The pressure inside the sealed can released with dry whoosh, and the metal rasped as it was torn open. With an involuntary moan of delight, the man shoveled a hand full of cold Busch's Baked Beans into his mouth. He could feel the jagged edges of the can worrying at his skin and the sauce stung his cracked, bleeding lips but he didn't care. It was the first real food he'd had in days.
As he greedily ate his eyes searched his surroundings, watching for threats to life or dinner like a dog. The interior of the gas station was dark, the large glass windows long since broken and boarded over with plywood. What little light there was came in through the hole he'd kicked through the door or shone ghost-like through the gaps in the barricades.
He'd slept by day and moved by night to make it this far. Walkers moved faster when they were warm. When night hit the desert and the temperature fell, they stiffened up and could barely move. It had something to do with their tendons, explained a surgical aide he'd met once in Phoenix while they looted a pharmacy together.
The Oriega Gas n' Fill was his home now, far removed from the necropolis that was Phoenix. A year after the outbreak had begun, surviving around the city became impossible. The land had been stripped clean of supplies in the weeks following the first reported outbreaks. Once there was no food to be found, most survivors left the city, leaving behind only the committed and the organized. But even they couldn't cope with the growing numbers of walkers coming from south of the border, an army that eventually threatened to surround the city on their march northwards.
It was then he'd decided to leave. His Buick and what fuel he'd hidden got him halfway to Flagstaff on Route 17. The road was lined with abandoned vehicles, glistening memorials to interstate living. But it was too dangerous to stop and siphon any gas from them. He'd already avoided a dozen packs on the drive out, who seemed to vaguely remember that roads were once the lifelines of living.
Without a backward glance he'd ditched the Buick and headed off northwest toward Prescott. He figured his chances were better both at going unnoticed and finding supplies if he went off the beaten path. It turned out they weren't. He trekked for miles through open expanses of sage and scrub brush, red rocks and black scorpions. He had been forced to run for his life more than once, through the walking dead spread out over the desert like a dragnet searching for their version of an illegal immigrant.
His days were spent resting fitfully in the shadow of large boulders, dug into the sand like a beetle. His nights were spent slinking through the darkness like prey. The few half-gallons of water and food he'd brought ran out on the fourth day, and he'd truly begun to despair on the sixth when, just as dawn was rising, he'd caught sight of the gas station.
The sound of a far off cry brought the man to his feet in an instant, beans in one hand and gore-spattered shovel in the other. He froze, listening for the slightest shuffle or scrape that would mean he needed to run. His mind began to race. Had he checked his trail often enough? Had one of them following him drawn others? Was there a horde slowly circling around his Alamo? He counted to one thousand with his heart pounding in his ears. But after one thousand and twenty counts, he heard nothing except the wind, and slowly sat back down to his beans.
With a last, hopeful swipe he cleaned out the can and licked the remainder from his hand. He stared at the label, and fought the urge to laugh. He'd hated baked beans as a kid and through a fit whenever his mom made them. Even when he'd grown up he still never preferred the taste.
Gingerly he set the empty can on the floor and made his way to the bathroom in the back of the store, past toppled shelves and coolers with broken glass doors. Here and there he could see things he'd need, a stepped on bag of chips, a dented can of soda in the corner that still looked intact. He didn't kid himself though, there were barely enough supplies here for a day or two. Turning on his flashlight he entered the bathroom, hoping to find anything of value. But even the truck stop condom dispenser had been jimmied open and looted, the quarters still left in it.
As he turned he caught his reflection in a dusty mirror and stopped. He hadn't looked at himself in what seemed like weeks, and he hardly recognized the gaunt, feral creature staring back at him. His already slight frame seemed skeletal, all the non-essential flesh long since used up, his frayed trucker's jacket and camo pants hanging off him. He took off his grimy sunhat and ran his hand over his head. He'd lost more hair at some point, he thought, and what was left was thin and greasy.
Now that he could see himself, he could feel the layers of dirt on him and the pain of his burnt skin and peeling lips. His eyes, staring brightly out of a benighted face, seemed to belong to someone else. They were hard and flinty like those of a predator. And there was a hollowness there too, an absence of warmth and life, eyes that had more in common with the dead than he living. He'd left himself back in Phoenix along with everything else. He slowly slid to a seat on the floor as the memories came to him unbidden.
A small room with a TV and a computer. A family. Too many years of state college. Too many years of fun and hedonism. Aimlessness. Promises and failures. And fear. Always fear.
Now he did laugh. It rose slowly from his stomach, shaking his whole body as he struggled to contain in. It cascaded up his throat until it burst out and he bellowed. He laughed at how useless he'd been, paralyzed by indecision like a deer in the headlights at every turn. He laughed at the news, at terrorism, at peak oil, earthquakes and the Second Coming.
He laughed at his own weakness. The man had never truly hurt anything in anger before the outbreak. Now he'd taken his shovel to more bodies than he could remember. And not just the dead, but the living too. In a Schiel's Department Store in Phoenix a businessman still wearing his three-piece suit pulled a knife on him, over a box of shotgun shells. The man split his skull open with his shovel blade like he was a walker, precisely and without pity. He traded the shotgun shells a few days later for three candy bars.
He wiped tears from his face, memories dancing around him like smoky phantoms as his laughter subsided. His mother, who had given him everything in life, sitting on her bed with a gaping wound in her neck staring blankly at her son. His best friend, robbing a family at gun point, screaming at him to unload their stuff from the minivan while they watched. Listening to survivors caught on the streets in the open, begging to be let inside, as the walkers began to feast. The arguments and the inevitable conclusions that there was no point in helping.
The man swallowed hard, fighting nausea rising in his stomach and pushing back the tide of mania and anguish threatening to drown him. He wouldn't pity himself, or anyone else, he thought. He was no stranger to suffering, he was a survivor now, and the best protection he'd found against the pain of the past was to act for the future.
He rose unsteadily, Busch's Baked Beans churning in his stomach, and made his way to the window. He looked out through the gaps in the plywood at the desolate expanse of the Arizona desert. In the light of the rising sun he could see walkers scattered across the wastes in the distance, grotesque black shapes silhouetted against a tequila sunrise sky, moving erratically in all directions across.
The road north wouldn't be easy, he knew. It would probably mean his death in the end, if not from walkers then from starvation, dehydration or a sick soul. In a previous life the prospect of an uncertain future would have terrified him, and sent him scrambling to make excuses and rationalize away what he needed to do. In a previous life he would have barricaded himself into the Oriega Gas 'n Fill to die in darkness and silence. But no longer. All he had left were goals. And so he clung to purpose like a drowning man clings to driftwood, and he made plans.
After making sure all was clear, the man carefully drug a metal shelf over to block the hole he'd made in the door. He took off his threadbare backpack and stretched out behind the register counter, his pillow a crushed cardboard box. It was the nicest place he'd slept in almost a week. He almost sighed in pleasure.
The man had never been one for religion. But these days he prayed, fervently, to anything that would listen. Not for safety, food or succor. He only asked that when he awoke, if ever, he had the strength to live with what he'd have to do.
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Topic: *OVER* [Giveaway] Dead Island 3 copies (Read 5190 times)