The autumn air was crisp as the archer stalked her prey, footfall silent and senses piqued. Her ears perked up at the slightest noise, her eyes tracked the slightest twitch in the forest. Hunting was always more exhilarating this time of year; one crunching misstep and you may miss out your last bit of fresh meat before winter rolled in with its blustery winds and bone chilling frost.
"Come on," Kate Bishop whispered to herself, eyes on a rather plump rabbit, bow drawn taut. "Stay still..."
She inhaled several times, trying to calm her racing heart and her grumbling stomach. This was the first game she had spotted for at least a week, a troubling thought when stocking up for the grind of a New York winter.
Well, what used to be New York, anyway. State lines and most other hallmarks of civility disappeared the moment news of a novel brain eating infection spread.
Though Kate was only twelve at the time, she remembered every minute detail of the day everything went to shit. To her naïve delight, she was plucked out of her sixth grade class a few hours early by her mother, Eleanor. Little Kate thought her father had decided to take her to that Yankees game after all, but as her mother held her hand tighter and gripped something that looked like a pistol in her suit jacket, she knew something was deeply wrong.
Eleanor tossed her roughly into the back seat of her SUV, not answering any of Kate's perplexed inquiries as she peeled out of the parking deck.
"Mom, why did you come get me?"
Eleanor kept driving, eyes staring straight ahead, her speed hitting 70, 80, 90.
"Mom, where's dad?"
Eleanor's eyes cut to briefly meet Kate's in the rear view mirror. The intensity in her gaze was enough to make Kate sit meekly back. With that look and with the gun she was almost certain her mother had, she decided not to ask any more questions. Not yet, at least.
Besides, it was not like her mother could provide any satisfactory answers as to why the National Guard was barricading hospitals, schools, nursing homes. Her mother could not explain why that man in the cab beside them seemed to be turning a sickly shade of green.
The streets grew more chaotic, more rabid as the two finally reached their Manhattan apartment. Businessmen ran by on the sidewalk below, speaking frantically into their phones. More police cars and ambulances than Kate had ever seen clogged the streets further, leading many to abandon their cars in the street in favor of sprinting.
Her mother pulled her away from the windows, shutting the blinds and curtains tight.
"Mom, what's happening?" Kate finally asked quietly, hands shaking.
Eleanor did not look up from her phone as she typed at a breakneck pace. She stood at the kitchen counter, unnervingly calm. She kept glancing at the door before answering, "there's a lot happening, Kate."
Young Kate bit her lip, flinching at the sound of more sirens below and helicopters above. An explosion sounded, and she cried, "mom, I'm scared."
"Honey..." Finally, Eleanor stilled. She took her young daughter in her arms briefly, hoping to shield her from the horrors outside for just a moment longer. She was too young for this. "I love you. Everything will work out."
Kate buried her face in her mother's chest, still so confused and feeling so small. "O-Okay..."
"I promise."
In the present, Kate nearly laughed at the memory. It was an empty promise, of course. Her mother couldn't shield her forever. The first week alone she saw the sick rounded up like animals and shot dead in the street, red flowing like rivers. She saw as people looted, raided, stole, killed for supplies. She witnessed the unraveling of society at the seams as politicians abandoned their posts and even the military lost control.
And at twelve, still so beautifully stupid, Kate saw her father stop to help a young man and his daughter as they evacuated New York City, and Kate saw him pay for it with his life. She remembered how he ran over without thinking, how the other man screamed, how the little girl was... one of Them. With his guard down, it was easy for the thing to sink its teeth into him, and a jumpy bystander ended them both with Kate just a few feet away. The gunshots still rung in her ears.
With one final exhale, Kate released her arrow. She did not bother to rush over in case the animal was injured; her aim was always true. Years of hunting for her own meals led to a sort of urgency in her shots, the desperation of a survivor on her own.
She was twenty now, no longer a scared little girl. She was a huntress, a navigator, a scout, an inventor, an architect, the president of her own slice of society.
Slinging her bow carefully over her shoulder, Kate crouched beside her kill. Her arrow pierced straight through the eye, killing the poor thing instantly. She took no pleasure in hunting the innocent creatures of the forest, but what other choice did she have?
Satisfied with the meat, Kate took the rabbit by its hind feet and started her journey back home. Home was a strong word, though, as her base of operations was nothing more than a glorified treehouse. It was an old deer stand, Kate guessed, and though its wood planks were subject to water damage and termites, being off the ground was worth the trade.
Over the years, Kate fixed up the place, adding a tarp over the roof that funneled rainwater to her jugs. She irrigated some of that rainwater to her modest arrangement of crops, mostly carrots and wild onions. A few wild blueberry bushes bloomed every year, and sometimes when exploring, Kate would get lucky and stumble upon a pecan tree. All of that combined with hunting rabbits, squirrels, and the occasional deer had sustained her these past three years of solitude.
