Chapter 3

One week after fall

Blood stained Rose's formerly white shoes, pooling under the survivors body. He'd slid forward as his momentum carried him, and landed at her feet.

"Dammit. I didn't want to do that." Rose lowered her gun, shifting the body off her feet. She dusted off her jacket and walked out of the room. "I told you he was crazy."

"Yeah I should have listened." Rhett smiled, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Stupid bastard. 1v2 with a knife. Rose holstered her gun. She walked briskly out of the warehouse and finally entered the light of the sun. She and Rhett were alone, the other two members having passed rather violently early on.

"Guess the furniture store is next, eh?" Rose asked, trying not to meet Rhett's eyes. She wanted to, but she was not the type to do that. It just felt wrong to meet eyes.

"Yep. We'll stay down a while."

---

After two days, the pair had obtained a good store of food, enough for a month or two with nothing else. The deal breaker was water.

"We'll go out today," Rhett said, putting a hand on Rose's shoulder. Rose appreciated the gesture, and tried not to blush.

"We have enough for 3 days if we don't overextend ourselves." Rose replied, sullenly.

"Bah." Rhett smiled, rubbing his thumb on her shoulder. "We'll be fine."

"You always say it."

"I suppose I do."

Rhett and Rose left their safe haven of chairs and other furniture, for the hell that was the outdoors. The stench outside was a sickly sweet, like rotten pig and strawberries. Luckily the hot wired SUV smelled of cloth, and the warehouse of leather and fabric.

The pair had come across several groups of survivors in the last 9 days since the world fell apart. The first group was a solely women one, the first day after, who were stubborn and voted on everything. They won by mob and stole food and water from Rhett and Rose, and left them for dead. The second group shot at them, and the third was just beyond sight. Evidence showed where they used to be, but the pair never found them.

Rose hadn't known Rhett very long, he was a tangential friend. He'd saved her life a couple times and her with his, so they had a common spirit. Rhett was 21, four years Rose's senior. They met two days before the world ended, in a 3 night DND game with some mutual online friends. The third night never happened.

Rose had concealed her age, afraid the group wouldn't let her stay over to play. It was easy because of the fact they met anonymously online before deciding to meet ip in real life. She'd gotten Rhett's number with her concealed age, but he knew now of course, just kept the relationship platonic. She didn't quite understand the big deal around one simple birthday.

Within 10 minutes the pair were out on the Athens perimeter loop. The westbound lanes were entirely clogged with traffic to the Atlanta. How the hell did they actually believe that bull shit? Rose laughed inside. She'd seen all the same PSA material, and laughed it off. "Atlanta safe haven", "Safety in Atlanta" et cetera. As much as she cared for her country, the PSA's were bull.

The cars and trucks were in various states of disarray, some clearly ransacked in haste for valuables, others with corpses in them, shot by their own hands, and still yet others with corpses writhing inside. The perimeter was expanded to 3 lanes just after the splinter war, specifically for military movements. The way to Atlanta was still stuck at 4 total lanes, meaning at the end of the perimeter, 3 lanes funneled to 2 on either side, and there was a bad wreck several miles down toward Atlanta. All this left the entire perimeter backed up Westbound.

Rose tied her hair back in a small ponytail, and wrapped a bandana around her head. Rhett unbuttoned his top shirt, leaving a white undershirt, and he rolled up his flannel sleeves. Rose had thin tight jeans, compared to Rhett's thick rough ones. Glad I wore a fucking tanktop, she couldn’t imagine how Rhett felt, being as overdressed as he was.

Rhett took the far lane, she had the inside. Overprotective ass. Rose smiled at the thought, but couldnt help seeing the logic. If someone from the woods came over, she was alot less powerful physically. Not for lack of trying. An hours work yielded nothing but a large first aid box, and 3 pocket knives. The second was much better.

Rose climbed the helper stair of a hummer, and pulled the door, it was locked. She pulled a gun and shot the window, and stepped back. A body tried to crawl out, but struggled. After putting a round in its head, she unlocked the door through the window, and jumped out of the way as the body fell out. So much for these white shoes. She froze as she mounted the side, another body sat in the passenger seat, but Rose didnt give her time to move, she buried a knife in its eye. Rose didn't even know if it was truly dead.

"Rhett, we got a prepper!" Rose grinned, and Rhett came from across the road. "God damn you're bloody," Rose commented, taking down her bandana and proffered it to Rhett.

"Thank you though." He held a hand up in denial.

"How does someone like him get stuck out here?" Rose wiped the sweat from her brow. The pair had gotten the last of the boxes from the vehicle. Wish we could just take the hummer. The lane was just too congested to do that.

"Well i reckon the corpse bride thought it would be faster than back roads." Rhett chuckled, gesturing to the former passenger.

