Chapter One

He sits against the wall, panting hard from running so long. Hunger is overtaking him; he hasn't eaten in three days. Reflecting on his situation, the dangerous trip to what was the old supermarket is justified by the ever continuing need for food to survive. He had thought of simply taking over the whole building before, of arming it to the teeth and defending it. He knew in the back of his mind what a death sentence that was, however. To do that would be to corner himself, living safely until he ran out of either food or ammunition. Then it would be worse than before. No, it was much safer to hide. To run away. To quickly steal only what he needed to live, then retreat to safety. The world is a living hell. There's no escaping that fact. His entire existence consists of running and hiding at night, and sleeping during the day. The monsters hate the daylight. They can't get him during it. Therefore he has become nocturnal, only going out when the sun is gone and it is dark; only going out when the monsters are active and looking to feed. It's an unfortunate paradox, but it's better than spending his most vulnerable time sleeping while he is hunted from every direction. With his breathing now more under control, he quickly scans his surroundings. There's the old police-station down the street to his left, an old 7/11 next to it, and the back entrance of the supermarket he came for sitting right between the two. Peeking both ways down the street from out of the alley, he decides that the coast is clear, so he makes a dash for it. Being careful to remain in the shadows and not make any more noise than necessary, he runs to the back of the gas station, hops the chain-link fence, and ducks down in a low ditch with a view of the door. Pausing a moment to catch his breath and listen, he again concludes that he is undetected, so he slinks up to the door and goes to work on the lock. Open in less than a minute, he quietly cracks it open and slips through. It is dim inside, but there is a light coming from somewhere. He can feel their presence. Smell their stink. The monsters are here. On his guard, he moves quickly to the canned goods aisle. He grabs as many cans of food as he can stuff into his backpack. Speed is his friend, and he only wants one more thing before he can leave and hide for the remainder of the night. It's a dangerous move, but in this world he finds the small comforts of the old days much more satisfying. He is at the aisle now. Briskly tiptoeing down the row, he finds the Fritos and is just about to grab a bag when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. A monster has found him. He rips the chips off the shelf and sprints for the back door, bashing it open and running into the dark night. Sounds are heard, more monsters are aware. He throws caution to the wind and runs in a straight line, disregarding sneaking in favor of the fastest route. He's already been seen, he doesn't have time to be careful. He's past the police station now, his lungs burning with the effort of sprinting flat out. At last he makes it to his alley, baseball sliding to the end where his entrance is. He finds the hidden hole, and drops carefully down the ladder, sliding the manhole cover over his head at the end. The sewers. Nasty. They do offer a quick and relatively safe way around the old city though. And with the exception of the one monster he killed, they don't seem to wander down here often. Plus, they seem to know they could never catch him in here. He's become an expert at navigating every single passage of the old city's septic system. He turns down an auxiliary passage, avoiding the main sewage line altogether. It's not that much faster to take the big passage, and there's no sense risking being killed in case the monsters did happen to follow him this time. It's a little less than twenty minutes to his destination through the sewers, and he makes the journey safely. Slowly pushing up the cover inside his de-facto dwelling, he looks in every direction before deciding the coast is clear. Hopping up into the room, he closes the ladder hole and secures it tight with a bike lock. He's in an old culvert with a small, grated drain from the street in the low ceiling. It measures roughly eight by eight feet, stinks like none other, and contains only a sleeping bag, TV-DVD combo, bookshelf, and microwave. "Home sweet home, I guess," he thinks to himself. Yes, welcome to his humble home.