Prologue
All Beka wanted to do was to go home, was that too much to ask? Apparently it was, because it was taking forever to do just that. Utah traffic wasn’t exactly rough to her, at least compared to the snail-races of California’s highways, but right now Utah seemed to have signed up for it’s own local snail race. Traffic was at a dead stop, probably a crash ahead, and with that crash the inevitable onlookers, surveying the crash like it was the most recent sitcom on the Disney channel. Slow traffic or no, as long as Beka could get home to Mufasa before tea time, the day wouldn’t be total garbage. At least her new truck, a ‘99 Toyota, had pretty good seats. which felt a little softer than usual. The radio was even playing some decent music, calming her nerves enough to help her put up with the I-19’s dead-stop.
You have to wonder why they call it rush hour Beka thought. It was a no brainer, really. Why not call it slow hour? It would definitely fit better, but she had to admit rush hour just had a better ring to it.
As Beka was thinking this she sized herself up in her rearview mirror. She looked good, especially after her most recent haircut. The crew-cut went well with her charcoal skin and purple button up shirt. She didn’t think it was looking good necessarily, but she did think that it gave off a pretty cool and knowledgeable impression. Nice job, you did well girl.
At that moment Beka saw a blur run past her window, accompanied by a shriek. She looked down from her rear-view to see two people running full tilt towards the front of traffic, streaming past her window. Beka’s jaw dropped an inch as she turned to watch them run down the traffic. They were both tall and lean, but looked young from what Beka glimpsed before she couldn’t make them out anymore, probably college boys or something. She couldn't blame them, she was two seconds away from opening her door and walking too.
Just as the college boys were about to be lost among the traffic, Beka thought she saw one of them fly-tackle the other to the ground, but she could only look for a few seconds before she heard commotion from behind her. As she put her hand from the steering wheel to the rear-view, Beka thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, in the car to her right. What the hell is going on?
What Beka saw in the car to her right didn’t fit, didn’t make sense. Was it a couple getting it on? It certainly looked like it, what else would two teenages be doing on top of each other, shaking the car to hell and back-and-forth? But that didn’t make any sense. People didn’t just do that, especially not in full view in the middle of a traffic jam. Maybe she just over-estimated people a bit.
Beka put a hand on the passenger seat and turned to look back at the traffic jam behind her, all she saw was chaos, but the chaos wasn’t registering right with her. What the flying f*** where those people doing!?
In the instant she turned around and focused on what was going on outside of her rear window, Beka saw four things. The first was a group of people converging on the truck directly behind Beka’s, all of them screaming. The second was a man trying to get into a car by using the sunroof, banging his bare hands against it, the skin on his knuckles beginning to fray. The third was what Beka thought was a family of three, a middle aged husband and wife, and presumably their child running down the traffic jam. Why are they running? The fourth thing she processed was a man hanging over her tailgate, the middle of his body on top of the gate and his head resting on the bed of her truck, except that there wasn’t a head. Just… pink and red.
Beka turned to the passenger seat and threw up, almost choking on her vomit as she picked her head up. She almost choked again when she saw blood covering the window of the car to her right, the “couple” nowhere to be seen. She didn’t exactly understand what was happening, or why, but she knew, in that instant that something was wrong. She couldn’t just sit there and wait for it to be over. That was when Beka decided to run.
The sound of dozens of screams came rushing at Beka as soon as she opened the door, overwhelming every other noise. Beka could hear every kind of scream she could imagine.
Beka turned  and saw a mob of people had converged on the truck behind her. Beka then made a fatal mistake. She gasped. As soon as the noise escaped Beka every person in the mob simultaneously turned their heads to look at her. Without skipping a beat they all ran for Beka with looks of pure hatred on their faces, she turned and ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
As Beka was running past the traffic ahead of her, she glimpsed people in cars who had no idea that anything was going on. People were giving her funny looks as they used their phones or re-applied their hair products.
