Chapter Text
Cain rummages through strangers' belongings. The door was locked and windows nailed shut with boards but Cain always had a talent to get in and out of places he shouldn't be. Searching Wardrobes, cabinets, piles of clothes, sometimes trash in the hopes might find something useful. He is always on the hunt.
It's been 1 year, 6 months and 16 days since the outbreak. It all started so slow. A case here, a case there. The authorities promised to the people that the situation was under control. It wasn't.
The young man pulls open another drawer and digs his gloved hands into the pile of clothes, finding a warmer sweater. He unfolds it, examining it closer, looking for tears, cuts or dirt but finds nothing of the sort. He quickly decides he would switch it for the one he is wearing now, stripping himself of the Baseball Jacket and his, by now, pretty roughed up sweater and replacing it with the dark blue one he just pulled out of the wardrobe. The seasons are changing and with it the nights have grown bitterly cold. He has to keep moving. Being so far away from the shelter he had called his home, since humanities fallout, doesn't allow him to carry around many heavy things such as multiple sets of clothes.
He has to use his strength and backpack space wisely. Most Canned foods are still edible and those are exactly what he was here for. For the past few months he's frequented this large city. Breaking into the houses, looting them, he's even managed to find some guns and their respective ammo, oftentimes on devoured corpses, sometimes in their bedside tables after they were ambushed in their sleep. They probably woke up screaming as teeth sunk into their warm, red flesh. Cain imagines skin stretching to its max until it starts tearing, ear piercing screams and white sheets turning bright red. It arouses him. The Violence. How they scream and squirm. He always knew of these fantasies, he had them since he was young, regularly masturbating to them. He did and still does it to all kinds of messed up stuff. It started with extreme bdsm, then Rape and abuse then incest, animals, kids. Nothing is too far in his mind. The more shocking and sickening it is, the better it feels to him. And, since the fallout, since humanity and morality had faded into obscurity there was no one stopping him.
There is no society left, no police that could punish him and he hasn't met another living person in ages. The only being keeping him company and somewhat sane is his german shepherd Rocky, which is currently sticking his long, dark snout in an over 1 year old bag of chips.
"Don't eat that." Cain warns. But his dog, probably just as hungry as he is, doesn't listen, scarfing down the probably slightly rotten snack. A sigh escapes Cain's lips. Rocky always eats all kinds of bad stuff, sometimes getting sick and puking it back up.
"I'll get us something better later, buddy. Something fresh before it gets dark..I hope."
The first thing he did this morning was set up traps around the city. They don't always work, but often enough they do. There's tons of dogs and cats in the cities, escaped or abandoned pets that have turned mostly feral again by now. They roam the streets in small packs but if you trap one they usually don't stick around for too long as they have to hunt or savage too. Rabbits and sometimes rats are also on the menu, he usually feeds the latter to Rocky though.
At "home" he has a small garden of wild strawberries and plants Potatoes and some other vegetables for himself. Though they cannot feed him, only give him some much needed vitamins now and then. While he is here in the city vitamin pills, canned food and meat will have to do.
He has made himself a temporary hideout in the city. A place where he can gather a small amount of things he looted over the course of a few days and then decide what he actually takes home. That usually being all the food and water he can carry, sometimes guns and ammo.
With a pen Cain marks off the house he's in on his crinkly, old map. This city is almost a paradise. He's come here almost every week for months and is just now done with the outer rim of buildings, never leaving any of "the things" alive that he crosses paths with. It must have been completely overrun, Cain assumes. In just a night, everyone that didn't die must have fled in panic. He has seen it happen. That's exactly what happened to him and his family. They just came out of nowhere in the night. They broke through the windows and doors and just tore everything apart, and everyone. Cain still doesn't know if he wants to call them zombies. They are? But not like in the shows and movies. Humans turn deathly pale when infected and lose all their hair but they don't die? And they don't rot. Their hearts still beat and they can starve and die. Their wounds even heal. He's seen gunshot marks and bites completely healed despite the first symptoms setting in within twelve hours. Cain assumes, whatever turns these people, doesn't kill them but it rewires their brains. And sometimes Cain wondered if he was already one of them.
He picks up his already pretty heavy backpack. Filled with multiple cans of some meat stew and soup. He'd already ransacked the pantry and was very happy with his find. That's good food for multiple days that won't go bad anytime soon.
Cain walks over to the next room, one strap of the backpack over his shoulder. He takes the large knife out of the sheath that's hanging from his belt. He knows if there was a zombie in here it would have already made its presence known, as they react to sound and smell. But there is still always the chance of 'what if…' or there could be a trapped animal in here. It's better to be safe than dead.
He nudges the white wooden door open with the tip of his weapon. It swings open smoothly, without a squeak. His brown-greenish eyes are immediately drawn to the floor and the grip around his knife tightens significantly. A person, laying to his feet. By now Cain has pretty solid fight or flight control, in this case choosing to fight he lifts the blade over his head ready to swing it down and jam it into the person's head if needed.
A moment passes, with no movement from neither him, nor the person on the floor. Then another, and Cain finally takes the time to look a bit closer. It's not a zombie. It's a young woman, with long, brown hair, light skin and soft features. She's very pale and laying in sheets soaked in blood, curled up holding a bloody napkin to her stomach. The smell of Iron is very strong. Cain slowly crouches down, trying not to make a sound. He doesn't know if she's dead, or maybe just passed out, or pretending to be, to get the drop on him.
He lowers his knee above her head and suddenly slams it down. Not hard enough to crack her skull, just enough to firmly pin her to the ground should she suddenly decide she's not dead. She doesn't react however, only moving the amount that Cains weight moves her. The man lowers his hand toward her throat and presses his fingers into the skin next to it. She is cold. No pulse.