Her first night alone was worse than she thought it would be. She had gotten use to his snores and his late-night mumbles in his sleep, it had cut the quiet of the world with sound, and the quiet that night was unnerving. To top it off, her and the dog was slowly hounded by dark storm clouds towards night fall, and though it had warmed up enough that it wasn’t snow now that pelted her and the dog, the ram shackled gas station she had found twenty miles out of town was not as sound as she had hoped. She and the dog had spent a cramped night under a tarp she had to throw over toppled over shelving because the roof was riddled with holes that suspiciously looked to have been added from the inside of the building, and it was still raining by dawn. She was wet, hungry, and doubting herself in leaving at least, the warmth and dryness of her little whole- in the Apocalyptic -wall, if not ‘being’ with him, at least with him she was not alone. The dog though, he didn’t act like nothing was wrong. That morning he graced her with a shower of his own making when he came back from where he had gone to do his morning business, and had brought back something he had found ,smelling like a rotted sewer, and she gagged as she made him go to the other end of the building with it. She sighed as she then rummaged through her backpack, looking for dry socks, and something to eat, and found both, though the food was just a dented can of potted meat. As she sat dipping a tongue depressor into the can to eat it with, she thought again on how lonely she was, and how she never could handle being alone. All her adult life she seemed to have had to have someone around her…she never lived alone for too long. That had, at first led to some bad, if not abusive relationships, then some less than savory roommates… then back to some not so useful men, and in between she always had some kind of pet…dog, cat, even a frog she had caught and kept in a little terrarium for a month while waiting for this last relationship to get out of jail -right before the end of the world. No, she did not do loneliness well, that’s why she kept the dog with her, he was a goodish- size dog, part German Sheppard, and part Labrador, and finding food for them both could get dicey. She could of just let him run free, he had showed this morning he could find food for himself better than she could, but the thought of not having something living, breathing, and to talk to, even if it couldn’t answer back, had her heart race, and her thoughts freeze up.

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She shook off the feeling of dread that always followed her thoughts of trying to go it alone ‘this time’ and got her socks changed and got her and the dogs packs ready to go. She whistled for the dog to come over, and looked up at multiple tiny the man- made sky lights and saw the rain seemed to have stopped, and saw some filtered sunlight trying to come through, and thought to herself if the weather held she might be able to get a fire going later on in the day to dry out her clothing, as she clipped on the dogs pack. She chuckled as she told the dog, Puddin was his name- silly name, he hadn’t like it, but it stuck- to follow, and they left the building and headed east, to put more distance away from the town, and away from the part of the Military base she had lived close to for the past three years. She had a bad feeling people were still coming to it to raid what ever they could still get their hands on, and quiet honestly, she did not want to be around people who felt the best way to handle the situation everyone -that was still alive that is- was in by taking what the wanted by the end of whatever they could find at a place like that. She took out an old-fashioned map-no Google Maps now peeps! - and glanced at the area she was heading for. She knew the next county over pretty well, but she now wanted to stay off the roads as much as possible, so across country she was going, and she wanted to make sure east would get her close enough to the main road in the bigger town there so she could get to the bridge to take her to the next state over. Her math was terrible, but, if she had it figured right, her and the dog should get there in the next couple of days. Pluss along the way she knew in between her and there was a lot of farm land, so maybe she could some wild growing veggies that had survived the early fall cold snap, or maybe some root cellars that had some still good canned things…'anything to better my chancess' she thought to herself,as she went headed out find what ever she was looking for..