Jacob put Oslo directly at his back and headed in a straight line south, using the infrequently appearing sun as a rough guide to keep the boat in the right direction until it set in the evening.

They made landfall well after night set in. The wolf had slept for most of the trip. He sped up to drive the boat firmly onto the sandy beach, figuring it would do as shelter for the first night. He would have liked to keep using the boat to travel down the coast and make more progress towards his destination, but it was already dangerously low on fuel. They’d have to hoof it.

There were dead fish littered all over the beach, and the smell was not pleasant. Jacob and the wolf sat together on the deck. He ate half a can of chicken noodle soup and offered the wolf the other half, who pinned the can between its paws and licked it all out with great gusto. Displeased that there was no more, it started biting the can once it was done. Jacob managed to pry the can away from it after a few attempts and filled it up partway with water from one of his bottles. The wolf lapped that up, too, then licked its lips.

“No more for tonight,” Jacob said, taking a swig from the water bottle. “Tomorrow we’ll find you some tasty dead humans to eat. Yummy, yeah?”

As they sat together in the orange-tinged darkness, he got to thinking. The wolf looked to have come out of the same facility as him. Given its strangely clingy disposition towards him, maybe they had met before in there, and he had just forgotten. Or maybe they had met even before that.

Looking into the wolf’s eye, it gave a brief shiver from the Death Glare, but nothing more. He had no idea what business he would have with a monster, or how it had turned out so amicable, but that was a mystery for another day.

Either way, I should probably be nicer to it. Maybe I’ll try and think of a name tomorrow.

He sat the pink backpack next to him and laid down to sleep on the cold, hard deck. The wolf curled up next to him, watching him unblinkingly until he fell asleep.

Jacob’s night was unrestful and marred by nightmares. One in particular stuck with him. A nightmare where Becca was talking to him, only to sprout hands from her mouth, more and more of them until her lower jaw dislocated from the mass of them, a tangle of wriggling digits.

Jacob woke up with a start and sat straight up. A hazy morning sun peeked through a tiny crack in the black cloud cover, providing some light. He got up and meant to get out some breakfast for himself and the wolf, but there was no sign of the backpack.

There was no sign of the wolf, either.

Jacob spent a few groggy moments in confusion before he put things together.

That little thief ran off with my stuff!

It played all chummy with me so I’d get it across the water. That sneaky little bastard…

If I see that thing again, I’m going to wring its neck.

What is it even planning to do with a bunch of tin cans? Can it even get them open on its own? I hope it can’t. Serves it right.

He checked the beach for footprints, but there wasn’t much to be found in the dry, fine sand mingled with powdery ash. He had better luck further up on land, where the ash was thicker, and he could make out a vague trail running inland. He considered following it, but abandoned the idea. The wolf was long gone by now. Its injured paw hadn’t been bothering it as much yesterday, meaning it was probably significantly faster than him.

Jacob returned to the boat and sat down to figure out what to do next. His anger quickly crumbled into despondency. He put his face in his hands, and for the first time since the world ended, he wept. Dry, quiet sobs. Nothing would come out of his withered tear ducts.

He was so alone. So very alone.

The wolf running away was his fault, he knew that. He’d treated it badly before, so it probably didn’t trust him anymore. Knowing it was his fault didn’t make him feel any better.

In some irrational way, it felt like everything was his fault. Like he’d done something wrong, and now the whole world was being punished for it. He’d never been a good man—never really tried to be—and that hadn’t bothered him much. But now that he felt the weight of his sins loom over him, it was suffocating.

But as long as he could find Becca, everything would be fine. He would put up with anything else to get to her.

He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths, gathered his wits, then moved on. With all his supplies lost, he would need to scavenge urgently for food, water, and another bag.

He found a road that was nearly concealed under all the ash and followed it along the coastline, hoping it would branch inland at some point. He came across a handful of summer houses by the water, but they were all empty. He used one of them as shelter that night, going to sleep both hungry and thirsty, with a dull dehydration headache.

There was an earthquake during the night, and he woke up when several planks fell down from the ceiling and struck him over the chest and face. He didn’t suffer any real injuries, but he was unable to fall asleep again after that.

