Chapter 3

A Chapter by Wunderlich

The third chapter.

Walking down the vacant road with its many cracks and depressions, Paul Baehr ambled solemnly toward the small town that lay only a few miles ahead of him. The straps of his backpack dug into his shoulders as the bulk of the pack and the gun case strapped to the bottom of it bounced against his back in cadence with his holstered Raging Bull revolver on his right hip. The cool autumn wind dried the sweat on his T-shirt and fluttered the jacket tied around his waist. His eyes assiduously scanned the road in front of him, focusing in on any movement or sound that sprung from the woods on his flanks or from the occasional indolent car.

His eyes, although weary of their surroundings, were outlined by thick black rims. Paul hadn’t slept much the night before, despite the many hours that he had forced himself to walk. He had slept with his revolver in his right hand, his eyes flittering open every twenty minutes. He had been afraid to fall into a heavy sleep for fear of being caught off guard. Yet in the meek minutes of sleep he had cherished, a young woman had found the tree he was in. She had not been able to climb it but she had groaned incessantly, pitching Paul out of his dreams. He had tightened his grip on the revolver, pulling back its hammer silently. With a single tug of his index finger, the gun had sent a bullet through the woman’s head. She had stumbled backwards and fallen on her back. Her limbs had twitched for a few seconds, sending droplets of blood into the air and cascading down upon the grass. Paul had taken a deep breath and sat on the limb of the tree had perched himself in, waiting for the welcomed sun to wake. Once it had, Paul began his treacherous walk once again, tired but awake, dark thoughts splashed about in his mind.

As he passed the intermittent vehicles in the road, his eyes gravitated toward the windows, peering inside. The ones with open doors usually held nothing more than some blood or trash, occasionally a body, but the ones that still had their doors closed were the ones that harbored men, women, children, whole families of the damned. Their faces smashed against the glass in a stupefied frenzy, their hands smacking against the windows, leaving behind smudges of blood and grime. The eyes of the creatures moved incessantly, their mouths opening, revealing rotting teeth and tissue amongst lifeless groans that pierced the glass of the windows and the metal of the cars’ bodies. Others might hear their companions’ calls for reinforcements, hunting groans, whatever they might be; if more came, Paul knew he would
be screwed.

So Paul pushed on, almost as if he was one of the frozen souls, shambling in a jaundiced manner throughout the world which was slowly reclaiming the lands stolen from it. His hair was plastered against his hot forehead and his thick, long dark brown beard was a tangled mess, even as the cool breeze swept down from the hills in the abyss. His mind sat silently behind his ears, looking over everything as his automatous body pushed itself toward the town.

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