A Tail Tale

The Long Road Ahead

Chapter 02:

        Walking down the path, the teenager clad in blue jeans, a cyan v-neck t-shirt, older model combat boots, a leather jacket, and a black hiking backpack walked quickly. Tall, thick shrubs engulf the sides of the path, darkness only allows eyesight for a few meters ahead, and the thin fog made it worse. His flashlight from his belt had ran out of batteries as he walked for ten minutes or so, and darkness soon surrounded him. A small wooden sign reading "Junction Ahead" is shaped like an arrow pointing further down the path, and slight rustling of leaves can be heard now. As he walked faster, the rustling became louder, and started to move faster, closing in behind him. Keeping one hand in his pocket on the small pistol, he started to jog as to not waste time or energy.  Stopping at the junction, he can see only two clearly marked and used paths that he could take. To the left lay a dark, weed covered path leading to what seemed like some park. The other road had dimly lit lights breaching the fog, and the sound of heavy movement. The bush movement got louder as well, and now bushes all around him moved, as if something were in them.

        Something large started to walk out of a bush in front of the lit path and held up it's arm, as if shielding it's arm from the light. "Bang! Pock! Zoooh!" bullets riddled what ever was up ahead, and stray bullets zoomed past the teenager. Making a split second decision, he dashes towards the left path sprinting down the path as he heard faint voices, and the common sound of gun fire. Running for maybe a minute now, he comes across a large stream, about two cars wide, and flowing slowly into a small drop off. *panting due to exercise*
"Mm-...Maybe I can get through this area" he said to himself.
Starting to cross the stream, he heard music playing with some interference. Looking towards the center of the stream lies a rock, with an old radio playing on top of it. "What's that doing here? Why is it on?" he asked himself as he moved towards it.

        Moving towards the radio, he could start to hear that all movement had halted, or gotten too far to hear. He climbed the small rock, sat upon it, and took a look at the radio. It was an old metal antenna battery powered radio that was tuned to a seemingly random radio station that was simply blasting rock music. Grabbing the radio, and in turn turning it off had done something. Bushes from the side of the stream he had come from started to rustle, and dark figures started to walk towards the clearing. Stuffing the radio in his backpack, the teen grabs his pistol, starts to back up to the other side of the stream, and kept his aim towards the figures. They halted their advance as the laser flicked on, but the teen still backed away. Whispering to himself
"I have enough bullets to take them on.....but I've got to get out o-..."
He is interrupted as he crosses onto solid land with something sprinting towards him from behind. Trying to move to see what it was, everything was a slight blur to the teen, and it was too dark to identify the intruder. A slash across the chest, and then a stab in the gut brought the teenager to his knees, dropping the pistol gripping his wounds in pain. The figure soon hits him in the head, knocking him out cold. Seeing nothing but pitch black for a few seconds before coming to, he found himself in a different environment.

     He sat in front of a snuffed out camp fire tied to a tree tightly. To his left were four medium sized tents placed behind a red pickup truck, completely dark and silent. To his front, behind the campfire lay a solid brick-cement wall mixture with what was shaped to be a boat. Other than being in a new environment, and being tied up, something felt odd. His backpack lay empty and torn to the left of the campfire. Looking at himself, his pants are dirty, his feet are still wet, and his shirt was ripped in the chest region. Though with blood stains, he could tell that he was no longer bleeding. Pure White bandages cover his wounds, and minimal pain was felt. Looking back up, a light had turned on in one of the tents.
*An older gentleman yawns*
"Who's watching our 'guest'?" the man asks.
Another person seemingly gets up and replies
"I thought you were.... I'll-" she is interrupted by the man.
"It's alright, I guess I need to get up anyways..." the man says as the farthest tent unzips from the inside.
The light flickers off, and a figure emerges from the tent, slowly walking towards the teen. The man walks out of the shadows and restarts the campfire.