He carried on the next morning in a foul mood. Finding an intersecting road running roughly south, he followed that. He spotted a pod of those gaseous blimp creatures flying overhead. One of them expelled a cascade of human bones from a distended sphincter, landing on the ashen ground with dull thuds. The creatures moved on, and Jacob shuddered with disgust.

The terrain here was different from Northland. Not all the trees were dead—occasionally he spotted one that had been warped just like the bodies in Oslo and… that little girl. These trees sprawled out with unnaturally long branches that sometimes reached out over a dozen meters and spiraling trunks that often split off into several smaller ones. Their branches hung heavy with blood-red, teardrop-shaped fruits, even if the trees had previously not been fruit-bearing ones, such as pines. Though Jacob spotted a few fruits that had fallen to the ground, he did not feel tempted to try and eat one.

He came across a small town along the road. Even though he could definitely hear some unsavory noises from among the buildings, his need for supplies forced him to investigate.

He went through a few residential houses. He found a hiking backpack that had some burn damage, but was still in usable condition. He also found a change of clothes, which he switched into immediately. A pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a flannel. They fit decently well. Lastly he found a pair of sunglasses in a jewelry drawer. They were on the small side for his head—still, it was good to have them. He’d feel a bit stupid wearing them when it was always so dark outside, but fashion was a luxury he couldn’t afford at the moment.

The town also had a small supermarket, which he visited for a little shopping trip. The interior was dark and lined with aisles of shelves. Many of the shelves had fallen down, and the floor was wet with liquid from broken bottles.

He hadn’t walked far before he spotted a corpse being devoured by a pack of winged creatures in one of the aisles. He counted five of them.

They had small limbs and fat, bulbous bodies. They were a bit under a meter tall and eyeless, faces dominated by round sucker mouths lined with teeth. They tore chunks of burnt flesh from their meal and swallowed greedily, their see-through fly wings vibrating with glee. They gave him the impression of demonic cherubs.

Jacob meant to stick to the other aisles and leave the monsters to their business, but one of them turned its head towards him and craned its neck in apparent recognition of his presence.

It lifted clumsily into the air by oscillating its small wings so rapidly that they became just a blur. It hurtled at him with a wretched cry. Struggling to stay airborne, it sometimes skipped along the floor for a few steps before gaining enough lift to hoist itself back up.

The other fly things jumped up with alarm and wheeled around to get in on the action.

The first one moved slowly enough that Jacob simply caught it out of the air by its neck, its skin like oily rubber under his fingers. He threw it against the floor and stomped on it until its body was mush, which didn’t take very long. They didn’t appear to have any bones, only made up of muscle, fatty tissue, and disturbingly large quantities of pus.

The other four rushed him. He pulled down a heavy shelf, crushing two of them, while the third clung to his leg and the fourth swung around his neck, their sucker mouths extending from their faces and latching onto his flesh. They dug through his clothes and bit into his flesh.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Jacob growled more out of anger than pain. He yanked the third one off his leg by one of its skinny arms and slammed it against the floor repeatedly. Then he pried the last one away with both hands and held the odious thing up in front of him like one might a baby. He let it fall and kicked it, sent it flying into a shelf at the end of the aisle. It fell to the floor with a pitiful squeal along with a bunch of cereal boxes. He went over and put the thing out of its misery with a quick twist to the neck, the whole head coming off in his hands with a spray of foul-smelling pus.

Jacob discarded the head with a grimace and checked himself over to see if he had gotten any of the off-yellow goop on himself. Luckily he had been spared that, but his new clothes were already damaged with bloody bite marks.

Can’t have fucking shit in the apocalypse.

With the fly things dealt with, Jacob walked around the store in peace and gathered food that had remained somewhat intact. He found enough canned goods and bottled water to fill his new backpack almost full. It was a great haul, well worth a close encounter with some nasties.

Moving on, he picked one of the last houses along the road, which was more intact than its neighbors, with the hopes of finding a decent knife or some camping gear.

