moderndayjxdas:
Thomas Pearson remembered it all. The world at war. The Virus that ended the war and the world as he knew it. For a backwoods boy in the mountains of  Georgia, the war wasnât something he concerned himself with in the beginning. It wasnât until the Virus started taking people that he really took notice, at first it seemed like people were just getting sick and dying. The dying didnât always stay dead though and Thomas finally was good at something.
The man wasnât extremely skilled, wasnât even really that smart but that changed after the rain.
Black, acrid tear drops fell from pregnant clouds rolling dangerously through the sky and it took his sister. Thomas had been traveling with his sister and kid nephew, she called them the three musketeers and she sang them to sleep off-key every night. That night she didnât sing, and the three musketeers became two.
What Thomas didnât realize until weeks later was that while the acid rain killed his sister, ate right through her, it had mutated something within him. The once not special man now had fire at his fingertips, and it might have been useful if it werenât so dangerous. A number of times he set fire to their camp, putting them both at risk of a number of things not limited to the fire itself.
They survived at the expense of almost losing themselves, but thatâs when their traveling landed them where they were now. Thomas wasnât particularly keen on New Hope, from the name down to the fact they let people come and go so freely. It was a different story for his nephew though, and that was his selling factor.
That was then, now after a few months this place had started to feel almost like a home.
Thomas was a hunter and a tracker, so when he showed up in New Hope they had assigned him work detail as such. Hunting for food, tracking down people to join their ranks because according to the authority types there was safety in numbers. It hadnât always been so in the manâs opinion, but what did he know? He was just the grumpy hick that knew a little about engines and a lot about keeping them fed, so they tolerated him.
He was on his way back trailing a few squirrels and a rabbit strung up on twine in one hand and his crossbow in the other, today had been a good one for hunting. For the most part, he wasnât paying attention to those around him but when he lifted cold blue eyes to an unfamiliar face he focused. âYouâre new.â Thomas grunted the obvious, shouldering his crossbow and taking in the entirety of what was seemingly a human before him.
Micah had caught glimpses of himself in cracked mirrors, or broken windows, and agreed that, yeah, he was classifiable as human. But it was a still a very generous title. When he looked down at his ravaged hands, or saw the black of his eyes reflected in murky puddles, he knew he was different. When he pressed his calloused palm to the forehead of a sleeping child, and drew the life from her until she was little more than a clawing husk -- thatâs what made the title an uncomfortable one to wear.
Humans didnât do that. Monsters did.
But if it meant he passed through ports in the storm like this one without ruffling feathers or causing a panic, he was fine by it. He let others qualify him, let others reason themselves into a false sense of safety -- it only made it that much easier for him.
He meandered a bit on the dirt road, enjoying the scrape of his boot across desert sand. With fingers warped together in a strange steeple, he gave quick nods to those that passed and slowly began to pick apart his new surroundings. A woman in a makeshift wigwam was rationing out freshly boiled water, and across the narrow way, a man leaned back in a ragged lawn chair, whistling as he sharpened a hunting knife. It glistened in the mid-day sun, and Micah appreciated it in his odd way. The way one deadly thing appreciates another deadly thing. Further down, a girl in a threadbare jumper cried over her bleeding knees.Â
Children were a rare sight these days. They were coveted like precious jewels. Glimmers of hope on an otherwise rotten horizon.Â
                                               âYouâre new.â
The voice was sap-like, and it snapped up Micahâs divided attention quickly. He hadnât heard a voice like that since Georgia, but they were far from the humid swamps of the southeast where walkers stood mired in creek beds and waved their crooked arms. Far from the toothless fucks in pick up trucks that chased the living and cooked them over open flame.
He looked straight back into those pale eyes, unashamed of his own -- colourless and black like the dreary bottom of a well.
âPlace like this, a new face shouldnât be much of a surprise.â
