Shooting’s over for now. Hopefully writing this won’t get me killed for not paying attention. The old man is keeping watch out the window. Hopefully he’ll stay conscious the entire time. Bleeding stopped, so he shouldn’t be passing out anytime soon.
Our little foray into hell got us right where I thought it would. Knee deep in crap.
Started out sensible enough. We’d put a keen edge on the axe for Jimmy-- he hates it when me and the old man call him that. Along with a set of Molotov's for each of us and a set a flares I found in the back of an SUV. Decided we’d looted what we needed from the surrounding area. Stepped out the back, and Dave spent a couple minutes next to the fresh patch of dirt where his dog lays. When he got back to where I uncomfortably waited, he was talking about how “dog’s got a sense of duty. Duty to it’s master, duty to us all. Us left alive got to stick together.”
He took a puff of the inhaler, and we set out. James wasn’t trying to outrun the two of us this time. Call him a lot of things, but I won’t call him a fool. Learned his lesson.
There were a few moaners as we passed through back alleys and across intersections. As long as we went slow, didn’t talk, and staked out each area ahead, we did fine. Moaners are slow as hell if they don’t know you’re there, and can be snuck up on. Every time we saw one, two would hang back while the last snuck up on it and bashed it’s skull in quiet as can be. First time James was up, he managed to kill the thing-- a petite old lady in sweats-- with one violent, well aimed stroke. He turned green when he looked her over. Found out that James can vomit quieter than he can walk.
We saw a few large groups shambling along, but heard them far before they saw or heard us. Was easy to sneak round them, taking side roads and carefully picking our way through buildings. The old man had studied a local map for a long time to fix in his mind how to get to the waste facility. Can’t think of many things worse than getting lost in HellTown USA.
Sneaking into the lion’s den got to all of us. The moaning, most of it muddy and distant, got louder the further we went into the city. By about noon, the old man signaled we would stop for ‘rations’ in a ‘temp camp’. Basically, we holed up in the back corner of a second story apartment and chowed on cold Spam and crackers. The walls quieted the noise a bit and removed some of the hair prickling certainty that this city no longer belongs to the living.
James didn’t eat much, but he kept on through the afternoon and into the evening, more and more jumpy. I’m jumpy too, round this much danger and blighted despair, but James took it harder, specially as we got closer to our destination. Saw him shaking his head to himself a couple times. Must be thinking of Liz. Just his luck, then, that he was the first one to see the bodies.
No comments:
Post a Comment