Dawn of the Others

Chapter 2

I awoke early that morning and headed out onto the porch as the sun came back up, the rays of light giving the brisk fog in the air a glowing quality as it began to dissipate. I breathed in deeply and relished the feeling of the fresh air filling my lungs, it was cold out this morning but I welcomed the wakefulness that it brought.
I had a loose plan to follow that involved heading up North to scout the old mill and hopefully scrounge up some much needed supplies. If so, I'd come back and tell the guys to bring one of the trucks out there and pick up what they could.
With a deep breath I headed off the porch and out to the shed at the back of the house where my dad's old motorcycle sat, a beautiful, slightly rusty Harley that was small in size but still had quite the kick. I was told growing up that he used the back shed as his shop but we were never really allowed to go near it when mom was around. She had been adamant that it was off limits and back then I hadn't been all that willing to push about it despite how odd it was that she felt so strongly. Time passed and I had started rummaging through the place and using it after she died, since there was no one here to argue anymore. Besides, we lived in a time where we couldn't afford to ignore all the useful things that he kept in there. Engine parts, tools, old gas cans and loose nuts and bolts littered the space, all in surprisingly good condition even after being left abandoned. I guess he cared more about his fancy motorcycle parts than he did about the family that had been not twenty feet away the whole time.
I zipped up the leather jacket that adorned my shoulders, something I had also happened to find in the shed, and rolled the bike out the front gate, moving the scarf that was around my neck up over my nose and cheeks to block the chill. I pulled on the large leather gloves that hung off the handle bars as I continued rolling the bike down the road. I didn't dare start up the bike until long out of earshot, taking the extra precaution in case there was anything nearby. With the road ahead clear, I finally jumped on and allowed the bike to rumble to life. It kicked up some dust as it jetted off down the crumbling pavement, leaving a small cloud behind me. I settled in for the ride ahead, it would be about 25 minutes to my destination and there wouldn't be much more than trees to look at for the majority of it. Despite the short distance many people in town disagreed with venturing that far, they preferred to stay near the walls. We were basically completely self sufficient at this point and what we couldn't produce ourselves we could trade for with other settlements. If I stayed inside the walls all the time I would end up going insane though, I wasn't really made for that life.
A few infected caught my eye along the side of the road as I wizzed by. I used to take this road with my parents when we went out of town each weekend to see our grandparents, back before everything went to hell and it was interesting to see how much things had changed after only a handful of years. A couple minutes from their place we'd always stop to get sandwiches from this little mom and pop shop that had now been reduced to a shell of a building. They were amazing sandwiches but those were the most boring weekends of my life.
I passed the same old worn road signs and abandon trailers as I made my way past the houses that used to mark the outskirts of town. Most were simply small bungalows made cheaply after the war to entice people to move out here, but there was one house up the side of the hill that overlooked the surrounding land all the way off into the mountains to the northwest. When I was a kid I had watched them throw it together in record time, it was thought one day it just appeared. It still sat up there now, the only difference being that it was empty as far as I knew. The fancy rich people that lived there had refused to leave, instead choosing to face things on their own, thinking their independence would save them. Needless to say they didn't survive long in their big house even thought it's location seemed like an advantage. That was the problem with some of this town, they were too stubborn for their own good.
My mother had been that way too, I loved her dearly but she was stubborn until the day she died, and had we not been within the towns fence limits she probably would've ended up just like those snobby people on the hill. She was something of a recluse, leaving the house only to mill about the yard and fuss with the garden. It had been for the best though, I hadn't thought that I needed to worry about her when I knew the farthest she would go was the neighbours house. How wrong I had been about that.
I felt myself frown a little as I thought. My family had always been a sore spot for me, long before any of this started, the war that ensued when they found something that they disagreed on was explosive. Even though mom was reclusive, when it came to my father she could be a firecracker, leaving the house in constant turmoil. My brother and I would usually hide away to avoid the risk of getting dragged into whatever the newest conflict was about. It had almost been a relief sometimes that everything had changed, although I knew the circumstances now weren't ideal for most people.
My head drifted to all those car rides that I had taken listening to my father scream at whatever small thing he could as he drove the half hour to my grandparents. It had always felt like an eternity and as much as I loved seeing my grandparents, I could have lived without those car rides. Mom would always come talk to us after we got back home and dad had retreated to his shed, trying to defend him and claiming that it was all just because of stress. He never spoke about it but according to mom he was dealing with a lot at work and had things on his plate that he just couldn't explain to us. She made excuses right up until the day he left, he packed his beat up truck one morning and pulled away without a word. She simply stopped talking about him after that, it was like we had never had a father to begin with. I guess it had just been easier for her that way, even though they fought I knew that she had still loved him fiercely. 
I shook the thoughts from my head and let myself enjoy the freedom that I had now, riding down the long empty stretches of street, passing abandon cars and the occasional infected wandering close enough to the road to see. Even though I missed my father at times this was still something I would take over those car rides with his short temper any day. I preferred the predictable danger that came with venturing outside the walls in this new world. The peaceful rides and searches through abandoned buildings would've made my younger self extremely jealous, the danger only would've been an added bonus to me.
I watched the trees fly by as I continued down the road, past the turn off towards our grandparents and farther out towards the mill. I got lost in the soft echo of the bikes engine against the Rocky Hills and the feeling of the wind whipping past my face as I enjoyed the ride.