The hike back to her stand took longer than Kate had expected frowning as her bad knee began to ache. She wandered out much farther than intended, and now worried she would not have enough time to dress and prepare the game before sundown. That, along with boiling water, searching for more wild fruit, and patching the hole in her tarp.... there just were not enough hours in the day.
Sometimes, Kate wished she had help. Living on her own was lonely at times, but in this world it felt like her best bet. After the initial outbreak, she and her mother fled to Boston, and the amount of backstabbing and useless politicking in that city disillusioned young Kate Bishop.
Even worse, her mother was the direct instigator of some of that politicking, and once she turned seventeen, Kate decided she would be better off taking her chances with the Lurkers.
Surprisingly, Kate's interactions with these undead Lurkers had been limited. In the city, most were put down by guards before they stumbled more than a few feet inside the walls. Out in the forest, she had seen a handful straggling along at night, but as long as she was up in her stand, her traps took care of most of them.
In eight years, she had only killed a couple dozen by her own hand. Her closest call came about a year ago when a Lurker no older than ten wandered into her camp. It seemed to be in the early stages of turning; head of thick blonde hair, full range of mobility in the joints, skin just slightly green. The child looked almost alive, and Kate's hesitation in stabbing it through the throat nearly led her to the same fate.
Outside of that incident, Kate saw Lurkers as mostly harmless. This was a cocky notion, but the bodies were slow as molasses and loud as tractors with their grumbling and dragging feet. As long as you stayed armed, avoided groups, and struck from behind, they really were not much of a hassle.
Finally back to her stand, Kate set her bow down carefully on the forest floor as she knelt at her makeshift fire pit. A smaller tarp spread over a tree stump served as her cutting board, and she made quick work of field dressing her kill. She pulled the arrow out of its eye, setting it aside to wash later. The innards were for compost, the skin would be tanned or used to line her boots, but she took pause with the meat.
Her stomach grumbled as she asked the question that popped up every time she made a fresh kill- eat it all now or save it for later? On the one hand, she was hungry now, and in this world no tomorrow was ever promised. On the other hand, winter was coming, and it would be wise to dry and salt at least part of it.
Planning for the future seemed so odd in such a fallen world, rejecting instant relief in favor of saving up for a day that may never arrive. Still, though, discipline and prudence had gotten her this far, so she saved the better portions of both legs for the colder months ahead.
After striking up a small fire in order to roast what Kate planned on eating, she looked around in dismay realizing the sun was nearly set. She had no time to patch her tarp or boil water, let alone cook dinner. Cursing, she packed it in for the night, tiredly cataloguing all the chores she had to do after dawn tomorrow.
She had to sew the hole in her sock, patch the roof, inventory her stock, boil rainwater, set more traps, harvest the rest of her carrots, chop firewood, clean off her arrows, sharpen her knives, maybe whittle a bigger bow...
There simply was not enough time. With shorter days and most of her time spent hunting lately, some of her responsibilities got away from her. Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow for sure.
Disappointed that she spent the entire day going after a meal she wasn't even eating, Kate sighed and made her way over to her stand. Clambering up her rope ladder, she pulled it up after her, leaving it in a bundle at the doorway.
She slipped off her worn old work boots, stretching her feet with a grimace. With a stretch, she shrugged off her beaten leather jacket, glad it was still warm enough outside to sleep without it. She sat against the wall of her stand, cozying up in the corner she considered her bedroom. Her second most prized possessions (the first being her bow), her books, sat neatly in a stack beside her down filled sleeping bag, spines mostly unbroken. The only time she could read was under the glow of sunlight, and the daytime was spent on far more vital things than daydreaming about knights and dragons.
That was one good thing about winter, Kate thought as she crawled into her bag, jacket laid overtop. She would have ample time to read, to journal, to sew, as it would be too cold to do much of anything else.
For a while, she lay there, unmoving, too hungry and too paranoid to sleep. No matter how often she told herself Lurkers weren't as scary as they looked, seeing an undead human being poking around her stuff in the dark was always unnerving. The thought of one somehow scampering up her tree, devouring her in her sleep always nagged at her, especially when hungry and dehydrated.
It was times like this when Kate wished for someone else to help keep watch. That, though, would require trust, something that her time in Boston extinguished from her soul. Maybe if her father had not been so kind, perhaps if her mother had not been so cruel, she would not be in this situation, alone and always scared.
Tired of thinking so much about the past, Kate shut her eyes tight, clinging to the hem of her sleeping bag. She focused on the sound of the wind in the trees, the calmness of the night air. She was almost asleep, when...
Crunch.
Kate shot straight up on reflex. Fearing she would have to kill a Lurker in the uncertainty of darkness, Kate gripped her hunting knife with trembling hands. Crawling to the doorway of her stand, she snuck a peak out, and horrifyingly, what rummaged around her carrot garden did not seem to be a Lurker... but a human. A real, live, breathing, backstabbing human woman.
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Hey hi how are you?
This series gives me an excuse to rip your hearts out. You've been warned. What'd you think, though?