It was when Beka thought she could get away that she felt a massive weight hit her back, which sent her reeling toward the ground head first. Beka only had time to turn her body sky-up on the pavement before she saw one of the mob crash onto her. Beka felt a splash of liquid go across her face, and then-
***************************************************
Beka woke up. As she opened her eyes, it was like waking up from a night’s sleep where you know you’ve had a dream, but you can’t recall anything from that dream except for a few images. She saw herself pinning a child on the ground, both of them screaming, she saw herself running with a bunch of people she didn’t know running towards a massive granite building… but what Beka saw when she first opened her eyes stunned her most of all.
She was standing at the edge of a cliff. Beka was at what her and her friends call the Salt Cliffs, a very large hill made from erosion and decreased sea levels. It was always a cool place to visit with friends, even if it was just to look off the cliff. It was a long fall, at least several hundred feet before you hit the sandy ground below.
For just a moment, Beka let the wind blow around her, took the smell of salt and dirt in, and breathed  for just a moment, before the pain knocked the wind out of her. She didn’t see it coming, she didn’t even know what it is, but she did know that it was the worst pain that she had ever felt. She clutched her stomach, fell to the ground, and screamed. While she was on the ground writhing she finally isolated where the pain was coming from, her fingers and her stomach. She didn’t want to look though, she didn’t want to see what was causing this much pain, all she wanted to do was to stand up and try to find something or someone that could possibly explain what the f*** just happened.
Beka did the hardest thing that she could ever imagine doing. She stood up. Every time she moved her stomach felt like was ripping itself apart from the inside-out, but she managed to move.
As Beka stood up she turned to see what was behind her, but there wasn’t much. All that there was on top of the hill was a large boulder. She remembered that boulder, because it was made up of heavily packed in sand that could easily be chipped away, not to mention that abundance of lizards that lived inside of it’s many nooks and crannies. Beka started to make her way towards it. clutching her stomach and bearing the pain. Before she could take two steps towards the boulder, she saw something move from behind it, a large man, with a bald head and a goatee. He didn’t look like he knew what he was doing there, at least that what Beka thought was going through his head, but why was he mumbling to himself? She almost didn’t want to call out to him, but she was so happy to see another face…
“Hey," she said.
These were Beka’s last words. As soon as she said them she saw the man’s head dart up, already running for whoever had spoken the words. Beka didn’t even have enough time to recognize the look of pure malice on his face before he reached her and tackled her. They didn’t hit any ground. Instead the two plummeted to the ground a few hundred feet below.
In the few seconds before they hit the ground, Beka looked at the man’s eyes. They were full of hatred, twisted in anger, but suddenly they weren’t, like a switch being thrown. In the next instant the man’s face was cleared of rage, replaced with a face full of confusion. That was when the two hit the ground.

Chapter One
Nobody woke up, which wouldn’t have been so bad if he knew what he had woken up from. He could tell something about this was wrong, one reason being that he could tell that he had woken up in the middle of a forest. Nobody didn’t know how he knew this, and that worried him even more. Still, might as well lie down while he could. Nobody knew that you had to take these relaxing moments when you could, but he didn’t know how he knew that either. Either way, it was nice.
Nobody dug his fingers into the dirt around him, but as soon as he put his finger tips into the dirt pain shot up his arms so hard and fast that he had to stuff his knuckles into his mouth to stop from screaming his head off. That was when he opened his eyes.
He was right, he was in a forest. Immediately ahead of him was the edge of the trees that Nobody guess marked the forest, along with a road that went outside of it and stretched to a large field. He turned to look at the forest behind him, taking his knuckles out his mouth. Pines and firs, but nothing else, pretty usual stuff as forests went. Nobody’s fingers were a different story.None of his fingers on his left hand had their nails attached to them. Nobody didn’t move, all he could do was stare at his hands. They were dirty and covered with a rusted black-red crust. Nobody’s ring and pinky finger on his right hand were completely gone, replaced by bloody stumps that almost hurt to look at, if they didn’t already hurt like a b****.
