Chapter 3

Levi hadn't gotten used to waking up in pitch blackness. Although he still wore a watch, Levi had long given up on keeping track of time - at least in a traditional hours-and-minutes sense.

Levi had often kidded himself about his choice of timepiece, as if it were a Rambo knife for the apocalypse. His watch was one of those high-tech, medium quality jobs that kept track of temperature, barometer, altitude, date and time. It was waterproof, scratchproof and powered by kinetic energy. Hell, the watch was even hooked up to Levi's email account. Of course, it was no Rambo knife. But it did keep date and time.

The fact that his watch still kept date and time lent him a paper thin sense of assurance that there was some remnant of order still lingering in this world. It was all that stood between him and the fog of shit and gristle that enshrouded the world. He felt comfort that his watch told him it was Wednesday. It helped to anchor him in the present.

"Hump day", he grumbled out loud, trying but failing to find irony in the words he spoke. The sound of his own voice had startled him. Levi Pickering hadn't spoken aloud for more Wednesdays than he could keep track of. He let out a satisfactory, baritone yawn, stretched out his neck, shoulders and legs and started his day.

Luminous orange and yellow cynders popped and cracked as they leapt from the flames that birthed them. The bodies Levi had flung into the campfire the previous day served as a supplemental source of fuel. Levi stared into the flames for a moment, contemplating what had driven the Russians to cannibalism. His introspection subsided when a blackened skull sprung forth from the hearth and gazed up at him with vacant eye sockets. Levi picked up a loose twig off the ground, threaded it into one of the eye sockets and flung it back into the fire.

"Alright, let's see what these people eating commie fucks have to help my cause," he spoke into the air, his voice more confident than it had been moments ago.

Chapter 2

Caroline Ames casually wiped the soot laden rain from her brow, shifted her weight back to her makeshift crutch and hoisted the satchel full of lichens, mosses and mushrooms over her non-crutch shoulder.   She skillfully limped back towards  what she fondly referred to as her "barge", successfully swatted a few mosquitoes and  quickly slipped their remains into her mouth, thankful for the much needed protein they provided.  Se didn't mind if the blood she tasted was hers.  In fact, she preferred to think it was.

The barge was not much more than two canoes strung together with twine, duct tape and whatever the hell else did the job.  The seats had been removed from the larger canoe; its bed was lined with tattered blankets layered on top of whatever foodstuff Caroline could gather.  This is what Caroline now referred to as the "living room".  The smaller canoe was where Caroline sat wen she wanted to pilot the barge somewhere other than where she was.  She kept the guns, ammo and dynamite in it.

Caroline hadn't used the guns in some time.  It's not that she wasn't in need of protection, but she hadn't hoisted a single gun in the entire time she had started to look after Sebastian.  It must've been at least a year, maybe two since she had taken him under her wing.  And how he had grown in that time.

 

Chapter 1

Levi Pickering immediately recognized the smell. It brought back memories of summertime and bright, buggy evenings.

Barbecuing was one of the few domestic tasks Levi had taken an affinity to in married life. It gave him an excuse to listen to old-school rap, sip one too many cold beers and steal a hit of weed from the fake metal cigarette he kept tucked away in the bowels of the propane grill Penny got him for his 34th birthday.

He'd insisted on cooking out every Sunday from May through September. Rain or shine. And he always cooked steak, despite the fact that Penny was something of a non-committal vegetarian. Before Kate, Levi would cook up a veggie burger or roast some vegetables he'd skewered and brushed with olive oil to appease his wife's more sophisticated sensibilities. After the baby was old enough to eat people food Levi had gotten away with cooking only steak on Sundays. He had convinced Penny that the protein was good for the baby. He got some semblance of satisfaction when he discovered that there was some validity to this claim after reading it somewhere in one of the countless "how to" motherhood volumes she had purchased and discarded since giving birth to Kate.

How he missed both of them. Of course, only the bugs remained. And they were legion.

The smoke stung at his eyes, but Levi was glad for it despite the hot, dry tears it caused; it provided him with a brief respite from the incessant buzzing and biting of countless tiny vampires.

Levi pushed aside the dry, grabbing tendrils of myriad malnourished evergreens and fixed his senses back on the smoke. As he closed in on the source of the acrid, black fumes, he realized it wasn't steak he was smelling - it was pork. "Fuckin' A," he thought, "didn't know there were any boar left in these parts."

Levi remained under cover when he arrived at the periphery of the crude campsite. A partially strung acoustic guitar lay across the opening of a makeshift lean-to with a rudimentary deerskin covering. 

Levi surveyed the campsite. Various pots, and pans, a rain catch and some manner of water purification equipment were strewn haphazardly about the campsite. A blanched wooden hilt poked out from beneath one of many partially filled aluminum frame backpacks. "Probably just a .22. Could be a hunting rifle though. Might even be a shotgun," Levi thought to himself.

Gentle laughter sprung from the open hearth. Levi's thoughts strayed from the gun. He snuck through the thick underbrush to get a glimpse of the camp's residents.

A scrawny man with a grayish beard and long, matted salt-and-pepper hair sat cross legged in front of the hearth, poking at red-hot embers. His clothes were dirty and tattered. His long fingers clutched at a bone that was sparsely covered in stringy, pale meat. Several of his teeth were missing or cracked to ragged stumps. Specks of gristle flecked his whiskers, lending his beard a greasy shimmer. The man chewed with an open mouth as he liberally pulled strips of flesh from the bone. Miniscule, moist globules of meat flung into the air as he spoke.

Levi couldn't understand what the man was saying, but he guessed he was speaking in Russian. Russians weren't unknown in these parts. There were nearly as many of them as there were Yanks, at least by Levi's estimation.

Across from the man sat a woman. Broad but soft cheekbones framed large, dark eyes. Her hair was knotted and filthy. An oversized sweater draped over her emaciated frame; sleeves rolled up past bony elbows. She covered her mouth when she chewed with the unanounced shame of an anorexic on a dinner date. 

Another woman who must have been in her seventies was seated next to the younger woman. She looked positively ancient. Knobby fingers quietly plucked strips of whitish meat from a morsel she held in her lap. One of her eyes was missing.

Both women chuckled as the scrawny man gestured at them intermittently between mouthfuls of scrappy meat. The familiar sights, smells and sounds of a family dining together were almost enough for Levi to let his guard down. He very much wanted to announce his presence to this merry company of Slavic strangers so he could partake in their supper. 

Then he saw the pig.

It wasn't a pig at all.

A blackened human form hung from a stake. Tongues of flame lapped hungrily at its trunk. Limbs plucked from sockets. Belly bloated and crisp. Scalp barren of hair that had long burned off. 

The corpse had been a child.

Levi took in three deep, measured breaths. He pulled the WWII era Zippo he inherited from his Gramps from one of his pants pockets. He pulled a small, standard issue juvie firecracker from another pocket, lit it and tossed it over the campers' heads. He quietly unsheathed his machete.

The cannibals turned their heads away from Levi when the firecracker went off. He rushed toward the man first and dispatched him with a quick chop to the base of his skull. Levi was able to exact a similar blow to the base of the base of the younger woman's skull, but not before the elder woman's good eye met his gaze. Before she had the chance to plead for her life, Levi raised his machete and decapitated her with a single, thunderous blow.

Levi Pickering tossed the corpses of the Russian cannibals into the fire, secured the hunting rifle and 6 boxes of ammo, pulled out a stale, half-eaten powerbar from his pack, bit into it and went to sleep under a darkened moonless sky.