Status: Am still trying to write, but school is keeping me really busy
Hopeless Wanderer
Seven
“Will?” The winter had been far more harsh than I’d imagined a winter in Georgia would be. Luckily spring was slowly working through winter’s defenses. I worked my cold fingers, trying to undo the knots I’d made to keep myself from falling out of the tree as I slept. I’d quickly learned that unless you give them reason to, those filthy rotters never seem to look up. “Where’d you go?” I’d met up with Will about a week after my visit with Pete and Ian. He refused to tell me where he’d been or how he’d found me, but I’ll never forget his million dollar smile when he saw me for the first time since the incident. Since then, he kept me company and gave me advice.
Will ducked out from behind a tree. He was shaking his head, grimacing. We’d become hopelessly lost in this forest. We probably would have emerged into a city somewhere a long time ago, except I suspected that for the most part we walked about in circles. Sometimes, in the dark hours of morning while I still slept lashed to a tree, Will would wander off and scout a bit. Will never seemed to need much sleep. I hauled myself down, thankful that throughout our travels we found enough empty farmhouses to keep a meager stock of supplies. We might stay a day or two, gaining respite from the elements, but never more than a week. If I found the house, surely others would be along too. I always outright skipped the houses that looked like they might still have live occupants. The houses with the rotters still inside I could handle well enough. I tried not to kill any unless I had to. I learned to abandon a lot of the social etiquette I’d grown up with, but I couldn’t quite shake the thought that putting my crowbar through their skulls for any reason but strict self-defense wasn’t somehow murder. Even if they were already dead.
The one house we passed through in early winter, with the bodies of the two children peacefully placed atop their beds, haunted my dreams sometimes. Their necks, mottled with purple, told me they’d been choked to death before somebody had put a flat head screw driver through their temples. That somebody was probably their mother, who had blasted her own brains out in the corner of the room with a handgun. It looked to be an awfully messy affair. It made me realize how lucky I actually was to skip the terrifying and uncertain times that followed as the state fell to the rotters.
I stretched out. It never grew old to marvel at how lean and fit I’d become. I had never considered myself fat, so I didn’t realize how much weight my body could stand to lose. Maybe if the apocalypse had been branded a new weight loss plan, more people would have embraced it a little better. After a little bit of arguing with Will, I set off in the direction I thought I’d been heading the day before. He kept trying to turn me away from this path but would never tell me why. All he would say was that I was headed the wrong direction. He wouldn’t explain how that was even possible since I didn’t know where I was going. If I didn’t have a destination, wasn’t one direction just as good as any other?
Will ducked out from behind a tree. He was shaking his head, grimacing. We’d become hopelessly lost in this forest. We probably would have emerged into a city somewhere a long time ago, except I suspected that for the most part we walked about in circles. Sometimes, in the dark hours of morning while I still slept lashed to a tree, Will would wander off and scout a bit. Will never seemed to need much sleep. I hauled myself down, thankful that throughout our travels we found enough empty farmhouses to keep a meager stock of supplies. We might stay a day or two, gaining respite from the elements, but never more than a week. If I found the house, surely others would be along too. I always outright skipped the houses that looked like they might still have live occupants. The houses with the rotters still inside I could handle well enough. I tried not to kill any unless I had to. I learned to abandon a lot of the social etiquette I’d grown up with, but I couldn’t quite shake the thought that putting my crowbar through their skulls for any reason but strict self-defense wasn’t somehow murder. Even if they were already dead.
The one house we passed through in early winter, with the bodies of the two children peacefully placed atop their beds, haunted my dreams sometimes. Their necks, mottled with purple, told me they’d been choked to death before somebody had put a flat head screw driver through their temples. That somebody was probably their mother, who had blasted her own brains out in the corner of the room with a handgun. It looked to be an awfully messy affair. It made me realize how lucky I actually was to skip the terrifying and uncertain times that followed as the state fell to the rotters.
I stretched out. It never grew old to marvel at how lean and fit I’d become. I had never considered myself fat, so I didn’t realize how much weight my body could stand to lose. Maybe if the apocalypse had been branded a new weight loss plan, more people would have embraced it a little better. After a little bit of arguing with Will, I set off in the direction I thought I’d been heading the day before. He kept trying to turn me away from this path but would never tell me why. All he would say was that I was headed the wrong direction. He wouldn’t explain how that was even possible since I didn’t know where I was going. If I didn’t have a destination, wasn’t one direction just as good as any other?