"Hell you're probably right," Rose said with a laugh.

Each box from the hummer was a 27 gallon sized clear box, lids a thick black plastic. Each had labels with the contents, and two of the six consisted of just water bottles. One was first aid, and the other three were purely canned and dried goods. Jackpot.

"We really need something big for gas," Rhett commented, pulling the truck off to the side of the road. The pair were heading back to the loop, intent on finding more vehicles to loot. They'd dropped off the former prepper's loot, but ran out of gas.

"You'd think a nice truck like this would have a low gas light thing."

"I reckon the battery is dead. We'll try to crank her up once we actually have some gas for it."

The gas turned out to be the easy part. They found an empty can not far from the truck, and siphoned gas from a car a quarter mile away. The hard part was the battery. They had no tools, and as darkness began to fall, no light. The rest of the day was gone when the battery was finally replaced, so Rhett and Rose just returned to the warehouse.

Day 10 post fall

"How many over that way?" Rose whispered, her eye not leaving her scope. Rhett sat next to her, but looking the opposite direction, to the east.

"A firm 6, 4 men, 2 women."

"I've got 4 at least, I recognize 3 individuals, but they are slinking around. Most I've seen is 4 at once."

"These feel like two distinct groups." Rhett said, "are yours watching mine?"

"Yeah they keep

around corners and shit." Rose and Rhett watched a while, and eventually Rose's four passed by their building. The pair knew the area fairly well since the world fell, so were quick to find a new vantage point.

The two groups were moving toward the mall, newly reconstructed since the splonter war. A firefight broke out, so Rhett and Rose stumbled from a waterbed store, across 78 Business to get a closer look, and ended up in the parking lot of a burger king, onlooking the georgia square mall.

Rhett and Rose set up their rifles on the hoods of an abandoned car, and spectated. This does feel like a sport. Fellow humans were hard to come by, being that the majority of them were dead. Like watching wild horses graze.

The smaller group, Rose's, had backed the others up almost to the loading doors this side of the mall. A semi and two security cars stood between the twp groups, and sparse yet rapid exchanges happened every few seconds. Rose learned her group was indeed 4 people, 3 men and a woman. The group of 6 were bloodied, trying their best to avoid seemingly immenent death, until they got a solid hit on the woman of the attackers.

Rhett shuddered, he'd been viewing them closely. Rose heard a shout of Despair, and watched as a young man turned a gun upon himself, head splitting open like a starfish. "Christ," Rose muttered, then set her rifle down when she saw the other two surrender.

"Didn't expect the underdogs not to kill them," Rhett commented, lifting an eye from his scope.

"I half expected to hear two gunshots about now."

"Wait somethings up," Rhett said, peering down his AR scope. Rose followed suit as a pistol was shot into the air by one of the 6, then the gun was tossed between the surrendered men.

The one on the left immediately grabbed it and aimed, but a shot wasn't to be heard. One of the men, a hispanic around 35, pulled hos own gun, and blew a hole in the head of the newly armed captive.

"The fuck was that?" Rose asked as the pair walked back to their warehouse.

"A test, I'd say. Joker type 'Theres only one spot open right now, so we're gonna have tryouts.'"

"Well I guess the reverse, no? They killed the one who turned on his companion."

"Ah true, true. Good eye." Rhett smiled warily.

"Best if we avoid the mall," Rose chuckled later, circling the mall in orange on the map. Rhett did the same in his. Both had a map in book form, stolen from the store a mile and a half down the street. The idea was to have matching maps, with detailed information written in. Stashes, hideouts, unlooted areas. If ever they got separated, they'd compare notes upon reuniting.

"Gotta keep an eye on them. They show promise." Rose felt that Rhett was too optistic in this, but at the same time true misanthropy wasn't the solution.

---

Rose rode with Rhett back from the east. The last couple days had been spent mapping out places to raid, stockpile, or make camp, and they had gone further and further east. Walkers became much more prominent, so the return trip was slow and careful. The waterbed store had just come into view when Rhett fully stopped the truck. Rose looked around wildly, raising her rifle, but finally matched Rhett's gaze.

Far across the lanes of empty highway, pas the abandoned burger king, and beyond the newly erected circle of cars surrounding the mall lot, sat two crosses. Both were adorned with bodies. Gods above. Rose lowered her window, and leveled her rifle out of it. She sat the stock on the door frame, and gripped the angled foregrip. "Still living." Rose said, sighing.

"What the hell did they do?" Rhett asked.

Rose returned her eye to the scope, pulling the trigger. "I don't think it matters." After the second shot rang out, Rose looked away, and gave Rhett a look. He took the rifle, looked through the scope, and set it in the floorboard. He gave Rose a nod, "Good shots."