𝙰𝚝 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙴𝚍𝚐𝚎 𝙾𝚏 𝙼𝚒𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚢 | 𝚃. 𝙾𝚝𝚝𝚘 𐂃

Chapter 16

Troy always had a keen sense for figuring out people; whether they were built for this world, whether they adapted to it or whether they were weak. With Cristine, he had ruled out the last option, even before all this. When he and his men first found her in the dessert on her lonesome. He saw it in her eyes; full of calculation and fight.

Still, it didn't mean he wanted to take her with them back then. She wouldn't fit in their community. But that picture. That picture saved her life and here she was. It was ironic and funny, but now that he'd observed the woman, interacted with her some more and read her journals, Troy saw similarities in their way of thinking.

The person that wrote all that down, probably fought by the skin of her teeth to arrive at this point in her life, wasn't there now. He detected the sheer obsessiveness in her scribbling, some so illegible, it was hard to read. Endless pages of scientific jargon and formulas, memos of actual people who suffered from the fever or those on the verge of dying. Testing on them with antibiotics for a way to cure them, save them, only to fail. She even timed a few.

Troy didn't believe she solely met the subjects on the road, she must've set up this place where she had the time to jot all this down. There was a clear turning point in her journey, because suddenly, she just stopped writing about the living and focused on the dead. Now, she realized there was no cure and that the world was as it is now; burned.

She brought her focus on the dead. Their ability to detect scents and differentiate between the living and the dead. How they prefer to feed on living flesh. Sight decayed over time for some, but they made it up with their heightened senses of hearing and smell. Darkness seems to have little effect on infected' senses at close range, and in areas devoid of light they could still find their way around as they would in the day. They felt no pain. Although slow and unintelligent when not active, they reacted quickly to sufficient stimulation, and rapidly overpowered a victim they had taken by surprise. Though their bodies were no more or less durable than a non-decomposed human body, they absorbed all manner of physical damage, even when badly decomposed.

Most of these findings were in tune with what Troy  discovered. He gambled that she was outside when she wrote this, out in the wild and surviving. Still busy with the infected, but with the aim to stay alive. She must've been a real asset for whichever group she was with.

But somewhere along the line, as she wrote about the dead, Cristine abruptly stopped. At a point where she mentioned that as the dead decay, their muscles, and consequently, entire body, become slowly, but surely, weaker. It didn't explain how that happened, what the parameters were for her test or anything.

Troy was frustrated by the unfinished notes and that's why he went to her cabin that night by himself. Why he invited her for a cup of coffee. He really wanted to have this conversation with her, but she wasn't even willing to do that. It's why Troy ran out of patience with the woman. Part of this trip with his men was to pick up the test she didn't finish: timing how long it took to turn. She'd written down a few things such as gender and age from the scarce people she found that were on the verge of dying.