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  The woman tried to make it a quick process, but the girl ( Julie, her name is Julie ) was starting to lose herself. Now that her tough facade had been mercilessly exposed and she had been hurt, she was sniveling like a little child. Dad tried to offer to bring her in, to look at the gunshot wound, to offer medicine and supplies. The voices of Kern and the woman roared above his, and before he knew it the woman had Julie's arm draped over her shoulder, limping along the sidewalk. Kern was beside him, the rifle still aimed in their direction.

  Dad turned and looked at him. He was shaking, his breath coming in hurried rasps. His face was flushed. While Dad knew the aftermath must have been harsh on him after such a split-second decision, the initial act hadn't been hard. He had been scared, and probably angry, when he pulled the trigger. Could Dad excuse it? If not, how was he supposed to punish Kern in this new world, where the only things that could be taken away were food, water, shelter, and life? The very things one had to have to survive.

  "Dad," Kern said, his voice starting to shake. "I...I..."

  "We can talk about it later son, I think we have some cleaning up to do."

  "No, Dad, I thought she was going to..."

  That was when they both heard it. Growls and moans off in the distance. The woman had not been lying. Kern stood silent by the door as Dad ran to get a towel and a couple of jugs of bleach. Dad tripped over the coffee table ( which had been moved to the center of the room so they could use the living room as a safe space ) and slammed into the wall. Pain exploded in his head, the side of it taking the brunt of the force. After pressing his palm against it for a moment, he hopped back to his feet and grabbed the bleach and a dirty old towel from the bathroom.

  Dad held his pistol in his hand as he walked cautiously out to the sidewalk, looking for both the infected and any one else. Their two visitors were gone, the trail of blood leading up a few houses and then cutting in between them. He took one jug of bleach and ran out to the sidewalk, telling Kern to take care of the door.

  They were both careful to not get any blood on them as Kern wiped the door off with an old t-shirt and then used another one doused with bleach to wipe it down. Dad hastily wiped up what he could up to where the two cut between the houses, then doused them with bleach on his way back to the house. The sounds were moans were getting louder. There was no time for a good scrub down.

  The door and the porch were the most important areas. If the infected followed the trail to their door, then they might catch a whiff of them and then it would all be over. After they had been wiped off the best they could, they wiped them down with bleach. Faint, red splotches mixed with the bleach and settled in the paint as it began to thin and attach itself to the towel. Dad cursed, and they had to use more clothing to clear it off.

  Dad closed the door behind them when they were done and they both took the soiled rags to the bath tub and doused them in more bleach. After that, Dad closed the curtains on the lower windows. Kern had grabbed his bag and brought food and water from the kitchen. He also grabbed Dad's bag and sat it on the couch. They wouldn't thirsty or get hungry tonight. Dad noticed he had gotten cereal bars, some of the precious chocolate, and canned vegetables.

  "I'll check these windows," Dad said. "You check the rooms."

  It was unspoken that they needed to wipe bleach around all the windows and outer doors. This was quick, and Dad went the extra mile to place bleached clothes at the bottoms of the doors. The smell was almost overpowering, but it was better than what the alternative might be. Dad peered out each window, focusing special attention on the way the woman and the girl had gone. Were they just like Dad and Kern? Maybe they had just been surviving. Things didn't have to go the way that they did, but there wasn't anything to be done about it now.

  Where the two had left the sidewalk was out of view, and the house had excellent soundproofing. Frustration was setting in because Dad couldn't tell what might be going on. If everything went well, Julie and the woman would run for their lives and the infected would follow their trail, far away from where they were. Worst case scenario: the two of them holed up just a few houses down with no way to mask their scent. Dad and Kern might have enough time to get the car in the garage running and the door opened, but if any of them were fast he doubted it. Besides, Dad would have felt better with the Jeep down the road. It was probably terrible on gas, but it would have went off-road a lot better than the hybrid.