“What the hell,” he said to nothing as he stood up, clutching his hands close to his chest. After glancing back towards the forest, Nobody sighed and started walking down the dirt road towards the green clearing. There was nothing noteworthy on the road, just sagebrush and dirt, but nonetheless something seemed off to him, something that was nagging at the back of his head that he couldn’t quite place. He shrugged and continued on, not letting his guard down.
“Why am I here?,” Nobody said to nothing has he walked towards the clearing. “Why am I here? Where is here? Who am I?,” he said. With every word his throat choked tighter, and his words were harder to get out.  Almost as soon as he finished talking, Nobody’s throat choked up. It was like someone had dropped a lead ball into his throat that he couldn’t get rid of.
Nobody fell to his knees and put his palms to the ground, dry heaving, knowing that it was a panic attack, though he didn’t know how he knew this. Nobody collapsed to the ground after a few heaves.
“What… What’s-,” he said. He had to stop because he couldn’t breathe. It was like all the stress and fear possible in the world had built up and crammed itself into Nobody’s throat. He couldn’t stop gasping for air, searching with what felt like his last breath for a reason why he was acting like this, why he was here, who was he!?
After what felt like an eternity of breathing for his life, Nobody sat up in the middle of the dirt road and looked at the grass clearing before crawling a few feet and falling against the sagebrush wall next to him. He looked at the forest and sat for what seemed like hours, trying to ease his breathing.
“I don’t know who I am,” Nobody said to nothing. For some reason this was comforting, even if he knew he wasn’t talking to anyone.
“Think we’ll be able to get out of this alright? My hands seem to be just a little f'ed up,” he said to nothing.
“Yeah, I think we’re good,” he said back.
Nobody stood back up and kept going. He was only a dozen feet away from the clearing. He knew it wasn’t much of a life goal to walk down to a small glass field, but it was good to concentrate on something. It took away from the onslaught of pain coming from his fingers, like small, tiny knives were driving into every bit of exposed skin and nerve.
“Alcohol, right?,” he said to nothing.
“Yeah, why not?,” he said back.
As Nobody reached the clearing, something was made abundantly clear: The only thing in this field was grass and jack s***.
“It is a nice little field though, some grass on the ground, a nice little sagebrush bush growing in the middle of it. Buy and large, nice, but jack s***," Nobody said
“No, not jack s***, cow s***," he said back. Nobody could see some cow pies throughout the small field. Cows. Except there were no cows in sight, but something even better was in sight. Smoke, just over the little hill in the clearing.
Nobody started running, his fingers hurting like the pits of red Hell but he ran anyway, ran as fast as legs could carry him. Smoke had to mean people.
“Or… It could mean… Fire,” he said to nothing.
“Shut… the f***… up," he said back.
Nobody reached the top of the hill and looked for the source of the smoke. A camp, at the bottom of the hill/ Before he booked it, Nobody took just a second to take in his surroundings, which happened to be a small valley surrounded by large hills and mountains. Nobody presumed he was at the top of a mountain range.
“Well, neat," He said to nothing as he began to run down the side of the hill towards the camp. All that mattered to Nobody right now was finding someone who could tell him just what the f*** was going on, but something was wrong. The source if the fire wasn’t a fire pit at the camp, it was-
Nobody felt his foot give away, and knew that he was f'ed in that instant. It was confirmed for him when the last thing he saw before everything went black was a large rock on the ground heading right for his face. The impact didn’t hurt him, the only thing he felt was shock that it had happened before Nobody lapsed into unconsciousness.
Nobody opened his eyes and looked at the edge of the camp. Luckily it didn’t seem like much time had passed, but his head was throbbing, stinging, and a little swollen. Nobody felt around the back of his head, noticing he couldn’t feel any brain matter, so he deduced that he was alright for the time being. His fingers, not so much. It felt like his fingertips were lit on fire, and his two missing fingers on his right hand were even worse. Nobody wanted to yell and scream, and he did for just a second before he saw the camp in front of him.
