luna mortimer-smith had long learned not to trust anyone, staying in the middle of the woods as to avoid any contact with the dead or any other humans.
one evening, she'd gone out to check her hunting traps like usual. little did she realize, thoug...
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The sounds of growling and dull thumping filled Luna's ears as she finally woke up, though she barely even realized it. She'd grown accustomed to it by now, having been living on the road for nearly a year at this point. Every night she'd park the car on the side of the road and curl up in the backseat, and every morning she'd wake up to a few dead trying to get in. She assumed they must've been able to smell her or something, but she wasn't sure. Either way, it didn't bother her anymore. After a few minutes she sighed, finally sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She turned, picking one of her bags off the floor and starting to dig through it for some food.
There was a dead one at the window while she ate, it's jaws snapping at her as it's teeth scratched against the window. She stared back at it, mostly annoyed that it was even there. After she was done eating, she pulled herself into the drivers seat and began her days journey. She had been going North for a while, but had decided to turn around and go South instead. One, traveling in the winter would be harder in the North and two, she figured if she was gonna die, she'd rather die on a beach. She'd set her sights on Florida, though without a map she had no idea where she even was-let alone how to get on the right track. She knew she was South of Virginia because she'd driven through DC a few weeks back, but that was about it.
Her days were always the same, and they consisted of waking up, eating, driving, and when it got dark, finding a place to park and going to sleep. Add a bathroom stop or two into the mix, and the occasional scouting mission into a building, and her life had become monotonous. She had books, but she never had time to read them because she needed to drive while there was still light. The CD player in the car had been broken before the start, so there wasn't anything to listen to other than the sound of the car and her own breathing. It was almost hard to even feel alive anymore.
Today was like all the others, driving until it started getting dark. This time, instead of stopping on the side of the road, she chose to pull into the parking lot of a strip mall. Much to her own surprise, the lights in the parking lot still functioned. She pulled up underneath one of them, climbing into the backseat after turning off the car and making sure it was locked. She cozied up, digging through her nearly untouched bag of books until she found what she had been looking for. Her copy of H.P. Lovecraft's complete collection. The book was large, over one thousand pages, and sat heavy in her lap as she scanned down the table of contents while snacking on a granola bar.
Finally, she found the story she was looking for and quickly flipped the pages until she found it. The Call of Cthulhu was a story she'd love since she was a little kid, when she first stumbled upon an old copy of it at her local library. Even though it really wasn't meant for kids, Luna had fallen in love with it quickly-and would often check it out. Eventually, though, she just stole it because her mom wouldn't buy her a copy of her own. She'd accidentally left in California when she moved, so her dad had bought her this to replace it. Her eyes scanned over the lines hungrily, and she realized that she'd almost forgotten the story by now.
