Groundlings

The dead man woke slowly to a blinding, blanketing darkness. He groaned and rolled over, face down on a wooden floor half rotted away. He let himself lie there for a time. His whole body ached. He was fairly certain the cracks in his ribs had healed together, but they certainly had not healed right and they certainly felt damn tender. That would prove to be quite a problem later in life.
How funny. All this time out here, down here, and he still thought he had a “later in life”? Well, hope was a small hope, he supposed. Not that there was much of it.
Groaning, he pushed himself up on two hands, then (carefully, painfully) twisted to sit on his heels, then again so his back leaned up against the wall and his legs extended before him. It took almost all the strength he had in him.
Oh, shitting hell. He really was finally dying, wasn’t he? Well, it sure had taken its sweet time coming his way. As he sat and breathed, his stomach rumbled, loud as thunder to his tired ears. Weren’t there still a few of those tasty leaves around that he’d found the other day?
He had to still have something to eat.
Something.
Anything.
The dead man groped around on the floor. Oh, good. His pack hadn’t gone anywhere during the night. He still had his knife, and his gun with its five shots left. He had burned through it all far too quickly in the beginning. He had thought he would find his way back.
He had failed in that. Clearly.
He supposed he had needed to be reckless in those early days. It had saved his life. But much good it would do now. How long had it really been? The air was not yet growing cold enough to herald winter but hell, it had to come soon.
He had to save those shots. Had to.
He couldn’t hunt. No, not now. Not when he had worse days to come.
There was always the option of using the knife, but he was too weak and too slow to get close enough for the blade to be useful. So, he would scavenge today. Maybe he would find mushrooms. What a thought.
What a wonderful hole he had dug himself into.
He pushed himself to his feet. And oh, fuck, fuck it hurt. But the dead man would not rest until he had nothing left. He would not die until those shots were spent.
And he would not shoot them soon. No, no, he would not. The gun came with him, of course. In case, just in case, a familiar weight on his back. A small, terribly uncomfortable home he always carried with him.
Man, that was messed up. But hell, you did what you had to do to survive. And survive is exactly what the dead man would do. He shuffled out of the cabin hunched over, his few belongings slung over his shoulders.
And as he breathed the air outside, the back of his throat felt dusted with centuries of dust. He coughed, hard and dry and hacking. He needed water, he remembered, and headed for one if the holes he had dug in the ground who knew how long ago. The water that had gathered was as dirty as always, but it was there and it was enough. Barely enough.
He knelt by the hole, slowly and painfully, as he did everything these days and scooped a handful from the hole. He grimaced as he looked at it. It had almost become a ritual by now, to sit there staring at the filth in his hands and be disgusted by how low he had sunk. But perhaps that peculiar ritual and the revulsion he felt was just one more thing that kept him human yet.
He was going to drink mud. He’d been drinking mud for ages. Ew. Disgusting.
He raised the hand to his mouth and drank, filtering as much of the grit through his teeth as he could. It still felt grainy going down, but at this point he could not even tell whether it was because he had swallowed too much dirt or whether his throat was just that dry.
Probably dirt. It hadn’t hurt that much going down, which certainly was a good sign, if it was anything. And somehow, it renewed his flame for the time being. He headed further out into the forest, slapping his hands against the trees where he’d marked them before, feeling the ridges of his carvings, some of them crusted with sap. Making sure he only followed paths he knew, because he had gotten lost far too many times to keep making the same damned mistakes over again.
He had fought like hell to know these parts through the woods. It was sheer luck that he had had the presence of mind for the markings early on. It was difficult to think when you had broken bones and were not used to starving.
Which reminded him, it was time to search for food. If nothing else, he could eat sticks again. He had done it a few times, and he knew it was terribly unhealthy, but it had staved off his death just another day. He hoped. But staving off death, or at least probably doing so, was all that mattered down here.
The dead man searched for tracks, especially for human ones. Those were the ones to avoid at all costs. It was a difficult search as it had not rained in days and the forest floor was littered with all sorts of decaying plant matter. And, well, the area did not have much traffic. Finding anything with meat on it would prove one hell of a challenge.
But even the mere thought of meat made his mouth water. It felt like it had been forever since he’d had even a roast pigeon. And those were as basic as it got. But hell, meat. Real meat, cooked up hot and tender and juicy and maybe still a little bit bloody.
He almost had to sit down just imagining it.
He imagined it so hard he could taste it, could almost feel the sinuous muscle tear in his teeth. He reached a hand up to pick out a bit of dirt that had wedged between.
A gunshot sounded in the distance. As always it was too far away to pinpoint what direction it had come from. But he was disoriented and weak, and the zombies were not. It was lucky, really. As long as there were not any close to him, the gunshot would draw them.
Away from him. It greatly increased his chance of surviving. And the forest around him was quiet except for the weak sounds of his own footsteps, so he was unlikely to have any encounters in the first place.
Was he imagining it, or had there been less of those in general lately? The dead man did not know if he could trust himself well enough to tell.
Another gunshot.
It had occurred to him several times before that even though he himself could not tell where they came from, he could probably tail the zombies turning in the right direction. He had almost tried it once, but luckily logic had won out. Even if he could make it home before being detected, which was incredibly unlikely already, he would look the same as his companions to the gunners. There would be nothing to welcome him home but a bullet to the head.
The snipers rarely missed. He knew because he had been one. But it wouldn't do him any good to dwell on the past out here. It took too much effort and it tasted too bitter, so he simply left it to stew until he had somehow made it out of this hell beneath the redwoods.
The dead man still had scavenging to do, so he tore himself away from his introspection to scan the area. There. A bush of berries he had come across a while ago. There were still some left on it, those that had taken their time to ripen. He had left them, knowing he would be back this way.
Bless him. He set to picking them, a few of them overripe by now. And, lacking any pockets to store them in, he lifted his grubby shirt, made loose by wear and starvation, and used it as a kind of awkward and wobbly bowl.
It was so, so difficult to resist just popping them all in his mouth right now.
But he couldn't. It was something he had learned early on, sources of food drew creatures besides just him. He had to stay alert. And that meant he could not eat until he was safe.
The forest around him was still quiet, which meant nothing big would come his way. He could afford to wait for something smaller, something he would have a chance at killing.
So he waited, patiently listening.
And something came. A swift flutter of beating wings announced the arrival of a bird, come to see if the bush had anything left for it.
Birds were tricky. They were nervous and they were fast and more often than not they were more trouble than they were worth. But the dead man was feeling good about this one. It had landed close, very close, and was hopping from twig to twig and inching closer to him.
Maybe it didn't see him.
After a what felt like hours but could logically not have been more than a few minutes, the bird was within reach. It still had not noticed him.
And the dead man took his chance and lunged, his free hand grabbing wildly. It closed on empty air twice as the bird startled. But he was lucky and it was stupid and it had fluttered into the bush, and on the third grab his fingers closed around one of its feet.
This was, arguably, the hardest part. The bird panicked, flapping its wings and crying desperately, making all the efforts its tiny body could muster to get away.
But he held on to it, held on tight, and smashed it against the side of the tree twice until it stopped struggling.
And a third time, just to make sure it was truly dead.
He had scattered most of his berries getting the bird, and he stooped to pick up as many as he could fit in his hand before he left, because he had to leave fast. That bird had been loud and its cry would draw predators in due time.
And, well, if he was still there when they arrived, he was in big trouble.
He walked fast, washing the trees for his carved markings. He wished he could run, but it was too loud and too likely to leave a trail. Besides, he probably couldn't even sprint ten feet at this point.
But it didn't matter, today he had won. He had meat and berries.
Today, the dead man would eat like a king.