by Steve Ormosi
They had been walking for days without rest. Refuge was forever over the next hill. And the hopeful looks from when they’d first started out were all but gone now. The creatures that looked like humans were constantly near, the group could hear their call for miles in all directions. They all said, “It must surely be a miracle that we've gotten this far without being attacked.” Many in the group were saying that maybe the creatures had changed and weren't slaughtering people anymore. Maybe their humanity had taken control again. Most didn’t believe it, but it was something to keep them going.
There were fifteen people in the group, a large number for survivors as far as they could tell. It should have been twenty, but they’d lost an entire family just before leaving, a husband and wife, two little boys and a teenage girl. It didn't even faze them anymore. Everyone had lost people, the consensus was that at least they got to go to whatever was waiting for them on the other side together. So they set out with fifteen, just as their city was completely overrun. They walked away from the destruction, off the roads, hiding whenever they heard something draw near. It was long and arduous. It was filthy. But it was also life.
The group as a whole was just beginning to understand suffering, to understand the complete pointlessness of being alive when the rest of the world is dead, when they came upon a recently infested small village. The creatures had come in, torn the infrastructure apart and then gone on to the next feeding ground. As the group stopped in to look for food, they noticed the bodies. Strewn about. Too many to kill.
“Everybody run!” Someone yelled, but it was much too late for that.
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