The Fallen World

Chapter 6: Helpless

After a week of following the long, crumbled freeway and passing through the suburbs—we're getting closer to the forest, but not close to Idaho. "Hey, are we getting close to the woods?" Chase asked as she looks around the ruined apartments, grassy roads, and the sun setting.

"We're almost there. Fortunately, we're not gonna deal that much Reefed when we arrive, since those Reefs mostly grow on buildings, but that doesn't mean we're alone," I said. "We need to find shelter before night rises, I need to take a break," she said, I then scoffed, "We all need a break, kid, but we need to keep moving." I said.

After a few minutes of walking, the trees started to appear more and more, the crumbled roads faded slowly and is replaced by tall grass and fern and knew we entered the forest. The twilight sky started to get cloudy and realized it's about to rain soon.

The forest gets darker and colder, a raindrop splashed on my head, then it turned to rain. I put my hood on—unfortunately, Chase doesn't seem to have one, but she doesn't seem to complain.

We still continued our journey around the forest without even taking a break, finding shelter here is scarce but the rain isn't gonna stop us from moving forward.

A few moments, the rain stopped. The smell of rain and pine always makes me feel more relaxed. Our footsteps makes cracking noises from fallen twigs and branches but I don't enjoy walking on the muddy forest floor and walking through fern and other plants—even getting insect bites around my face just ruins the calm experience of the forest.

The crumbled roads started to show up and even street lights appear in the middle of the woods, this used to be a road. I saw buildings close by along with those large pine trees scattered around them, then the forest started to get misty.

Chase got tired and catches her breath, "Hey, can we cool down for a minute?" she asks while panting, "Mm-hmm" I rest my paw on the mossy pine tree then sighed. My breath appeared from the cold air as I panted.

The mist slowly faded, the overgrown roads started to clear up. there were wrecked cars scattered on the road and around the forest, Chase stopped walking and stared at a tilted street light, "Oh god." "What? What is I-" I stopped and looked, I'm as shocked as her.

A buck, hanged from the tilted street light. The dead buck's clothes are ripped and torn, like it was attacked or maybe tortured.

His clothes are soaked in blood, and still drips on the ground, wears a wooden sign worn around him with the name written: 'Brian', it was written in blood. The people we're dealing with are really messed up.

"Chase, I think now's the best time to get out of here, quick." she still looks at the buck and threw up. "Woah, woah! You okay?" she coughed and shook her head, "God, why would they even do that?" she wiped her mouth. Our walking speed has been doubled, then we saw a group of strangers ahead of us.

One of them is being dragged and crying for help—we took cover behind a large fallen tree log.

We took a peek at them, a wolf with an eyepatch on his left eye and a pistol connected with a plastic bottle with a piece of cloth inside that serves as a silencer—his feet only wears a wrapped bandage. A bluebird with a bow and quiver, and a reindeer holding and gently tilting her knife. The wolf is dragging the helpless victim's legs to his friends, a tied-up fox.

The fox wears a waistcoat, knee-high soccer socks with wrapped bandages on his feet, and a bell collar. His hair is dyed brown and white on the front. Jeez, I think he's too cute to be in this situation.

Most of his clothes are ripped, torn, and have mud and blood stains. The wolf, and the bluebird seem to enjoy his crying but the reindeer doesn't seem to be having fun.