He circled around the building and peeked through broken windows, but didn’t see anything inside, so he went around to the back door—which looked particularly weak—and kicked it down.

He hit the bad-luck jackpot yet again. As soon as he took a few steps inside the house, a warped humanoid peeked its head around a couch near the opposite end of what was apparently a living room.

The thing was roughly human-sized, with an elongated, bird-like neck and seven black eyes arrayed randomly about its face. It was a little slow on the uptake, staring blankly at him with drool dripping down its chin. Then it let out a warbling screech.

Jacob launched into a Dash and caught the monster’s face with a booted front kick that snapped its head back. It fell backwards, revealing its pudgy body, which was clad in human clothes.

It tried to reach up and grab him with clawed hands, but he just stomped on its head a few times. When it kept on twitching, he repeated the process, and the creature finally died, arms falling limp.

Jacob searched through the rest of the house slowly and methodically, anticipating another ambush, but the monster’s cry hadn’t called any reinforcements, and he didn’t find any sign of other beings.

The kitchen was mostly intact. The table had been set for dinner, but the plates and cutlery had fallen to the floor, probably during one of the quakes, with rotting pieces of food strewn about the floor. He found three breakfast bars and ate one of them where he stood. He took a medium-sized kitchen knife and wrapped it in a kitchen towel to act as a makeshift sheath before stowing it away in his pack. A hunting knife would have been better, but it would do for now.

After going to the upper floor and finding nothing of real use in the bedrooms, he went back downstairs and discovered a basement door connected to a nook in the kitchen. He figured there could be a blanket or bedroll down there. The door was locked, but he kicked it open after a few tries. It swung open and slapped against the wall.

In the darkness below, at the end of the stairs, there were two figures, illuminated by the flickering light of a candle stump. An old man and a teenage boy, the former bent and white-haired while the latter was tall and black-haired. They both had the same curls.

“Oh,” Jacob said. “Uh, hello.”

The two humans stared up at him, terrified.

“I know I don’t look it, but I’m human. Sometimes even friendly. Sorry, bad joke.”

The old man opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

“Is she dead?” the boy asked.

“Is who dead?”

“My mom. Upstairs.”

“Oh, that was your mom? Yeah, she’s…” He made a vague, noncommittal gesture. He hoped they wouldn’t mind him smashing her head in.

“You saved us,” the old man said. “We’ve been trapped down here for days, ever since she flowered.”

“Flowered?”

“That’s what we’ve been calling it. When the bad gets into you.”

“Right.”

“The lucky ones die right away. Some suffer a long time. Then there are ones like my daughter.” His wrinkled face got all screwed up, and Jacob worried he was going to cry. To his credit, the old man held it in. “Can we come upstairs?”

“Oh, of course.”

Jacob stood aside, putting his sunglasses on, and let the two of them climb the stairs. He immediately bristled as soon as they came into the light.

Half the boy’s face—the right side that had been obscured by darkness—was marred by corruption. The eye on that side was abnormally large, dominated entirely by a yellow iris except for a small slitted pupil. Patchy green scales ran down the right side of his face. They were evidently uncomfortable, because he kept scratching at them.

The old man must have noticed him staring, because he stepped in front of his grandson. “My name is Ibrahim. He’s Tarim. He’s not like the others, I promise.”

“You promise, do you? Look, I’ve seen this before, and I don’t wanna see it again. I’ll be going now. You guys can stay here.”

“You’re a User, aren’t you?” Tarim said. “Like a hero.”

Jacob sighed. “None of your business, kid. I’m leaving.”

“Don’t, please,” Ibrahim pleaded. “You could help us. I beg you. There’s no one else.”

“Man, I don’t want to say this, but your grandson over there, he’s dead. If you want, I can…” Jacob screwed his eyes shut and gave a sharp sigh. “I can make it quick for him, if you’d like. That’s all I can do.”

“He’s not like that!” Ibrahim insisted. He came to grab Jacob by his clothes, but Jacob held up a hand in warning and stopped him short. More softly, the old man said: “Honestly, it’s not. He’s been like this for days, and he’s not changed any more at all.”