Everything in the camp was black and grey, except for the bodies. Those were bloated, green, and purple. Nobody screamed as he shot up and backed away from the charred camp, pushing his back against the hill that he had just ran down. The trees surrounding the camp began to look more and more like the walls of a tomb, trapping him.
Nobody felt the lead ball forming in his throat again ,but he shut his eyes and breathed slowly and deeply. It was all Nobody wanted to do was shut his eyes and focus on his breathing until the day that he died, which right now he hoped was soon. Nobody knew he couldn’t wait, he had to look for something to help with his fingers, otherwise he was going to die.
“S***… s***… S***!” Nobody yelled before he opened his eyes. Nothing had changed, the bodies were still there, same as the burnt tents. From what Nobody could see where he was sitting, there was nothing left. Wait, not nothing. There were two large black duffel bags right by the fire pit. But to get there, he had to go through the camp.
             Nobody got up and started walking, putting one of the sleeves of his jacket over his mouth to help filter the smell of the decomposing bodies. Nobody couldn't stop looking at the bodies. There were four, an old man wearing a hunting outfit was lying next to one of the burned tents, one side of his face was charred and burned, and two mid-twenties girls both slumped next to the opposite edge of the camp. Nobody couldn't tell who the fourth person was. His or her body was inside one of the tents, completely black, completely burned.
            Even though he was completely terrified of them, Nobody couldn't help but feel a bit of interest towards the bodies. And that scared Nobody almost as much as the bodies themselves. The interest wasn't in the bodies themselves, but what happened to the people who used to occupy them. Where did they go?
           Nobody picked up the duffel bags, threw them across his shoulders, and ran as hard as he could for the edge of the mountain-top valley. He needed to find out what the f*** was going on, and fast, otherwise he knew he was going to lose his mind, or his life. Either one seemed just as likely to him in that moment.
          The lead ball had come back with a vengeance, forcing Nobody to stop in the middle of the clearing and drop to his knees.
          "HELP!," Nobody screamed to nothing as he fell to his knees.
          "HEEEELLP".
          "HELP ME PLEEEAASSEE".
           Nobody fell on top of his stomach and wept. For how long, he didn't know, didn't care. While he wept his breathing felt like it was being forced out of his stomach by the lead ball in his throat. What had killed those people? Why was he missing two fingers on his right hand? How did he get here!?
          "You're not... Gonna get anywhere... Worrying about it…” he said to nothing.
          Nobody knew his own voice was right, but it didn't help as much as he wished it could. Nobody got up anyway.
          Working furiously with his left hand, Nobody opened one of the duffel bags. Nothing much, a few pairs of clothes that looked like they would fit him, a tent, a sleeping bag, and a poncho. Nobody could tell from the weight and feel of the second bag that it was going to yield better results. He was right, in a way, because inside the second duffel bag were guns. Guns, and lots of ammo. Too much ammo.
         Nobody felt a moment of pure confusion as he looked into the duffel bag filled with shotgun and handgun shell boxes, including two .55 caliber handguns and one .12 gauge shotgun. Nobody knew in the back of his mind that no one used this much firepower when hunting, so that was out of the question, but before Nobody could think any more about it he spotted a first aid kit at the very corner of the duffel bag.
        "Yes!," he said to nothing as he fumbled for it with his left hand, trying as hard as he could to get it open. Jackpot!  There were bandages and alcohol inside.
        "Now comes the hard part, I guess," he said to nothing as he got up and sat against the first duffel bag.
Nobody took a long look at the small of bottle of alcohol, wondering if you could get drunk off of it just as he poured some of it over his right hand. The pain wasn’t the worst that Nobody had ever felt, but by God did it hurt like a son of a b****. All Nobody could do was make a sour face and pour the rest on his left hand, which hurt like a son of a b****’s twin sister. Nobody decided to use some of the water he found in one of the duffel bags to help clean the wounds on his hands before putting on bandages. It still hurt like a sunnuva, but it felt better all the same.