  Kern waved to Dad from the stairs. They both quietly went to the upstairs bedroom where Dad was able to survey everything a bit better. He wiped the tears from his eyes and held his shirt up over his nose. Kern had really doused this window. Dad gently opened the window, and he could still hear the moans and growls. They were closer, but were moving farther away. The growls still sounded urgent, so he hoped they had picked up Julie's trail. Silently, in his mind, he prayed that both of them would be alright. It made him feel a little guilty hoping that they were being pursued in spite of his prayers, but right now he was concerned with their survival.

  The pack didn't sound very big, maybe a half-dozen or so. If that were the case, maybe they would be able to slip out soon. Dad nodded to Kern after he closed the window and the two of them went to the living room.

  It was imperative now that they left. There was still blood on the grass, and it might take days for the scent to go away. Right now, the infected were occupied. Later that night, however, they might double back on the trail of blood and follow it back here. The Jeep was obviously out, but they had packed enough gas into the trunk of the hybrid to get several hundred miles. Dad started the car periodically and Kern had even scavenged another battery for it. It was bigger and might take some quick rigging to get it in, but at least it was a side post.

  The two of them sat in silence for a little over an hour. Dad had made his decision. The car was packed with food, water, and fuel. The water had been replaced a couple of weeks before, so it was good, and all the food was processed and in sturdy containers. Gasoline was his only concern. He knew it went bad after a while, so they had kept every bit they had scavenged in gas cans and sealed bottles. With that said, Kern had loaded up a lot of other things they may need already. It had become a pastime of his, Dad thought.

  "It's time," Dad said. Kern looked at him, a hazed look in his eyes, and nodded. "Is the car packed with everything we will need?"

  "I think so. I have a few bags I think we might want to take, and we should load up all our medicine and the fishing stuff. I'm also taking my laptop."

  "Make it quick, and be quiet," Dad said.

  While Kern crept around the house, careful to avoid the windows, Dad started gathering things he knew they would need, like some of the bleach and extra blankets and a couple of pillows. If there wasn't enough room he could leave them, but an extra blanket on a cold night was a God-send. Then there was all the food and water he could cram into the car.

  Bittersweet it was, leaving the place they had called home for months. Electricity and running water were luxuries now, and they had even cordoned certain parts of the house off into their own domains. Dad would miss the courtyard, and the Spring mornings he had only so recently been able to enjoy sitting out there with a hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate. It was in those solitary moments and others like them that he had finally began to come to grips with the reality of all that had happened to them. Once he had time to rest and every waking moment wasn't spend pondering their direction or their next meal, the mist and fog that had pervaded his thinking finally lifted.

  Sometimes he thought about before, even though he and Kern had both agreed they should never think or talk about it. He even said their names out loud, lest he might forget them. Sometimes, the memories of the others they had lived with and shared their lives and home with popped into his mind. The pain was still so overwhelming that they were only on the periphery of his mind. One day, maybe, he would remember them.

  Every sound seemed amplified in the quiet house, and he either jumped or looked in
the direction. Kern was being as quiet as he could, going back forth from the garage. Dad wondered if he would be able to see out of the rearview mirror, and then grinned at the absurdness of it. Who was he worried was going to pass him? Would there be a cop to pull him over? Fear was something that only held sway when it was far away or kept closely at bay. When a person is mired deep into it, it loses it's power. After leaving their safe haven, Dad wondered if it would take hold again. It had laid dormant there while they stayed in the house.

  Kern stepped into the room with a look of determination. It was time.

  xxxxxxxxxx

  Mosquitos swarmed them in placid drones as the sun beat down through the trees. Bug spray was a distant memory. They had stockpiled some at one point, but it wasn't high on the list of things one needed for survival. The little red bumps all over their arms and necks were testament to this. Now, Dad would have traded all the fishing line, hooks, and granola bars for a can of spray.

