Deer Hunters
12 Oct
2100
After leaving this morning, I had my gear positioned and straps on my pack adjusted for a long march south. I noticed that my clothes fit rather loosely compared to just a couple of weeks earlier. I know that I feel constantly hungry because of all the walking I am doing. Thank goodness this area of the United States is relatively flat. I think I might have perished if I had had to traverse the Rocky Mountains with so few provisions. After an hour of slowly moving south I saw a buck with my binocs a hundred yards in the distance.
My hunger took over as I went down on one knee and quietly set the pack down next to an old stump that would be easy to find. I stalked the deer in front of me, keeping close to the tree line to avoid detection. One hundred yards would be a near-impossible kill shot with my 9mm submachine gun; I would need to get inside twenty yards to make the shot count. The buck did not detect my presence as I closed on him. I took another look at him with my binocs from fifty yards to make sure he would be a healthy mark. I tried to check him over to verify that he had not been injured by the creatures. I could see no bite marks and he seemed to be relatively healthy. His muscles flexed as he walked and grazed. He did not appear too skinny or too old. I could not count the number of points on his rack because of the foliage around him. I looked back to make sure that I wasn’t spotted by the undead and to make sure I could still see my pack next to the old stump. I had stalked closer, to within about one hundred feet, when the ears of the buck perked up, sensing that something was not right. Perhaps it was the smell of a living human or maybe I was not walking as quietly as I intended.
I pulled the weapon up and aimed it at the buck. Using my thumb I checked to make sure the weapon was in single shot, as I didn’t deem it necessary to waste ammunition on my mark. It was now or never, as I had a premonition that within a few seconds the animal would get spooked and run away.
I squeezed off two rounds and hit the mark in the neck and behind the head. The animal fell on its side, then got up and started to run. I tracked the animal, cursing half to myself and half out loud over how stupid I was to be so greedy and reckless. I hated killing animals unless absolutely necessary for food, and now I might have killed this animal for no reason, losing it forever. I tracked the blood for what seemed like an hour, carefully gauging my distance from my gear and from the highway to be sure I would not get lost.
The blood drops trailed down into a small valley and behind a finger of terrain. I carelessly ran down and around the finger, thinking only of my growling stomach, and came out of the shrubbery right into a baker’s dozen of undead feeding on my mark. They were on their knees over the buck and scratching and biting at the hide of the animal. One of them had already pulled the skin back from where the bullet penetrated. Guilt and anger fell over me as I saw them devour the animal. The poor beast’s eyes were open and as I looked through the corpses that were all around it, I felt that the animal was looking at me and thinking, “So this is why you took me?”
I was only ten feet away from the things. I decided to start walking backward to get out of this little valley. One of the creatures looked in my direction with buck blood and flesh dripping from its rotting jaw. It then put its arms out to reach for me. It moaned and then two others looked up and did the same. I turned to run back to my gear and followed the blood trail. I opened the distance between the pursuing dead and myself. I noticed as I ran a dramatically skinny house cat jump from a tree near the buck. It scurried off into the field nearby.
Seeing those things reminded me how close to death I was again. I had thought that I would be desensitized to them after so much exposure. Each one is a Picasso of terror that reminds me that I will be at war until they all rot into the ground whence we all came.
I checked behind me every five seconds and just ran, still cursing under my breath at how stupid I was for even attempting to shoot this animal at that distance with the weapon I had. The buzzing had once again returned by the time I was close enough to see the stump where I had cached my gear. I looked all around and concentrated on where the sound could be coming from. The sky was too overcast for me to see anything above the tops of the trees. In a solemn state of concentration I began to hear the snap of twigs in the trees off in the distance. The deer hunters were in pursuit of something new. I grabbed my gear and readjusted the pack straps. I was thankful to be alive but felt deep guilt for sentencing another living thing to be eaten by those f*cking abominations. It was almost as if I had scored a goal for the other team. The deer was put on this earth for living things to eat in need, not to be poached by something by the likes of them.
I evaded the creatures by carefully crossing the highway and following the other side. This side did not provide the same amount of cover as the other, as it consisted mostly of a large field for the next few miles, with sparse cover every few hundred yards. I decided to cross back over when the first safe opportunity presented itself.
The rest of my day was spent walking slowly south and attempting to keep my mind off the food in my pack that I needed to conserve. It drizzled most of the day and was generally miserable, but I suspect that in times like these a sunny day would be just as miserable. I had heard the buzzing three times total today at random moments and decided to start mentally noting the times of day and duration of the sound.