       The fire bursts into life with blinding light. A man wearing a grey t shirt, blue jeans, and black boots is standing behind the fire. His skin was covered in a thick coat of grey fur, with a wolf's head instead of a human's. The man appeared to have one of the different said diseases. Now in shock, the teen tries to get himself loose even more, seeing a diseased person was in his presence. Sitting down now, the old man, diseased sat down and said "Heh, might want to calm down if I were you..."
Stopping, realizing his futility, the teen looks towards the diseased, and stares.
"I guess you can understand me! I guess you're not one of the others then... Speak up if you can talk!" the old man, thing says.
"W--What do you mean I 'Can understand' you? If anything, I should be the one saying that to..."
sighing, then continuing
"What do you mean by 'one of the others'?" the teen asks.
"Wait... I've been rude, let me introduce myself before we go on. I'm Musan, if you can't remember me by that, then just call me Mr. M." Musan says.
"Hmm, interesting name.. I'm Tyler...." The teen replies.
"How did you get infected....Mr. M?" He asked.
"Long story short, I was attacked, and infected by one of them.... I thought I was done for, so to ensure I didn't cause any damage.... I tried offing myself...." Musan says.
There is a brief, depressed silence for maybe thirty seconds or so.
"I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So I hid and watched myself slowly turn into this over a day. No pain or anything.... it's interesting to know that anyone infected could turn over night without noticing..." he said.
"So, how did *you* get infected Tyler?"
Tyler looked slightly stunned, then shook his head in disbelief "You're kidding me right? I'm not infected, none of those things bit me or anything. Though I think one of your people stabbed me back at the creek, but it looks like you patched me up, so thanks."
Musan looked slightly concerned, then said
"That gash in your stomach wasn't made by blades you know? It wasn't made by any of my people either. We simply found you there bleeding out, so we took you in."
After saying that, he throws a mirror towards Tyler, which lands close to his feet. Musan then motioned someone, or something out of Tyler's line of sight to do something. A ripping sound was brief, and the rope came undone even quicker. Looking at his own hands, Tyler realized something was different. His hands were black, covered in fur, but it did not feel warm to him, or odd.
"What? That can't be...the river..." Tyler said before he started thinking about the river experience.
Musan interrupted his thinking to point at the mirror.
"You're something else Tyler. Not a normal infected like me, one of the more.....special types."
Picking up the palm sized mirror, Tyler took a long look at himself. He was definitely no longer human, but he looked similar to a small forest animal, a fox. Fur covered his skin in a similar pattern to a Red Fox's coat pattern.
"You see? You're one of us now, though different even to us. You're one of the rare infected. When we found you bleeding out on the banks of that small stream, you were shaking violently, changing as we took you in. We didn't know whether you were going to be feral, so..." Musan said as he gestured to the rope on the tree. He moves over to Tyler's backpack, and tossed it to him. Catching it right before it hit the ground, Tyler looked inside it to make sure everything was fine.

  Inside the backpack, things were out of place, but neater than when he last looked inside. Plenty of food was placed inside, all cans from his rental home, some 9 millimeter ammunition boxes, a few empty magazines, a lantern, the radio from the creek, and a flashlight. Something essential was missing though.
Looking around for it, Tyler asks "Where's my gun?"
Looking at Tyler, Musan replies "Gun? If you had a weapon, we would of confiscated it when we tied you up there."
He pauses for a bit, then remembers something.
"Come to think of it, yes.. We collected a gun that was lying in the stream where we found you. To make sure it's yours, can you tell me what it looks like?"
"It's a silver 9 millimeter Beretta with a laser built into the nose of the pistol... It had a few rounds left in it before I was...." Tyler said before he paused, remembering what happened at the stream.
"It's alright, you don't have to go any further with your description. We have that indeed, question is whether you're friendly or not though." Musan stated.
Looking at Musan now, Tyler questions what he said "I am friendly just so you know. Wouldn't I have already been cussing at you, or working out a deal to earn my freedom by this point? Wouldn't I also say I were friendly since you proposed you will allow me to be here if I were friendly?" Pausing for a moment to think, Musan replies
"I suppose so, but... I think you have many choices here. I'll propose three of them, but please do not take the third choice, for both of our sakes. One, suppose you were friendly, you could work for us to get your weapon back over time, and gain our trust. Two, you can simply leave now, but if you come back, we'll be long gone, or take that as an action against us. Three, you could secretly try and kill us all, but I hope it doesn't come to that!"