  Dad lifted the almost flat, military-style metal bowl to his lips and took a sip of the fish stew he had made that morning. It was water, some roots he and Kern had foraged for, and wild onions. The fish were bluegill, those spiny little perch that had plagued the poles of every fisherman for centuries. Still, they made for a great meal when that's all their was and lately, that had been the case. The bottoms of their packs held granola bars, drink powders, and a few other things, but they were saving those for a rainy day.

  The little hybrid had taken them a little over two hundred miles by the time it gave up the ghost. By looking at the map, Dad figured that they had went around a hundred and twenty miles as the crow flies. Bad gas was the likely culprit, but there was no way to know for sure. Knowing they would have to leave most of their stuff behind, they moved all their food into the woods surrounding that little country road. They stayed there and gorged themselves for four days, loading up on the calories and carbs.

  From there they moved towards Canton. All that laid between them and possible salvation was a few hundred miles of forest and a few sparse towns. The trajectory they were following kept them away from the major cities. Roads also weren't safe. Now it wasn't just the drug addicts and thieves they had to worry about. Bad and desparate people had banded together. Some of them were just trying to scrape a living, but treating others harshly. Dad had seen these people having some aptitude at things like crop gathering and basic mechanics. They had watched and traded with a few groups like these, careful to only approach them when there was one or two, and always with Kern covering Dad from the bushes with the rifle.

  Then there were those who had no ambition, no skills, and no worry about the future except where their next fix or meal was going to come from. You could usually tell the type. Rotten teeth, trashy clothes, foul mouths over the smallest thing. They had encountered them once before deciding to leave the road. One of them tried to lure them back to a larger group. The only thing that saved them was when a small group of the infected exited the woods. The two of them ran and hid while the others looked for them. As they silently waited in the brush, Dad cringed at how they talked about how cute Kern was, wondering if they had any drugs in their bags.

  Clark, a small town nestled in the foothills, had fallen victim to people like this. One day while foraging through the ruined gas station and few scattered houses, they came across two women huddled together. Sara and Christy. They recounted the terrible story of how they had come to town and taken most of their food and anything else they thought was of value. Everyone else had left after that, hoping to find a brighter future somewhere else. The two women had stayed, waiting for a man named Davey Coleman, their husband and brother, respectively.

  There weren't many infected in this part of the world, and for that he was glad. What few they had come across were slow, dragging their feet and making a good ruckus on their way through the undergrowth and up the hills. Whenever they made camp, they would take clothesline and string it at ankle and chest level, looping in sticks, bottles, or whatever else they could find, then tie the ends to metal tins filled with rocks. It wasn't the best security system in the world, but it worked well enough.

  As he sipped, relishing the small chunks of meat, he couldn't help but think about how much Kern had matured and introverted since they had left. More often than not, Kern was thinking more. He wasn't so rash. A lot of times, he was quiet and just sat there reflecting. Dad liked to think that it was the road, or that he had hit that point in life a little early. Deep down, he knew that it was had happened just moments before they had left their little solar powered oasis.

  xxxxxxxxxx

  Kern was checking the lines, hoping the day's catch had been better than yesterdays, in between casts. So far, it wasn't. Most of the bait was gone, but he did catch a drum and two more bluegill. Kern patiently baited the hooks with bugs from a plastic bag. As mosquitos had proliferated in the hot forest, so had every other kind of insect. Luckily, some fish weren't too picky.

  They would need to move on in a few days. They were catching just enough fish to eat for the day, but he knew that there wasn't enough carbs to keep them going around here for long, and they had scavenged most of the plants and berries they knew were safe to eat. Now, as long as they stayed close to the river, they had meat every night. A few months ago, Kern would have thought this was high living. It wasn't enough, though. Dad taught him about carbohydrates. Back when times were normal, they were the bane of every person trying seriously trying to lose weight. Now, they could be a life saver. They needed to retain their weight, and on what lean foods they were eating they had slowly but steadily lost it.

