Infected

I - Scavengers

September, 2062

Eight years after The Plague

Auburn leaves crunch under my feet, my scuffed boots caked with mud from last night's storm. The scent of rain is fresh, and entirely too calming.

The bow in my hand twitches with anticipation, as if the arrow attached is an extension of my arm, reaching out for a scrap of the kill.

Crouching down, I lift a couple of leaves away, revealing small hare tracks.

Finally.

Straightening, I narrow my eyes, and I see it. White against the orange leaves, like a fleck of snow in a forest fire. I raise the bow, elbow raised high but firmly.

My father's voice echoes in my head, the way it always does when I hunt.

Breath, Cora. Inhale as you cock the arrow back. Exhale as you release.

And I exhale.

The arrow flies through the air swiftly and silently, striking the small hare in its beady eye. Rushing over, I grab it by the nape of its now limp neck, removing the arrow, wiping the blood on the side of my jeans.

My first meal in almost two days.

I carefully knot the legs of the hare with twine, looping it onto the strap of my knapsack. I turn, walking back to the only place I could call a home.

The old cabin is rotting, the wood unkept and damp from many storms. Every time I get it in my sights, it's like I'm ten years old again, starving, heartbroken, alone.

At least I'm not starving anymore.

After my mother, after the Plague, I stumbled around the woods, shivering and sunken. It's an odd sensation, being ready to die at ten years old. But after three days, I found the cabin. It had been abandoned, its owners either dead or infected. Cans of beans and fruit had lined the cabinets, and old moth-filled clothes filled the drawers. It was a haven.

But soon the food ran out, I grew out of the only pair of shoes I had, and I had to return to the city.

Since the Plague, the government turned the cities into quarantine zones, with cement walls and barbed wire surrounding the edges, Raiders and soldiers docked at each possible entrance, or so they thought.

It took me only two hours to find a hole - the tracks. Outside the city gates, there's one old subway entrance leading out through a tunnel, leading right to the city square.

And after walking only about a mile of track, I realized why the Raiders didn't bother to plug it up. Every so often, you'll find Infected, hunched against the walls, mumbling to themselves and twitching like an electrocuted rat.

It's easy to kill one Infected at a time. The virus destroyed their logic and reason, so if they can't see you or hear you, they won't move. One stab to the head and they're gone.

I enter the cabin, moving towards the old fireplace which I've filled with dried wood and leaves, the perfect place to have a fire inside. It's too risky to make one outside.

The Scavengers could find you.

Scavengers are the second lowest rung on the ladder of humanity, just a smidge above the Infected. They'll kill anyone for a scrap of food, or even just for fun. Brutes and thieves, they're moral compass was destroyed by their own greed and stupidity, never learning to hunt, only to take. They're pretty easy to outrun, but not to kill.

The first time I saw them, they were crowded around a log fire in the middle of the woods, almost ten miles from my cabin.

The fatter of the three men was hovering over a smaller person, pointing a cigar-thick finger and laughing. His friend, tall and thin like a sapling, twiddled a knife between his teeth, smiling.