Chapter 2: The New World
Six months. Six months since the world ended, not with a bang or a whimper, but with the wet, tearing sounds of humanity devouring itself.
The initial reports from the Palisades Manor that night had been grim, an isolated incident bleeding into the city's concrete veins. But the infection, whatever biological horror it was, had moved with a speed and ferocity that defied all expectation. The "unverified reports" from the news anchor had become verified nightmares across every major metropolis. Panic, amplified by the sudden collapse of digital infrastructure and communication, had spiraled into savagery. Governments, caught flat-footed, had been overwhelmed within weeks. Military responses were often too little, too late, or turned on themselves as the plague infiltrated the ranks. Cities became charnel houses, then silent monuments to a lost age. Suburbs turned into battlegrounds, then deserted husks picked clean by the elements and roaming packs of the infected, or worse, the desperate uninfected.
Highways became graveyards of abandoned vehicles, choked with the last futile exodus. The news channels went dark, replaced by endless static, then nothing at all. The carefully constructed symphony of modern life, electricity, clean water, information, commerce had dissolved into a dissonant silence, punctuated only by the growls of the hungry and the cries of the dying. The vast, interconnected tapestry of the United States had unraveled, each thread fraying into isolated pockets of struggle and despair. They were living in the end times, a post-apocalyptic reality where every sunrise was a gamble and every shadow held a threat.
Nate had seen it all unfold from the periphery, a ghost slipping through the chaos. His intimate knowledge of networks, hidden passages, and the precise geography of 'ignored' spaces had been his initial shield. He hadn't joined any groups; he'd seen how quickly they dissolved, how trust curdled into paranoia. Instead, he'd used his skills to navigate the crumbling edges of civilization, scavenging what he could, moving with the preternatural quiet of a man who spent his life observing rather than participating. He'd holed up in abandoned gas stations, utility closets, even a forgotten sewer access tunnel, always moving west, deeper into the wilderness.
His final destination was a place only an old-school land surveyor or a reclusive hermit would know: a barely-there dirt track leading to a clearing nestled deep within the Catskill mountains. There, hidden beneath a canopy of dense pine and deciduous trees, was an old, dilapidated hunting cabin he'd stumbled upon months ago. It was small, crude, half-swallowed by undergrowth, but it had a sturdy roof, a stone fireplace, and was far enough from any main road to be practically invisible.
He'd spent the last four months fortifying it, shoring up walls, patching the roof, fashioning crude locks from scavenged metal, and setting up a series of tripwires and alarms crafted from discarded fishing line and old tin cans. He'd dug a small trench around the perimeter, a meager but effective deterrent. A tiny, carefully masked garden patch yielded some pathetic root vegetables, nourished by collected rainwater. His days were a monotonous cycle of checking traps, foraging for wild edibles, maintaining his meager defenses, and endlessly cleaning his scavenged rifle and handful of knives. Nate had become a creature of habit, his movements precise, his senses hyper-alert, his mind a constant, weary triage of survival. The twenty-dollar bill from Pierce, along with other small bills, was folded neatly in his wallet, a grim reminder of a world that no longer existed. He sometimes looked at it, wondering what it could buy now. Nothing.
For three months, he hadn't exchanged a single word with another living soul. The silence of the woods was profound, occasionally broken by the rustle of leaves, the call of a distant bird, or the unsettling, distant howl that sometimes carried on the wind, a sound that was never quite wolf, never quite human, and always sent a shiver down his spine. The isolation was a slow poison, leaching the color from his thoughts, blurring the edges of memory. He found himself talking to himself sometimes, just to hear a human voice, the words often nonsensical, choked off quickly by a surge of self-consciousness.
But the real threat wasn't the silence, or the loneliness, or even the distant howls. It was the dwindling pile of cans in his pantry, the last handful of rounds for his rifle, the nearly empty box of iodine tablets. His body felt lighter than it should, his clothes looser. The wild berries and roots weren't enough. He was running out of time, running out of options.
He needed to go on another supply run.
The thought was a cold knot in his stomach, a tremor in his hands. The last one, nearly a month ago, had been a nightmare. He'd dared to venture further than usual, pushing into what used to be a small mountain town, hoping to find an untouched pharmacy. He'd found a nest instead, a writhing, roaring mass of infected drawn to the scent of living flesh. He'd barely escaped, a jagged tear in his jacket, a graze on his arm that had haunted him for days, paranoid it was more than just a scratch. He'd run until his lungs burned, until his legs gave out, convinced he was bleeding out, convinced they were right behind him. He'd made it back to the cabin by sheer, desperate will, collapsing inside the door, shaking for hours. The memory of their grasping hands, their guttural snarls, was etched into his mind, a constant, vivid replay.
He'd sworn he wouldn't risk it again unless absolutely necessary.
Now, it was absolutely necessary. The last can of peaches glared at him from the shelf like a mocking eye. The days were shortening, the crisp autumn air hinting at the desolate, brutal winter ahead. He couldn't survive it on an empty stomach. The store, a dilapidated, small-town general store about fifteen miles east, was his only hope. He knew its layout, knew the desperate rush to clean it out would have happened months ago. But maybe, just maybe, something had been overlooked. A back storage room. A high shelf. A forgotten corner.
He stared out the window at the dense, indifferent woods, the grey light of dawn just breaking through the foliage. The silence of the cabin was crushing, a stark contrast to the thrumming fear in his veins. He had to go. He had to face it again. He had to hope there was still something left in the ruined world for him to find.