As I looked at my watch, gauging how much daylight I had left, I began to formulate my strategy for a secure sleeping area. By 1500 I was able to see the outline of a town in the distance. This prompted me to start looking at the highway for signs indicating what I would be walking into. I decided that if the population sign read more than thirty thousand, I’d make no attempt to get near it. After all, I needed some food, a road atlas and maybe some ammunition, but not at the cost of dealing with half a million of those things. Even though all it takes is one of them to do you in, a bite is exponentially easier to evade when dealing with a smaller population. This is not a science, but it makes me feel better to draw my line in the sand.
It would be getting dark in a couple hours. I was getting a little uneasy. Sleeping on the ground was not going to happen in a million years. If I did not find shelter before dark, I was going to stay up all night and keep moving. Originally, following the crash, I had thought that I would limit my movement only to night, but the lack of batteries for my NVGs and the idea of sleeping during the day when those things can see had changed my mind. I know they can’t see in the dark, as was evident the other night when I departed the top story of the farmhouse. They responded to sound but could not see me.
My choices were lessening by the minute so I looked to the highway for a place to hang my automatic weapon. There were a few options. There was a Winnebago, but I ruled that out because there would be no escape in the event the RV was surrounded. The next option I came to was a UPS truck turned on its side. Once again I felt that this was too small to use since it could also be easily surrounded. The next option I came to was a large semitruck that had a long feed trailer on the back.
Using my binoculars, I scanned the truck for any sign of death. The windows were rolled up on the tractor-trailer. The truck was high enough off the ground that those things could not climb up on the hood and the rig had a sleeper cabin behind the driver. The words “Boaz Trucking, Inc.” were painted on the driver’s door. Two of the tires were flat on my side. The rig was leaning a little because of this. I thought it best not to rush into this and just keep an eye on the area to make sure there was no danger. I listened and watched for half an hour before I dropped my pack and headed for the rig. When my foot touched the asphalt I could see clearly in both directions up and down the road.
An ambulance sat derelict in the distance to the north, and to the south I could see a green sign that I thought could indicate the miles to the next town. I made for the running boards to step up to the cab. On the driver’s side I noticed the door was locked, but the other side was not. There was no sign of any danger inside the cab. I jumped down and ran around to the other side and opened the door. The old truck smell of fast-food bags stuffed under the seat, and a sun-baked dashboard told me that no one had been in this rig for a very long time.
I climbed inside and looked in the sleeper behind the front seats. The bed was not made but was serviceable. Inside this truck everything seemed normal, other than the faded fast-food bags sitting on the dashboard. I climbed out of the truck, satisfied that it was safe, and went to retrieve my pack. By the time I got back to the truck it was getting too dark to try to read the sign up ahead so I decided it was best to prepare for the night. I placed my pack on the driver’s seat and pulled the privacy curtains so that I could not be spotted easily. With the doors locked, I started to inspect the cab for anything of value. I found a disposable lighter and a can of Vienna sausages along with a nice ink pen and a Sharpie marker. I devoured the canned meat. In order to conserve my flashlight batteries, I intend to check the rest of the vehicle over when the sun rises in the morning. The doors are locked and the windows, I suspect, will never come down again.
13 Oct
0822
I slept well last night despite hearing something outside before falling asleep. I was so exhausted. I thought that I would attempt to remain still and quiet and in doing so, I fell hard into deep sleep and didn’t wake up until about 0630. The light was shining into the cab through the curtains. I kept them closed as I slid my boots on and laced them up and splashed some water on my face. I climbed over to the passenger seat and peeked past the curtains into the area outside. I thought I could see something moving around far to the south. I reached over and grabbed my binocs and checked it out. There was a single corpse in the distance wandering about the abandoned cars. I could see no sign of any closer threat. Cracking the curtains to let more light in, I began a more thorough search of the cab.
The glove compartment revealed nothing but an insurance card that had expired six months ago and a picture of a man and his family standing in front of the Alamo. My mind drifted back to San Antonio and the fate of the Alamo. The area was nuked and is now a wasteland of radiated undead. I wouldn’t go back there even with a thousand AC-130 gunships over my head. The back of the picture was dated December of last year. I looked at the picture and wished that I could go back to that time. I would give many things to have one day of normalcy from before all this happened. Behind the family were others laughing and carrying on. They were oblivious to what the world would be like just thirty days after the tourist photographer depressed the shutter release.