State of Decay✔️

Chapter 02: The Day the World Went Away

They passed through the treeline.

Marcus felt a palpable sense of relief wash through him, it was like slipping into a cool bath at the end of a particularly brutal workout. Was he really this tense? He glanced back behind him and finally chalked it up to being 'out of the woods', that old, old holdover from when man was not man but caveman. The forest was a dangerous place and it was easy to get your hackles raised. Plus, well, there were some weird things going on. The silence, those mysterious gunshots earlier, and that smell...he meant to start walking again, (both he and Ed had stopped once they passed the perimeter of the forest, as if reaching some unspoken agreement,) but now he hesitated further.

That smell...

It was back.

"Oh, god," Ed moaned. "I can smell it now. Damn, that is one nasty stink," he muttered. "We're going to have to tell someone. It's like a meat factory is dumping month old rotten corpses or something around here."

"Real nice, Ed," Marcus replied.

The sense of subtle dread, a quiet tension working its way into his gut and sapping it of heat, had returned with the stink. Their conversation fell flat in the still air. No breeze blew. The sun burned high overhead. Despite the heat, Marcus felt a chill ripple through him. Was he just being paranoid? He looked over at Ed, who was looking around anxiously. Did Ed pick up on the subtle apprehension, too, or was Marcus' own fear just infecting his friend? Ed was prone to flights of fancy and rash decisions from time to time...

"Where the hell is that coming from?" Ed moaned. "Let's get out of here."

"Yeah," Marcus replied uneasily.

They began to move forward. Then they stopped once more, making it only five paces. The smell was getting worse. Marcus looked around. To his left was the lake and a small dock. Someone had stored a handful of bright blue canoes in a small gazebo-like storage area. Their plastic noses peeked out from beneath a dull gray canvas, tied down with rope. Behind them and slanting off to the right were the woods.

Directly ahead, however, was a small rest area and the trail that led up to the ranger station at the top of the hill. That way lay civilization. Also, apparently, a man. Marcus hadn't noticed him before, but now both he and Ed were staring at the man who sat at one of the wooden tables, facing away from them. He appeared to be wearing a tarnished, dark blue business suit.

"Who's that?" Ed muttered, more, Marcus imagined, for something to say than anything else. Ed shifted uneasily.

Marcus looked around. He heard the buzzing of flies, but could see no collection of them. Not by the trash, not at the treeline, not on the ground.

Except...

He focused and realized, with a sudden sense of revulsion, that the flies were clustered around the man seated at the table. He felt another wave of fear smash through him. Was the man dead? His hands went cold and he lost his grip on the cooler, dropping both it and the tent.

"Hey, man..." Ed complained, but his heart wasn't in it, he sounded distracted and afraid. "Is..." he swallowed. "Is that guy dead?"

"I don't..."

Abruptly, the man shifted, began getting up.

"I guess not," Marcus whispered. "Could the smell be coming from him?" he asked, his voice even lower.

"I don't think so, man," Ed whispered back.

"He could be homeless..."

"There's no homeless that smells that horrible."