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*Two years' time skip*

I was heading out for a hunt, again. For a while now, it seemed like the only game around here was rabbits. All the larger games had gotten the memo to get the hell away from this region, or simply had been eaten off by me. I bet it was the former for some reason...

Eating rabbits day in and day out would get you tired of it very soon, and boy was I tired of rabbits. On this fine day I shall range further into the everlasting forests to the west in hopes of a different prey. How shall I bring the prey back? I hope these bags I had would be enough.

I silently passed through the trees, heading west. I had smelled a herd of deer earlier and I was on the pursuit. They certainly do smell like some of them were sick, this should be easy...

Slipping behind a tree, I peered out at the herd. They were grazing the clearing, with one of them keeping a lookout. Damn, this wouldn't be as easy as I had previous anticipated. The sick one was looking for was in the middle of the herd, perhaps one of the old does at the edge of the clearing? Yeah, I could do that. My body had fully entered the hunt mode, as I called it these days, and I slowly and silently skirted around the edge of the clearing, slipping into the closest piece of cover I could find to my prey. This one was rather large, for a doe. She would certainly last me for a few days. I carefully await an opportunity to pounce. As where she was situated was slightly out of leaping range for me. She was slowly eating towards me, just a little bit more... just a little bit more... There!

Silently, I leaped towards the poor animal. In the last second, her head snapped up and she started to run, but it was too late. A swift blow shattered her neck, and she collapsed on the ground.

The rest of the herd was swiftly dispersing into the woods, but that doesn't matter, I already had my prey at my feet. After a look around, I knelt and started to skin the doe. A while later, after the skin was off and stored in a bag, I started on the editable part of the doe. I started at the limbs. They were removed easily enough; a simple twist of my wrist was all that required to snap the joins. I then took a knife to the soft tissues at the joins. The limbs were tossed in a pile for further treatment. I then thrusted my hands into the chest cavity of the animal and tore out the heart and the liver, placing them in another plastic baggie, then proceeded to tear the rest of the organs out and left it in a pile near the carcass. These will be left for the local scavengers to enjoy. The head came off next, into the disposal pile. I then deboned the animal, because I'm a lazy git who hates having bones on the dinner plate, the remaining meat were chopped into pieces and filled the remaining baggies. The legs were to be my meal this day, after all, I earned it for finally taking down something other than a rabbit in weeks. I dragged my spoils to the other side of the clearing to enjoy.

A cougar decided it was a fine swell time to show up, waltz in, and claim my kill. Fool. I sensed it long before it came up against my back, since it was so determined to not walk completely silently. I twisted around to growl at it, it bared its teeth back at me, but sulkily moved away. It knew it would lose against a zombie and does not want to tempt fate.

A while later I saw the same cougar entered the clearing near to where I killed that doe. With a glance at me, seeing that I didn't contest the animal's behaviour around my discarded wastes, it started dragging the entrails off to somewhere I wasn't in to enjoy. I stared at where it left the clearing for a second longer before giving myself a shake, settling down and returned to my meal. The shaking thing was something that developed after I got infected and was most definitely a side effect of the virus. I had seen other infected doing that too, most notably after a confrontation ended. This, while interesting, was not as important as my food. Dropping that thought, I dug back into the meat.

I was on my way back to my hidey hole when I scented something. Bood, mixed with a wolf's scent. My interest was piqued, and I switched my direction to check it out. I arrived to see a grey wolf lying on his sides, whimpering quietly. He had a large gash on his neck, oozing blood. It will bleed out soon, and there's nothing I could do for him. Still, I knelt next to his head and softly stroked his fur. Those golden eyes tilted to look at me, staring intently. His muzzle let out a tiny whine, and his head shifted closer to me, whining in pain as he moved.

'Shh, it will be alright.' I whispered to him, softly scratching behind his ears. He whined and slowly blinked at me, I blinked back in reply, my hands still stroking his furs. He whined again and muzzled my legs, the golden eyes never leaving my pale blue one.

The grey wolf stared intently at me, blood still leaking out of his neck, staining my pants, but I really didn't mind, blood often found its way onto my clothing, due to the nature of my diet. Slowly, the movement of the wolf's chest slowed, eventually stilled. At the same time, his brilliant golden eyes dimmed, turning glassy and lifeless. Just like that, he was gone. Such is the nature of life, the fleeting thing it is.

With that, I pulled out my knife. While I don't have enough baggies to carry all that meat, I do have an extra that could carry the pelt. That was fine, it's not like the meat wouldn't spoil before I could finish it all. Once upon a time, I would have balked from performing such disrespectful act on the corpse of a creature who died in the comfort of my hands, but those days were over. I couldn't bury him, I didn't have the time, and leaving him in the open will subject his corpse to the local scavengers anyway, so I can't see the harm in taking the pelt, nor would I felt any guilt over it. It was a beautiful pelt too; the reminder of the wolf would be well preserved.

I entered my cave. Over the years, the cave that I found overlooking a creek was built up by me from a barren, dark hole to place I would proudly call home. I had built the door and the front wall first, using wood from the surroundings, coating he entire thing in fire retardant, just in case. After the front wall, I hauled furniture from a nearby box store to my cave via a trolly and now there were throw rugs spread over the floor, mixed in with the occasional hides from my hunting. There was also a bookshelf filled to the brim with books, a cot and a table filling the space. Although my eyesight was better than before, they weren't that good to see in pitch darkness, so a solar lamp sits on the table, ready for use. One thing I had noticed over the years though, was that the virus completely and utterly screwed up my hearing. I was not quite close to deaf, but also nowhere near a normal human's hearing. I think I had about half of the average hearing? Close to it, anyway.

I had dropped the skins outside for it to dry, and the meat had gone into the storage room. I had wanted to haul a fridge here too but changed my mind when I tried to move it along with everything else. It was just not worth carrying the thing back. So, the meat will just sit in the storeroom, kept cool by a creek passing through the room. I stopped by to grab a change of clothing, then I headed down to the creek to clean up.

The creek was the same as always, sheltered in the shadows of the trees, and deep enough to reach my wrist. After stripping down, I stepped into the water and sat down at my usual stone, the water now reaching my chin. I then proceeded to dunk my head under the water, scrubbing the day's grime and the blood spatter that got on my hair, then I stood up to leather my entire body with soap and my hair with shampoo, before washing all away, along with the grime of the day.

Feeling freshened by the bath, I set to washing my clothing. A rock on a shallower section served as a washboard, slowly and surely, the grime and dirt were removed from the clothing. After washing the clothes, I slipped into a clean set of it and headed back home. It was still near sunset already, so I retreated to my table for some light reading.


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I'm backkkkk

A wee cheeky timeskip here in this chapter. What happened to Sadie's quest to find her friends? That, shall be revealed in all due time. 


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