On a frosty mid-Winter morning, an unusual humidity floated stagnant in the air. The sun was moments from peeking above the eastern horizon, a few pale lavender clouds drifting lazily across the Georgian sky. A woman rolled over in her makeshift bed of flannel blankets and straw, her vision blurry as she blinked her eyes open. The blue light of the early day was wafting in around the edges of the heavy woolen horse blanket that was tacked in place above the east-facing window in the loft above. She poked a sleepily awkward pair of fingers into her already throbbing temples and forced her aching body into sitting position, curling her legs beneath her. Her jaw opened into a wide yawn as she wrenched herself upwards, staggering towards the boarded up windows which prevented light, amongst other less desirable things, from getting in. She leaned forward and pressed an eye socket against the space between two boards, squinting into the early light of the day. The woman saw nothing but open space, tall grasses and the swaying silhouettes of the damned, standing in stark shadowy contrast to the bright pinks and oranges that were gradually illuminating the sky. She drowsily staggered towards the ladder that would take her into the loft of the aged barn in which she had hunkered down. She hefted herself onto the rickety old thing, placing one hand and one foot over the other with a deftness that she found surprising for how sleepily she had awoken this morning. She climbed a few rungs higher than the level of the loft, then swung herself down onto the floorboards using the rafters overhead. She landed with a soft, dusty thump and then moved over to the open loft window. She could see for a few miles from her lonely perch; from the sagging remains of Atlanta all foggy and distant, to the nearby correctional facility, peeking out from above the tops of pine trees with tired cement walls.
Cat had been alone at the end of the world for months now, holed up in a barn that had once belonged to her grandparents. But they had shot themselves dead in their living room before the apocalypse even had a chance to gobble them up. Cat still hadn't quite decided if she pitied or envied their fate. Her bare, calloused feet padded quietly over to the edge of the floor and she squatted down, swinging her legs out to dangle along the weather-worn face of the barn. Slouching so hard it almost seemed she was inviting her mother to rise up out of the grave – she should really start rethinking what metaphors she used, even if in thought – Cat began to scan the horizons with sharp green eyes. Just as every other morning, nothing seemed entirely out of place in the surrounding fields of weedy grass. Cat had completed her scan of the immediate fields and moved on to the gnarled and nigh impassible tree line that began about three miles from where she sat. The stillness of the morning finally settled in on her as she realized that, just like every other morning from the previous year, no catalyst existed to foster any sorts of change in her newfound form of existence. The only thing that remained as an influence in her life was the wheel of death, constantly rolling forward and leaving everything crushed in its wake.
Cat was absentmindedly sweeping her eyes over the tree line once more, her sclera shrouded beneath a furrowed brow when she caught the far-off rustling of a pair of blackberry bushes. Her eyes hovered intently over the spot at which she swore she saw something. Just as she was about to write it off as one of those shit-brained beasts screwing around in the underbrush, Cat caught the glint of something hard and metallic, and in no way fleshy and rotted. Without realizing it, Cat had brought herself into a standing position and was leaning perilously far over the edge of the barn window, straining against herself to get a better look at what was fighting with the plants on the edge of her territory. It was then that she finally caught enough contiguous lines in the brush to make out a scope. At that moment, a cool and sharp breeze whipped past her right ear, prompting Cat to brush away what she thought was a fly. It wasn't until she heard the sharp thok in the wood behind her and the subsequent wobbling noises that followed that Cat finally realized that the bolt of a crossbow had been fired into the general vicinity of her face.
To be continued...
Chapter one of a story that I have no idea where I'm going with.
Please review n shit.