  "I suppose option one sounds best,  but how will I protect myself from random people on the road? Let alone feral infected." Tyler asked.
"I didn't quite think of that young one, how about we make a deal then?" Musan said.
"Depends on the deal, but I'm listening." Tyler stated.
"So how about we take some of your food in exchange for your weapon? With the deal that you won't fire upon my group at anytime? Then you can come and go as you please, just wave a flag or something to let us know it would be you." Musan proposed.
"Alright, how much food are we talking about?" Tyler asked.
"Just one or two cans should do the job fine, I don't sense that you'll actually cause us any trouble." Musan said.
"You have yourself a deal then....Mr. Musan?" Tyler says as he gestures using his right hand to shake hands.
Musan nods, then gestures for Tyler to put his hand down. "I don't need to shake on it, your word is good enough for me." Musan gets up, then starts walking towards the tents. Opening his tent again, he pulls out a familiar looking pistol. "That's it, right?" Tyler whispered to himself. Musan walks back, and hands Tyler his pistol. Shinier than before, it feels the same as before.
"Take good care that you don't accidentally do anything with that you'll regret with that." Musan said as he got up in front of the Fire.
Putting the pistol in his bag, Tyler replies. "I'll try my best Musan, but no promises.....Split second thinking isn't exactly my thing...."
"I'll be heading to bed, you can leave if you want to anytime, no one's stopping you. I'll be asleep in my tent over yonder." He says as he points to his tent.
"Oh, and as I said earlier, don't try anything that you'll regret, we have guards posted around this camp watching like hawks!" He says, then walks towards his tent.
"Leaving sounds like a good idea, I would be able to scavenge while only worrying about myself....but it'd get lonely over time.. Maybe I should stay... just a few weeks, in order to get to know the local area more... maybe get better supplies while I'm at it... But if I leave now....I coul-..." Tyler contemplates to himself before getting interrupted by a new figure.
"Talking to yourself are we?" A woman says as she jumps down from the tree Tyler was tied to.
Jumping up in a startle Tyler replied to her sudden appearance, and question.
"Woah..... for a moment there, I thought you were one of those other infected..."
"Not quite, just a human, like you used to be...." She says as she walks over to the tents and gets into one.
Tyler starts looking at the camp; it is a small camp built into a high-way rest stop. Two trucks are parked in the parking lot with a truck parked in the grass where the tents are located. A boat on a trailer lies behind the wall in front of the campfire, and is painted in a camouflage pattern, as if it were meant for sport. An empty highway lies curved to the right of the camp in a seventy five degree curved turn. A city lies in the distance of the right most turn of the highway with large black smoke plumes emitting from it's interior. To the left most road lies lots of nature, vegetation, and a variety of abandoned automobiles littered near a crashed semi-truck. After looking around, Tyler starts setting up a small camp in front of the now snuffed out camp fire. Laying down using the tree as a support for his bag pillow, he tries to sleep. Moving around to try and get comfortable, Tyler notices someone standing over him.
"Do you need somewhere to sleep?" A tall, stern man clad in khaki shorts and a red shirt asks.
"Yeah, that'd be nice...." Tyler said as he sat up.
Pointing towards one of the parked trucks, he states "That truck is unlocked, and out of gas, you can stay in it if you would like."
Tyler starts gathering his things and looks over at the parked blue pickup truck and said "Thanks, there's no catch to this though, right?"
Looking at Tyler in confusion, he just shakes his head left to right whispering to himself "Kids.....infected kids...."
Tyler walks over to the blue truck parked next to the other truck and the boat. Getting a brief look at it before looking inside. It was a blue old-fashioned pickup truck with one headlight broken, a missing mirror on it's left side, the left side of the bumper is dented with faint blood stains covering it, and the glass in the cabin is tinted black. As he looks inside, the interior is rather clean, no trash or anything, just a dusty interior. Opening the door, a strong smell of febreeze flew outside, as if someone left the can spraying overnight. Getting overwhelmed by the smell, Tyler shuffled backward hitting the other truck with his elbows. The loud bang was heard, and someone started running for the parking lot.
"Who's there?" Musan whispered.
*coughing a little* "I-...It's me..." *Still coughing*
"What was tha...." he pauses as he is also hit with the extremely strong aroma coming from within the pickup truck. "Close that truck's door! Infected of all types can smell that from a mile away!" Musan says as he coughs a little.
Closing the door, Tyler rushes away from the vehicle to get some fresh air.
Covering his nose, Musan tells Tyler "There's a spare tent on the other side of the camp if you want to use it. We used to use it for another person, but they decided to ditch us for a Bandit group near the city."
He points to a dark green tent about the size of a single person smart car with only one way into the tent.
"Thanks, I guess I'll be sleeping in there then tonight...." Tyler says as he heads towards the tent.
Unzipping the tent door, he finds the tent to be completely empty, except for a lantern, matches, and some larger bullets laying on the ground. He enters the tent without a worry, zips closed the door, and tries sleeping on his leather jacket instead of his backpack. Even though he had a torn shirt which was simply hanging on by a few threads, his new fur coat kept him oddly satisfied in temperature. Falling asleep quietly, he awaits the next day to make up his mind, and make the decision.