“I guess finding someone would be a pretty good idea," he said, and with that Nobody stood up, slung the bags over his shoulders, and begin to head downward, hopefully towards a town, towards people. Nobody walked for hours before he started to notice it was getting dark, so Nobody made camp in a cozy spot inside a circle of firs.
As Nobody lay inside the tent at night, he started to cry. For how long he cried he didn’t know.

Chapter 2
“Good morning, sunshine," Nobody said to nothing as he walked out of his tent, stretching out the kinks he got from sleeping on the bottom of a tent with no tarp or ground cover. He couldn’t help but notice that the forest he was in was beautiful. Although it wasn’t different from the area where Nobody had “woken up” from, he could still appreciate a good forest when he saw one.
“But I’ve only seen one," he said to nothing.
“Oh shut the f*** up," he said back.
Smiling at his own sense of humor, Nobody packed up the tent, slung the duffel bags over his shoulders, and started walking. After a few minutes, Nobody noticed a road leading down the little mountain range. Nobody thanked Christ out loud before he started walking down it. After a few  feet he saw an iron gate with barbed wire on either side. The gate itself was locked. Seeing no sign of anything else interesting, Nobody jumped over the gate and kept walking. It was getting dark again when he saw a highway off the edge of a small cliff he was standing on. The highway was a small one, only two lanes, surrounded by big hills of sandstone. Nobody ran for it, didn’t stop until he got there. By the time he reached it the sun was setting. Nobody spent the next day walking along the highway. On the way he had two panic attacks, but at least he didn’t cry himself to sleep.
Nobody got up the next morning the same way he got up the last two, stretching and admiring the view. Wherever he was, it was a pretty place. It looked like a nice mix of mountain and desert from what he had seen, which made for a really appetizing look. Nobody couldn’t stop looking around him. The only thing that made him stop looking was the sight of a small town in the distance, after rounding a bend behind one of the hills. Nobody wanted to run, but didn’t. Instead he froze, pulled one of the duffel bags from his shoulders, and took out one of the handguns. The bag had come with three loaded clips, so Nobody slid one of them into the handgun, cocked it, and slid the gun into his belt. He put the clips into the pockets of his jeans. The thing that scared Nobody was that he did it so calmly. He didn’t even pause to consider why he was doing it, he just did it. Nobody knew there was something going on here that wasn’t just isolated to the mountain range that he had just come from. That, and the fact that the small town was completely black and grey, just like the camp. Burned.
           Nobody moved towards what appeared to be the town's only gas station. It was separated from the rest of the town, clearly meant to be a truck stop. It looked like the gas station was untouched, so Nobody moved towards the entrance, walking on the balls of his feet to help keep quiet.
          "It's no use trying to act all quiet, I could hear you since you rounded the hill".
           Nobody froze and put his hands up. The voice had come from the gas station. Nothing had scared Nobody this bad since he had woken up, but at the same time it was the best thing he had heard since he had woken up. A person! Finally, a living, breathing person!
           "Please," he said, "I don't mean any harm, I just want to know what's going on!". There was a pause...
           "Who are you?," said the voice.
            "I'm... Hal". Nobody liked that name.
            "What's your business, Hal?"
            "I just want to know what the f*** is going on".
            A man stepped out of the shadows of the gas station, chuckling. He was old, with a long beard and a bald head.
           "Well then by all means, come inside and make yourself comfortable, but fair warning, if you draw a gun on me I'm going to blow your head off."
           "Of course," Hal said. I like this guy, Hal thought to nothing.
          Hal followed the old man into the gas station. It was completely empty, the only thing remaining were the counters in front and back of the store. The store had a very green look to it, due to the setting sun and the completely white walls. Looking at the empty racks and fridges gave Hal a bad feeling.