Jacob glanced over at the kid. “I don’t think that matters. It’ll happen sooner or later.”

“What’s your hero name?” Tarim asked.

“Shut up, kid. The adults are talking.”

Ibrahim took another hesitant step forward, arms held out in front of him pleadingly. “Please. Wherever you’re headed, let us come with you. We won’t make any trouble, I swear, and Tarim is fine.”

Jacob had a refusal ready on his lips. Dragging an old man and a kid all the way to Arcadia would slow him down, and finding enough supplies for three people would be difficult. But most of all, he really didn’t want to see a person ‘flower’ again.

He still hesitated. He wrestled with some other part of himself. A part of him that was just happy to see another human face.

“It’s a long trip,” he said. “I’m going to Arcadia.”

Ibrahim nodded. “We’ll come with you. They might still have heroes in Arcadia. People.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Then why are you going there?”

“I’m looking for someone. She might have left from there to go someplace else. It’s really none of your business. Look, if you can sort out your own supplies and keep up with me, I’ll let you tag along to Arcadia. What you do from there is your own problem.”

“Thank you,” Ibrahim said. He elbowed his grandson in the side, and he mumbled a ‘thank you’ as well.

Ibrahim offered a handshake. Jacob looked at his hand for a long moment, then reluctantly shook it. He kept glancing over at the kid’s unnerving yellow eye.

I’m so dumb. I’m going to regret this immediately.

Ibrahim and Tarim geared up with whatever was in the basement. Tarim carried their things in a duffle bag, containing a few food items, toiletries, two compact sleeping bags, a portable gas stove for camping, two metal cups, and a small pot strapped to the side. Jacob had already cleaned out the supermarket, so they would have to find food elsewhere. He definitely wasn’t sharing.

They left the town at a noticeably slower pace than Jacob had kept earlier, diminished though he was. It was Ibrahim that slowed them, barely able to keep up on his cane and needing to stop often to rest. He clearly knew it himself, too, because he kept apologizing, which only served to annoy Jacob more.

Tarim, on the other hand, was all energy, and would probably have run on ahead if his grandfather didn’t keep reminding him to stay close to ‘the hero’, as they called him, even though he’d never confirmed that he was either a hero or a User. They seemed to just take it for granted.

“What’s your hero name?” Tarim asked for the second time, kicking a pile of ash.

“Stop asking me that.”

“What’s your Blessing?”

“I never said I was a User.”

“Yeah, but you look like one. And you’ve survived this long out there.”

Jacob offered no reply.

Tarim didn’t take the hint. “Where’d you come from, anyway?”

“It’s not important.”

“Have you ever killed someone?”

“Yes. So maybe stop getting on my nerves.”

“You have? Really? What was it like?”

“Tiring. Could you be quiet for a minute, please?”

“Tarim, stop bothering the hero,” Ibrahim said and poked the boy in the back with his cane, but his voice was too soft to serve as any real admonition.

“What rank were you?” Tarim carried on, undeterred.

Jacob sighed. “Kid, seriously. The Earth is dead and we’re all fucked. What are you so upbeat about? Didn’t your mother turn into a monster and die?”

He went quiet at that.

No one said anything for the next few hours.

They camped under a tangle of fallen trees that night. Ibrahim and Tarim were soon snoring in their sleeping bags, but Jacob was unable to settle. He stayed up staring at the kid for most of the night. Waiting for him to turn.

At some point, despite himself, he fell asleep. He dreamt about Becca. She was talking about some hero thing she was obsessed with. Then she looked over at him and gave him that impish grin he’d always loved. Then she leaned in to kiss him.

And bloody hands burst out of her mouth, grabbing at his face.

Jacob woke up with an angry groan, rubbing his sleep-stiff face. Sitting up, he found the boy and his grandfather sharing a breakfast of biscuits with jam and tea brewed on the camping stove.

“Good morning,” Tarim said with an uncertain smile.

“Good morning.” Jacob stood and shook ash off his clothes. He inspected the boy closely, but he didn’t look any different from yesterday. The corruption on his face hadn’t spread.

But it will, Jacob told himself. So don’t let either of you get attached.