How One Becomes A Cannibal

Tobias Campbell had never liked following other's orders. He was a leader, and he always had been. First boy scouts, then the hunting group, then as a business manager. He would never play second fiddle to someone else, that just wasn't the path that god had paved for him.

That was when he met Lillian. She was surely the person meant for Tobias, a loyal follower who knew that in order for there to be leaders in the word, there must be people that follow. She adored Tobias, and he loved her more than anything.

He brought home game and she cooked it. He drove the car and she held the map. He went to the town meetings while she kept him notified of all the news he missed during his hunting trips. He made the bed and she filled it.

The two just fit together. A perfect match.

And then came the end of the world.

Tobias had thought for a moment that he would never see his wife again. There was an army force in Philly, ordering the locals around with some plans for an evacuation, a hoard threatening the place they saw as home.

But Tobias was never one for following. With help from Lillian, they left the army base behind. Tobias and Lillian wouldn't leave the place they considered home so easily. And with them came a few people that similarly worked for themselves, rather for anyone else.

That group was quick to separate, seeing as there were too many freethinkers with their own ideas about how to handle the apocalypse. And just as soon as they left, Tobias and Lillian found others to replace them, and set up camp out in a field, making plans to put up a fence to keep the zombies at bay.

Food was always hard to come by, even before Black Summer.

So Tobias was always the man with solutions.

He had his girls, minus his Lillian of course, working as prostitutes, luring in outsiders, and charging them things like food and medicine for their services. Occasionally he'd have to have one of the boys pick up the slack when a woman or a man with different tastes came.

It was slightly dirty, but everything was dirty in the apocalypse, and it was proving a good way to keep everyone fed.

Until Black Summer.

Everyone was starving all over America, possibly the whole world. But despite their struggles and the nagging, painful hunger, the family stayed together.

Then one day, Stu Johnson got shot. It happened while some of the group were out scavenging, and got into a fight with another for some food.

Tobias and his family had rushed to carry Stu home, but it was clear that he was dying, and dying fast.

Turning to the men that had come with him, Tobias demanded some privacy and watched as they left. It was rare people turned their backs to Tobias. It seemed fitting it only came when he ordered it.

Holding Stu's head up, Tobias looked into his dying eyes, but Tobias's eyes slowly wandered down to Stu's stomach.

Stu had always been a bigger guy.

Ever since the apocalypse he'd been steadily losing a little weight, and now because of Black Summer he was the thinnest he'd likely ever been.

But there was still enough there.

Tobias's hand clenched around his knife.

"I'm sorry Stu." He said between his teeth, half hoping that the man was too delirious to hear. He unbuttoned his shirt, and stuffed a cloth into Stu's mouth, just in case.

His screams may have been muffled, but when Tobias came out with the meat to put onto the grill, everyone knew what he had done.

He had taken as much as he could from Stu, even though this was his first time harvesting. He had only forced himself to stop when Stu finally stopped struggling, his cries and screams fading away into a dying man's moan.

He couldn't taint the good meat with the zombie virus, he had to stop.

Tobias saw their faces as the meat cooked. Their cheekbones prominent, bones practically visible through their skin. They all smelled the meat in the air.

"Come my children." Tobias grabbed a plate and held it out towards Cassandra, the girl standing closest to him. "Let us eat."

(I may expand on this later, but it is a short work.)