         Hal set the two duffel bags down on the counter where the cash register usually was and watched the old man as he seated himself on a lawn chair on the other side of the counter.
          "Was everything looted?," Hal said.
          "Yeah," the old man said, "so how much do you know?"
          "Nothing, besides the fact that it looks like a lot of people are dead," he said.
          The old man said nothing as he looked and Hal, measuring and weighing him. Hal felt uncomfortable and regretted putting it like that.
           "Yes," the old man said, "A lot of people are dead, in fact, most of them are dead from what I've seen."
          Wait, what!? Hal thought to nothing as he took a deep breath and put his head in between his hands.
          "You really don't know anything? About the infection, the Great Panic, anything at all?," the old man said".
          Hal shook his head.
          "Be glad you don't remember," the old man said as he looked out the window towards the parking lot of the store. From here you could see the darkening sky and the low hills, the green sky caused by the setting sun. After a few moments the old man turned back to Hal. "I'm assuming you don't remember anything?".
          "Yeah," Hal said.
          The old man looked at Hal for a few more moments before speaking again. Hal could tell the old man was trying to see if he could tell he was bullshitting or not.
          "What's your name?," Hal said. The old man grimaced.
           "Just call me George,"
"Okay, George, can you just tell me how all of this happened?" The lead ball was starting to form in Hal's throat again.
          "Rage," he said, "Rage by infection".
          "So... Zombies?" Hal said.
           "To put it simply, yes, but I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't believe me," George said.
            Well, I don't have anything else to believe right now, Hal thought. He nodded toward George. George nodded back and kept going.
           "No one knows how it started. No one really knows how it ended either, though the best bet is probably a cure released into the atmosphere. The actual infection technically only lasted ten days. In those ten days, every city in America fell. I don't know the percent myself, but for now I'll just say that a s*** ton of people died. Most people, actually. That's all I know personally."
            Hal took a deep breath and tried to process what he had just heard. It made sense, in a twisted way, but...
           "You sound like this happened a while ago," he said.
           "That's what confuses me," George said, "Most people seem to have woken up by now, in fact it's been a month since I've last seen a person who had just barely woken up. You’re also the first person I’ve seen who’s lost their memory.”
What the f*** is goi- Hal was thinking when from nowhere something clutched at Hal’s throat and stomach so hard he collapsed onto the empty gas station floor.
“Oh s***," Hal hear George say at the edge of his mind. Hal couldn’t breathe, even though he knew he could. All that he thought about while he was writhing on the floor were the bodies that he was at the camp. Was that going to happen to him? When? How? WHY!?. Hal suddenly felt something touch his shoulder.
“Come on, kid, everything’s going to be alright. Just breathe, come on, you know this, amnesia or not.”
Hal was comforted by George's words. He didn't know for sure but he could tell that George was right, but it didn't help. All he could see were the dead bodies. If what George was saying was true, then for all he knew he could have killed them. Out of the corner of his mind Hal could hear George trying to calm him down, but Hal just couldn't focus, couldn`t think. All he saw were the dead bodies, looking at him, accusing him.
Hal felt a flash of pain go across his cheek. Hal was stunned. All he could do was look at George, arm outstretched with a pill at the palm of his hand, a cup of water in his other.
"Take this, it helps, trust me," he said. Hal took the pill and swallowed it with the water.
"Now," George said, kneeling down next to Hal, "What set you off?".
"After... After I woke up, I found a camp full of dead bodies" he said, "All I can see are the bodies..."
"And you think you might have killed them, don't you?," George asked.
"Yeah... Yeah, I think I might have," Hal said.
"Well, you might certainly have, for all we know".
Hal looked up at George. He felt like hitting George, but he knew he was right. For all Hal knew he very well could have killed those people.
"But when I say there is no sense dwelling on it now kid, I mean it in the harshest way possible. You are going to see a lot of dead bodies from here on out, you may even make a few yourself, and if you can't handle that, fine, go an end it like so many else have, but let me tell you this: You are damn lucky."
