A New Life
Rick was right, there wasn't much here. The batteries from the humvees had been looted, only the smallest bits of oil and gas remained in the drums. I was able to find a military issue Beretta M9 that was stashed in one of the humvees under a seat with 1 extra mags, meaning 30 total rounds between the two 15 round mags. This made me think though. Mother had taught me about the guns of different countries and who used what. The US armies were pretty much all swapped over to a SIG Sauer, usually M17 or M18, after it won the Army's handgun competition in 2017.
I suppose someone could have a personal pistol that they don't carry and that's why this one was stashed under a seat, but that still didn't fully explain it. The boxes were labeled for Beretta M9s and even the holsters were were designed for that pistol. I'm sure local reserve armies got hand me downs but would they really be so out dated?
Packaging for food. Outdated pistols. Outdated hospital equipment. All of these factors were leading me down one line of thought that just seemed so impossible. Father and Mother taught me a lot. Showing me some popular things in media to aid my vocabulary to be able to relate with normal people once I got out into the world.
Understanding movie references or common quotes and phrases are important for such a thing. The more normal you seem the less you stick out, which is why my facial features and looks were tuned to be objectively average. I was taller and leaner than the average 10 year old and they couldn't help my eyes being a striking grey, but they had solutions for that. I had hundreds of different color variations in contact lenses.
All of this to say that the only thing that could possibly explain my situation was time travel. But even that couldn't fully explain because I knew the history of the world, of course I didn't know absolutely everything about everywhere, but I knew that based off my guess of it being 2010 there had never been anything like this to have happened.
So I hadn't just time traveled, but maybe I actually had died that day and now I had been given a new life. A new life in a world where there wasn't rules. I no longer had to go to studies and learn from Father, or combat training with Mother. Had I actually been blessed with this opportunity? And the quietness… Besides Rick's shuffling around there was almost no sound. Okay maybe the smell wasn't great, but I could deal with that.
I slipped the M9 into the holster that I strapped on, placing it at my lower back just above my tailbone, covering it with my shirt. I also managed to score a Ka-Bar knife which I banded the sheath around my left thigh with the same straps I took off the dead body I had found with the knife.
Locating Rick based off the noise he made it seemed he had had similar luck as me, and even found some army fatigues that were just a little oversized for him. No boots, but at least he had pants and shirt instead of walking around in a hospital gown.
"I see you found a knife." He said nodding at the knife on my thigh.
"And I see you found a gun. Any ammo?" I asked
"Only what's in it. Found these fatigues in a tent a few yards back, no shoes sadly. No big deal though, my home is only a few miles down the road. I want to get there and check on my wife and son." He said while slipping the M9 into the holster he had managed to find.
I nodded as I looked around at the abandoned mess of everything. It truly seemed like there had been a war here, but I didn't see any dead bodies of what could be enemy troops. There's a possibility the enemy had already cleaned up their fallen comrades. Despite that though everything seemed… wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it, but this just didn't feel like what I imagined a battlefield would be like. Not to mention all the dead bodies I came across had one thing in common. Each and every one of them had a bullet through their head.
"Well let's get going then. We only have a few more hours of sunlight." I finally spoke shouldering the bag of supplies we had looted from the hospital.
"What do you think happened?" Rick asked, but he sounded hesitant, as if he didn't know if he should be having this conversation with a kid.
"Not anything good, that's for sure." I responded. Though while I said that I couldn't help the excitement that bubbled up within me. There was very little I got to do for fun back at The Lab, and even less that I did that wasn't monitored.
My curiosity was piqued. What if me and Rick were the last 2 people on Earth? I didn't particularly like the idea of that, that sounded boring. Nothing against the former Sheriff's deputy, but I want to meet lots of people. Observing people was probably the thing I enjoyed the most. Even Mother, Father and the scientists at The Lab weren't safe from my observation.
Thats why I was fine with traveling with Rick. I could tell that he was one of the good ones. He had a genuine desire to find his family, and he seemed concerned with my wellbeing along with my upbringing as well. Which is why I decided that I wanted to help him find his family.
If they were at his home, which I highly doubted, then I would probably go my own way. But I would cross that road when I got there.
We were walking down the road just chatting as Rick wanted to know more about me. The standard 'how old are you?' 'Where are your parents?' Etc… I mostly answered truthfully since it didn't matter to me, I told him I was 10 and that i truthfully didn't know where my parents were, nor did I care.
It was the body missing its lower half that really caught my attention though. I stepped off the road and onto the grass, pulling knife out ready to turn it over.
"Hey, what are you-" Rick started but I held my hand up as I stepped closer to shut him off. I could hear a faint raspy breathing coming from what I had first thought was a corpse. The state of the decay and the lack of blood and even the smell told every single part of me that this was a dead body, but my ears had never failed me before.
"Adam!" Rick hissed in a whisper, but I was already reaching my knife and pushing the body. As soon as I did I had to jump back as the body rolled. Not in the direction I had pushed it but towards me, lunging its arms out and growling at me. Years of training had allowed me to get to a safe distance on instinct alone, but I was frozen in place other wise.
"Ah, oh shit!" Rick stammered as he tripped over a bike that was on ground in his scramble to get distance from the now moving body.
"Adam! Get away from that thing." He called to me as he made it back to his feet, backing away as he did. But I just watched it, the way it's grayish yellow skin had no life it, eyes that screamed just one desire to eat. It's lips were gone, revealing gray gums and teeth stained by dried blood blackening them.
I recalled the hundreds of bodies with had bullet holes in their heads. The double doors in the hospital that smelled of nothing but death and decay. The words on that door had said there were dead inside. At the time even when the hand had poked through I wasn't sure of what was happening. But now seeing this corpse reaching and crawling for us, growling like an animal, I couldn't help but come to the realization that I had woken up in a zombie apocalypse.
"What is that thing?" Rick said, thankfully still keeping his voice low. Now I realized how reckless I had been this entire time. If we had gotten cornered in that hospital by the walking dead, then even I might not have been able to make it out unscathed.
"Uh well I think it's a dead person… that came back to life." I finally answered him as I continued to step back.
"C'mon let's just get to your house." I said, tugging on his arm to continue down the street.
"What do you mean it came back to life?" He asked, but I didn't reply. Thankfully he didn't continue to ask questions, just giving one last glance behind us as we made our way down the street.
"Here we are." He said as he stopped in front of a nice house. I strained my senses and nodded as I didn't hear anything nor did I smell anything dead in the house.
"Alright you go in there and see what you can find. I'm gonna search the other houses for any supplies." I said.
"What? No. You and I both saw that… thing. What if there are more of them? Just come inside with me and we can search the other houses later." Rick said and smiled faintly at his concern.
"Look I'm not the one that tripped over a bike to get a way from something that had no legs. Just whistle for me when you're done. I'll whistle for you if I come across something dangerous. Just try not to make too much noise. The dead isn't the only thing we have to worry about." Rick frowned at my words but eventually nodded.
"Fine. But don't go far." I nodded back to him and dashed across the street to the house opposite his, an equally nice rather large house. It smelled fine and I didn't hear anything in it either. Actually I still didn't hear much of anything, but I was picking up faint smells not too far from us. I would need to be quick with my looting.