  Kern did have a little stash that Dad never asked to partake of. It was a small collection of various candies he had looted along the way. Once a day, he would pop one in his mouth. It was almost like a window to another world, one they had lived in before. Still, the window was small enough that nothing from that world could escape. It was just the familiar taste of sugar, or lemon, or cinnamon.

  Dad had tried once to talk about the time before the dead started to rise, when they were still driving. Names and places gushed from his mouth, trying to make some kind of a point. Kern promptly started yelling and even opened the car door, threatening to jump out as the asphalt raced past and the dead moved towards the road. Those things, of the world before, were not to be talked about. Dad had promised him that night, when they lay starving and freezing in one of those bleak buildings they had been forced to hole up in.

  Thankfully the candy didn't have that same effect. It calmed his mind, reminding him that there could come a time when there wouldn't be any worries like now. Canton was a long shot, sure, but at least it was something. It was better than waiting at whatever place they could find food and shelter, just waiting for the time when they would either have to leave or die. Hope is what was wrapped up in those little pieces of cellophane, and he intended to hold onto it for as long as he could.

  Food was more scarce in the rural areas, the remaining residents not as pressed by the dead and the concentration of goods being just a fraction of what it was in the cities. This suited Kern. Especially since they were on foot, it gave him something to do. Fishing, hunting with the thin branches he had sharpened to a point, searching for edible plants. Dad did more than his fair share, Kern knew. When it came to pole fishing, Dad had a better knack at catching fish. He also knew a bit more than Kern about certain plants. Dad was the one who usually found the wild onions, carrots, poke. Sometimes, he even added flowers to soups or salads. They had even started making their own primitive form of salad dressing using berries honeysuckles.

  There was no reason why the majority of the people shouldn't have survived out here in the woodlands. Almost every house they passed had a treasure trove of things a person could use to survive. Human beings were wasteful creatures, and most people weren't as imaginative as Kern. An old trash bag to most people would be trash, but to him he saw a poncho, a tent, a bag, a fish trap, and a dew trap or rain ca
tcher. Since they didn't have the luxury of being able to stash goods, he had to be extremely picky these days about what he took, but that was part of the fun.

  Kern finished checking the lines, catching two more bluegill and frog. After killing his catches, baiting the lines, and strapping his collapsible rod and reel back to his pack, he started back towards camp. They had made camp in a small clearing in a thicket of pine trees. A good bit of thought had to go into where they camped, because if the spot was too open, they risked being spotted by both living and dead alike. If it was too enclosed, then they could run the risk of getting trapped inside or getting hung up in the brambles if attacked. The river was only a few hundred yards from the camp, so Dad didn't worry too much.

  Searing pain shot up his legs as the burned skin stretched with each step. It was rare that they ever got into the water, fearing attack, but a few days ago they had taken a bath and used some dish liquid Kern had an excess of. After he was done, he laid on the bank in his underwear a bit too long. It didn't help matters any that he had to pull himself up by the saplings on the bank. He wondered how many times a sunburn had been the end of someone out here, either by not being able to run or by sun poisoning.

  Twigs broke and something hit the ground off to his left. He crouched and looked, but couldn't see anything past the uprooted trees and shrubs. Slowly, he continued pulling himself up the bank. It wouldn't be good if one of the dead came upon him from the top of the slope. Every second seemed like an hour as he pulled himself up the bank in excruciating pain. His kills of the morning were in a plastic grocery bag tied to his pack, and try as he might he couldn't stop it from making that crinkling sound every time he pulled himself up.

  When he reached the top of the slope, he pulled his knife. Rustling in the undergrowth started again, this time closer. Who or whatever it was didn't seem to know he was there. A human would have noticed him looking and would have tried to be quiet. One of the dead would be coming at him as quick as it could, growling at him if it still had any lung capacity. His heart was beating in his ears. The first course of action that came to mind was running back to camp to warn Dad, which seemed like a bad idea. If he did, whatever was out there would know where he was and follow him.