Hal stared at George, speechless and slack jawed. A wild fire had appeared in George's eyes, and for a few seconds Hal was afraid for his life.
"Yep, that's right, lucky. Believe me, kid," George sat down across from Hal and leaned forward. "There are people out there who would literally kill just for a chance to lose their memory like you did. A lot of people woke up next to their dead families or friends, some even woke up just as they saw the life go out of the eyes of the ones they loved, them usually being the ones that caused it, so believe me when I tell you that you were damn lucky" And with that George got up and walked out of the gas station.
Hal scurried to his feet and ran to the door of the gas station. He saw George disappear over the hill that he had just come from. It was dark out, the sky was a deep purple. All Hal could see of George was a dark silhouette scaling the hill. A part of Hal wanted to run to him and apologize, another part of him just wanted to grab his duffel bags and run. Instead, Hal grabbed the softer of the two duffels and, walking behind the counter, laid down with the duffel as a pillow.
For a while Hal couldn't fall asleep, no matter how hard he tried. All he could think about were questions that he knew he couldn't answer. Hal still had trouble coming to grips with what was going on, a part of him didn't want to believe that he himself was probably a part of the zombie apocalypse. Hal took little comfort in knowing that the supposed apocalypse didn't last long.
"Is this a test," Hal said to nothing.
"I don't know," he said back.
Hal woke up the next morning hoping against hope that he would wake up in a hospital bed with his memory back, but even in his half-asleep mind he knew that wasn't going to happen. The feeling of the hard plastic ground underneath him was evidence enough.
"Gotta hope George has some kinda breakfast tucked away in here," he said.
"Nope, can't say I do." George said from in front of the counter.
"Holy sh-" was all Hal could get out when before the floor came rushing towards his face. For a split second Hal thought it wouldn't hurt too much.
"F'ING GODDAMNIT," he screamed. From behind the counter Hal could hear George laughing his ass off. Hal stood up rubbing his head and saw that George was indeed laughing so hard that his face was starting to turn purple.
"Well f*** you too," Hal said, but before he could finish he was starting to laugh as well.
A few minutes later  Hal and George were sitting in the back room eating some of George’s rations he had managed to stock up over time. Apparently George had lived in this town before it had been hit with infection, and later burned. He had managed to stockpile guns and ammunition and enough food to last him a while.
"So, how're you liking Utah?," George said.
"That where I'm at?," Hal tried not to gag on the dry rations but finding it increasingly difficult.
"Yep. Very nice place once you get used to the neurotic climate." George said. He wasn't appearing to have any problems downing the slime himself.
Well, Utah. So that's where he was it. He didn't have much of an idea of what kind of place this even was, but he liked it so far.
"How close are we to winter," Hal asked.
"Too damn close," George said, scooping out the rest of his ration with the edge of a knife he produced out of nowhere. "It's August right now. Not too bad, but there's going to be some much needed preparation pretty soon".
The more Hal thought about winter, the more he wanted to shut it out his mind.
"Where should I head go first?," Hal asked.
"Leaving already?," George asked with a somber smile, "I guess you'd want to head towards the Rocky Mountain Line. It's where most people out here in, and from what I've heard from the passing it seems to be doing pretty well."
"If that's the case George, I think I'll be leaving here in a few," Hal said. Even though he had only been here for a very brief time, it made Hal sad to leave. He liked the appearance of an empty gas station, he guessed.
"Suit yourself, kid, it's always nice to meet a stranger. But fair warning, it's not going to be a cakewalk. You're going to need all the gear and ammo you have and more if you're gonna have any hope of making it to the Rocky Mountain Line."
Hal nodded and finished the rest of his ration. Then got up and grabbed his duffel bags from the counter. As Hal walked out he stopped and looked back at the counter. George stood behind it with his hands folded under his chin.
"Good luck kid, stop by again if you get the chance," he said.
Sure thing George, thanks," Hal smiled, nodded, and walked out of the gas station.