I wandered the countryside for the best part of two days before I found adequate shelter. I spent the first night on a bale of hay in a farmhouse. In the darkness, I didn’t notice that I’d left the front door open. I was lucky to survive until morning.
Lacking both food and water, I scavenged some withered roots from the untended fields outside the barn, and went on my way. The countryside had been plagued by wolves, since the human population ceased to keep their numbers in check, and they were ever-threatening to catch me off-guard, or without a weapon.
I found an abandoned FEMA camp at midday, and slowly cleared the zombies as they stumbled out through the twisted remains of the same wire fence which had once kept them away from the cowering researchers and refugees within. Some of the zombies were clad in military gear. My hunch is that the men and women whose bodies those once were had been the guards of this particular camp.
They died like the rest of the mindless horde. I dragged them through bushes and barbed wire, until they shredded their clothing and their limbs were tattered with strips of slime-ridden flesh.
I found weapons and medicine, but no food or water. Ironic, since I could now defend myself from everything but the gnawing hunger in my chest. I had eaten only wild since leaving the city. It was then that I stumbled upon my salvation - in the midst of a forest, slumped over bushes and lying like ragdolls in the undergrowth, I found a squadron of soldiers. I didn’t stop to dwell on what might have killed them, without leaving so much as a splash of blood, and gratefully shouldered an expensive backpack, and a few precious bottles of water, and hooking a powerful set of binoculars to my belt-rig. I silently thanked whatever had caused their demise, for it had surely prevented mine.
By the time I had quenched my thirst, there was little left of the water. I made my way northwards, chewing on a bar of soapy chocolate and some mildew-flavoured crisps. There is little comfort in the world of the dead. Peering through my binoculars, I spotted a military bunker squatting under the brooding sky, in an open field. As the first drops of rain fell hissing onto my skin, I broke into a jog, desperately praying it might be inhabited.
A hail of bullets halted my advance. I threw myself to the ground as the first hissed past my ear, followed by ten more. The grass around me exploded with tiny fountains of soil as the rounds ripped into the ground. I crawled desperately along a line of sparse shrubs, wincing every time another salvo sliced effortlessly through my meagre cover.
Somehow, I made it to a copse of trees and, out of sight at last, the danger faded away, leaving only the gentle patter and hiss of the acid rain sliding off the leaves above me. It was a few minutes before I dared to peer out, readying my pathetic handgun in the hopes that it might ward off any potential attackers. “I’m not an enemy! I’m alive!” I shouted.
For a second, only silence and the echo of my voice came back to me, then there was a click, a beep, and an smg sent five bullets slamming into the trunk of the tree against which I was leaning. Turrets. Somewhere inside me, the animal fear pooled into liquid laughter. Even the repeated beeping that responded to the sound of my voice did nothing to stop me. Turrets! This would be easy.
I slipped through the trees, keeping an eye on the cool grey steel that marked their position out to me through the vegetation. Silently, I made my way behind the bunker, and, after reassuring myself that there were no turrets on the near side, I dashed across the tarmac until I was pressed against the wall. My heart beat steadily. There was nothing to fear.
Having paused to catch my breath, I worked my way around the corner until I spotted the machines - a bank of four, in a square formation, all pointed away from me, silently aiming at the trees into which I had vanished. I picked up a large rock and threw it in an arc so that it landed out in bushes in front of them. They tracked it expertly, hammering it with unerring accuracy as it sailed through the air. They weren’t fooled for long. The sound of my feet as I dashed towards the bunker’s entrance was enough for the battery to turn, as one, to face me. There was a click, as they primed their weapons…
And fell inactive. The ID card smoothly slid into the reader.
Once inside, I used my last remaining card to open a chamber filled with grenades and bombs. It took me a while to gather up the courage, but I used them to blast open the rest of the storage chambers. It wasn’t long before I found a mess of wires and bio-mechanical implant structures - a CBM. By the absence of the usual matte plastic casing, it was an experimental model, and the phrase “time dilation” scrawled on a tag hanging from one of the nerve-wires was enough to warn me away from attempting to install it without help. This was some serious military gear.
I left the bunker armed with a few more pieces of military gear. To the casual eye I might well be a soldier - and perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps any survivors might think twice before trying to ambush me, if I looked like a seasoned fighter.
The rain had cleared, although the sky still threatened ominously with a vast, slow-twisting spiral of black clouds. Looking back, I know that I was soon to find the place that became my home, but faced with that crushing darkness, the sharp smell of rain still clinging to the air, a blustering wind at my back and only a few drops of water to my name, I can forgive myself for doubting it.
