Only Human

Scavengers

Will had been in camp 35c for as long as he could remember. Camp 35c was one of the hundreds stretched across the world. It was safe to say that overpopulation wouldn't be an issue for the human race for a while. As soon as he was old enough, he was tasked with the job of working in the kitchens. He had learned how to make numerous dishes, such as Chef Boyardee's canned ravioli, and freezer-burned dinosaur chicken nuggets. He had been told that the life expectancy used to be higher. Those people used to be able to live well into their 40s and beyond. That would be crazy.

Unfortunately, food was scarce. There were only so many Toscos and Walmarts they could raid before there was no more good food left in their area. The scavengers would come back with less and less canned foods, then fewer and fewer living people. Will knew that soon he would be chosen to go on the scavenger hunts. He might have been excited if he didn't know what was out there. A lot of the kids his age didn't know. But he had heard his dad talking to others at meals, and had picked up enough that the outside world terrified him.

When the day finally came, Will met with the rest of the scavengers at the camp gates. In the beginning, they were all supposedly given firearms to use as weapons, but decades later left them with nothing but gardening tools and baseball bats. Will had been handed a rusted iron spade. At least he hoped it was rust.

It wasn't all that bad outside. He had been expecting instant death the moment they walked out of the camp, but it seemed pretty normal. The Walmart was a couple of miles away, so they were walking a while before they heard a sound. It was a small sound. Like a whimpering dog. They followed it into a small house. The roof had caved in and there were molds and rot eating away at the wood. Inside wasn't much better. The floor had multiple holes and all of the furniture that was left was covered in insects. The whimpering noise had turned into more of a sob. Will went ahead to follow it. He came across what looked like a heap of clothes, and a nest of some sort. No, it wasn't a nest, it was hair. Matted, knotted hair. It was a person. Presumably a woman. She was hunched over something else that Will couldn't see. He crept around her and then saw it. It was a baby in a makeshift bed of cloth. Its skin was an eerie, cold grey and its eyes were glossed over, frozen in place. This woman is sobbing over her baby, Will thought. Or at least she was.

The woman had gone silent. Will looked at her in frozen horror when he realized she was turning towards him. Her eyes locked with his, and for just a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of what had been a grievance. Deep and utter sadness was inflicted on her by what must have been her child. But it was only a second, and afterward, her eyes emptied and hollowed out to become that of an enraged animal. She lunged at Will. In a split second, she tackled him and was pinning him to the ground. Biting at him like a feral animal. And for a moment he thought he heard her yelling "THIS IS YOUR FAULT! YOU DID THIS! YOU!" But before he could make out what those words meant, she tossed his spade to the side and was about to take one gnarly bite out of his jugular, when a baseball bat swung from behind her, tossing her aside as well.

It had been Heath. He was only a couple of years older than Will, but a lot more grown-up. He had dark coffee hair and eyes and had been on way more scavenger hunts than almost anybody in the camp, including some of the older residents. One time Will had given him an extra fruit cup from the kitchen.

When the woman started to get back up, Heath stalked over and quite literally bashed her brains in. The one glance that Will could stomach had seen a hollow shell of brain soup where her head had been. Heath helped Will up, and when Will looked up, he saw that Heath was covered in black blood. Heath didn't seem to notice though. They shared a moment of eye contact before the others came into the room and saw what had happened, nobody said a word. Heath lead them outside and they continued on their way. The reason this hunt was important was that it was a new Walmart. Their camp hadn't raided it and there weren't any camps close enough to get to it either. Some of the older residents in the camp had told stories of how their great grandparents lived in a time when Walmart used to sell a limited number of items. Such as produce and electronics. But in the years before the outbreak, Walmart had upgraded to selling everything from sparkling water to methamphetamine. There was not one thing that Walmart did not carry. That's what made this so exciting. They could leech off of this for years to come. Nobody in camp 35c would die of hunger. Not for a while, at least.