before looping back north until she came upon the tracks again. She'd met good people in her life, and most of those good people were dead. The ones left decided it was adapt to the new rules or die.