Earl took a while to get back on his feet and when he did, he stared at Maxine afraid she could, somehow come back to life. He couldn't tell how long he stood there but it was long enough to be sure she wasn't going to rise up again.

For the first time in maybe 20 years, Earl shed a tear. He killed a person for the first time in his life. Murder, even in self-defense, is still murder.

Slowly, he approached the dead body, laid on the floor almost like she was sleeping face down.

He reached for the flashlight, picked it up but kept it pointed at the corpse.

Slowly, Earl backed out, but stayed cautious. His breaths had become heavy. He could feel his body begging for rest, but he didn't want to.

He wandered around there, finding skeletons at seemingly every corner. Some of them had clothes on, old, clothes. He even found a group of skeletons dressed like cowboys, with hats, boots and even rifles with bullets in them.

Not much further, he found a group of about 10 piles of bones stacked next to each other, wooden bows and arrows laid beside them. Earl stepped on some eagle feathers.

Slowly the puzzle was coming together...

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Earl thought he must have been there for about a day when he found a skeleton which caught his attention more than any other.

This skeleton in particular had a pink dress, with white spots on it.

You see, a strange thing happens when you see someone you've forgotten for a long time. It's like all the memories you deleted of them, get downloaded into your brain at once.

Now he knew...

That was Heather, the love of his life. Now, he could remember her round face, red cheeks and blonde curly hair. He grew up with her, they went to the same school, had the same friends. Yet, growing up, Heather didn't like him.

She liked a guy called... The name seemed too far in his memory to recall. But he knew she liked him a lot and that she was sad when he enrolled in the army. Earl remembered how happy she was the morning he came back from war and how sad she was in the evening after finding out he lost a leg in battle.

When Heather's father met with Earl's father, they made a deal to make their children marry so their families could be united in blood and in business. A tradition which had died off since then.

Earl remembered how the first few months of their marriage were rocky and how Heather didn't want to speak with him, see him or lose her virginity to him. So Earl got her parents involved.

Reluctantly, she slept in bed with him that night and every other night until she disappeared. They had 3 children. Heather seemed content with the life she had.

When Earl moved the torch across her remains, he found another skeleton next to hers. Their hands were intertwined. The other skeleton was missing a right leg.

Earl understood.

He marched ahead for a while until he found a spot where there were no skeletons. Earl sat with his back to the cave's wall and waited until the smell of his decomposing body added to Cadaver's stench.