New Lands

The cat stood in the bow of the ship. He thought hard about what to do with what he learned from the parrot from the other end of the radio comm. Apparently, the avians weren't open to accepting visitors. They would only accept the 'feathered' into their community, and another reason for this was that the location of their base was unreachable for the flightless.

It was not that Zed wanted to join their community, but even if he knew where they were, he would not be able to reach them.

"France huh?" Zed returned to inside the Yacht and searched for France. It was a long way from where he was considering he just came from the Pacific. Bzzt... zzt... The radio comm's status sounded beside him.

"Hello... I have returned. So as I was saying, we settled here in the Eiffel Tower and it would be impossible for a flightless to reach us. I talked to my direct superior. Unfortunately, the Owlking was out. Did you eat already? I just had lunch, so sorry for the wait." Chip called from the other end, especially chirpy.

At this point, the two were already talking in the AviaNest Language. It was a language that the Owlking had devised with his species in mind. Though Zed had a strong cat accent, it appeared that Chip was not bothered as he could understand just perfectly fine.

"You were awfully talkative. Why? Did you lack conversation partners or something?" Zed criticized Chip with a jest.

"Yeah... It was awful..." Chip explained his situation. "Few tried the Radio Comms, I was telling you... Savages, I said... In fact, you have been the 13th one to have connected. Fortunately, I was... Though we had gained sapience for some other reason since the Fall, many of us remained as beasts... Though the following generations had adapted, many of the Champions we labeled as Old Ones were persistent in their ways! I was telling you!! It was not only the undead and the weather we had to fear now. There was a snake in Algeria, the thing kept on eating and eating stuff. Then a Cheetah in Iran, the damn cat nearly slaughtered a division of birds we sent..."

The parrot grumbled on and on, the information in between the radio static served to educate Zed.

However, Zed too needed self-retrospection after hearing the parrot's grumbling. He heard words that resonated with him. The mention of Old One, a special address, made him feel elated. But when he heard that Old Ones referred to people who were persistent in their ways, he kind of felt annoyed.

Zed recalled his 'persistent ways' of trying to find a human.

"My name was Chip, oh I already told you that. Wait, I didn't catch your name..."

"You didn't. My royal name was Zed Pizza Alimonte Nuts Growltiger Noir." The cat finally introduced his name.

" Zed Pizza Alimonte Nuts Gro- you know what? I'd just call you Zed. So what plans now? It would suck to be stranded in the middle of the sea. If we had outposts near the specific, we could have helped you... send a vulture on a supply run. They were a lazy lot, but they'd do the job nonetheless. I could help you with the directions." The parrot offered aid, perhaps his superior giving him permission to do so.

"I would be fine..." Zed replied. If it came to it, he would swim the ocean until he found land.

The two continued their conversation for days, and even during break times, Chip would not leave the radio designing it to just eat in front of the apparatus. Zed had nothing to do so he just stayed beside the radio comms and learned about the world through the parrot.

Chip was quite generous with his mouth... er context-wise, with his beak.

Zed had fancied himself to have traveled the whole world, and if not, half of it. He also shared what he knew with Chip. It was a fair trade of information. It seemed that the birds had not decided to scout the north as even with their freedom of flight, they feared what was in the north.

From what Zed had seen and inferred, the north's weather patterns were quite brutal. The rain had become so toxic that a touch of it would render any life form burned with the acid. The toxicity of the rain varied, but at its worst, it would still leave any lifeform scalded and itchy.

Finally, the day that Zed had consumed all of his batteries came. It had been a few months since he contacted Chip. To his bad luck, there was still no land in sight. He looked around and deduced he should go southwest and try his luck. He referred to his compass, tucked it back into his bag, and prepared his own lifeboat.

Zed took a couple of lifebuoys and improvised, building his own boat. He used a sizable paddle he broke in half to row. He fixed the paddle on both sides of his boat using ropes and plenty of duct tape. It was hard work, but he managed to create a functional boat. He began his journey anew. He was lucky so far that he didn't meet any storm that could have capsized his yacht.

Well, there were storms, but they were inconsequential. But now with a smaller and much more fragile boat, Zed would not hold any confidence. 

Dozen weeks later, he finally found land by the coast of who knew where.

There were no undead in sight. Zed's survival tactics were fairly simple. If they were undead, avoid them. He was very good at avoiding them. He would not want to get ripped apart. Animals would not be zombified, but the undead would still kill most animals. Though Zed would not die from said ripping, he would not still want to get hurt. 

The cat dragged his ready-made bag from the boat with his mouth. It was full of convenient tools for travel from a compass, a map, and even a notebook. He took it upon himself to journal his travels as he was inspired by Dr. Janus Vein., That aside, his paws were not dextrous enough to write so he borrowed the AviaNest language to record his journey.

Using a boulder as a marking, he tossed his bag at a deep cave far from the sandy floor, and away from the rain and sunlight. He would come back for it after surveying the area,

He began looking around and found a hut by the sandy beach beside the coconut tree.

Zed found a silhouette of a person. He was hopeful. Maybe this time, it was a human. But he was reminded of Dr. Janus Vein's journal. With lesser expectation, he checked. He lightly jumped from the open window made of nipa and saw the rotten remains of a lumbering undead. It cried in its hoarse undead noise and lunged at the cat.

But Zed was faster, he dropped down backward from the window and landed on his foot. "It was a bogus. At least I tried." He walked away in search of civilization. When he found nothing more to the beach, he came to the forest adjacent to the rocky shores. He did not find any activity except for a few undead milling around.

There was no tension to Zed. He was used to this. In the past five hundred years, he had met so many of them that he had gone dull in acknowledging their presence. On a biological level, few would be a threat to him. No matter what the harm or how annoying it might be, he'd live to see another day.

When he crossed the forest, he was met with a highway filled with congested cars. He began sleuthing around in search of either food or water. He found a few bottles of water and immediately drank them all to satiate his thirst. It soothed his liver a bit. And then he found a few crackers and ate them all the same. He felt his stomach hurting less as his intestines had stopped grinding themselves. 

Zed returned to the beach and made camp. On his way from the forest, he dragged a sizable dried nipa leaf to burn. He retrieved his bag from its hiding place and hauled it into the open sand. he took out a matchbox, and a magazine. He made a small fire with what he had as the sun was almost gone. 

It was difficult scraping the matchstick and making it spark, but he had practice. Using his mouth, he scratched the matchstick to the side of the matchbox and ignited it. He tossed the blazing stick to the dried nipa, and with a few pages of magazine paper, he made it burn. The warmth of the flame was comfortable, and so was the light.

The cat took out his notebook and made a new entry of his arrival in this new land. He would not be able to write with his paws like humans did, so he tried his own way. It would take practice, but he was making progress. He used the AviaNest Language in his journaling because it seemed easier to write with. The language was based on Korean and simplified Chinese, and would not need any combination of letters but simply the use of characters. This meant that Zed would not consume so many pages and space. 

Afterward when he finished writing and had written something he could be satisfied with, he fell asleep besides the fire unguarded.