It was the stench he noticed first.
The rain did little to wash it away, though he reckoned himself better off in the Pacific Northwest than somewhere with more sunlight. Heat did nothing to deter them…it only baked them, fanning the hints of rotting flesh into a flame, tainting the air.
Even now, he could smell it, carried downwind through the forest. Death.
They hadn’t been dead long. A family, from the look of it. Several, even…a caravan, much like the one he himself was a part of. They’d been done in by an animal, yes, but not the usual sort–not one of the diseased. No…they’d been shot. He glanced around the remnants of their car. No gasoline, no food, a bit of clothing that had been picked over. Scavengers, then. Every man for himself, these days.
Despite the gunshot wounds, he couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t rise again. Not really. One could never be too careful…not now. Which left only one option.
“Care to do the honors, or shall I?”
Roma had spent the day with Pearce, tracking through this way and that trying to stay off the road but she smelled it almost the same second he did. As a medic she knew the smell of blood and decay above all else and by the strong odor- there was a lot of blood drying in the sun. She had stopped a few steps behind him, keeping an eye out from the small incline that was provided from the wood coming down to the road. She shouldered the gun onto her shoulder and looked around, a clear morning despite everything. Had it not been for the corpses on the ground she’d never had known there was an outbreak of a violent disease. Everything was still and calm.
She turned around when Pearce spoke, her attention immediately on the man by the road. She trudged down the small embankment to where the group of still corpses lay, motionless but that was how they all started. Motionless. Powerless. Then the next thing you knew there were teeth digging into your flesh and fingernails clawing you apart. She had stopped seeing them as people a long time ago, instead she saw the aftermath of the infection. The jerky bodies tearing into men, women- children. She pitied not the dead so when Pearce asked if she wanted the honors, she stepped up next to him and aimed her weapon.
Seven shots to the head, she watched the bullet all but destroy their heads, taking whole chunks off, before shouldering her gun once more and looking up and down the street. “Guess they didn’t leave anythin we could use?”
