He exchanged fresh fatigues for his soaked, torn clothes, and tied his holsters snugly over his thighs. While he changed, Marc listened, hearing nothing but the river that was already feet deep around distant maple trees and broad column-supported buildings. He hadn't thought to miss the sound of another human voice and it was a surprise to the loner inside.

Changed and warming up, he took a quick look at the water still rushing downstream, evaluating. His breathing was normal, heart back in his chest where it belonged, and other than a couple of bruises and scratches, he was unharmed - hadn't swallowed any of the nasty liquid. He still had his hat even - string around his neck had kept it from being washed away. Marc tried hard not to dwell on what could have been, very aware that had he reacted a little slower on the bridge, he would be dead. It was a hard, new world…one where some days were rougher than others.

He had come 130 miles in the seven weeks since finding the family home deserted, and the bodies were what bothered him more than even the constant reek of smoke and rot. They were in every place he went; stores, stations, cars, and sidewalks. Men, women, kids, elderly; all shocking to see in even one American City, let alone all of them. He fought the urge to give them the burials they deserved, knowing that like with the letters and notes, if he buried even one, he would spend the rest of his life on it.

The realist inside knew that gradually, terribly, Mother Nature would run her course. The cadavers would all disappear into the ground, into dens and burrows, and then into hungry stomachs. But it would always be obvious that a harsh and violent struggle for survival had swept this country from coast to coast. So much death and destruction, even in places that had no actual bomb damage!

Fires were the most common cause of this devastation, town after town reduced to darkened, shadowy frames, the victims of arson. This new world was a bed pisser's wet dream and a King horror novel all mixed together, Marc thought. He hated the helpless feeling it gave him to roll through these places. They reminded him of his nightmares of the walking dead from the bus, and the soldier who'd killed himself. In his dreams, they followed him relentlessly with their not-so-funny, stumbling walk - pushing until the cold ocean waves lapped at his feet, the water the only place left to go.

Marc sighed, lit a Winston with hands that stank of fish rot. Where the hell was he supposed to go? Even the radiation was already showing up, the mice in West Virginia were twice their normal size of normal and...




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