Travels

A clap of thunder that shook the lonely farmhouse down to its weathered foundation jolted the man out of his uneasy sleep. He sat bolt upright in his increasingly tattered Coleman sleeping bag, the half unzipped flap of which let the chill air creep in but allowed for fast mobility in case of a disturbance such as the current one. Blinking in the dark, dust-smelling air, he looked around, heard the din of the downpour on the neglected shingles, and eased his hand from the grip of the Glock 23 holstered on the belt that also served to hold up his wayworn jeans. He eased back into his slightly damp bag, his mind involuntarily running through the depleting foodstuffs in his pack. Time to deal with that tomorrow. Lightning flickered again, illuminating the unkempt fields that sprawled into a forest after running their course for around half a mile.

Seeing the movement that had become to be feared, hated, and inevitable in the past months, the lone traveler was at his feet in an instant, shoving his feet into his boots and yanking the laces closed. Careful to stay as hidden as possible, he eased to the filthy window, taking note of motion in the darkness so subtle that he doubted its presence until another flash erased any doubt. Meandering around the fields, some of them shuffling closer to the mangled, peeling picket fence, they were they. The pistol was already in his hand. The dead had come.

The fact he was a shadow in an unlit, deserted house didn't matter for an instant; they knew he was there. (How could they see when their eyes had rotted? How could they move with no heartbeat?) One of the few that had already crossed the fence's shattered boundary turned its rotted face toward the window that to all natural eyes was blank and moaned, his face rising in excitement of the feast to come. The action allowed the downpour that was already running in rivulets along the surface of the filthy, saturated remains of his suit to track new streams down the exposed bones that marked the chunk of flesh that had been ripped from his face, the brand of the bite that had killed and risen him. The moan set the stumbling ghouls making their way through the field quicken their march.

In the dryness of the still, silent house, the traveler stood in front of the open front door, watching the spray of rain that made its way in dot the dusty hardwood as he pondered the path that had led him here. The city he had left behind as it started to burn still smoldered on the horizon, causing a greasy haze on the horizon that mercifully shrunk each day he journeyed. Four days of making his way past the burnt wreckage of suburban homes and abandoned cars, many of which still had the dead thrashing around inside, had led him what was truly the country, where the land became less and less flat and whose rolling hills and forests hid nightmares of the walking dead and the desperate who had survived them through their own savagery. The lone farmhouse had appeared on the horizon, visible in its clearing for miles off, conspicuous from its lack of smoke or glints of reflected light from moving vehicles or weapons. He had set his course for it, a tiny white speck in the endless green woods and the browning fields that were their intermissions. He had started with 500 bullets; when he crossed the sad, silent threshold of the house that had been deserted long before the dead walked he had 187.

As the dead man in the suit came within five steps of the porch stairs the traveler squeezed the trigger. The first .40 caliber round cracked out of the short barrel, its trail of fire and noise to following fractions of a second later. If observed at the minute level it could have been seen that as the bullet spiraled along it course it rose slightly as it hit the cooler outside air, wobbled as the rain struck it and flashed into steam, and finally deformed itself into a lumpy gray mushroom as it burst the zombie's skull.

Two empty magazine lay on the floor by the time the final dead man joined the pile that had formed at the base of the farmhouse's stairs. The traveler retrieved them, aware of the fact that the stench of rotting flesh would further corrupt the ruined house that stood like a sentinel of the hills. The lightning continued for another hour before it looked safe enough to again take to roads that would soon crumble and tracks through forests that concealed ravenous, unfriendly eyes. Such was the life of a traveler in a world that had been overtaken by the damned. 158 bullets left.